Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-03-22

for instance. Here was fighting monster
mounting sixty-seven- ton guns fore and aft
She ran on the Pereiro Reef off the Spanish
coast and pierced through with great
limestone rocks These were inspected criti-
cally by the surgeons and with marvellous
adroitness small charges of dynamite were ex-
ploded under them without injuring the vessel
Four hundred cubic feet of rock was pulverized
by blasting inside the hull and then great
shields were fitted over gaping wounds IN the
battleship's flank Next, the prodigious pumps
were set a-throbbing. and her saviors beheld
with triumph the floating fortress rising again
on the crest of the waves as though she had
never been injured.
The ram of her towering sister the Anson
tore a great hole in the Italian emigrant ship
Utopia Genoa to New York, and she sank in
sixty-seven feet of water in the dead of the
night dragging down with her great number
of unfortunates who were looking forward to
the Land of Liberty Her position was serious
menace to navigation in Gibraltar Bay; so she
had to be killed or cured. The latter was
thought impossible. Not only was the rent
enormous, but racing currents threatened any
salvage work. Undeterred by all difficulties
however, the free 1ances of the sea came for
ward with their armies OF helmeted divers, and
built monstrous cofferdam, the full length OF
the stricken ship. This meant practically the
extension of the Utopias hull upward from the
deck to the water level.
When this was done,-as it was. IN spite OF
swirling tides and dangerous currents, down
went the divers to patch the gaping holes !;
and then dozen twelve-inch centrifugal
pumps went to work. In less than an hour
four thousand tons of water was literally pulled
out of the cofferdam, which instantly began
to exert an enormous upward lift AS the
Utopia rose she was lowed shoreward, beached
at length, and temporarily overhauled; to be
towed later to Glasgow and handed over to her
owners, with all the pomp and circumstance
Of real triumnh n maritime St1fQerV
But there are many cases where the stricken
ship is past all hope, and her huge, inert car
cass lies a sinister menance to all traffic on the
high seas. In such event the surgeons are to
the fore also; for the task of ending grey
hound or tramp is often actually more delicate
and perilous than mending one. In the fair
way of the Thames they will not soon forget
the famous Triple wreck-as strange chapter
of accidents ever that highway saw. First
of all the huge steamer Newburn ran into the
Winston at Thames Haven during a dense
fog The latter sank at once. Guard boats
fused around both wrecks, wheeling and
blowing their sirens. Yet in spite of all pre-
cautions. along came the stately Erasmus Will
son, and within twenty minutes OF the first
catastrophe drove her towering steel bows
right through the wounded Newburn, cutting
her clean in two Here, surely. the ship doc
tors could do little save gather up the pieces.
One half of the twice smitten Newburn was
hastily sold for seventy-fve dollars, and the
other for three hundred and seventy-hve dol
lars-four hundred and fifty dollars for the lot
cheap price for an ocean going ship! The
sunken Winston brought forty-hve hundred
dollars; and it cost twice that sum to dock
and repair the third actor in this curious trag-
edy.
The Wick Bay. too needed only the coup de
grace from the surgeon of ships. For four years
She Law in thirty feet of mud, and defied all
attempts to shift her. and when at last she