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

was raised, after expenditure OF pubic
money far exceeding her prime cost. three
thousand tons of clinging mud was pumped
out of her. Her obstinate back had to be
broken with dynamite before she could be
moved from the spot where she had so long
DISTRACTED navigation
The Hoodoo Terrors
HOODOO ship" are the terror of surgeons ;"
- and owners alike. Take the fine, handsome,
brand new Daphne as she stood newborn on
the ways. ready for long and honorable
career of the sea. Men said devil possessed
her. At the very terminus of the launching
ways she capsized and drowned one hundred
and twentyfour workmen. Thus early did
she need the physicians of the sea. These
righted her rechristened her the Rose for good
1uck-only to see her fill and sink at London
derry Pumped out here, she passed over to
Millport, and tore her bottom out. Floated
again by the ever ready surgical aides and
alarmed owners, she still continued to seek
misfortune At last she was sold to the
Greeks, and is at this moment sailing as the
Eleni of SMYRNA veritable hoodoo of the sea
What does the hospital bill of the worlds
shipping run into every year? Probably fifty
million dollars at least And this is only a
small fraction of the total involved in deaths
Off Cape Race alone, that fateful southeastern
extremity of Newfoundland, one recent years
record is eight fine steamers and two big
windjammers, sent to utter destruction. in
volving the loss of thirty-five lives and two
million dollars in hulls and cargoes. AS to the
causes of wounds short of total loss these may
range from icebergs to meteorites from other
worlds Why these fragments of planets should
fall so frequently has never been explained.
Talking of injury from bergs, surely the
strangest case record is that of the Gulon
liner Arizona. New York to Liverpool, with
five hundred and nine passengers and a big
cargo She was tearing over the Grand Banks
at midnight, two hundred and fifty miles
northeast of ST. Johns, when without a mo-
ment's warning a colossal ice castle doomed
over her masts. Imagine the impact of the
six thousand ton liner at eighteen knots. A
frightful panic ensued as the half-clad pasSen-
gers swarmed on deck and beheld the mighty
shape that lowered white and CHASTITY. with
cleaning crags hundred feet above
Wounded almost to death. staggering as If
in agony the liner drew back, with her deck
and fore part Uttered with two hundred tons
of ice boulders. And SO she put about for St.
Johns. Never had that port, so famous in
maritime annals, beheld such sight the
manned Arizona as she hmped in Bows
smashed from toprail to keelson, with wounds
twenty feet wide: massive plates and giant
ribs crumpled like tin: her ironwork twisted
like strands of wire; the great oak planking
in matchwood; and the immense stempiece
bitten clean off by the monster she had struck.
First aid promptly given by the ship doc
tors of ST. Johns; and then with a temporary
wooden bow built into her, back came the
Arizona to New York for more permanent
treatment at the hands of specialists of world
wide repute in the merchant marine.
Such is ship surgery. And SO profitable
the value of the cripple to her saviors. that
many syndicates have been formed expressly
to go out into the highways and byways of the
sea to play the good Samaritan-at price.