ADRIFT ON A DERELICT
"Looks to me as though we're going to have a ripsnorter for Christmas,"
said Eric to his friend, Homer, the day before the festive season. "If
the sea gets much higher, Cookie won't have to stir the plum duff at
all!"
"How's that?"
"All he's got to do is to leave the raisins and the flour and the
currants and whatever else goes into the duff lying loose on a table.
The old lady is kicking loose enough to mix it up all right. Doesn't she
pitch!"
"Great cook you'd make," laughed the other. "I'm glad we don't have to
mess from your galley. But you're right about the weather. It's all
right to go hunting for derelicts, but I don't know how the deuce
anybody can be expected to find one in a sea like this!"
"We might hit her," suggested Eric, cheerfully.
"You're a hopeful prophet, you are," retorted his chum. "I'm not aching
to feed the fishes yet awhile."
"Well, we might bump, just the same. Then the _Seminole_ would have a
chance to hunt us as a derelict, and Van Sluyd--he's on her now, you
know--would have the time of his young life."
"I don't think you need to worry about sending a message to Van Sluyd
yet awhile," the other answered; "after all, the _Miami_ is still above
water."
"She is, once in a while," Eric commented, as the cutter "took it green"
and the water came flooding down the deck. Homer, seeing the wave
coming, scuttled for the companion hatchway and went below.
As Eric had said, it seemed difficult to try to locate a derelict in a
half a gale of wind. Yet, so dangerous to navigation was the floating
wreck which the _Miami_ was seeking, that the risk was worth taking.
When he remembered what the lieutenant of the _Bear_ had said to him
once about derelicts, he realized the terrible importance of the quest.
"Every year," he had said, "hundreds of vessels, both sail and steam,
leave their home ports for foreign shores, or start from foreign ports
for home. The day of the expected arrival comes and goes, two or three
days drag by, and still there is no sign of them. Anxious relatives and
friends besiege the shipping offices daily for word, and no word comes.
When suspense has passed into assured disaster, the underwriters
inscribe against that vessel's name the one word, "Missing!" An average
of a vessel a day is the toll of the Seven Seas upon the world's
shipping. And the principal cause is--derelicts."
As the _Miami_ plowed her way through the water, dipping her nose into
the waves raised by a stiff southeaster, Eric thought of the suddenness
of the catastrophe if the Coast Guard cutter, in the darkness, should
strike one of those abandoned hulks, floating almost level with the
water, and scarcely visible from the vessel's decks.
It was a night calculated to shake the nerve of a youngster who knew
that this deadly menace to the life of every one on board might be
suddenly lurking in the trough of any one of the waves, that came
shouldering their vengeful resentment against the sturdy little vessel
that defied them. They had nourished their grudge against Man, the
violator of their ancient domain, over a thousand leagues of sea, for
the _Miami_ was a hundred miles to the eastward of the Lookout Shoal,
though westward of the limit of the Gulf Stream. The billows thus had a
stretch of unbroken ocean from the frozen continent of Antarctica. Of
this they made full use, and staunch little vessel though the cutter
was, she was making bad weather of it.
The fog was dense and the gale whipped the spray into a blinding sheet.
This was varied by squalls of sleet and hail and for three hours a
blinding snowstorm added to the general discomfort. Less than thirty
miles to the eastward lay the Gulf Stream, where the water was over 70
deg. and where no snow could ever be, but that gave the crew of the
_Miami_ little comfort.
It was not a coast on which vigilance could be relaxed, and Eric was
glad when the search for the _Madeleine Cooney_ was abandoned for a
while. It was time, too, for the _Miami_ had all she could do to take
care of herself. The Coast Guard vessel was midway between the Frying
Pan and the Lookout Shoals, two of the most famous danger points on the
Atlantic coast, and the wind had risen to a living gale. The first
lieutenant was on the bridge a great deal of the time. For forty-eight
hours there had been absolutely no sign of the sun or any star. There
was no way to determine the vessel's position except by dead
reckoning--always a dangerous thing to trust when there is much leeway
and many cross-currents. The lead was going steadily, heaved every few
minutes, while the _Miami_ crept along cautiously under the guidance of
that ancient safeguard of the mariner.
It was the evening of the second day after the worst part of the blow
started that the _Miami_ dropped her anchor in eight fathoms of water
off the North Carolina coast. Steam was kept full up, although the
position of the cutter in the lee of a point of land precluded the
immediate possibility of her dragging her anchors.
Almost exactly at noon the next day, the wireless operator intercepted a
message from the Norfolk Navy Yard that the steamer _Northwestern_ was
anchored 55 miles southwest of Lookout Shoals, with her propeller gone.
As this position, pricked on the chart, showed the steamer to be in a
dangerous and exposed position, and as, moreover, she was a menace to
navigation, being full in the path of vessels, the _Miami_ got under way
immediately.
As soon as the Coast Guard cutter reached the bar, a snowstorm, which
seemed to have been waiting around, as if for that very purpose, struck
down upon the water and the _Miami_ clawed out over the bar in a
blinding smother. There was a nasty, choppy sea, the wind having hauled
round to the westward, though it was not as violent as the day before.
At two o'clock in the afternoon the radio operator received a storm
warning for a nor'wester.
A passing vessel spoke the _Miami_ by wireless and stated that she had
sighted the _Northwestern_, but gave her position twelve miles to the
westward of the point first quoted. It was evening before the steamer in
distress was sighted. The Coast Guard cutter ran up under her stern, and
asked if she could hold on for a while. The captain of the steamer
answered that he could.
"I'm all right, so far," he shouted back through the megaphone; "it's
that blithering bally-hoo of a propeller!"
His language was picturesque, fluent, and convincing, and everybody on
board the cutter grinned while the old sea-dog expressed a highly
colored opinion of the whole tribe of ship-fitters, machinists, and
mechanics generally. After ten minutes of descriptive shouting, during
which he never repeated an adjective twice, he wound up by saying that
he considered "an engine-room an insult to a seaman's intelligence,"
and said that "he'd like to pave the bottom of the sea with the
skeletons of engineers diving a thousand fathom for his lost propeller!"
Following which, he seemed to feel better, and discussed what was best
to be done with his ship.
The situation was dangerous. The sea was far too rough for the lowering
of a boat, no matter how well handled. The gale was such that it was
unsafe for the _Miami_ to anchor. In the case of the _Northwestern_,
anchoring had been her last resort. There was fully twenty fathom of
water, and fortunately the steamer's anchors held. The captain had put
ninety fathom of chain on each anchor, and though the weight pulled her
nose into the water, so that she snubbed into the sea like a ram trying
to butt down a wall, still everything held. The _Miami_ stood by all
night, keeping close to the imperilled vessel.
Next morning the conditions were no better. The advantages of daylight
were more than overcome by the increased fury of the sea. The
_Northwestern_ lay in an angry rip, for the gale had come on in full
force and was countering the long rollers from the southeast that had
been blown up by the storm of two days before, the same which had
driven the _Miami_ to shelter and which had crippled the big steamer,
twice the size of the revenue cutter. The _Miami_ stayed near by, hove
to, waiting for the storm to abate. But of this there were no signs. The
force of the gale increased steadily through the day.
[Illustration: MAN'S WATERSPOUT. A DERELICT'S END.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]
[Illustration: PREPARING TO BLOW UP A DERELICT.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]
The _Northwestern_ was pitching terribly. She was heavily loaded with a
cargo of crude oil, and as she swung to the squalls, the sea breached
her completely and continuously. Only her high bow, poop, and
pilot-house were out of the water for any length of time. The big
steamer was tearing viciously at her anchors and it was amazing that
they held. The long scope of chain, however, was probably her salvation.
As darkness came on, the captain of the _Miami_ called the first
lieutenant.
"Mr. Keelson," he said, "I think we'd better get a line to the steamer."
"Very well, sir," the other answered.
"If we're going to take her in tow," said Eric to Homer, overhearing the
order, "we're apt to get our stern works pulled out of us. She's
pitching like all billy-o!"
"We'll make it if the skipper says so," his friend said cheerfully.
It was then nearly half past four o'clock, and fortunately there was
just a slight lull in the storm. Swinging across the _Northwestern's_
bow the gunner shot a line into her rigging. The steamer's crew were on
the alert--they had good men aboard that craft--and tailed on to the
line. The _Miami_ forged ahead and dropped anchor with sixty fathom of
chain on the disabled steamer's starboard bow.
The _Northwestern_ had got enough steam up for the donkey engine. It did
not take long for them to get first a strong rope and then the big
hawser aboard, and make fast. As soon as the hawser was aboard, the
_Northwestern_ began to heave up to her anchors. Closely watching, the
_Miami_ hove up to hers, ready to break at the same instant that the
steamer broke free. The instant the larger vessel's anchor raised, the
_Miami_ swung hers free, to avoid fouling, for in so fierce a gale the
merest touch would have been fatal to one or both vessels.
The _Northwestern_ swung down broadside to the sea and stood a fair
chance of being swamped. The _Miami_, however, going ahead at full
speed, just managed to bring the strain on the tow-line in time to swing
the steamer clear into the crest of a huge comber which struck her bow
harmlessly instead of hurling its tons of water on her unprotected deck.
The strain on the _Miami_ was extremely great, but the hawser held well,
although the _Northwestern_ yawed frightfully. She would run up on the
line, and the sea would strike her bow, throwing her off, tightening the
tow-line suddenly with a jolt that shook the _Miami_ from stem to stern.
It was an awful night's tow, but just at eight bells of the middle watch
the cutter and the rescued vessel passed the Frying Pan Shoals
Lightship, and as soon as they got within lee of the shoals they met a
smoother sea. At nine o'clock the next morning the _Northwestern_ was
safe and sound in a good anchorage in Southport at the mouth of the Cape
Fear River.
When Eric came on deck again, he found the _Miami_ on her way south
again on the search for the derelict, _Madeleine Cooney_, this time
reported by the United States Army mine planter, _Schofield_. Two days
afterwards in latitude 27 deg. 52' N., longitude 84 deg. 34' W., a vessel
was found in 65 fathom of water, with her anchor down, burned to her main
deck and on fire aft. She was dismasted and her bowsprit had gone. Eric
was sent in charge of one of the boats to run a line. The sea was
comparatively smooth, so that the _Miami_ made fast alongside her stern
and put two lines of hose aboard. The cutter's heavy pumps were attached
and in fifteen minutes the fire was out.
The anchor chain was fouled, so the first lieutenant gave orders that
the cable should be slipped. Some of the cutter's men worked around the
masts floating alongside and the entangled rigging, and cut away enough
of the rigging to make a heavy wire bridle which was passed through the
hawse-pipes in the burned vessel's bow. This was necessary as none of
the upper works of the ship remained to which a tow-line could be
attached. To this bridle was bent the ten-inch hawser of the _Miami_,
and the derelict was towed into Tampa Bay.
On the way, however, rough weather came up and the masts and spars broke
adrift. As they were right in the path of traffic, the _Miami_ went back
to destroy these. The spars were separated and allowed to drift, as the
set of the current would soon take them ashore out of harm's way. This
got rid of everything except the lower part of the mainmast. As this
heavy spar itself might be the means of sinking a vessel if left
adrift, tossing on the waves, the _Miami_ parbuckled the big timber on
board, chopped it into small pieces--none of them large enough to do a
vessel any damage--and set them afloat.
The weather continued squally as the _Miami_ ran down the coast, the tag
end of the gale blowing itself to tatters on the stretch from Cape
Hatteras to Cape Fear. Little though Eric realized it then, before the
year was out, he was destined to know that coast from painful experience
and every curl of those hungry breakers was going to be imprinted on his
brain.
The _Miami_ was off Cape Canaveral when a radio message was received
that there was a derelict bark two hundred miles to the westward of
Abaco Island, the northernmost of the Bahamas. In less than three
minutes after the receipt of the message over the wireless, the captain
had been advised, the course changed and the _Miami_ was headed for the
derelict at full speed. She had been running for a little over an hour
when a second radio was received from a land station, relayed from a
steamer.
"Schooner _Marie-Rose_ reports passing water-logged vessel 23 deg. 40' N.
and 73 deg. 10' W. Signs of distress observed. _Marie-Rose_, crippled and
running before gale, could not heave to. Not known whether any one on
board."
Then the wireless began to be busy. Within twenty minutes the same
message was received from Washington, from the station at Beaufort,
N. C., from Fernandina, Fla., from Key West and from Nassau. Then by
relays from vessels on the coast, from the _Seneca_, the Coast Guard's
great derelict destroyer, far out on the Atlantic; from the _Algonquin_,
stationed at Porto Rico; from the _Onondaga_ patrolling the coast north
of Cape Hatteras and from the _Seminole_ in port at Arundel Cove
undergoing repairs, came orders from the Coast Guard Headquarters. The
_Miami_ was instructed to proceed at once to the point indicated, to
rescue survivors if such were to be found and to destroy the derelict
which was floating into the trade route and was a menace to navigation.
Meanwhile, the long harsh "buzz" of the answer sounded all over the ship
from the wireless room as the operator answered the various calls with
the information that the _Miami_ was already proceeding under full
speed.
"Van Sluyd will be sore," said Eric to Homer, as the message from the
_Seminole_ was received; "she'd be sent instead of us if she weren't in
dock. When he hears that we're going on this chase instead of his own
craft, he'll be green with envy."
"He'll get over that," said his friend; "he's under a good man. There's
very little gets by the _Seminole_ that is possible of achievement."
Dawn was breaking as the _Miami_ neared the spot indicated by the
wireless messages as the location of the derelict bark. Using this point
as a center, the navigating officer of the _Miami_ plotted a chart of
the U-shaped course which would enable her to cruise and cover the
greatest amount of space without doubling. At about four bells in the
afternoon watch the speaking tube on the bridge whistled.
"Something that looks like a derelict, sir," came the message from the
man in the crow's-nest, "bearing about a point and a half for'ard of the
port beam."
The officer of the deck gave a sharp order to change the course and the
_Miami_ swung round. The captain was on the bridge at the time.
"Observed anything, Mr. Hamilton?" he queried.
"Lookout reports an object, now right ahead, sir," was the reply. He
picked up the tube again.
"Can you see the derelict now?"
"Yes, sir," came the reply; "we're a-raisin' her fast."
"She must be nearly flush with the water," said the officer of the deck,
handing the glass to the captain; "I don't see her yet."
In half an hour, however, there was no doubt that this was the derelict
that had been reported by the _Marie-Rose_. As the _Miami_ neared her it
was evident that she was heavily water-logged. Her bow was deep under
water, only her stern appearing above the surface. On the poop rail had
been hung a shirt, the white gleam of which might have been the distress
signal referred to in the message of the _Marie-Rose_. The _Miami_
slowed up as she neared the derelict to survey the wreck. Suddenly there
came an order,
"Clear away both cutters! Lively now, lads!"
The men sprang to stations at the word.
"Lower away together! Easy now! Let go all!"
And with the routine of clockwork two of the _Miami's_ boats were in the
water and off for the derelict. The sea was choppy but not high, and the
water-logged bark lay so heavily that she scarcely moved. The waves came
up and dashed over her almost like a rock. One of the second
lieutenants, who was in charge of the large boat, was first to round the
derelict. From the lee side, he pointed with his finger.
"There must be somebody aboard her," said Eric, rightly guessing the
meaning of the gesture. Then, noting the manner in which the other boat
kept away, he realized that the wreckage was on that side. Wrenching the
tiller round, he called,
"Back starboard!"
The boat spun round like a top, sweeping right under the vessel's stern.
"Give way to starboard! Easy port!"
The boat slid up alongside the derelict as though coming to a landing
place. The men trailed their oars, the bow oar grappled with a boat-hook
and Eric leaped for the poop rail of the vessel, and swung himself
aboard. The deck was pitched forward at an angle of 30 degrees, but
evidently the vessel had floated in that condition for some time, for a
sort of barricade had been made, with the right angle of the half-sunk
cabin companion hatchway as a base, and on this three bodies were lying.
A keg of water and a maggoty ham--the latter exposed to the full
sunlight of the tropics--was all the food in sight.
Eric slid down the deck to this barricade. The first man seemed to be
dead, the heart of the second was beating feebly, but the third, a
white-haired old man, appeared only to be asleep, the deep sleep of
exhaustion. When the boy put his hand on his shoulder, the old man
opened his eyes wide.
"So you have come the third time," he said, in a queer far-away voice,
"but it is too late."
Eric slipped his hand into his coat pocket and brought out a small phial
of restorative he had provided just before leaving the cutter. He gave
the survivor a few sips. The old man changed not a muscle, only repeated
in the same dull and far-away voice,
"So you have come the third time, but it is too late!"
Perceiving that the sufferer regarded him as an apparition and that in
his hallucinations born of exhaustion and exposure he must have believed
he saw rescuers before, Eric picked the old man up bodily and, half
crouching, half climbing on the sloping deck, carried him to the
derelict's side. Two of the sailors climbed up and helped him lower the
old man to the boat.
Meantime the other boat had made fast and the second lieutenant joined
him. He was a man of considerable experience, and while Eric was quite
proud of his knowledge and skill as a life-saver, he was amazed at the
deft handling of his superior officer.
[Illustration: THE GREATEST MENACE OF THE SEAS.
A sunken derelict ready to sink any vessel that strikes her.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]
[Illustration: BURNED TO THE WATER'S EDGE.
Vessel abandoned and floating in the path of commerce, hunted as a
dangerous beast, and found by the Coast Guard cutters.
Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]
"I think this one's gone," said Eric in a low voice, pointing to the
first man he had seen.
The other cast a quick look at him and shook his head.
"Pretty far gone, but not quite," he answered. "There's always a
fighting chance that we can pull him through. I'll take these two into
my boat and get back to the cutter. We'll probably blow this craft up,
afterwards; we couldn't ever tow her this way."
"Why, sir? Because she's too heavy?"
"Not only that, but she lies too low. On end, the way she is now, she's
probably drawing thirty-five or forty feet of water. She might stick in
a channel somewhere and that would be worse than getting rid of her out
here."
The boats raced back to the ship and the survivors were handed up to the
_Miami_ where the surgeon immediately took charge. All preparations had
been made, meanwhile, for the placing of mines and Eric was told off in
the boat under the second lieutenant to see to the placing of the
charges.
This was work to which Eric was unaccustomed and he watched with
considerable interest the gunner's handling of the mines. It was easy
enough to place the charges in the upper works of the stern where they
would be sure to blow that part of the ship to pieces, but so much of
the forward portion of the hulk was under water that the problem there
was more difficult. In order to make sure of the job, five mines were
set and connected with each other by electric wiring. A long strand of
insulated wire was then carried to the boat, over a hundred feet in
length.
At a signal given him by the lieutenant, Eric pressed the button. There
was a tremendous roar as a waterspout shot up from the surface of the
sea. As though some vast leviathan had passed underneath the old bark
and shouldered her out of the water, the long black hull heaved herself
up slowly. She seemed to hang poised for a fraction of a second on the
surface of the water as if, in her death agony, she had for a moment
thought of her old life when, under press of sail, she flew bounding
over the billows, defying the very elements which at last had worked her
ruin. Only for a moment she hung there, then with a dull crash she
broke her back. The bow plunged downward with a sullen plunge, but the
stern still held poised. Then, quite suddenly, the air imprisoned in the
hull broke free and slowly, almost, it seemed, with dignity, the
remainder of the vessel sank forever beneath the surface of the waters.
It was the end of the _Luckenback_ and somewhere at the bottom of the
sea her distorted steel plating marks the spot where rest the nine
members of her crew lost before the rescuing Coast Guard cutter hove in
sight.