Читать книгу Titanic and Other Ships - Charles Herbert Lightoller - Страница 22

Several expeditions were made overland across to the wreck, in the hopes of getting something from the old ship, but all we ever secured was about a dozen pounds of pork--this had evidently been washed out of one of the harness casks, on deck, and drifted ashore; a bit of canvas, and about a fathom of rope. Out of the rope we made our fishing lines.

The party returning from the wreck, on the occasion when they had retrieved the pork, had the good luck to catch three rabbits, and eventually made their way down the broken north end of the cliff, which we had found easiest to negotiate. The only drawback, as this returning party soon found to their cost, was the fact that it led down close past an albatross rookery.

It is a well-known fact that to a man fallen overboard an albatross is almost as bad as a shark. The latter attacks the man from below the water, but an albatross can, and will, drive his beak clean through a man's skull whilst swooping past in the air, which very likely accounts for the Ancient Mariner grabbing one by the neck and hanging on--I don't blame him.

When the albatrosses scented the pork and the rabbits, they rose in a cloud to share a cheap meal. The party of humans had no alternative but to back up against the cliff, put the pork and the rabbits to the rear, and do their best to beat off the birds. Someone who was working on the beach down below heard their SOS, and raised the alarm. Arming ourselves with sticks, staves, or anything we could lay hands on, we dashed up the cliff (as well as we could do any dashing by this time) to the rescue of the party who were making a valiant fight to retain their precious pork and rabbits. Arriving there, we handed out sticks. Those that had knives used a stick in one hand and a knife in the other; and for the next half an hour it was just a battle royal with these huge birds, measuring anything from fifteen to twenty feet from tip to tip of their wings. Finding that their grabs at the grub were ineffectual, they varied operations by swooping down, and making a dive at one's face or eyes as they planed past. We, of course, retaliated, first with a stick, giving them a crack over the head, and then, as they fell, driving a knife in between their shoulders, which we found the best way of settling them, otherwise, they simply rose and went for us again.

Beyond some pretty severe gashes, we came out of it quite well, still hanging on to our pork and rabbits.

What a meal that was! All boiled down in a huge cauldron, mixed in with a few fish, some grass, and thistles. It formed about the one and only decent meal during our occupation of the island.

There are very few albatross rookeries to be found in the world. These birds do come ashore to breed, but otherwise they seem to live on the wing, and if they do sleep, they also certainly sleep on the wing, for you meet with them thousands of miles from land, in gales of wind, when they couldn't possibly sleep on the water. They have absolutely no fear, and will hover with the tip of their wing almost touching the bridge of even a steamer, and stare the officer of the watch straight in the face with their little, black, beady eyes. They fall an easy prey to a little bit of pork, and one of the easiest methods of catching them from a ship is to get a piece of tin cut into a triangle with the sides half an inch wide, tie some strips of pork onto the tin, and let it drop astern on the end of a line. At the point of an albatross' beak is a hook, almost exactly resembling a lion's claw. When they make a dab to catch the pork, the point of their beak goes into the centre of the triangle, and is drawn to the apex where it jams, and, providing he will rise in the air, proves an easy capture. Unless the line is slacked off he can never get his beak out. On the other hand, if he determines to resist, and puts his feet and the wings in the water, it is good-bye to line, bait and all.

I have seen one caught measuring thirty feet from tip to tip of its wings.

The rookery on St. Paul's consisted of a number of ledges where it seemed as though the fathers and mothers of all albatrosses came to spend their last days. Some two or three hundred feet felow at the base of the cliff was a mound of bones covering nearly half an acre of ground, fully a hundred feet high, and must have weighed scores of tons. It was nothing but the bones of ancient albatrosses, that, from time immemorial had gone there to die, eventually tumbling off the ledges from old age, to add to the bones below. Some of the beaks were picked up were over a foot in length, and the birds they had been attached to must certainly have had well over a thirty foot spread.

On nearly all these outlying islands there is a cache of provisions, supposed to be maintained by the Government of the country to whom the island belongs, but in point of fact, this job is usually carried out by British ships. We searched everywhere as long as our strength held out for this cache, which we knew must be there, but never found it. Some twelve years later, when I was on my first voyage out to Australia in the White Star Line, I happened to be reading a book of sailing directions, which described the situation of these various caches, and the one on St. Paul's was referred to as being "marked by a cairn of stones on the South spit." I knew it at once. The cairn of stones had been there all the time, but painted on the side was "Mrs. Smith and child, wife of Captain Smith, died such-and-such a date."

Naturally, we thought it marked her grave, and that being so we would not touch it. Yet tobacco, potatoes, tinned provisions of all kinds, were there beside us all the time and to be had for the taking--and last, but not least, matches also. Amongst the forty-two of us there had been only one dry match, and with that we made a fire, which we had to keep going night and day, the whole time we were on the island.

We seem to have been slightly worse off than other ships that at odd times had left their bones there; that is, in the way of getting provisions.

In the entrance to the lagoon the wreck of H.M.S. Megæra is still visible, although she was run ashore there as long since as 1874. Bound from Simon's Bay, West Africa, with a crew, and relief crews, numbering 375, she sprung a leak the first week out. She was only 1400 tons, and heavily rigged for sailing, although she had 350 h.p. engines down below. She sprung a leak under the bunkers, in the sheathing, where a rivet came out, and when the engineers attacked it, with a view to securing a supporting plate, they found that the ship's bottom in places was the thickness of a sixpenny piece, and to attempt to do anything would undoubtedly have been fatal. They were already running before the usual heavy westerly gale, and mountainous seas, and it seemed hopeless to turn about and try the Vanderdecken touch and beat back to the Cape.

There is no sea in the world equal to that which one meets down in those south latitudes, it comes literally swinging round the world, with no land to break or intercept it.

One moment you are riding right up on the back, getting the full force of the gale, and the next you are down in the trough, which only the upper yards on the mast visible to anyone around. Even a twelve thousand ton ship, on the side of one of these seas is like nothing better than a fly on the wall. The saving grace is that they are so big that they seldom break! Woe betide the ship that is running before it, and one of these seas does break! I saw it once, and it was nothing short of a miracle that anyone lived to tell the tale.

The choice the Captain of the Megæra had put before him was a might bitter one. A short beat back to the Cape, or a three thousand mile run to the nearest land, and that land was only the islands of St. Paul's and Amsterdam. He took the wiser course; in fact, the only course, and ran with every stitch of canvas towards St. Paul's. The pumps were continually getting choked with weed and to make matters worse, the straining of the ship caused other rivets to loosen up.

Ultimately, every man jack on board, including officers, was bailing with anything, and everything, to keep her afloat. Stoke-hold fires had been put out very early on, sails were passed under her bottom, and held in place with lashings of rope, but proved to be of very little use. She was making a good eleven knots under sails alone, and of course these patchwork quilts were simply washed away. After many days of intense anxiety, they at last sighted St. Paul's, and finally came to anchor at the mouth of the lagoon.

They got the ship pumped out, and then fires going, divers down, and the holes plugged.

They then went to work and tried to put a supporting plate on the outside, when, with hardly a moment's warning, the whole original plate gave way.

They had just time to slip their anchors, and run her as hard as they could for the beach. She grounded between the shingle spits in sixteen feet of water, and in the process ripped nearly the whole of the bottom out of her; and there her bones still lie to this day.

Fortunately, whilst still afloat, all provisions, sails and stores had been landed, and they had actually on the island food for all hands for one month. But as there was every likelihood of their spending several months there, they had to go on short rations forthwith; just enough to keep them alive; and well it was they took this drastic action, for it was four months before they were eventually taken off.

They were more fortunate than we were in the fact that they possessed their own boats, thoroughly seaworthy, and could work outside the harbour where ample fish could be caught. In fact, as an officer of that ill-fated ship told me, he caught no less than 1,100 pounds of fine Cape salmon within a few hours, with only his boat's crew, and this only just outside the shingle spits.

Several ships came in sight but never near enough to make out their distress signals. Eventually, with one of their lifeboats, an officer was able to board a passing ship, bound for Surabaya, but before anything could be done in the way of rescue, the usual gale sprang up, and she was driven away.

However, they made port with this officer and his boat's crew on board, who got in touch with the naval authorities at Hong Kong, and the P & O s.s. Malacca was despatched at once to take them off. Beyond casualties through scalding when the boilers burst at the time she was run ashore, there were no losses.

Some of the tales that are left written on St. Paul's have not that happy ending; and with the crew of more than one ship, it has been the last survivor who has finally scratched his message on a piece of wood or stone to be read by those who came after. Just a silent record of a few of the risks that have to be taken by those who "go down to the sea in ships."

It is bad enough to be stuck on an island with little hope of rescue, but it is worse when, after many days, a ship heaves in sight and deliberately leaves the castaways. In all the time we had been there not one single ship had been sighted, till the early morning of the day we were taken off. That morning, the first man out of the hut rubbed his eyes to make sure he was really awake, for there, lying becalmed, close in to the island, lay a full rigged ship under all sail. The next second everyone was awake and dashing out of the hut in response to his roar of "Sail-ho!"

We had only one boat that made any pretence at floating, and this, with her crew, was detailed for fishing. The tide served that morning at daybreak, as the best time for catching crayfish, with the result that the boat was right over the other side of the lagoon, and the ship was hidden from the boat by the south cliff. We yelled, and hailed, and only after a long, heartbreaking delay, got the boat from under the cliffs.

As soon as they were in a position to see the ship, they pulled as hard as their strength would let them, out of the harbour, and were actually half way between the island and the ship, when a slight breeze sprang up. It is hard to believe, but down went that ship's helm, she went about, and deliberately stood off from the land.

On shore we had a huge fire burning, sending up columns of smoke, and everyone of us that could stand was waving his shirt. We could even see the men on her deck.

It was a rank impossibility for those on board not to have seen the column of smoke, or our boat, and yet, away she went, and that is the tragedy that so frequently happens in these cases.

One of the most glaring instances was that in which the Volturno on fire in mid-Atlantic, in fine weather, was passed by a big steamship, without her taking the slightest notice. It was fine, clear weather, and the dense column of smoke rising from the burning oil could have been seen twenty-five or thirty miles away, and yet, a ship not five miles off, passes and takes no notice. Again in the case of the Titanic, which I am going to tell about later, we were using every modern method, visible and invisible to call the attention of a ship actually in sight, yet, there she lay, making no attempt at rescue, whilst some fifteeen hundred people patiently waited and were finally drowned with that ship's lights still in sight.

In our case on the island of St. Paul's the boat had no alternative but to return. We did not even get the name of the ship, as there was no name on her stern. If there had been, the Second Mate could easily have read it; and yet, where will you find a ship without her name and port of registry on her stern? Some have said, "Oh, it must have been a phantom ship, the outcome of some delirious imagination. You were starving, you know." They might just as well have put it down to the "morning after the night before,"--only unfortunately, we lacked the wherewithal.

She was not seen by one, or a half a dozen, but by all of us, and you can't mesmerize forty-two men. Anyhow it just about knocked the bottom out of what spirits we had left, and they were mighty few. We had been there eight days, and it would take less than another eight to finish the lot.

Anyhow, we weren't going to be caught napping another time, so we instituted a day and night look-out, on a hill top above the camp, where a good view could be obtained all round, northward and westward. The same hill where many other ships' crews have kept their sometimes fruitless vigil, others to watch for their welcome rescuer, and where the Megæra managed to mount a twelve-pounder gun.

The boat we had for general purposes, including fishing, was now detailed to stand by, to intercept any other ship that might come along, and the crew, although allowed to fish, were forbidden to be out of hail. We launched another boat for a fishing party; she floated, and that is about all that could be said for her. She was nearly as broad as she was long; in fact, it would be interesting to know what kind of ship ever brought her to the island. Then we settled down for another wait, although, as it turned out, not for long.