Part 2

"In peace times," continues Mr. Grosvenor, "there is no other menace to navigation as dangerous as the derelict, unless it be the submerged iceberg, such as sunk the _Titanic_. Refusing to stay in one location, yielding to no law of navigation, hiding most of her bulk beneath the waves, the lonely, desolate, moss-covered, weed-grown derelict, with deck or keel all but awash, comes out of the night or through the fog as an assassin out of a lonely alley, and woe to the sailor who has not detected her approach.

"Drifting hither and yon, now forced on by the wind of a stormy sea, now caught in a current and driven along, these rudderless, purposeless, wanderers cover many a weary mile, with only screaming sea birds to break the monotony of the roaring gale or the soft surge of a placid sea. Sighted frequently for weeks together, now and again they disappear, often reappearing suddenly hundreds of miles away. As many as a thousand have been reported in a single year in the North Atlantic. The majority of them frequent the Gulf Stream.

"Examining the records of the Hydrographic Office, one finds that in six years twenty-five derelicts were reported as having drifted at least a thousand miles each; eleven have 2,000 miles apiece to their credit, while three sailed 5,000 rudderless miles.

"The classic story of the wanderings of a derelict is that of the _Fannie E. Wolston_. Abandoned October 15, 1891, off Cape Hatteras, she traveled northward in the Gulf Stream. When off Norfolk, Va., she changed her course and headed across the broad Atlantic toward the shores of Africa. On June 13, 1892, she was sighted half way across. Then she headed southward for more than 300 miles; then shifted her course to the northeast for another 200 miles, retraced her track for several hundred miles, turned again and went in the opposite direction, like a shuttle in the loom instead of a ship upon the sea. Then she took another tack and headed west for nearly 400 miles; then shaped her course north for 300 miles, and then headed east again for 700 miles; so that in January she was almost in the same latitude and longitude that she had been in the previous June. In the following May she was a thousand miles away from where she had been in January, on the border of Cancer and midway between Florida and Africa. Again she headed toward America for 600 miles, and repeated her shuttle-in-the-loom performance. Then followed many long months of erratic zigzags and she was sighted for the last time 250 miles off Savannah, Ga. She had remained afloat and had out-generaled the waves for two years and a half, during which time she had sailed more than 7,000 aimless miles.

"In normal times," continues Mr. Grosvenor, "the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department keeps careful check on the derelicts. Every ship that sights one of these menaces to navigation reports its location. The names of some of them remain visible, while others are susceptible of identification by their appearance. The Hydrographic Office gives each wreck and derelict a serial number and plots its position on a map. Each report is registered with an identification number. In this way, by a system of cross checking, it is possible to identify each derelict, to determine the direction of its drift, and usually to get it so well located that the Coast Guard cutters may run it down and sink it."

On January 16, 1919, I addressed an inquiry to the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Washington, on the subject of international protection of commerce in the destruction of derelicts, ice observation, etc., to which I received the following courteous reply from Commodore Bertholf, dated February 7, 1919:

"1. Your letter of January 16, addressed to the Coast Geodetic Survey, seeking information on the subject of an arrangement between our Federal Government and the Government of Great Britain prior to the Great War for the protection of commerce in the destruction of derelicts, has reached this office by reference.

"2. In reply I beg to state that Article VI of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, which was signed by the delegates of the various countries on January 20, 1914, provided for an international service of derelict destruction, study and observation of ice conditions, and an ice patrol.

"3. Article VII of this convention invited the United States to undertake this international service, and provided that the high contracting powers which were interested in this international service contribute to the expense of maintaining this international service in certain proportions.

"4. While Article VI of the convention provided that the new international service should be established with the least possible delay, the convention, as a whole, could not come into force until July 1, 1915, and if the organization of the international service were deferred until after that date, the consequence would be that the two ice seasons of the years 1914 and 1915 would not be covered by the proposed international ice patrol, and, therefore, the British Government, acting on behalf of the other maritime powers, requested the United States to begin this international ice patrol and observation without delay and under the same conditions as provided in the convention. The President directed this to be done, and the Coast Guard undertook the work and performed the ice patrol during the seasons of 1914, 1915, and 1916. It was intended that the Coast Guard should also undertake the international service of derelict destruction at the conclusion of the ice patrol each year, but owing to the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1914, the international service of derelict destruction was never begun.

"5. As pointed out above, the international ice patrol and ice observation service was begun in 1914 and was continued during 1915 and 1916, but for obvious reasons the patrol was discontinued in 1917 and has not as yet been resumed.

"6. Of course, as you are aware, the various Coast Guard cutters recover or destroy such derelicts as may be found within a reasonable distance of our coast.

"7. I am sending you under separate cover a copy of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, also copies of Revenue-Cutter Service Bulletins Nos. 1, 3, and 5, covering reports of ice patrol for the years 1913, 1914, and 1915, respectively. The report of the ice patrol for 1916 has not yet been published.

"Respectfully,

"(Signed) E.P. Bertholf,

"_Commodore Commandant_."

LOST LINERS.

About forty years ago the fine British barque _David G. Worth_, commanded by Capt. Thomas Williams, and owned by the writer, James Sprunt, sailed from Wilmington, N.C., with a full cargo of naval stores bound for the United Kingdom. The owner had spent $10,000 for extensive repairs in London on the previous voyage, and the ship was in every respect staunch and strong and classed A1 Lloyd's and 3/3 II French Veritas. The captain's wife accompanied him, and the crew numbered sixteen.

From the day of her departure from Wilmington bound to Bristol up to the present time, not a word, not a sign of her, has ever come to light. As Mr. Joseph Horner said in _Lost Liners_:

"We only know she sailed away "And ne'er was seen or heard of more."

"Lost absolutely, in the fullest and most awful sense of the term! Swallowed up wholly, mysteriously, by the devouring sea! Such has been the fate of many gallant ships; no single survivor to tell the story; no boat or piece of wreckage, no bottle, not a sign or syllable from the vasty deep to reveal the nature of the awful catastrophe by which vessel, cargo, crew, and passengers were blotted out of existence! There is a weirdness, an awful terror, in such mysterious disappearances. They fill the imagination with horror, and cause mental tension in the minds of relatives of the lost far harder to bear than when the fate of a wrecked vessel is told by survivors. The sinking of the _Royal Charter_, or of the _London_, or of the _Northfleet_, though gruesome and harrowing, does not produce in the mind that sense of pain which comes with the recollection of the fate of the _President_, or of the _Pacific_, or of the _City of Boston_."

Continuing, Mr. Horner in _Chambers's Journal_ says: "The number of vessels which have so mysteriously disappeared at sea that not a trace of them or of their crew or passengers has ever been found is larger than most people imagine. In the North Atlantic service alone, from the year 1841, when the _President_ disappeared with 136 souls, to 1890, when the _Thanemore_ of the Johnston Line, with 43 lives, never came to port, there have been, inclusive of these, no fewer than 24 big steamers absolutely and completely blotted out of human knowledge, together with their crews and passengers, numbering in all 1,453. At a very moderate estimate, the value of these vessels with their cargoes could not have been less than £5,000,000. The sum of human agony involved is terrible to contemplate. And every year vessels are posted up as missing.

"The _President_, one of the earliest Atlantic liners, was the first steamer to be lost and never heard of again. She sailed from New York on the 11th of March, 1841, with 136 souls on board. She was a nearly new vessel, having left the Mersey on her first voyage on the 17th of July, 1840. The commander was Lieutenant Roberts, R.N., a man of iron will and resource. He had taken the _Sirius_ on her first voyage from Queenstown to New York in 1838 in eighteen and a half days. The _Sirius_ was the first steamer owned by an English company which crossed the Atlantic, and but for the determination of Lieutenant Roberts the crew would not have proceeded; they became mutinous, and said it was utter madness to go on in so small a craft. He insisted and had resort to firearms, and so brought the little vessel to her destination.

"After the loss of the _President_ in 1841, thirteen years elapsed in which only one life was lost by the wreck of an Atlantic steamer. It is a curious coincidence that, after the _President_ was lost and never heard of, the next great loss of life, which occurred in 1854, was also that of a vessel which disappeared without leaving a trace. This was the _City of Glasgow_, which sailed with 480 souls on board. The _Pacific_, of the Collins Line, left Liverpool on the 29th of June, 1856, and with her living freight of 240 was never more heard of. In the year 1859 an Anchor liner, the _Tempest_, mysteriously disappeared with 150 souls. The _City of Boston_ of the Inman Line, with 177 persons, was never heard of after leaving port on the 28th of January, 1870. A board stating that she was sinking was found in Cornwall on February 11, 1870. The Allan liner _Huronian_ left Glasgow in February, 1902, for St. John's and disappeared. The British gunboat _Condor_ was lost in the Pacific in 1901. Besides these, the names of many lesser-known vessels swell the long list of tragic disappearances.

"The White Star cattle steamer _Naronic_, with a crew of sixty hands and seventeen cattlemen, was lost in February or March, 1893, while on a voyage from Liverpool to New York. She was a month overdue before very much anxiety was felt, as it was known that heavy weather had been experienced in the Atlantic, and it was thought that she might have broken down and was making for the Azores. A boat with the name _Naronic_ on it was subsequently found half full of water and abandoned. In this case the vessel was a new one, launched in May of the previous year. She was built with bulkheads and all modern improvements, was 460 feet long, and had engines of 3,000 horsepower. Yet she disappeared, perhaps 1,500 miles from New York, that being the location of the abandoned boat."

Probably the most mysterious disappearance of recent times is that of the United States collier transport _Cyclops_, which sailed from Barbados for Baltimore March 4, 1918, and has not been heard of since. The official information respecting this important vessel is fragmentary and disconnected. In December, 1917, she reached Bahia, Brazil, and was ordered to take on a cargo of manganese at Rio de Janeiro for the return voyage. The Navy Department exchanged several messages regarding her cargo with the commander in chief of the Pacific fleet, and, on February 7, the latter sent the following message concerning damage to one of her engines:

"Starboard high pressure engine found to be damaged on board U.S.S. _Cyclops_ during passage Bahia, Brazil, to Rio de Janeiro. Board of investigation reports accident due to loosening of nuts on follower ring studs, resulting in breaking of follower ring. Cylinder is broken into two parts by plane of fracture passing from inboard upper edge down and outboard at angle of about 45 degrees. Cylinder cover and piston ring broken and piston rod bent just below piston, which is damaged. So far as now determined, responsibility seems to be upon engineer officer watch Lieut. L.J. Fingleton, who did not stop engines nor report noise. Board recommends that new cylinder, piston rod and piston, piston rings and follower be manufactured. That cylinder cover be repaired by welding upon return United States. Repair of cylinder by welding believed possible. Can not be made here. Engine compounded and vessel will proceed thus when loaded."

She reached Barbados safely and began her voyage from there to Baltimore. Being overdue, the Navy Department sent the following message to the naval stations at Key West, Charleston, Guantanamo, Navy Radio San Juan, and the U.S.S. _Albert_:

March 22, 1918.

"U.S.S. _Cyclops_ sailed from Barbados March 4 for Baltimore. Now about ten days overdue. Endeavor communicate _Cyclops_ by radio and ascertain location and condition."

The following day the Navy Department sent a similar message to the commander of Squadron I, Patrol Force, Atlantic fleet. On March 24 the station at Charleston, S.C., reported that at intervals for twenty-three hours messages by radio had been sent in an endeavor to locate the _Cyclops_, but without success. Commander Belknap directed that calls be continued, and on March 26 the Navy Department sent the following message to the Governor of the Virgin Islands:

"U.S.S. _Cyclops_ sailed from Barbados March 4 for Baltimore. Has not yet arrived. Have you any information regarding this vessel passing St. Thomas?"

The reply was "No information regarding U.S. S. _Cyclops_."

Every station within radio communication of her route and every ship within call during the time of her passage, including foreign ships, was asked for any fragment of information. The search was continued as long as it seemed possible to gain news of her, but nothing definite was ever heard. The only suggestion of how she may have been lost is contained in a message to the Navy Department from the First Naval District, received June 6, 1918:

"Mr. Freeman, now in Boston, telephone address held in this office, states log of U.S.S. _Amalco_ shows that on night of March 9 U.S.S. _Cyclops_ was about five miles distant. March 10 heavy gale damaged the _Amalco_. Capt. C.E. Hilliard, of the _Amalco_, now at 2876 Woodbrook Avenue, Baltimore, Md."

On April 22 the commander in chief of the Pacific fleet sent to the Navy Department the following statement of her cargo:

"U.S.S. _Cyclops_ had by tally of bucket 10,604, by draft in feet 10,835 tons manganese, distributed number one hold 10,614; number two hold 1,995; number three 2,250; number four 1,875; number five 2,870. Cargo stowed direct on wood dunnage in bottom of hold. Reports differ as to whether cargo was trimmed level or left somewhat higher in middle. Incline to latter belief. Reported also vessel had 4,000 tons of water, mostly in double bottoms. So far as ascertained, no steps taken to prevent increasing of metacentric height, and this must have been considerably increased."

What caused the catastrophe will probably never be known, but with one of her engines reported out of order she was not in the best condition to weather the storm reported by the _Amalco_, and it is not unlikely that a sudden shifting of her cargo caused her to capsize and to be instantly engulfed.

Exactly one hundred days from the date of her sailing the following order was issued:

"From: Secretary of the Navy.

"To: Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (via Bureau of Navigation).

"Subject: Re official declaration of death of men on board the Navy collier _Cyclops_.

"I. The following named enlisted men in the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps should be officially declared dead as of June 14, 1918, deaths having occurred in the line of duty through no misconduct of their own:"

(Here followed a list of the crew and passengers of the Navy collier _Cyclops_ at the time of disappearance.)

"(Signed) Franklin D. Roosevelt,

"_Acting_."

In his annual report for 1918 the Secretary of the Navy states "_Cyclops_ was finally given up as lost and her name stricken from the registry."

Causes of the Destruction of Lost Ships.

Since the veil that conceals the catastrophes that sent the missing vessels to their doom can never be lifted, a wide field of surmise is open. We can only guess at the causes of these losses by considering what has taken place in the case of vessels which have received serious injuries the nature of which is known. I quote Mr. Horner in giving the following as the possible causes which may account for the total disappearance of liners: "Capsizing; damage from within, as explosion, breakdown of machinery, or fire; damage from without, as collision with an iceberg or with a derelict hulk; and mysterious causes.

"In reference to explosions, there are two possible causes. One is due to the steam boilers, the other to coal gas generated in the bunkers. Accidents from both causes have frequently occurred; and though it is not easy to see how the force could be sufficiently great to rend a vessel asunder without affording time for the use of boats or life-saving appliances, yet the possibility must be admitted. Boilers are always in the bottom of the vessel, and it is quite conceivable that one or more boiler explosions would rupture the sides and let the water in in large volumes. In the case of a tug in the harbor at Cardiff this actually happened. And although the loss of no big vessel has been traced to this cause, it must be admitted that the cause would be sufficient, and the end would be sudden.

"Explosions of coal gas have occurred; and in past years, when less attention was paid to ventilation than at the present time and when vessels were built of wood, it is within the bounds of possibility that an explosion might have torn a hole or started planks, or might have given rise to a fire of large extent. If to this is added the terror of rough weather at night, when most of those on board would be asleep, the chances of any vestige remaining would be slender.

"Breakdowns of machinery alone would hardly account for the loss of vessels, but they might do so indirectly--first, by leaving a vessel exposed to the mercy of rough weather; secondly, by damaging the hull and letting the water in. Fractures of propeller shafts or of propeller blades are not infrequent occurrences. Neither is damage to a rudder. It is quite conceivable that a vessel disabled thus for several days and encountering exceptionally heavy weather, might be overwhelmed by the sheer force of the waves. In rough weather the chance of a disabled vessel being seen in mid-Atlantic if she drifts out of the regular routes is very slender. Steamers for many years past have been entirely dependent on their machinery, having no sails to fall back on. Only in recent years have the most modern and best liners been fitted with twin screws and double sets of engines, one of which remains available if the other is damaged. A disabled vessel might, therefore, in the past have suffered badly if she drifted out of the trade routes, and might have gone down in bad weather.

"Damage to machinery may also be sufficient to explain the loss of a vessel by causing her to sink at once. The _City of Paris_, of the Inman Line, had a big smash in one of her engine rooms on the 25th of March, 1890. She was coming home in fine weather, and when she was near the Irish coast the starboard engines broke down in consequence of the fracture of the starboard propeller shaft, and the sea filled the engine room. Then the massive fragments of the wrecked engine hammering against the bulkhead smashed that and allowed the water to flow into the engine room, completely filling that also. In about ten minutes both engine rooms were filled with water, adding 3,000 tons to the vessel's weight. Yet she still floated securely, and the outer skin was not damaged in the least. The water-tight compartments kept the _City of Paris_ afloat for three days until help came to tow her into Queenstown. At Queenstown the openings in the sea connections of the vessel were closed with the assistance of divers. The water was pumped out of the engine rooms, and with her port engines and one screw the vessel renewed her voyage and went on safely and quietly to Liverpool without harm to anyone. In the case of the P. and O. steamer _Delhi_, which stranded on December 12, 1911, off Cape Spartel, on the Morocco coast, all the passengers were rescued, including the Duke of Fife and the Princess Royal and her daughters.

"Capsizing is not so likely a cause as some others, but it is possible. The _Captain_ capsized, with the loss of hundreds of lives. The type was, however, very different from that of the liner. But the draught of a vessel diminishes toward the close of her voyage, as coal is reduced. Some vessels are unsteady, and it is conceivable that heavy weather, shifting cargo, and insufficient ballast may cause a vessel to roll over on her beam ends and capsize. There is little doubt that the _Wartah_ capsized by reason of top-heaviness. One of her life buoys was reported as being found (December, 1911) at Waiuku, New Zealand.

"But the most probable cause of unexplained losses of ships at sea is fire, or it is one, at least, which divides probabilities with explosions and icebergs. Even on the supposition of an explosion, it seems almost inexplicable that no trace of a sunken vessel should ever afterwards be seen. A missing liner or other large vessel is a source of interest to all seafaring men, and a keen outlook is kept on the track which the vessel was known to have taken. Any stray spar or belt or bit of wreckage, therefore, could scarcely escape observation. If a vessel sinks in mid-ocean some portions float. But if a vessel is burned everything would probably be consumed, as the vessel would burn to the water's edge. Boats might or might not be launched, according to the rapidity of the rush of the flames, the state of the weather, etc. If boats are launched, say, a thousand miles from land, the chances of rescue or of making land are remote. Fire, therefore, seems adequate enough to account for the loss of some of the numerous vessels which have never been heard from after leaving port.