Quaint Memory of Southern

Sailing Against The

Propeller

Quaint Memory of Southern Cross III.

We are indebted to Mr. F. S. Whit combe, of Levuka, Fiji, for the follow ing interesting story of the old Melan esian Mission Ship, Southern Cross

Iii.:

IN the P.I.M. of January you printed a history of “Southern Crosses.”

Southern Cross III. was not a threemasted two-topsail schooner, but was barque-rigged, when owned by the Mis sion, and she was a little beauty. Her main royal was the size of a large hand kerchief.

After Capt. W. Ross bought her she was barquentine-rigged; foresail, two topsails, and a top-gallant sail, with main and upper staysails. Her topsail yard was rigged with Cunningham’s patent topsail reefing gear, and every time we used to reef down it jammed, and a hand would have to go aloft to overhaul the down haul.

When Captain Ross made his first run to Tonga in her (after doing away with the boiler and machinery and making a sailer of her), the propellor, a two-bladed one, was left in place up and down; but the aperture was boarded up, with the propellor inside.

During the trip, when near Sunday Island, we struck dirty weather, and the planking was stripped from the aperture, with the result that the propellor, which was a pretty long one, worked athwart the ship or cross-ways, like a barn door, and stopped the ship’s way.

The dear old man nearly had a fit over the next two days’ runs. With a fair wind, the vessel was only doing 5 to 6 knots, with the wind on her quarter, when she should have been doing 10.

Anyhow, one of the hands happened to think of the propellor, and we lowered him over the weather quarter in a bow line, and he spotted what was wrong. So we rigged a hook on a |in. iron bar, and straightened her up until we arrived at Nukualofa.

The Ysabel could sail like a witch, and could do 30 to 40 miles to windward, against a dead muzzier, any day in a day’s work.

I was A.B. on her, and she was a happy ship.