How Captain Dow Died

From Our Own Correspondent Nov. 1.

From information to hand it is pos sible to piece together a lonely tragedy of the sea—the death of one of those travel lers who have, escaped the horrors of civi lisation by wandering about the Pacific Islands in a yacht.

Captain John Dow left New York in the Chance, with his friend, Captain J.

H. Meyers, and sailed for the Pacific. His companion left him at Panama and he went on alone, among the Islands.

Somewhere in the Pacific he developed malaria, and became very ill—so ill, in deed, that he was not able to steer his vessel, and could write only feebly in his log.

When he was nearing the end he lashed his steering wheel and lay down. Two days later he got up and prepared some soup; but he was unable to eat it. Then he wrote a letter which was to be read in case he died, and his boat was found.

The next thing that is known is that the natives at Kia Passage, Ysabel, In th® Solomon Islands, reported that a small yacht with a flag at half-mast had drifted on and off the reef there, and behaved in a way that suggested there was no one on board. The natives went out in a canoe and boarded the vessel, and found the body of a white man, who had been dead for some time.

This information and the story of the lonely voyager’s death, as disclosed in his paper, was brought by the Government vessel Gizo when she returned here on October 15 from her annual overhaul at Tulagi.