Old Missionary
p. 90 · Read in the full issue
Schooner
Dies Hard
FOR the last four or five years, the hull of the famous old LMS ship John Williams has been a landmark on the coast of Savaii, (near Fagamalo, Western Samoa) where she was wrecked. It sat per fectly upright on the reef, as though the ship was at anchor in calm water.
But in a storm last January the heavy seas broke the back of the old schooner. Late one afternoon, it was noticed that the third mast was swaying, and an hour later it fell. Next morning, the after sec
tion of the ship appeared on the reef, about 200 yards away from the rest of the hull—it evidently had been hanging, for years, out over deep water, and the big seas shifted it away when the vessel broke in two.
The stern section now lies on the coast, like the stern section of the old German warship Adler, off Apia; but the remainder of the John Williams still sits primly on the reef, with the two remaining masts firmly upright.
H Miss Ethel Nordman returned to Tahiti from France in May, on the maiden voyage of the M.M. liner Tahitieh.