Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1894 — Too Magnetic for Safety. [ARTICLE]

Too Magnetic for Safety.

The story that a deviation of her compass, resulting from the presence of steel in a cork leg worn by the man at the wheel, caused the steamer Susan E. Peck to strand near Bar Point, Lake Erie, in September last, with a loss to the unaerwriters of upward of $20,000, has brought out another quite funny one. According to the narrator, on one of the trips of the fine steel steamer Castalia down Lake Huron the past season, the second mate reported to Capt. Allen that the compass had suddenly gone wrong; that the needle would swing three or four points tt, the right or left at intervals, and that because of these erratic movements it had become utterly impossible to steer a course—ln fact, he had lost track of the course of the steamer altogether. Capt Allen accompanied the mate to the pilot house and found matters just as they had been reported. Besides the man at the wheel two lady passengers were in the pilot house when Capt. Alien entered. Turning to them, after meditating for a moment, he asked if they wore steel corsets. A reply in the affirmative led to a further question as to where they had been, and this elicited the Information that tbe ladies had paid a visit to the engine room, and that while there the engineer had afforded them an opportunity to inspect the dynamo which supplied the electric lights of the steamer. “That settles it; you must get out of here!” next greeted the ears of the ladies as Capt. Allen opened the pilot house door for their exit. And while they were walking back to the cabin in a maze of suprise and astonishment at Capt Alien’s exhibition of bluff, sailor-like authority, that compass got right down to staid business again and showed the man at the wheel the way with its usual precision. It is hardly necessary to explain that the dynamo bad magnetized the steel corsets worn by the ladles, and that thus the corsets became responsible for the crazy race the needle of the compass ran as the wearers moved to and fro in the pilot house. —Milwaukee Wisconsin.