Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1911 — HAD ROUGH VOYAGE [ARTICLE]

HAD ROUGH VOYAGE

Sailors Had in Mind Tale of “The Ancient Mariner.” Baneful Bpell That Fell Upon Sailing Ship Rhine Was Attributed to Killing of Albatross That Had Taken Refuge.

New York. —Coleridge’s tale of “The Ancient Mariner” may now be repeated as the record in many respects of the strange voyage of the Rhine, a British sailing ship, which has reached this port from Trinidad, laden with asphalt. For forty days and forty nights the vessel struggled against adverse winds, or, like the craft in Coleridge’s poem, hung In d glassy sea, “as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." Followed for a time, as men of the crew believe, by as mysterious an Influence as that which held the ship of “The Ancient Mariner” in thrall, the Rhine fought Its way through to the end of a trip that ordinarily would have occupied fourteen instead of forty days. To the killing of an albatross was attributed the baneful spell that fell upon the ship of “The Ancient Mariner.” The question for superstitious minds is whether the spell that bound the Rhine for a time was brought about by a West Indian sailor who killed a sea bird which had taken refuge on board the ship’s deck. •ißefore the Rhine, which is a full rigged ship of 1,690 tons, was a day out of Port au Spain, Trinidad, it found itself in a calm. Day after day, with only an occasional puff of wind to bring hope of more favorable weather, the Rhine crawled along beneath a burning sun. The ship was a week and a half on its way when a strange thing happened, Captain Bergman and his first mate, Harry Wolth, were on the quarter deck, and the sailors were idling about the deck forward when a huge dog, gaunt with hunger, appeared on deck. Captain Bergman and his mate are not superstitious, so they had the animal cared for by the steward and then let him roam the deck at will. It was not until the Rhine was well up the Atlantic coast that it ran into heavy weather. On Sunday night, November 13, a hurricane rose. The first mate was caught in a .heavy sea and was thrown to the deck, where he lay stunned. No one saw him fall —no one but Bob, the stowaay dog. He ran howling to the skipper, and by his actions led him to pend the third officer to see what was the matter. Wolth was found and carried to his cabin, where it was found that he had dislocated his left knee and Injured the leg generally. Wolth insisted on remaining on duty. The Rhine was forty miles east by northeast of Cape Henry when It encountered the storm. It took the ship two weeks to fight Its way to this port, a distance of only a few hundred miles. Captain Bergman in 1905 received SI,OOO and a gold watch from Insurance companies for bringing the Har-

vard into the Delaware breakwater under jury masts after all his spars had been carried away except the foretopmost. Mrs. the skipper’s wife, also has won recognition for heroism at sea. She has an official letter of thanks from congress for aiding in the saving of life. She lives aboard the Rhine. The Rhine is a steel ship, 257 feet Hong and thirty-eight feet beam.