CURIOSITIES • OF THE SEA.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR." J
SIB,—As a most important instance of fact being stronger than fiction, I beg to send the following brief account of an Incident in the career of one of our great merchant seamen,. Captain John W. Jennings, who enjoys the unique distinction of having been sixtyefour years at sea, fifty-4mi of them in command, without one serious accident or loss of a ship.. On a passage from London to Calcutta the ship sprang a leak which incessant pumping failed to keep under. During a brief afternoon's nap Captain Jennings dreamed that he had die- covered the leak, and on awaking had twenty bales of jute cleared away, finding a hole in the silpipe as thick as the wrist, exactly where his vision had located it. Around the leak was a quantity of mustard-seed and pepper, which naturally absorbed much water. Mrs. Jennings shortly after- wards averred that she could smell fire, but no notice was taken until the ship's arrival in London. During the dis- charging of the cargo a solid mass of toffee was reached where sugar ought to have been found, and upon removal of this flames shot fiercely upward. Underneath the toffee were fifteen tons of red-hot matter kept from spreading vertically or laterally by the surrounding sweetmeat formed by the action of fire upon melted sugar. But the sugar on top of the burning matter was not stowed there originally ; it came there by a slight shifting of the cargo through improper stowage. I am indebted to " Chart-Room Gossip," a most valuable weekly column in the Liverpool Journal of Commerce, for this absolutely true story.—I am, Sir, &c., F. T. BULLER.
Previous page
