of the last South Sea trader
the Dane German Harry
by Børup Sørensen
Translation by Patrick Lindahl
Chapter 2 - German Harry buys a wreck
Chapter 3 - The ship's boy Sören
Chapter 4 - Harry tries a little of each
Chapter 5 - The first years in the Pacific Islands
Chapter 6 - The women in Harry's life
Chapter 7 - An evening on Ocean Island
Chapter 8 - Ted and the failed recruitment trip
Chapter 9 - Wrecking of "Quetta"
Chapter 10 - The cannon from the Barrier Reef
Chapter 11 - German Harry saves the crew of "Sunbeam"
Chapter 12 - The last days of German Harry
Chapter 13 - The story from Captain Walker
Chapter 14 - The Hibiscus Flower
Chapter 15 - Epilogue
Chapter 16 - Postscript to the Swedish edition
Author's foreword
German Harry is one of the most adventurous figures in Danish sailing history. Ever since Jeppe Sören Christensen, to call him by his real name, ran away from home in Guldager Parish between Esbjerg and Varde in 1863 at the age of thirteen to go to sea, until he closed his eyes for the last time in Sydney in 1914, he experienced so many things as a sailor, smuggler and trader in the South Seas, that his wilde adventures and exploits made him famous all over the world.
German Harry's reputation attracted the attention of many writers. Somerset Maugham wrote of him in his short story in the "Cosmopolitans". The Australian writer Albert F. Ellis tells of him in his book "Adventuring in Coral Seas" and Captain C. A. W. Mockton, at one time Chief of Police at Samarai and in New Guinea, mentions him in "Some Experiences of a New Guinea Magistrate."
Of his own countrymen, I am probably the one who knew him best. For four years I lived with him, accompanied him on a long series of his adventurous journeys, and was with him in his last moments.
On the basis of his own and others' stories, his diaries and notes, I have tried here to give a sober and authoritative portrayal of this extraordinary Danish sailor, the last trader of the South Seas.
Copenhagen, April 1940.
O. M. Børup Sørensen.
Chapter 2
German Harry buys a wreck
Chapter 3
The ship's boy Sören
Heavy snow clouds hung low over the North Sea. The westerly wind, which during the course of the afternoon had changed to a fierce gale, did not bode well for the night, which slowly descended, dark and brooding, over the gray water.
The schooner brig "Emanuel", old and keel-blasted and wide-bowed, made only three knots in the high, white-shimmering sea as she pushed her starboard necks into the wind on her way to North Shields in England.
It was nearly four weeks ago that the ship had left Kristinestad in Finland, where she had been loaded with planks, which in the event of an accident would be good for floating on. It was worse when the schooner was returning from England with coal in the cargo, but that trip probably did not go to the Baltic where there was certainly too much ice at that time.
It was December 22. In two days it was Christmas Eve; then the captain would issue a few bottles of rum to the crew, and if the weather didn't get too bad, they might be able to get to port before the weekend was over. In addition, it would take three weeks to get the schooner unloaded. They could count on staying in England for at least one month.
Captain Clausen, wearing a southwester and an oil coat, dripping with water, came up to the helmsman. He looked at the compass, where the night lamps had just been lit.
"Hold her tight, Peter!" he said to the helmsman, who stood bent over the compass, with a firm grip on the wheel.
"And keep her west-southwest", he continued. "We will surely have a difficult night."
In front of the jib stood the ship's boy Sören, clinging desperately to the halyards. He was the lookout. They were supposed to be close to the Dogger Bank, and it was important to watch out for the fishing fleet. He should have been at the far end of the forecastle but from there he would have been washed overboard long ago, so in a rare moment of kindness the mate had given him permission to stay at the foremast.
Sören was only 18 years old. His full name was Jeppe Sören Christensen and he had seen the light of day for the first time in Todböl in Guldager Parish between Esberg and Varde. He had enlisted as a ship's boy and was consequently next in rank and dignity to the ship's dog Rollo. Rollo had once been a fine, white poodle, but that was a long time ago. He had gradually come to assume an indeterminate dark hue, thanks to the tar with which he had come into contact. But it did not concern Rollo in the least whether he was white or black; he was the skipper's favourite and received the best treatment of all on board.
Sören had run away from his parents' home and gone to sea. He knew that many boys had done it before him, but what he didn't know was that he would never see his parents and his home again.
Only now, as he stood up here on the iced-over deck, holding on to the leeward stay of the foremast, did he realize what he had done. He hadn't said goodbye to anyone back home, he thought and felt a lump in his throat. The brother and the two sisters, would they miss him? And the old well-meaning school teacher, who had so kindly reprimanded him for never doing his homework to which Sören had objected because he didn't need it to keep guard over pigs and geese.
"Very possible, Sören", the schoolteacher had answered, "but there may come a day when you will regret not being more diligent at school."
When the father heard that Sören wanted to go to sea, he became very serious and explained that it was not a life for humans but for dogs. No, Sören would instead become a good farmer and learn to cultivate God's earth. Sören's father used to sing a song to his son about the sailor's hard lot and death at sea, and the only stanzas Sören remembered were the following:
"There is no coffee on the bed,
but maybe it needs to be beaten up first ..."
And that this was true, Sören had found out in the short time he had been on board. He had been seasick, the sailors kicked him along the deck because he could not cope with the unaccustomed work, and every morning he had to get up at 4 o'clock to make coffee for them. Sören wished himself dead many times over. The sailors scratched him when he didn't steal sugar and butter in the galley for them, and the captain, who knew his Pappenheimers, promised to break every bone in his body if he dared to steal anything from the provisions room. But wait, he got big at some point and then ...
"Wake up your drum!" roared the helmsman and a stinging slap in the face roused Sören from his musings. "You call that looking out, huh, boy?"
A large sailing ship, whose mast had gone overboard, drifted past at a distance of a few cable lengths in the darkness. Despite the slap he'd received, Sören couldn't help but look at the wreck with curiosity. What if there was someone on board?
Suddenly, a drawn-out wail was heard from the berth outlet aft. Sören turned in horror and stared through the snow that had begun to fall. After a minute or so, the same plaintive sound was heard again, as if from an injured animal. And now Sören saw in the dim light from the night-house how the captain pulled a crank to a small square box, which stood on the berth outlet. It was the schooner's siren, which had to be started because of the thickness of the snow.
The mainsail had long since been rigged, and now the skipper roared through the storm an order to raise the jib and salvage the mainsail.
"Clear at yards and gig trains, clear at yards and gig trains!" echoed the crew. Soon after, six men ran up the rigging, up into the darkness and the snowstorm, to rig the sails in grand style.
The next morning at dawn the schooner brig "Emanuel" lashed out without a mast before a smoking storm. By midnight the windward bardoons and mitts had sprung and the rigging had gone overboard. The heavy round hulls, which were left hanging from the side of the ship, entangled in the trainwork, had punched a large hole in the bow before the crew could clear the wreckage with the cars. The deck cargo had gone overboard together with the rigging, and the big boat, which had been lashed to the deck cargo, had taken the same route.
Peter, the helmsman, who had turned up on the evening watch, and the helmsman were missing. The rest of the crew, eight men, had lashed themselves to the stump of the mast. The ship was full of water, both the cabin and the gunwale, but fortunately the Finnish planks kept them afloat. For three days the crew persevered, half-dead from the cold and from the water, which incessantly washed over the hull. No-one could untie their lashings to go down and grab something edible. The blades of the pump still held and continued to spin as if to show that all hope was not yet lost. But the leak was too big, and they might as well have stopped the pump.
Sören thought with horror of poor Peter who had gone overboard. Peter was the only one of the sailors who had been decent to him, who had never hit or kicked him. He could, when he closed his eyes, see Peter in front of him, sitting one Sunday morning on the hill when the schooner was still in Kristinestad. With his beautiful voice he sang "Lazarilla's Song", and the Finnish girls threw him kisses. The skipper himself, who at the same time sat smoking his pipe aft, hummed contentedly like an old bear. But now it was all over. Life didn't just consist of singing and Finnish girls; it meant serious and hard work too. His father had probably been right, Sören thought, just as an icy sea washed over the hull and almost drowned them all.
On the morning of the third day the storm abated somewhat and the seas did not so often beat upon them. The captain loosened the rope with which he had lashed himself and with some difficulty made his way down into the cabin where the water reached his waist. He groped his way into the pantry, grabbed a bottle of brandy and a bag of ship's biscuits that were curiously not soaked. Each of the crew received a biscuit and a sip of brandy. However, Sören was so carried away that he could not hold the bottle, so the captain had to put it into his mouth.
At noon the castaways sighted a ship. It was the schooner "Nellie" of Hull. Captain Clausen waved and shouted like a man possessed, but the schooner's crew had already spotted the wreck and steered towards it.
It was a very ill-fated and exhausted crew who next day were put ashore at North Shields, where the consul took them in and procured them lodgings in the seamen's home of the town. "Nellie"'s captain and crew, who had performed the outstanding rescue work, were photographed in the "Illustrated London News" which also published a drawing of Sören with Rollo in his arms.
After a few days, the consul found Sören accommodation in a boarding-house down by the river with a Mrs. Simpson. Mrs. Simpson devoted herself with love and care to the Danish ship's boy, and when the consul, a couple of weeks later after the worst horror had passed, asked Sören whether he wanted to go to sea again or be sent home, Sören unhesitantly chose the sea. This pleased the consul a lot as it saved him the money for the boy's journey home.
On board "Fortuna", Sören developed into a first-class sailor. After a couple of years, he was the best when it came to rigging sails, splitting rigging and standing at the helm. He soon learned to speak English like a native, for no other language was spoken on the barque.
Sören made many wonderful trips through the blue Mediterranean and learned to love the sea with a love that never left him. Like all true sailors, he forgot storms and hardships as soon as he had been in port for a day.
However, he did not forget Mrs. Simpson, who had been like a mother to him when he first went ashore in North Shields. Every time Sören came to England, he stayed with here until he set out on his travels again.
One beautiful evening a few years later at the beginning of May, the "Fortuna" was in the dock, ready to go to sea. The pilots had come aboard, and friends and acquaintances gathered on the wharf to bid farewell. Among the farewellers were also seen Mrs. Simpson and her 16-year-old daughter Nancy, a sweet and pleasant girl, who seemed to have an eye for the young Danish sailor who sang with his young strong voice the song about "Rio Grande" while the comrades stomped on the walking game and from time to time joined in the chorus:
"Way Rio, Rolling Rio,
Sing fare ye well,
To my pretty young girl,
we are bound for Rio Grand!"
It was not easy for Nancy to say goodbye to Sören, and she constantly wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. So much could happen on such a long journey. Sören waved a last greeting to Mrs. Simpson and Nancy, then he pulled his cap down over his eyes to hide his emotions and busied himself with sails and hawsers. "Such a wonderful girl", he thought and stroked his eyes with the back of his hand.
Five years later, Sören signed off from the barque "Fortuna" and said goodbye to the sea. He had acquired a taste for the comforts of home and, after a while, married Nancy. And suddenly, when Mrs. Simpson passed away, he found himself to be the owner of her boarding-house and a good English citizen into the bargain.
This episode of Sören's life is somewhat shrouded in mystery. It is said in some quarters that he engaged in "shanghaiing" sailors, and there are wonderful stories about his activities. Personally, however, I have never believed these rumours, mainly because there were no people to be "shanghaied" in the English coastal towns, least of all for the merchant fleet and not at all at the time when Sören Christensen was staying there. In England there was really only one kind of "shanghaiing" being done and that was by the Royal Navy which had the legal exclusive right to "shanghai" people as crews for the the men-of-war through so- called "pressers" who combed the ports' inns and taverns and violently dragged sailors aboard.
However, it is proven that Sören was involved in smuggling. His specialty was opium, and much of this Eastern drug is said to have found its way through Sören's boarding-house to London's Chinatown. But that's no reason to disapprove of Sören's character and morals; it has to be remembered that those were different times then, especially among sailors.
Business went well and money flowed in, but Sören eventually found out that he was not meant to be a landlubber. When he was at sea, he longed for port, but when he had been on land for a time, his old longing for the sea began to re-awaken. So one fine day, after various controversies with Nancy, when Sören, like so many others, realised that first love does not last forever, and the English authorities wanted to talk to him about a failed smuggling story, Sören decided to disappear. With only 10 pounds in his pocket, he re-surfaced in Hamburg at the end of 1874.
There he started his rollercoaster life in the streets of St. Pauli. It wasn't long before people started to respect his huge fists, and the funniest part was that he knew how to clean houses. When he reached a certain stage in a happy team with good friends, he used to get up and say with an adult voice: "Yes, now we clean house here!" What happened next could rarely be explained clearly afterwards, but Sören did not give up until everyone in the place, including the host, was out in the yard or the street. Then it might occur to him to make up for the pleasure on the spot and offer drinks over the top. It could hardly be avoided that he occasionally sat around and one day, when he thought it might be useful for a little change of climate, he enlisted as a sailor on one of Rickmer's large sailing ships, the "Nathalia Rickmers", destined around Cape Horn to Chile to pick up saltpeter. He enlisted under the name Harry, a name that from that moment came to follow him for the rest of his life.
On board the "Nathalia Rickmers", Harry, as we will henceforth call him, learnt what it meant to be a Cape Horn sailor. The nitrate ships in the saltpeter trade were worthy successors to the old tea clippers with their record-breaking voyages. If a captain had made a record-breaking voyage, he was praised at home and held up as an example to his peers by the shipping company, until some competitor beat his record by another day or two. Then the former recordholder was called to the shipowner who gave him a warning and urged to better his times or else look for another job. The consequence of this system was, of course, that the captains were forced to take unreasonable risks, which affected both ships and crew. Eventually there wasn't a German left who wanted to work on those notorious ships, so that eventually the crews were made up of Scandinavians, Finns, Italians, Greeks, and even Negroes. On board "Nathalia Rickmers" a Babylonian bewilderment reigned with at least ten languages. It was also said that when the captain turned in for the night, padlocks were put on the spars and halyards so that the helmsmen would not be tempted to lower the sails. A trip where only one or a couple of men went overboard and drowned was considered normal.
The cook on board the "Nathalia Rickmers" was a Chinese and according to the muster roll, his name was Ah Mour. He was a real starving artist, it was said, and with the help of a few bones, water and an octopus could conjure up a delicious dinner. But when the ship had been at sea for a couple of months, a cooking expert was also needed to be able to produce something edible from what was in the provisions: rancid salt meat and pork and dry ship's biscuits, as hard as flint, from which the worms had to be pounded out.
Ah Mour had a face like a sphinx, and even if the ship were to be wrecked with all men lost, not a muscle would have moved on his unscrutable face. After the ship sailed from Hamburg, he did not utter a word to any person on board. The first time he opened his mouth was when one of the crew had appropriated a couple of roast chickens, intended for the captain's table. He muttered just a few words to the captain:
"Man steal chickens!"
The captain was furious. "Fischer", he said to the first mate, "call all men aft."
The crew assembled on the aft half-deck, where the captain stood next to the helmsman.
"With sadness and resentment I have been forced to state that my crew is stealing", he began. "I urge the guilty one to come forward and receive his well-deserved punishment."
The sailors squirmed and peered from under their lowered heads at each other, but none pleaded guilty. After a while the captain broke the deep silence and growled, "From today you get half-rations until the culprit reports. I will indeed" - he swore a rough oath - "teach you!"
For three days the crew survived on half-rations. Already, portions were usually small, but half-rations were pure starvation. After three days, Harry went aft to the captain to confess that he was the thief. The captain understood very well that he was lying, but heaved a sigh of relief and whispered: "It must be that there is a fellow-thief out there on the schooner!" From this moment, because he got them full rations again, Harry became very popular with the crew. .
The second mate's name was Schultz and he was from Bavaria. You couldn't find a more unpleasant person. He used to chase the sailors around the deck like dogs and beat them in the skull with a heavy belaying pin. In fact, he was afraid of the men, who hated him dearly. The captain didn't like Schultz either, but used him to make the crew work harder.
The "Nathalia" behaved like a hysterical woman. She rolled heavily in the sea, with the mastheads often swinging twenty metres to either side. A desperate attempt was made to round Cape Horn when the wind was favourable for once. The course was straight west. On the starboard side, but out of sight, you had the storm-whipped rocky coast of Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire, the most God-forsaken region on earth, and on the port side you could now and then between the torn the skies see both the moon and the setting sun cast a rare shimmer over the vast seas where the Atlantic and Pacific meet.
The captain was furious because it took an hour to fix the mainsail. Harry, along with ten other sailors, lay on the heavy iron bar on the starboard ridge, struggling with the thick canvas, which felt like icy wood to handle.
Glancing down to the deck, Harry saw Schultz chasing a Finnish sailor, who always walked around with a terrified expression on his face, onto the splitter boom to secure the splitter. When the entire forward ship was periodically dipped into the high sea, everyone could understand how it would end for the Finn. Just when they had finished the square topsail, a huge wave came and buried the whole hull; the Finn, who was out on the yardarm, could not hold on and was swept into the water. Harry shouted, "Man overboard!", but Schultz yelled at him to shut up. There was no way to put a boat out in this weather, and that idiot didn't have to sleep outside on the bowsprit! The crew stared after their comrade and grumbled. After a while they caught sight of a pair of large albatrosses circling over the spot where the Fin had disappeared. The albatrosses only peck out the eyes when they get hold of a drowning sailor, Harry told me.
With rapid speed the ship rounded Cape Horn and was soon in tropical waters again. The freight consisted of general cargo for China and Japan, and on the return journey they would stop on the west coast of South America to load saltpeter. A fortnight before arriving at San Francisco, a couple of large rolls of bream sailcloth disappeared from the storeroom, and could not be found despite a thorough search. It was the sailors’ intention to make tents from the canvas for the gold fields of the Sacramento Valley, when they fled to San Francisco. On the way home around Cape Horn, mate Schultz also disappeared on a dark and stormy night in roughly the same place where the Finn had drowned. The captain briefly interrogated the crew, but to no avail, and no-one cared about what had happened.
Harry made two trips on the "Nathalia Rickmers" and then signed off in Hamburg. He then sailed with a Norwegian barque to Brazil and the La Plata, and then once again joined the saltpeter trade on one of the famous P-Line barques from Hamburg. For two years he sailed with this line and became the best sailmaker on the route, much sought-after by the captains.
One night, when the ship was in Oakland unloading lumber, Harry escaped. He went ashore together with a Norwegian sailor named Andersson who had no money. "It doesn't matter", Harry comforted him. "When I have money, you have money too. I pay."
They entered land on a long wooden bridge just as a large American flat-topped schooner slipped through the Golden Gate. Harry pointed towards the ship to explain the sails to the Norwegian, but got no answer. When he turned his head to look for his companion, he was gone. Harry couldn't believe his eyes, because there wasn't a cone on the entire bridge. After a while he heard desperate cries and saw Andersson, who was lying in the black water under the bridge and clinging to the slippery bridge pillars. He had simply fallen through a hole in the bridge.
Harry got hold of a boat and got his mate back onto dry land. A couple of glasses of cognac at the nearest bar worked wonders. And while Harry and Andersson were sitting there at the bar, the rest of the crew from their ship eventually arrived. The whole pile had escaped to go up to the gold fields at Sacramento. The temptation was too great and several ships lay in the harbor without crews. Yes, there were ships where the officers, even the captain, had run away to try their luck. It was at that time that the famous sailor's song "Sacramento" came into being. The refrain was:
"Blow boys, blow,
for California!
There is plenty of gold,
So I've been told,
on the banks of Sacramento".
On the "Barbary Coast" in San Francisco, Harry amused himself to his heart's content for three weeks, reliving the wild adventures of his younger days in Hamburg. Then he disappeared up to the gold fields to try his luck for a while, but to no avail. One evening he was ambushed by two armed bandits, but was lucky enough to survive one and nearly choked the fellow. The other took to the harrow. Harry then left the goldfields, signed on with an American schooner in San Francisco, and disembarked a month later in Callao, Peru.
Chapter 4
Harry tries a little of each
Chapter 5
The first years in the Pacific Islands
Coming from the west coast of South America with its dry, unhealthy climate to the mild South Sea islands must have been like coming from hell to heaven for Harry. Here was everything a human being and an adventurer could wish for. Wonderful palm islands with verdant vegetation and sparkling white sandy beaches and fruits that you only had to reach out for. It is hardly surprising that the white-haired sailor settled here in this earthly paradise and remained there for the rest of his life, with the exception of a short visit to England later on. Here he also got the name, which later became famous far and wide. At the same time, an English sailor, also named Harry, appeared in Cooktown; he was called Welsh Harry while our Harry, who was so well versed in the German language, was christened German Harry.
German Harry was broke when he came to Cooktown, and with his ravenous appetite for life he took every chance that came his way. He was not afraid to cut in if it was necessary, but it goes without saying that his upbringing in life's own hard school meant that he was not so accurate with the bourgeois laws. Smuggling was a business he knew, and here were all the opportunities that, according to the proverb, make a thief. He boarded the China boats, which arrived every week, bought silks, gems, and opium, concealed the contraband in pigs' bladders, filled with air, and let them go overboard through some ship's valve, whereupon he could fish out his goods. He felt wind and current conditions on his five fingers. 59
Customs had a good eye for him, again and again he was thoroughly examined when he went ashore but of course without the slightest result. Nor did it succeed for the zealous customs snoopers to discover his methods.
However, all this was, as far as Harry was concerned, only small things and a small beginning of what was to come. He had other and bigger plans. But this required capital, and Harry kept a watchful eye on every opportunity to obtain such. The first chance presented itself as follows:
After the discovery of Hodgekinson's goldfields, the Government wished to establish a port nearer to them than Cooktown, and offered a reward of £200 to whoever could point out a suitable place where a port could be built and a road made over the mountains to the goldfields. At that time there were no railways in Queensland.
Harry thought it was best to search from the sea side. He bought a boat, had it rigged with mast and sails, hired a helper and set off. Another man named Bill Smith and a negro, who knew local conditions, had set out on the same errand and had eight days' lead. As soon as Harry found a place, which he thought was suitable for the purpose, he went ashore, pitched his tent, and began to build a hut. The next day he continued in his boat up a small river to find, if possible, an even better place. Here he met Bill Smith and the Negro. They too had marked out a place which they found suitable and moreover they had already been up to the gold fields and brought back a couple of the gold diggers, in order to prove with their help their pre-emptive right to the reward.
The government took the two proposals under consideration and found the place where Harry landed best suited for the port building. In the same place is now the city of Cairns. Where Harry built his hut, the main street now stretches out and where he put down his tent stakes rises a building housing the town's bank. But Bill Smith, much to Harry's chagrin, got both the £200 reward and all the credit, because he had been first up to the goldfields.
Harry didn't lose heart over that, though. He consoled himself with his favorite proverb: "No night so dark that there is no bright day afterwards!" and decided to find some other ways out. He stayed for a couple of years in Cooktown and made good money serving as a gold carrier over the mountains, but then roads were built, gold transport was arranged differently and Harry turned to the sea again. He started fishing for trepang, a kind of "sausage", which the French call "bêche de mer" and which is a favorite dish of the Chinese. These anchovies live on coral reefs and are fished with an iron hook on a long shaft. The red trepange is particularly valuable and brought in at that time up to 4000 shillings per ton. Harry bought a schooner which he named "Captain Cook", hired about forty Chinese and began fishing on the Great Barrier Reef, which stretches along the coast of Queensland from Brisbane to Torres Strait in the north between New Guinea and Cape York. The fishing was extraordinarily profitable, the Chinese wading on the reef with their iron hooks and a bag on their bellies and making good catches. On Rheine Island the trepange was treated according to all the rules of the art and Harry rushed provisions and water there from Cooktown. In doing so he used the same channel through the reef as Captain Bligh on his famous rowing trip after the world-famous mutiny on the "Bounty".
Rheine Island was a deserted bank without the slightest trace of vegetation. Nowadays there is a lighthouse, but when Harry stayed there it was as desolate and lonely as when Bligh found it a hundred years before. From Rheine Island, Harry shipped the finished trepange back to the mainland and made some rough money. In addition, he sailed between the islands with dynamite, intended for the gold mines.
As an example of how thoroughly Harry went about it, one day he bought the New Zealand brig "Maggie" stranded at the mouth of the Daintree River. He had actually bought the wreck for scrap, but before this happened he lived on board the schooner for four months and used the time to study navigation, as all the necessary instruments, books and charts remained on board. It had always been in his head that he couldn't navigate on his own and here he now had the opportunity to learn everything he would need. The roving life had created a gap in his knowledge, and he had often had reason to ponder the admonishing words of the old Jutland schoolmaster that perhaps a day would come when he would find use for bookish knowledge. And when he sat alone in the cabin struggling with numbers and nautical calculations, he bitterly regretted being so lazy at school.
Harry had already intended to buy a bigger ship, on which he could smoke the sausages on board and on the whole set up more practically and spaciously, when one day he was shipwrecked with "Captain Cook". He was leaving Rheine Island one fine morning on the usual trip to Cooktown with his load of trepang, when about a couple of nautical miles from the island he was surprised by a violent squall. His crew, a couple of Chinese and a Danish boy who had enlisted at Cardwell, were sitting between the open hatches on the deck, eating breakfast in good company, when the schooner capsized, filled with water, and sank within a couple of minutes. Harry was the only one who escaped from the adventure alive. He was just about to drown, when he saw a floating hatch and climbed onto it. And afterwards he could swear that, as he lay on the hatch and paddled forward with his arms and legs, he could see Captain Petersson, a Swede who was foreman for the Chinese, standing on the island and watching his struggle for life through the binoculars without doing the least to help. Petersson was already in the process of taking over the lead of the trepan fishing when Harry suddenly, after four hours of violent effort, crawled onto the beach bed, panting like a hippopotamus. However, he didn't give himself time to rest or dry off before giving Petersson a real beating.
After this mishap, Harry travelled to Brisbane and bought a beautiful schooner, which the government offered for sale. He intended to continue with the fishery, but the Chinese had other plans. They went on strike that they were not employed in fishing with the schooner "Lizzie," as the new schooner was called, but with the "Captain Cook." Behind the whole story was a clever manager, who saw a good deal in the money-rich Harry and therefore had caused the Chinese to strike. However, Harry didn't think it was worth sacrificing any money on possibly long-lasting processes, but shut down the trepang fishing and sent the Chinese home so that the careful manager had to look after the estimated profit.
It wasn't long before another chance appeared. Just then, large gold fields had been discovered at St. Aignan, Sud-Est and other islands off the coast of New Guinea and on New Guinea itself. Gold diggers flocked in by the thousands, and Harry determinedly started regular passenger services between the mainland and the islands. Every time Harry came to Cooktown there were crowds of people on the docks waiting For "Lizzie". Everyone wanted to go with Harry, because he had the reputation of being the most skilled navigator between the islands. When sailing through narrow passages in the coral reefs, he always stood up at the donkey's head on the foremast and waved to the helmsman whether he should keep starboard or port. From there he could see down into the clear water and direct the course in time. Yes, there were even people who claimed Harry could "smell" his way to hidden shards, reefs and underwater rocks. The competition was great, other skippers also led the way, but although even the great Burns Philp Line fielded two steamers, Harry maintained his leading position, and if a steamer out-competed him on one route, he immediately recovered the damage on another. At one time he had no less than six schooners in operation, but always himself in command of the flagship "Lizzie." He constantly bought and sold ships, and one day, when he had only the "Lizzie" left, he went to Sydney and returned with a whole flotilla, consisting of twelve schooners. It left the other skipper along the coast speechless.
With this sizable fleet at his disposal, completely different possibilities opened up for Harry than just passenger traffic with gold diggers. He had several pearling stations in the Gulf of Carpentaria and in the Torres Strait. His ships were always manned by coloured men, namely Australasian negroes and Malays. The coloureds were honest, he said, while the whites were not to be trusted, and if a ship went down it was just so many niggers who had drowned, if it was whites, the whole thing became more complicated. Besides, most of the whites had a fault, namely that they drank themselves silly, a course of action which Harry, who himself never tasted a drop on board, strongly condemned. Just a single time
Harry tried using white. He modelled an old English sea bear called Old Jack and a white chef.
The latter proved to be on the verge of delirium tremens and had to be put ashore after two days, and Old Jack, who had been with the fleet once upon a time, was no better. The only thing he was good at was standing at the helm when the schooner was in port, and that wasn't much fun.
During the time Harry was fishing for trevally on the Barrier Reef, something happened that is perhaps worth mentioning, not least because it gives a good picture of the conditions at the time and explains why Harry could sometimes appear more heavy-handed than a modern person likes and understands .
After the shipwreck with "Captain Cook", Harry dismissed the Swede Petersson and hired an overseer named Mac Gregor. He was a Scotsman and was mostly interested in whiskey and a comfortable existence. He had another white man as his assistant, and the rest of the "staff" consisted of 10 Chinese, 5 Malays, and 4 natives from one of York Peninsula's wildest tribes, which most whites otherwise used to get out of their way.
One day Harry had sailed to Cooktown with a load of trepang and came back to the station on Rheine Island to take on new cargo again. He had been gone for a week. When he went ashore at the wharf he found it deserted and abandoned. Not a human was seen. In the warehouses there was a lot of trepang, ready to be shipped, but the smoking ovens were cold and abandoned.
Harry walked across an open space where the catch was being dried in the sun and towards the workers' dormitory, a large barrack with a corrugated iron roof. As he looked into the half-dark room, a terrible stench hit him. However, he went in and found all his people, including the Scots and the white assistant, lie murdered there. Their heads had been smashed with an ax lying in a corner of the shed.
It didn't take Harry long to figure out how it all worked out. The fact that the four natives were missing gave him sufficient certainty. Nor did he hesitate for a moment as to where he would find them.
At night Harry and the two sailors he had brought with him to Cooktown caught a pair of giant turtles and the next morning they carried them aboard the schooner and sailed over to the mainland. From the coast they headed inland. The two sailors carried the turtles between them, Harry going last, armed with a Winchester rifle with 14 rounds in the magazine.
Twenty hours later they reached the native tribe, whose camp site Harry knew beforehand. And here he found the four escapees and about thirty others engaged in various games and weapons exercises. Harry pretended he came as a friend. He noticed the four of them looking at him uncertainly from under their bowed heads, but he didn't pretend not to notice and handed over the two large turtles as gift.
Harry and his two men sat at a distance and watched the blacks as they oiled the gizzard. But suddenly a couple of them started doing high crunches and rolling on the ground. At the same time, Harry opened fire with his winchester. Some blacks tried to escape, but they didn't get far. The turtles were prepared with a fast-acting, deadly poison. Not one of the tribe escaped with their lives. Harry's revenge was complete.
On the return trip, Harry rescued two Australasian negroes who were floating on a tree trunk far out to sea. The two men were half dead of hunger and thirst, but Harry nursed them back to health and then made a long detour to land them on the shore. That was German Harry!
The next time Harry came to Cooktown he reported to the authorities the murder of MacGregor and the other white. His private revenge, on the other hand, he didn't mention.
One day on the way home from Cooktown, Harry, who was on the lookout for reefs and seabeds, spotted four men on a low sandbar. He maneuvered his schooner as close to the bank as possible, had a boat put into the sea, and took the four castaways on board. They told us that they belonged to a party of twenty gold diggers, who had been returning from New Guinea on board the schooner "Saucy Jack." The ship had run aground on a rock.
"Where is that rock and how many were on board?" Harry asked.
The four rescued explained that they had taken the boat to row for help and that the other sixteen were probably still on board the "Saucy Jack". However, they had rowed around for so long that they did not know where the stranding had taken place. A couple said it was in a westerly direction, others that it was in the east and Harry was at a loss for words.
Despite being short on provisions and water, he vowed to save the castaways, no matter the cost. It was impossible to steer between all the dangerous reefs, shoals and sandbanks, so Harry sailed up to a small island on the Barrier Reef, anchored there and put a boat into the sea. For three days he cruised with a couple of men on board between islands, reefs and rocks to find "Saucy Jack", but without success. When he was back on board the schooner, one of the four castaways remembered that he had noticed a strangely shaped rock when they stranded. From the description, Harry thought he knew where it was and gave the order to drop anchor. He set course for the north, and four days later he actually succeeded in finding the wreck of the "Saucy Jack" on a coral reef and rescuing the sixteen gold diggers. It was at the last second because they could not survive many more hours without food and water.
In fact, it was a remarkable feat for Harry to find the stranded ship in the then only partially charted sea of thousands of islands, rocks and underwater reefs. The rocks where the gold diggers' schooner had run aground, Harry named after "Saucy Jack" and they are still called that today.
A month later Harry was passing through the Torres Strait into the Gulf of Carpentaria, which is 300 nautical miles wide and filled with islands, inhabited at that time by natives who had never seen a white man. Harry was looking for new pearl banks and visited islands such as the Wellesley Group, Sir Edward Pellew Group, Groote Eylandt and many others and finally reached Cape Wessel, from where he could look out over the Arafura Sea.
At Rocky Island, where he went in to fill up with fresh water, he had an incident that could have ended badly.
As Harry took on water, the natives streamed down to the beach to view the ship. The men were completely naked, their only "clothing" consisted of a few bone and stone wedges in their noses and ears. The women, on the other hand, were "dressed" in a finely braided bast band, which was wrapped a few times around the waist. They were magnificently built and
Harry immediately liked them. He lured the most beautiful one on board, and she apparently helped escape with the white chief. But then Harry and his people would rowing out to the schooner, the natives held the boat's catch line so that they could not get out into deep water, and at the same time a shower of javelins and arrows rained down upon them. The beauty, who apparently believed that sooner or later Harry would end up in the pots, took her part, jumped overboard and went ashore. But she had scarcely reached the beach before she was knocked to the ground by a great burly fellow with a huge club in his hand, and Harry had so much feeling for his chosen one that with a well-aimed shot he sent her brutish tribesman to the rare hunting grounds. A spear, which one of the crewmen instantly seized in flight, might easily have dispatched Harry in the same manner.
After a fierce battle, however, Harry and his men managed to break free from the beach and in a moment the schooner weighed anchor.
In the Gulf of Carpentaria, Harry found several fine pearl shoals and marked the find sites by anchoring small cork buoys with flags next to them to return later with Malay divers and necessary pearl fishing equipment.
In most places along the coast the natives fled when they saw Harry's ship, but on the islands it was better when he traded his provisions in the form of fruit and water for common trade items such as knives, cheap pocket mirrors and other knick-knacks.
Harry reached Cape False on Frederick Henry Island, then sailed east and one day stopped at the small trading station of Sukarie on the coast of Dutch New Guinea. As he rounded the headland at the entrance, he noticed a white merchant schooner at anchor, but decided to wait to visit it until the next day.
Late at night, Harry sat in a deck chair on the deck, refreshing himself with a cup of tea, like one of his native crewmen made ready. The night was still and the sea lay like a mirror. Inland, he could see the dark forests rising behind the coconut palms by the shore, and even further away, forested mountains rose against the deep blue night sky. The moonlight played across the roof of the administration building on the outskirts of the small town.
Suddenly Harry heard a splash in the water at the side of the ship. He stood up and saw a white man who was just climbing out of the water.
"I was lucky to meet you, Harry", the man said as Harry, with a strong grip on his neck, dragged him aboard. "The accursed Dutchmen are stealing the schooner from me and tormenting the life out of me!"
"Now let me hear of your troubles", said Harry, who at once recognized in the wet form one of his old friends, Captain Hamilton of Sydney. "Why you come swimming here like another nigger in the middle of the night?"
Hamilton told: He had run into the harbor with his schooner "Daisy" but had been fined fifty pounds because he had no clearance papers from the previous port. Unable to pay, the authorities seized the schooner and refused to release it until the fine was paid. Hamilton was in fact under arrest but the authorities did not bother to lock him up. He was careful enough, they thought, not to escape into the mountains and be eaten by cannibals, and besides, they had the schooner as pawn. Now he had gone a whole month and starved ashore.
"To imagine being arrested by that pack of thieves in this godforsaken den!" Hamilton said, spitting out a mouthful of water over the rail.
"I notice the blessing of civilization has come to this town as well", Harry said, opening his safe to examine his current financial resources.
"Here's £45 and the rest in Chilean dollars, that's all I have for the moment. Arrange for you to pay the bloodsuckers and get away. And then you'll have to forgive me for also disappearing, I don't have any papers either!"
An hour later Harry was far out at sea. Among other things, German Harry owned two large schooners, "Galathea" and "Hygyea", which were leased to the Phosphate Guano company. These two vessels sailed non-stop with cargoes of guano from Reine Island to Melbourne.
At some point, Mr. Arundel, the director of the company, went to Reine Island and from there to Thursday Island and thus got to know Harry. He then never got tired of telling his acquaintances about Harry's exploits.
When they were at Thursday Island, one of Harry's curly-haired Santa Cruz boys ran amok. Harry stood in the bow scouting for a good anchorage, when the black man approached him from behind, axe raised, ready to send him to eternity. At the same moment, Mr. Arundel rose from the cabin and shouted at the top of his lungs to Harry, who turned in a flash and glared at the black man. He dropped the axe in shame and lurched aft. Then he suddenly jumped overboard and swam towards shore.
Not a muscle moved in Harry's face as he took the winchester rifle and cocked it. "Yes, he really deserves to die, that assassin!" said Mr. Arundel.
Harry didn't answer. He took careful aim and a shot was heard. The negro splashed around in the water and to his great surprise Mr. Arundel watch him swim back to the ship and climb back on board. He fell to his knees in front of Harry, clinging to his legs and whimpering like a whipped dog. Harry told him to go ahead and do his work.
Later in the day, as they sat at the table, Mr. Arundel Harry: "Why didn't you shoot the black beast?"
"Shoot?" Harry replied, "I didn't have the remotest thought of shooting him."
"But I saw with my own eyes that you aimed at the man's head and missed. And why did he come back, they don't usually do that. I don't understand a bit of it all!"
Harry smiled. "I didn't miss him. On the contrary, it was a real hit. A shark at least fourteen feet, about to sink its teeth into the weakling. It got the bullet right between the eyes and it went to the bottom like a stone."
He looked thoughtfully at his glass and continued: "The Santa Cruz man is one of my best men. And he will henceforth be faithful as a dog."
Such was Harry's attitude towards the natives who came into his service. He himself recruited the workers for the pearl fisheries from the small unknown islands of the Pacific Ocean, from the river areas of New Guinea and the most uncivilized regions of the York Peninsula. He understood how to treat the natives the right way and never showed any fear, even though his life often hung in the balance. This created a mutual respect, and the natives looked up to him as a god. He never once broke agreements made and was one of the few traders who never had a native abducted against his will. He also procured workers for the rubber and coconut plantations in New Guinea and for the sugar plantations in Queensland, and when the terms of the contracts expired, he sailed them back to their respective home islands.
Harry's business soon grew beyond all limits. He also engaged in illegal pearl trading, that is, he bought pearls from divers who were employed by other pearl fishermen. These divers were always eager to sell to Harry. Harry's black Austral negroes, which he used on some pearl banks, could not dive in deep water, and he was therefore unable, with the help of his blacks, to procure the large quantities of pearls which he occasionally brought with him to Sydney.
Harry also bought large tracts of land from the native chiefs of New Guinea and acquired entire islands off the coast, where he planted palm trees and established plantations, including rubber plantations. He had his hands full and was well on his way to becoming a real man of substance. He was the most famous and talked about ship owner and plantation owner in this part of the globe and people counted him as a man of great importance. His bank account in Sydney grew slowly but surely.
But one day a stick stuck in the wheel. Civilization was advancing. Germany and England annexed New Guinea but did not want to recognize Harry as the rightful owner of the lands and islands he had acquired. Harry raged like a berry and invoked his ownership, but to no !--- raged like a berry ---> avail. He was treated as a pirate and adventurer, and he sacrificed thousands of pounds in vain on lawsuits and lawyers.
Governments are nothing more than a band of legalized robbers, Harry thought.
Otherwise, you would think that with all his many businesses, Harry should have amassed fabulous riches. That was, Bell". As they approached the door of the hotel bar, there was shouting and noise from within, and at the same moment a negro rushed out with his stomach distended. A Greek gold-digger had stabbed him with his knife. It is perhaps needless to say that Harry was not allowed to sell some hotel that night.
One day Harry met a man who didn't really like him. It was Sam Griffith. Sam, who was then Premier of the State of Queensland, had set his mind on organizing the whole motley collection of immigrants who lived in these areas, and above all he wanted to put an end to the abuse of the natives. It is true that there were strict laws against kidnapping and slavery and definite regulations for the work of the natives on the sugar plantations, but regardless, traders and schooner captains employed formal pat-hunting of them and treated them like animals. Sam Griffith made it his life's aim to remedy these wrongs, and therefore he did everything to instill the fear of God and Sir Sam into the hardened hearts of the depraved. Many were beaten with irons, others were hanged, and the South Sea traders realized that the good old days were over, that their kingdom was tottering in its foundations.
German Harry, who with all due respect to his good sides was no angel, found himself having several unsolved dealings with the law and order and therefore thought it would not hurt to have a little climate change. He sold his ships to the firm of Burns Philp, who also took over his plantations and other properties, and with his pocket full of good pounds he boarded a ship and sailed as a passenger to England.
Chapter 6
The women in Harry's life
Chapter 7
An evening on Ocean Island
One evening the three merchant ships Ellison, Danty Louis and Smith had come to anchor with their schooners at Ocean Island. They were now sitting talking over a grog on land. Out in the lagoon, the schooners were reflected in the shiny water, a cable's length from the beach bed. To the south, the huts of the natives and the small town of Taipang loomed between the tall coconut palms.
It would be fun to know if German Harry is going to run in here if he comes by, Ellison said during the conversation.
Why would he come here to Ocean Island? asked Danty Louis. The Burns Philp boat which I passed yesterday had seen German Harry's "Lizzie" on a southerly course, probably bound for Sydney from Hunter Island with clam shells, copra or God knows what cargo he has this time. He always has a full load when others can't even get it together for ballast. And we hope he pops in here, if he comes by, right Smith? Ellison's last remark had a definite undertone. Smith, who was a pearl buyer, owed Harry £50 and, incidentally, was not exactly counted among the Great Dane's most intimate friends. He has no papers as a captain, said Smith sullenly, it would be about time the government stopped this kind of illegality and put him on the school bench for a while. A shriek of laughter interrupted him.
German Harry in school, said Dante Louis, are you not quite clear in the skull? The schoolmaster is not yet born who can teach him anything. By the way, I want to see the captain, from the old country or the island sea, who can compete with Harry, as far as navigation is concerned. There is no such thing, despite all the papers and lessons learned. —I don't understand how he manages to get his ship out or into Brisbane, Sydney or other civilized ports, continued Smith, here any vagabond sailor can run in, even if he has no papers at all.
- It’s probably easiest if you ask him yourself, Ellison said. "I thank you," muttered Smith.
Otherwise, it's all very simple, Ellison continued, when German Harry, for example, is arriving to Sydney, he gets a captain on board who has a power of attorney and then he goes ashore and up to the harbor office and clears the schooner. When Harry is about to set off again, the same fellow gets them out, and when they get past Sydney Head the man is sent back ashore again in a dinghy brought for this purpose. Keine Hexerei, nur Behändigkeit, gentlemen. Cheers!
At midnight, while the three traders were still toasting and talking, the stillness of the lagoon was interrupted by an anchor chain, which rattled out from the hold of a ship. The three men rushed up, and the whiskey box on which Smith was sitting overturned right into the fire, where one of the black islanders was roasting a pig on a spit. Ellison stared out over the water.
- Mark my words! Do you see the tall stern mast - it's Harry anyway.
—The impudent devil, said Smith, saving his whiskey box from the flames, he doesn't care if it's night or day, he blasts away through reefs and surf, just as damned. One day he will end up in hell.
"German Harry always lands on his feet like cats," laughed Danty Louis. Authorities, customs and numerous others on three continents have tried to catch him, but he has always gotten away due to lack of evidence. He has always been as pious as a lamb. A nice lamb! repeated Smith.
However, Harry had made it ashore in a dinghy, rowed by two brown-skinned Tahitian boys. - Where there are decent people, more decent people come, he greeted the three and jumped ashore. And, look, there we have Smith. It's been a long time since we last met. A year and a half, I think. It's best if we manage our intermission at once, then I won't have to go around the South Seas after you. I have the bill on me, here it is.
Harry pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Smith. The interest rate can do the same, he said, winking with one eye at the other two. Smith, who was known to never pay his old debts, was caught off guard to the point where he ungrudgingly paid Harry the £50 as the others looked on in astonishment. Harry got a bite to eat, the others continued to drink.
- Well, what are you sailing with these days? Ellison asked Harry, his mouth full of roast pork.
- Copper, ivory nuts and a residual charge of dynamite, which I'm going into Lord Hove Island with on the way, Harry replied. - Is it shipping? asked Danty Louis.
- No, it's own cargo, said Harry, it pays better to sail with your own goods. - You haven't insured "Lizzie" have you? Danty asked Louis again. Harry laughed.
Since I have no license, it is not possible to insure the ship. But on the other hand, I save the premium. Big risk, big profit!
I never liked to sail with dynamite, Ellison remarked, I'd rather take the schooner full of savages from the Solomon Islands.
- Or wild animals, grunted Smith.
- Wild animals are not vices, Ellison replied, at least I've never heard of them. - I've both heard of that and witnessed it myself, said Harry dryly. He had finished eating and caught fire on his pipe. A load of dynamite should only be kept properly shelled under the hatches, and nothing will happen, but wild animals must be placed on the deck. They need fresh air, and that's where the danger lies. I can tell you a story about such a transport, if you care to hear it.
Harry took a deep drag on his pipe and looked out over the lagoon. It is several years ago, he began, we were on our way home with a full-rigger from Hamburg, had been to Japan and China and then ran into Saigon in Annam. There we took on board a whole menagerie, consisting of four Bengal tigers and a black satan, I think it was a panther. The captain was furious and explained to the agent that his ship was no zoo, but there was nothing to be done and so we must sail with the five beasts. We fed them during the trip, meat, bones, shark meat and squid. Once we put in for them a whole bunch of yellow peas left over from dinner, but they didn't want that kind of food, they just sniffed at it, hissed and looked angry.
- Actually, I wouldn't mind a plate of yellow peas right now, said Ellison, who was getting a little tipsy.
- Now shut up, interrupted Harry, and listen. We had two large cages on the upper deck just aft of the mainmast. In one cage we had placed three of the tigers and in the other the fourth tiger along with the panther. The two of them later sat staring at each other in their respective corners, and when, during the morning cleaning, we stuck the hose with which we flushed through the slats, they flew into a rage. The disaster came one day, after we had rounded Cap Horn and off La Plata entered a pampero.1 A huge wave swept in and smashed both cages. With a speed that would have made a Nova Scotia sailor pale with envy, the panther entered the gunwale, where it sat and drooled over the deck, while the tigers ran about and hissed on the bilges. A sailor named Otto had just rounded the galley with a tar broom and a pail of tar, when one of the beasts came rushing at him with gaping jaws. He was so frightened that he stuck the tar broom straight down the animal's throat, after which he fled for his life to the cook, who quickly closed the door behind him. From the valve window they could see the animal doing somersaults out on the deck, whereupon it tried to stick both front paws into its mouth at once. After two minutes there was not a single man left on deck except the helmsman, who dared not let go of the wheel for fear the ship would capsize. The lumberman was hardened when flayed alive, he stood inside his house with the door open, working on a spar without knowing what was going on, until a new wave washed one of the tigers right at him. The captain entered half-deck with a rifle in his hand to protect the helmsman, and from this place he succeeded in shooting the animals, one after another. We have to go up and get the panther down, after it was shot, it had become hanging with its claws entangled in the ropework. Well, was the lumberjack killed? Ellison asked, as Harry paused.
He hovered between life and death for many days. We had no other medicine on board than castor oil and the captain thought it was of little use. We then thought of giving him tar poultices on all the wounds and scratches, but of course it still became inflamed. However, the mate, whose name was Koenick, came up with a good idea, which I believe saved the poor man's life. We dissolved three braids of the best strong English tobacco in a tin can of hot water, then boiled the strong broth for two hours and gave him poultices with it. The mate believed that this strong sauce would kill all bacteria. When we were done with the bandages, the lumberman lay as if dead in our hands. The next day he began to roar as violently as the tigers, but eventually he was able to take in at least a bit of food. When, on 1South American term for a hurricane-like westerly storm. arrival at Hamburg, the doctor came on board to see the carpenter, who was now on his feet again, and was told what we had cured 102 him with, he only said: - God Father, save us! and shook his head. Since German Harry had sent the dinghy out to "Lizzie" later that night for more whiskey and a little tobacco, the conversation continued. Suddenly, Ellison asked Harry: What really happened to Captain Petersson, who you once told us about - he, who lost his entire crew in Santos?
- Yes, it was a sad and strange fate that befell him, said Harry and sat for a moment seriously thoughtful. So he told:
- It was, if I'm not mistaken, in 1878 during the great fever epidemic in Santos. Petersson had been lying inside the jetty with his barque ”Sydkorset" (Southern cross) and waiting for cargo for three weeks. Almost the entire city was depopulated. Everyone who could crawl or walk had fled to the mountains, where the air was cleaner. But then the crew on "Sydkorset" began to die, one after the other. Petersson alone did not catch the fever. A fortnight later he was left alone on the ship. All alone he buried the whole crew, sixteen men in all, and carried them on his shoulders up to the cemetery, one each day, and buried them all in a corner. On each grave he put a plaque with the name of the sailor and the ship and the year 1878.2 After much trouble, he later got a new crew sent to him from Rio, the worst jumbled scumbags on the planet, and then he sailed away.
Harry paused for a moment, the others waited in silence. The following year I was boatswain with Captain Petersson on the same ship. And I soon noticed that he was never sober. He drank everything he came across except sea water. In Rio, a doctor came on board and examined him. "That man has delirium tremens," he said to the mate. "He must not be alone in the room, you must assign a man to guard his berth at night, and of course he must not taste liquor of any kind".
The same day we sailed to Santos and the third mate was ordered to keep watch at night with the captain. Towards morning, when he thought the captain was asleep, he went in for tobacco and matches. When he returned a little later, the captain was lying in the bunk drinking from a bottle. The mate immediately saw that it was a bottle of brandy and it was emptied to the bottom before the mate managed to get it from him. Petersson dropped the bottle on the floor and fell back against the pillow. "It was good," he moaned, then died. Later we discovered that he had been upstairs and retrieved the bottle from a chest of drawers. Afterwards we found another one of the same kind. Captain Petersson was buried in the cemetery in Santos, not many steps from the sailors, whom he himself had buried the year before.
As the sun began to gild the palm tops on the beach, German Harry stood up and said goodbye to his comrades. The Tahitian men, who had slept in the boats, were already ready at the oars. Just as Harry was about to board, he pulled Smith aside, stuck him the 50 pounds and whispered, Just keep the money, Smith! We have had a nice night.
An hour later the schooner "Lizzie" appeared like a white seagull far out at sea. 2 In the cemetery in Santos, I myself have seen the sixteen crosses or canes with the year 1878 and the names, which, however, are partly illegible. Auth. - Harry is in any case a good sport, said Ellison.
- A most strange man, said Smith, it is not easy to fathom the depth of him.
- It is probably also best not to try, said Danty Louis. To which they toasted.
Chapter 8
Ted and the failed recruitment trip
German Harry's schooner "Galathea" went under full sail off the coast of the island of Malaita. It had been in a small practically unknown bay to recruit workers for the sugar plantations of Queensland. But the result had been completely negative, the blacks did not understand themselves well and did not understand how good it was on the plantations. They did not know the blessing of work.
German Harry had gone down into his cabin to get a little rest. When he awoke, he was surprised to see one of the crew, a young man named Ted, walking past his door with closed eyes and outstretched hands. Harry couldn't help but laugh. It was clear as day that Ted was sleepwalking. When Ted made it up the cabin stairs, a crash was heard. It was Ted, who tripped over something or other. Harry ran up to see what was on.
When he got on deck, he was greeted by a terrible sight. The "Galathea" had been attacked by the savages, who had come rowing in three canoes. The black, woolly-haired natives of the Solomon Islands were climbing like giant flies all over the deck and were already in a wild fight with the crew who were trying to throw them overboard again. Several of the blacks had already been killed. On the front deck a heated battle raged. Harry hurried aft and took over the steering wheel from the helmsman. It was important to get away now, before all the savages got on board and maybe even more made it to the scene. Harry offered a magnificent sight from where he stood. His upper body was naked to the waist, but on his head he wore, as usual, his large Stetson hat, which could hold three gallons. In the corner of his mouth he had a lighted cigar, which he chewed incessantly, and in his right hand a heavy caliber revolver. He should have been painted at this moment.
Suddenly Harry felt a searing pain in his head as if someone had burned him with a hot iron. He had to let go of the wheel and grabbed his head. His hands were full of blood, his eyes were dizzy, and the surroundings took on the appearance of a theater decoration. As if through a mist, he saw how Ted, with a face contorted with tears, swung an ax at the head of one of the natives. A bullet from the mate sent the black man overboard.
With a command, Harry called the entire crew aft. He then took out of a box at his feet a large cartridge of dynamite, lit the fuse with his cigar, and threw the cartridge toward the front deck. The effects were terrible. Heads and limbs were scattered everywhere. A couple of the savages just managed to jump overboard, but were eaten by the sharks. Harry sent off a fresh round of dynamite at one of the three canoes that were just docking at the rail, packed with warriors, who were swinging their spears and axes in a manner that left no room for misunderstanding. A few seconds later, nothing was left of the canoe, but black heads appeared everywhere in the water and the sharks were very busy again.
— Take care of the helm, Mac, said Harry to the mate, while I go down and get something to wrap my head with. I think they've had enough for this time, those devils.
A glance over the railing showed him that it was true. The two other canoes were on a wild flight towards land, while the savages who remained were in a hurry to fish up their comrades.
—I can't understand what's up with the blacks, Harry added as he went downstairs. They don't usually behave this crazy on this coast. It looks almost no better than that some fool has been inside and made a spectacle of them. They then always demand revenge on the first best white man. Now keep it well clear of the headland, Mac, the reef stretches far out in a southerly direction.
When Harry got down into the cabin, he noted with satisfaction that the skull was still intact. But he had received a big wound, and it pounded like a small thunderstorm in his head. In addition, he had annoyingly his nice Stetson hat spoiled. He had to keep an ugly scar on his skull for the rest of his life.
A moment later, when Harry came up on deck, the last traces of the clash had been cleared. Two of his sailors had passed into eternal rest, but the schooner was saved.
— Go away and get Ted! Harry said to one of the sailors. He lies away under the bow and licks his wounds, I guess.
A moment later the sailor returned with Ted. He had wrapped a strip from a shirt around one arm and was holding the cloth tightly with his fingers, but the blood was still pouring out in all directions and edges. Harry began to bandage his arm and then said:
— Now tell me, Ted, have you always walked in your sleep? "Yes, Captain," Ted replied, a little embarrassed, but I couldn't bring myself to bring it up as I signed on. I was ashamed of my weakness, and I think, by the way, that I would prefer to get ashore again at the first opportunity. Sea life is definitely not really suitable for me.
Harry laughed and gave him a friendly little push.
— You'll probably be allowed to come ashore when we reach Sydney, Ted. And I'm glad you woke me up in time, because otherwise there wouldn't have been a living soul on board by now. It was just a pity that I had to resort to the dynamite. I admit that it is the last resort I use.
As the mate and Harry later sat eating together on the aft deck, the mate said:
—I still don't understand how it all came about. Ted handled the ax brilliantly, I must say.
—Yes, Harry replied, he worked diligently. But had he not walked in his sleep and thereby awakened me, our heads would have graced the roofs of the canoe houses inside Malaita by now. It would have been a nice scandal!
Before I go on, let me tell you who Ted was and how he came to be patterned by Harry. Ted's story is not so common.
Ted hailed from Charters Towers in Queensland. He had come to New South Wales at a young age and been brought up on a farm near Wahroonga in the Blue Mountains. When one fine day he had grown tired of tending sheep on the farm, he resigned his post to, as he put it, take a look at civilization.
The first time Harry saw him was in Rawson's bar Kent Street. He was a tall, puppyish farm boy, who had pretty well greased lips as long as he had money in his pocket.
Before disposing of the last of the money which the farmer had paid him on his departure, one evening he bought a lottery ticket for the annual "Melbourne Cup" race and put it indifferently in his pocket. Some time later, after the horse races had taken place, one of the guests asked Ted whether he had checked whether the lottery ticket had come out with a win. Ted thought he had lost it and didn't care much about it, but he finally found it crumpled together with some old cigarette butts inside the lining of his jacket pocket.
The note was unfolded, and compared to a draw list. One corner was gone, but the number could still be read with some difficulty. All the guests jostled together to amuse themselves at his disappointment, for of course no one could imagine that he had won. Great was therefore the astonishment and jubilation when it appeared that Ted had won the top prize of £25,000 in the famous "Melbourne Cup". The host dropped a glass, which he was polishing, on the floor and wanted to see if it was real. Yes, the number was exactly right. Afterwards, Ted received unlimited credit in exchange for the host having the note in his custody, and Ted ordered champagne overall in Mrs. Fortuna's honor. Champagne, which was otherwise not an everyday drink in Rawson's bar, was obtained from a nearby liquor store.
German Harry and one of his good friends, Captain Carr, were just passing by on the street when they heard the commotion inside from the restaurant. They entered and saw every single guest sitting with a bottle of champagne in hand. Glass was not used. Ted was "a jolly good fellow" and ordered promptly a bottle of champagne to each of the new arrivals, after which he asked Harry if he wasn't a farmer, pointing to his pointy goatee.
"That's an insolent fool, then," thought Captain Carr, frowning.
"Well, maybe he's just a little inexperienced, the young man," Harry said. He's not even dry behind the ears.
Ted relived for eight days without a break, much to the benefit of Rawson's bar and to the delight of the guests, who had everything for free. The host, whose large, round face beamed with delight and satisfaction, had never believed that there were so many people in Sydney. The door of the bar was in constant motion, word of Ted's adventure had spread far and wide.
Finally the ticket was redeemed and the money arrived. Ted, now appearing in a large checkered gray suit, egg-yellow shoes, bright red tie and green hat, consulted the host and was persuaded to deposit the sum in the Sydney Government Savings bank, with the exception of a £500 line for current expenses. The host, of course, had already been reimbursed for his outlay. A clever journalist got an interview with Ted, a photographer took a picture of him in full war paint with a carnation in his buttonhole and a big cigar in the corner of his mouth, and then Ted went up into the mountains to impress the farmer. The farmer stared for a moment in silence at the phenomenon and then said:
Yes, Ted, you've been lucky, I can see, but once you've got rid of all your money one day, your old place is still open to you.
Ted gave the farmer a friendly pat on the shoulder and let out a laugh. In the small town, Ted settled down with a young widow, who owned the only tavern for miles around. The business didn't go so well, but thanks to Ted, better times came. The manager of the local bank office, who was a good friend of the widow's, often came and spent a pleasant evening in their company, giving Ted much sound financial advice as an expert. In that way, it gradually became clear to Ted that it was better to have the money transferred there, and the widow was of the same opinion. She thought it impractical for him to travel to Sydney every time he needed a few hundred pounds.
And so one day Ted appeared at the bank in Sydney, where he declared that he wanted to withdraw the entire sum. The bank clerk, who frowned when he heard the large amount mentioned, asked him to wait a moment. Ted was then politely asked to enter the director's private office. Here the director advised him of the imprudence of moving his fortune out of the safe bank vaults, etc., etc. Ted pointed out that he could very well manage his money himself, and mentioned that he intended to marry.
Well, good luck with the connection then, said the bank manager, following him to the door. You can withdraw your money after the usual notice. Of course, I cannot prevent you from moving the money.
Ted got his money deposited in Wahroonga's local bank, and all was well and good. The widow and Ted had agreed to marry, and never did the sun shine on such a happy couple until the day of the wedding. Then the bride and the bank manager disappeared over the mountains. There was nothing left of the big wedding dinner with subsequent ball, to which the whole town had been invited, and the flower-adorned church was empty.
The bank branch was closed and the pub was mortgaged up over the chimneys. For his last pennies, Ted made his way down to Sydney and drowned his sorrows in Rawson's bar in Kenth Street. Here Harry found him exactly two months after their first meeting, poor as a church rat. When Harry asked him if he wasn't sorry to have lost all his money, Ted stoically replied that money was only a nuisance.
Harry ordered two glasses of beer and asked Ted what he was going to do next. — Ideally, I want to travel far away, Ted replied. If I knew any captain who had use for me, I would gladly leave tomorrow.
Harry said he probably knew a captain who could use a man, so if Ted wanted, it could perhaps be arranged immediately. Yes, but you are farmers, right? asked Ted.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything, it'll sort itself out anyway, said Harry. The following evening, Captain Carr came into the bar and met Ted. He offered a glass of beer and said he came from a captain to pick him up. He was to be a midshipman on a schooner, which was going out to the islands to pick up a cargo of copper for Sydney. They left the bar, and along the way Carr described the glorious marine life with such warmth that Ted was about to fall over his own legs in his eagerness to get away.
In Darling Harbour, Carr spied a schooner, which was anchored some distance out, and a moment later Ted saw a boat come in towards the wharf, rowed by two black Santa Cruz sailors. These were, on account of their coming to a big city, dressed in "party clothes", i.e. swimming trunks, a stick through the nose and the eternal chalk pipe stuck through one ear. Ted stared at them in disbelief, but Carr helped him into the boat. Once on board, Ted was led by Carr down into the dark, gloomy stockade, where he was assigned a berth among ten black cannibals. After that, Carr disappeared. When Ted came on deck the next morning, German Harry stood smiling and received him. Ted rubbed his eyes and didn't understand a damn thing.
So began the journey, about whose dramatic events I have already told before. On the schooner's return to Sydney, Ted said goodbye to German Harry, and shortly afterwards he regained his place with the farmer at Wahroonga. In the meantime, he had learned a little bit more about life.
Chapter 9
Wrecking of "Quetta"
Everything I have told you so far about Harry I have from his notes, from what others have told me about him, and from what he himself told me, when we were together and he let his thoughts drift back to old, stormy times. Now I want to turn to telling what I myself experienced together with him during the four years I knew him and traveled with him, from 1910 to 1914.
It was good times in Sydney at the time, when I became acquainted with Harry. One day, some time after I had followed him to Middleton Reef, I came strolling down King Street. At least half a dozen times I was molested by people who asked if I wanted work. But I had about a pound of silver in my pocket, and could afford to say no.
At the corner of Castlereach Street someone suddenly stabbed me from behind in the collar, put a knee in my back and pulled me backwards. No, sure, now they're too busy, I thought. I clenched my fist and was about to punch around as best I could, but my hand was locked as in a vise. I dropped to my knees and suddenly saw German Harry's smiling face above me.
"Be glad you're in a civilized town, Johnny, or you'd be as dead as a herring by now," he said, as he helped me upright again. Can you imagine that you are so busy walking around and admiring the beauties of the city in the evening light that you don't once can hear me call out to you without nearly needing a knockout to return to reality.
I hastened to explain to him that I wasn't out to look at girls, but just to get some fresh air. But it certainly didn't sound very convincing.
Well, that's just as well, Johnny, he laughed, I wasn't any better myself in the old days. But let us now rather pass away at the Princess theatre. There's a really good cowboy movie going on right now.
We turned the corner at George Street. At the entrance to the cinema, Harry bought two tickets and we disappeared into the darkness. After we had seen the film, we went across the street to the Theater Royal and watched another film of the same kind. When there were cowboy movies on the posters, Harry never let down.
Later in the evening we ended up at the old barber Andersen's in Pitt Street, one of the Danes who lived in Sydney at the time and where Harry hung out a lot. The old white-haired compatriot immediately began to tell us the history of the fatherland. Well, for the hundredth time, he told us how in his time we beat the Swedes in Køgebukten. As usual, he illustrated his story by pointing his stick at an oil print on the wall.
Here you see how the Danish fleet arrives and gives the Swedish a happy team. But "Niels Juel"…
"Yeah, we knew our stuff that time," Harry said, patting him on the shoulder. Harry had a special ability to get the old man out of his endless war stories without offending him.
Mrs. Andersen, who was born Irish and who in stature and appearance bore a striking resemblance to the old Queen Victoria, asked us to take our seats. And soon the Andersens and their children, the daughter Benedictine, who, however, for reasons of convenience was never called anything but Benny, the two grown sons George and Walther, who ran the barber shop for the father, and the youngest son Berthie and Harry and I sat pleasantly around the family dining room - table. We had brought some large lobsters with us along with a couple of bottles of stout, and you could hear the lobster shells crunching between Harry's strong teeth as the stout ale was poured into the glasses. The conversation was lively.
- Say, Captain Christensen, asked Mrs. Andersen, how did it actually go with the German who fired at you on board the "Galathea"? Wasn't he imprisoned or neutralized somehow?
Harry shrugged.
- I have to calm him down a bit with a trunk nail to get him to stop shooting.
- Yes, but wasn't he immediately sent ashore? Benny asked eagerly. Did you really dare to be on board with a robber murderer? She was obviously impressed.
Lord Jemine, said Harry, who was annoyed that the story was being made so much of a fuss, I couldn't very well put him ashore, as we had eight days to the nearest port. The man was, shame to say, quite cranky when he woke up, he hadn't been really sober and then it's easy for things like that to happen.
Later I heard the story from another place. Harry had been at the helm, when the German appeared, mad with heat and booze, and started shooting at Harry with a Winchester rifle. The bullets whistled in Harry's ears, as they always did must dive and swing his head left and right. But when his hat was pierced by a bullet and flew off, he became angry and punched the German.
After we had taken leave of Andersen's and were heading down the street, Harry said:
By the way, I've been thinking of a trip to the Barrier Reef, Johnny, and you can help me with a lot. Would you like to come along?
If I wanted to! I had a hard time hiding my joy. What are we going to do up there? I asked, as we cruised across Market Street just in front of a tram, the driver of which was clutching his watch like a madman.
"There's an old wreck up there," Harry said. I have often thought of going there, but never got around to it.
Shall we take the schooner? did I ask.
No, we'll go off with the "Alice" and sound the terrain first, and then if we think we need the schooner, we can always muster a crew and head out there again. It's just as well that you come along on board "Alice", so we can talk a little more about the plans. You can have the one sofa in the cabin for the night.
We strolled through the Sydney Domain and soon came out onto the coast road to Rose Bay. As we passed a shop, Harry asked me to go in and buy some bread and some small things for us to take on board.
Half an hour later we arrived at "Alice". It was a magnificent evening, the moon shone over the many headlands of Port Jackson with the beautiful villas and gardens, and a cool breeze swept from the lake inland.
We found the "dinghy" moored at the wharf, rowed out to "Alice," where we moored the boat aft, lit candles in the cabin, and laid down the provisions.
We can go out and get provisions tomorrow, said Harry, filling the anchor lantern with oil. If there is something that you are particularly keen to bring, we will send it with an offer tomorrow. We don't need to lack anything.
A moment later he said:
Give me that chart on the shelf above the couch, and I'll show you where we're going.
I handed the rolled-up map to him, he spread it out on the table, after which he began to measure the distances with compasses and ruler. It was a large nautical chart of the western Pacific with the coast of Queensland and the surrounding islands.
Look here, Johnny, he said, pointing the compass at the map. Here we have the Great Barrier Reef, stretching along the coast of Queensland from Sandy Cap right up to the middle of Torres Strait, past Cape York for a length of about 1,500 miles. It is the most remarkable coral reef in the world, but it is also a graveyard for ships. Many large and small ships have ended their journey on this reef, and thousands of people have drowned here. We're going all the way up to the height of Rockhampton at the Tropic of Capricorn, which you see here on the map. It will be a trip of 2,000 miles. But we can go in and get water at several places, and I have promised Swirvel & Co. to take a box to Mr. Robinson, the steward of Lord Hove Island, so we sail there first.
On the map I observed some with red dotted crosses and some numbers below them. Several places were also marked with an anchor. I asked Harry what that meant.
An anchor means you can anchor up and get to the bottom without risk, Harry answered. But the crosses and numbers mean something completely different.
I pointed to a spot by the name Endeavor reef, where a cross and the number 300 had been noted.
Yes, it is by now an old story, known throughout New Guinea, he stated. The Dutch barque "St. Poul" came in 1888 from China with 300 Chinese workers to the sugar plantations in Queensland. The ship ran aground on Endeavor Reef, which is located near Rossel Island, an island in the Louisiade Archipelago. The white crew and the officers took the ship's boats to sail to the Dutch Indies for help, but they apparently landed in Queensland to search for the gold fields. The Chinese were thus left to their fate, and the natives of Rossel Island, noticing the stranding, paid frequent visits to the Chinese on the sandbar, and stuffed them full of provisions so that they grew fatter and fatter. Then they picked up eight or ten at a time in a canoe and brought them to Rossel Island. The Chinese, believing that the blacks wanted to save them from the terrible sandbank, sang songs of joy every time the boat departed, and the savages, who had good ears, learned the songs by heart. To this day, these songs are still alive with the natives. The Chinese believed that they would all be saved if they were only patient. In 1889, only one Chinese remained, who was taken aboard a passing French ship and landed in Australia. The rest of the 300 Chinese ate up the Rosselmen in less than a year. An English warship, as a warship, which later visited Rossel Island, found the 299 heads neatly piled up on the beach!
Harry continued pointing at the map:
So here we have a place just outside Sydney. "Dunbar" is written along with a cross with the number 250. Here, "Dunbar" was wrecked on its way from England. Only one man was saved. And close behind we read "Lapeyrouse" with a question mark after it. This means that here the famous French navigator was last seen alive, before he disappeared with both his ships. Many have tried to find his tracks and solve the mystery, but so far no one has succeeded. By the way, a reward has been promised for it, but there is very little chance of finding it, as it has been over a hundred years since he disappeared. You see here, the bay outside Sydney is named Lapeyrouse in memory of the famous sand. A fashionable seaside resort now stands on the site. Later, however, some information has emerged that his tracks have been found on the Santa Cruz Islands. Here at "Flinders Reef" the coastal steamer "Navarra" sank with 200 passengers on its way to Brisbane. None reached land.
I interrupted him:
Here, right up in Torres Strait, there is a cross and the number 400 along with the name "Quetta" - is it also a ship, like a shipwreck?
Harry joined in even more seriously. It was just as if something touched him uncomfortably, and I thought he looked old and sad all at once. He sighed deeply and after a moment's thought replied:
You see, Johnny, I never said a word to any human being before about the "Quetta" business. I think tonight you will be the first to hear the story.
I made sure he didn't have to tell me anything that embarrassed him. But Harry cut me off as if he wanted me to be quiet. I had never seen him more serious.
You have your whole life ahead of you, Johnny, he began. Neither you nor I know what the future holds. But I hope you won't be as lonely in the old days as I have been. In my young years, I thought I would always stay young. Then I had other thoughts. And now, during these years, I ask myself what it was all worth. I have had a lot of money and still have money. A friend once asked me why I didn't build myself a villa and settle down on the hill like other people. I answered him: Why should I have all the trouble of household, servants, and all the rest? You can't do more than eat your fill, and when I have my lovely boat to live in and travel with, I have no other wishes. By and by I have come to regard my fellow men with distrust, Johnny, and I have been deceived and deceived on every side. But I've always managed by myself and I've never asked anyone for anything. But try borrowing ten shillings from your best friend and your eyes will be opened. No, Johnny, your best friend on earth is your wallet. As long as it is in order, you can walk with your head held high. The Andersens we visited yesterday are decent people, but if one day I came and told them that I had lost everything and applied for a small loan, you would be surprised at the answer, which I will get. There is soon no honest person you can trust.
With the knowledge I had of Harry, I thought this speech was unlike him. He did not tend to be sentimental or solemn. Nor did he usually use so many words. Just in what we have touched on, there must be something that made him sad and bitter and that made him look at life more darkly than usual.
Now you will hear the story of "Quetta," he began, after stopping and lighting his pipe. It might be easier if I can tell it and I like you, Johnny.
I followed him with tense eyes while he spoke: Do you remember that mrs. Andersen once told of a young man named Harold, who was going to travel home to England? A lawyer wrote that his father was dead and that he could claim his share of the inheritance, which amounted to £70,000. He traveled with "Quetta", but he was never able to collect the inheritance. His earthly remains are still in the ship that sank in the Torres Strait. Harold was engaged to the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was also warm-hearted and intelligent. Her mother had a couple of smaller properties across the water, in North Sydney. I was often a guest in the house, and Alice, as she was called, always gave me a kiss of welcome and called me Uncle Harry. She was wonderful, and now you know why this boat is called "Alice". Sometimes I was jealous of Harold, and God forgive me, but now and then I could wish they wouldn't get married, because I thought she was too good for any man. Alice was to accompany Harold to England, and I followed them on board the same day they left, she hung around my neck and cried, as if I were her fiance and not the other. When she waved goodbye, I noticed that around her arm was a wide gold bracelet, which I had once given her. It was a precious bracelet with inlaid brilliants that formed her name.
Alice also drowned when the "Quetta" sank, I asked.
"Unfortunately not," Harry replied gloomily.
— Unfortunately?
Yes, you will hear what happened. The ship went up along the Great Barrier Reef after entering Brisbane and receiving a full load of passengers. You had to go up through Torres Strait and into Torsdagsön, before running out into the open sea. It was around 12 o'clock at night. The captain intended to round the outermost point of the Barrier reef and turn into the strait, when the grounding occurred. Now I don't want to blame the captain too much because I know the waters up there and know how difficult it is, but he shouldn't have taken any chances with such a large ship, full of passengers.
"Quetta" went to the bottom in a couple of minutes. Only two were saved, a male passenger, who was fished out of the reef the next day, and Alice, who drifted on a wreckage for 36 hours, before being picked up by a canoe, manned by 3 Australian negroes. She was put ashore on Torsdagsön, where she came under the expert care of some friendly people. But her reason had been clouded by the terrible strains; she perceived nothing, recognized no one, and could tell nothing. Later she came to Sydney and everything was sacrificed to get her back to health. But nothing could be done. She died six months later without having learned to recognize even his own mother.
It was the only time in my life I saw Harry with shiny eyes. It took a while before he composed himself enough to continue:
— Later, by the way, a memorial was erected on Torsdagsön over the sinking of the "Quetta". The following year I myself was at Torsdagsön with my schooner and obtained a description of the ship, its interior, the place of the disaster, etc. And gradually I became more and more occupied with the idea that it might be interesting to go down and have a look at the wreck. Others had had the same intention, but I arrived first. In Sydney I had a nice diving suit arranged with air hose and other accessories, I studied books on diving, took all eventualities into consideration and then one fine day secretly sailed north with my usual black crew. The government, as always, showed complete indifference to anything that was once wrecked, so here should be something to do, I thought.
He knocked out the pipe, stopped it again, and continued:
—When I arrived at the reef, it was a still day with practically no lake. It was difficult to locate the wreck, as even the masts did not reach above the surface of the water, but finally I found the spot after searching all day with my binoculars. I determined that the tire had a slight sidewall of 5-6 degrees and measured with a plumb line 45 feet to the center of the tire. This depth made me a little apprehensive, and I waited until the next morning, when I did a couple of test dives. The Blacks laughed as they screwed on their helmets and saw mine face behind the window. But I had given them strict instructions to turn the crank for the pump, which was installed in a box, and I expected it to be a success. I went down twice to examine the deck, the third time I brought a dynamite cartridge with a long lead, placed it about amidships, and when I came up I cut off the power. At first I thought the whole ship had been blown to pieces. Dead fish were tumbling up everywhere. But the result was satisfactory. The whole deck was open amidships after the explosion and I was able to walk straight down to the middle deck and into the saloon. In the captain's cabin, which I soon found thanks to my preliminary studies, I discovered "Quetta's" money chest, in which I was particularly interested. It was 3 by 4 feet in size, of iron or steel, but not so heavy as I had wished. The lashing by which it was fastened I easily removed with my knife, and I then brought it out on deck, whereupon I ordered the blacks to hoist me up. The undertaking was considerably more strenuous than I had thought, I was sore in all joints and had to lie down and rest for a quarter of an hour with the helmet open. Then I went down again but now equipped with a strong rope to the money box. As soon as I got down, I secured the box securely to the rope. But before I went up, curiosity impelled me to look into the drawing- room. Here I was greeted by a sight that I will never forget. Passengers sat or lay along the couches, some on top of each other. I experienced the shipwreck in all its horror. At one place a man stood behind a door that I opened, it was just as if he was bending over me when the door opened, but of course it was caused by the movement of the water. In the back of the salon, a woman was half seated reclined in a corner. In the dim lighting, I could see that she had a pearl chain around her neck. The idea of possessing it turned me on for a moment. But I didn't want to be a corpse looter. In another place sat a young mother with two small children pressed close to her. It was a horrible sight. Suddenly a large shark appeared in the deck opening. It circled a couple of times over me and then steered away towards one of the pillars that held up the deck, where it scrubbed the suckers off its skin by rubbing back and forth against the pillar. Then it headed straight for me. I had taken cover behind another pillar and kept my knife ready. I feared that my diving suit would be torn open or the air tube would be punctured if it attacked me. However, it must have had other plans, as it was content to circle a couple of times over my head before disappearing up the hole. I breathed as much relief as my wetsuit would allow and set about getting up as fast as possible. I've never been afraid of anything, Johnny, but if there had been ten more money boxes in the wreck, I wouldn't have gone down again.
He was silent for a moment and seemed to be lost in thought.
— But was there anything in the money box? did I ask.
— Yes, he answered thoughtfully, there was something in the box, but something that I had never dreamed of finding there. It was a very solid steel box, which could not be opened easily. However, I beat it with a big hammer until it was completely out of shape, and the lid finally popped open. It was full of bags of gold coins and large bundles of bills which I dried in the sun the next day as we continued south. It was money I was after that time. But money doesn't bring happiness, Johnny, you believe me, the worst tramp who trudges along the country road under God's blue sky, is many times more satisfied than the millionaire, who sits in his palace and thinks only of his fortune. And the man who has spent his whole life scrimping and saving, who has put penny after penny to enjoy a carefree old age, finally discovers, when he is about to enjoy the fruits of his thrift, that it is too late. He has become too old. When the grieving family finally stands around his death camp waiting to share his money, he discovers that he has wasted his life.
He has to make an effort to get back to the subject:
— It is customary and customary for passengers on long voyages to leave their money, jewelry and valuables in the care of the captain. It had also taken place on board the "Quetta". In addition to the money, the casket contained a lot of jewelry and other valuables. After I emptied it, I let it go overboard again and started to sort the jewelry. Suddenly I was standing with a bracelet in my hand. The same piece of jewelry I gave Alice. The diamonds that formed her name shone in the sun like a silent greeting from the unfortunate girl. She didn't marry Harold, they were both dead, and I had gotten my bracelet back. A strange game of fate. At the height of Brisbane we came into a strong gale. I was in the most gloomy mood, and left all the sails, while the schooner sped away through the foaming lakes. I didn't care if we went to the bottom with all the glory. My black crew made an attempt to set sail, but I held them at bay with my revolver. Then they lashed themselves amidships. They believed that I lost my mind. We passed very close to one of the route boats, which was heading north. I could see crew and passengers standing on deck watching us through binoculars. I wonder what they thought of that sailboat. Well, we made it to Sydney alive and I immediately went to Alice's mother to leave her the bracelet.
Chapter 10
The cannon from the Barrier Reef
The sun had already begun to cast its golden shimmer over the water when I came on deck the next morning. Harry had cleaned and tidied up everywhere. He had also hoisted the flag with the six stars astern. Now it swayed there in the fresh breeze.I always get up to watch the sunrise, was Harry's morning greeting, as he brewed the coffee, which he let boil over so that it ran in streams down the sides of the coffee pot. The sun is the best thing we have here on earth, he continued. We "blanks," as the negroes call us, worship a god we cannot see, the Chinese worship gods they themselves make, but the ancient Egyptians devoted their worship to the sun, which they could both see and feel which perhaps it was wisest of all. After this devotional time I rowed in and fetched the box to Lord Hove Island, which a forwarder had been down with, together with several other small and good things, and after we had dinner we cleared the buoy to which the dinghy was moored, and set out on the long journey.
It was Sunday and everywhere the yachts were seen sailing by. We passed Shark Island and were soon out on Watsons Bay. Here we met the big ferry bound for Manly, fully loaded with happy Sunday travelers with their bathing suits under their arms. An orchestra played amidships and all the passengers sang:
Take me down the harbor On a Sunday afternoon,
Round the Spit and Watsons Bay
We'll call at Coogee on the way, Call around at Cliffton
Or Mossman, that will do.
Dear old harbour, Sydney town, They can't beat you.
Passengers waved as they glided past. From the stern, a young man shouted down to us:
— Just be careful that you don't get seasick when you get outside.
Harry laughed and waved too. Such is youth, he said, it takes life lightly these days. Shortly afterwards we passed Sydney Heads with the high cliffs on either side, the entrance to Port Jackson, and were soon out in the elongated swells of the Pacific heading north. As usual, Harry had been in a brilliant mood since we got out into the open sea. He was like a completely new person, and I hardly recognized him from the night before, when he sat in the cabin and told his sad story about the sinking of the "Quetta". He had bought a box of fine cigars, which he handed over to me, he contented himself as usual with his indispensable pipe.
We continued northwards and on the third day we experienced an eclipse of the sun which lasted two hours, from 12 to 2 noon. As the solar eclipse was total, it was almost as if we were sailing in moonlight on the open sea.
As scheduled we called at Lord Hove Island and got the box ashore to Mr. Robinson who received us on the beach. I have rarely seen anything as beautiful as this island. The natives collected Kentia palm seeds for export. Only on this one island and on Norfolk Island the Kentia palm grows old enough to bear seed and the storage sheds were full of seed sacks awaiting shipment on the steamer that called at the island on its way to Sydney. The price was 5 shillings a bag on Lord Hove Island, in Sydney it was sold at a huge profit in small packs of 1,000. in every. From Sydney, the seed packages were exported to Belgium and from there all over Europe.
On the beach I found the largest clam shells I had ever seen, some measuring three feet in length. Mr. Robinson mentioned that the natives used them as baths for the children and to make ax heads. There were thousands of large hermit crabs on the beach, turtles, and the most beautiful conch (empty mollusk shells) a collector could wish for.
We stayed at Lord Hove Island two days, and on leaving brought with us as much fruit as we could take on board the "Alice," bananas, cocoanuts, and much else.
From Lord Hove Island we went to Brisbane, a distance of 200 miles. There, Harry greeted several old acquaintances. A high official invited us in the evening to his home, and Harry was received very politely and treated almost like a prince. Before we left, we stocked up and filled our water tank and then started the last part of the journey up to the Barrier Reef to the north.
At Swain's Island we reached the reef, but there were still several hundred miles to go. — We could very well go inside the reef and sail that way, said Harry, the water there is like a millpond, but instead it is full of coral reefs and reefs that you cannot see, and they can be dangerous to run into at night when it is dark. Outside there are no skerries but somewhat more waves. I think we choose to go outside the reef.
Which we did. The higher we got up towards the north, the warmer it got. One day when the heat was almost suffocating, Harry said:
—I know of a fine remedy for the heat. We make ourselves a nice cup of hot tea. I had actually thought of something in a completely different direction and looked a little skeptically at Harry, when he started making tea. But I have to admit, Harry was right as usual.
Not even at these latitudes is there anything better to cool off with than tea. One day I asked Harry what kind of wreck it really was that we were going up to investigate. "It is a very old wreck," he answered. I came across it once a long time ago, when I was fishing trepang with my Chinese. I marked the spot with a very rough pole, which I stuck down between the coral blocks, and that is the only thing we have to go after, if it is still there.
Day added to day as we sailed along the reef, which was flooded at high tide but a couple, three feet dry at low tide. One day, after taking cutlery, Harry decided that we should be there the next day at dinner time. Now a month had passed since we left Sydney and I rejoiced at the thought that we were nearing our goal. The following day we went right in to the reef after Harry had taken the sun altitude and reviewed the map.
— Of course, we cannot find the wreck immediately, he said. But now we throw out a little buoy with a flag and then we go a couple of miles north and throw out another buoy there, while we scout for the pole.
Several times I thought I saw the pole, but it turned out to be some coral branch sticking up from it torn. After we got a couple of miles north we dropped the second buoy and sailed back towards the first.
I hope the pole is still standing, or we'll never find the wreck, said Harry.
We passed the first buoy and then slowly headed south. I doggedly scouted for the bar as Harry went through his notes and examined the map. Harry was just coming up from the cabin when I spotted an object in a southerly direction. Harry put the binoculars to his eye and immediately exclaimed:
— Yes, there we have it!
He left me the binoculars and took the helm himself. Yes, there was no doubt. A long pole had been set askew between the corals a mile south of the first buoy. Once again, I have to admire Harry's masterful navigation.
We moored "Alice" to the bar, which was half its length overgrown with marine life and coral, and went out on the reef. It was not yet low tide, but the water had begun to recede. I looked around in amazement but could discover nothing but corals of all sizes and shapes. I think someone has been here and picked up the wreckage, I said. The only thing here is coral.
Harry laughed. You're standing on the deck right now, Johnny, he said. Can you see how the stern deck slants up and leans out over the lagoon on the other side?
I looked around in amazement and suddenly I discovered the whole shape of the ship. But it was covered with coral to such an extent that no one would have guessed that it was a ship. I crawled over the coral blocks and peered out over the high aft deck.
— Come here and look, I shouted eagerly. Here there are like real windows in the stern. "Yes," replied Harry, "it's possibly an old warrior from the eighteenth century." They always had a very tall stern building with windows. But instead go aboard and get an ax so we can try to remove some of the coral.
The ax was retrieved, and Harry cleared part of the deck so that the planks, which were apparently still intact, were exposed under a couple of inches of water.
— Those are oak planks, Harry said. They built properly in those day.
Could it be "Pandora", sent out to punish the rebels from "Bounty"? I said. It sank on the Barrier Reef. Or is it perhaps Lapeyrouse's ship?
— I don't think we'll get the reward this time, Harry replied. The scholars in Sydney believe that the Lapeyrouse was wrecked on the Santa Cruz Islands, which, however, is not completely proven. It will be difficult to identify this schooner. But you can in any case see that it has been a three-mast of strong dimensions for the ship of that time.
The water had now receded enough that we could see part of one side with traces of rusty iron fittings.
Here we have part of a mast, I said, driving the ax down between the corals, but it didn't bite into any wood, but leaned out to the side. Harry came forward and examined the matter and then he said:
— It’s not a mast, Johnny, it's more like a cannon. We worked with ax and crowbar to remove the corals, and the cannon—because it was one—soon lay before our eyes in the daylight. The coral cover had protected the iron amazingly well. At the thick end we could glimpse the year 1730 and an indistinct name.
It might well be a Spanish or English cannon, Harry remarked. You see a hint of a crown above the name. And if we also don't find more than that, then at least the journey has not been in vain. You'll see, there will be life in Sydney, when we come home with the cannon! They're crazy about old guns in town.
But is it possible to have it on board, isn't it too heavy? That'll do, Harry thought. We heave the ballast star overboard and let the cannon go in as ballast.
We worked all day on the wreck and managed to arrange an opening in the deck, but the ship contained only water and coral growing through the bottom. We observed many beautifully colored fish sneaking in and out of the wreck. In the cabin, which we finally entered through the stern windows, we found an old half-rotten oak chest with traces of black iron fittings. In the chest we found an ancient instrument, which Harry explained was an ebony quadrant, which was used in ancient times for navigation.
"I wouldn't mind finding the ship's bell at all," Harry said. You might be able to find the name of the ship on it. But it probably went to rock bottom many years ago. By the way, it doesn't have to be a man of war for us to have found the old cannon, because in the past almost all ships were armed for protection against pirates and savages.
We remained until the next day and continued our investigations, but finding nothing but some weathered iron nails, we determined to take the cannon on board the "Alice" and sail home.
However, this turned out to be easier said than done. First we have to change the entire cabin, break up the floor- and bottom planks and fit the ballast star overboard. Next, we rigged a boom with a hoist between the coral blocks. It took us hours, in the sweat of our brows, to get the piece on board and properly placed in the bottom of the cutter. "Alice" sank a good bit lower than usual, but Harry said it lay nicely. We could not lie on the floor again, but had to crawl over the cannon down in the cabin during the entire journey home.
Harry didn't think there was anything of value in the wreckage.
- I can usually smell when there is money or other valuables in old wrecks, he explained laughing. And so we threw away the moorings, hoisted the sails and began the long journey home. We left the pole as we found it.
The journey home went well for eight days on our way to Sydney. Then we encountered a cloudburst. We changed course to avoid it but only partially succeeded. "Alice" chased away with just a foresail at 10 knots, and the clouds came ever closer. By the way, it turned out to be two tornadoes, but one split in half and disappeared. The other passed us at the distance of a cable's length, and a violent downpour came crashing down upon us. We thought it would flood the whole boat. The cabin was half filled with water, but by then the worst was over and the sun was shining again.
One Friday morning we slipped into Sydney and moored at the old buoy. Soon the rumor spread that we had come back with an old cannon. Anyone who was in Sydney at the time probably still remembers the sensation in the daily press about German Harry's cannon. Everyone wanted to see it, it was asked and explained endlessly. I still remember how Harry was lying on a couch down in the cabin reading the newspaper:
"Great sensation. A small sailboat hundreds of miles at sea on the open ocean. Magnificent feat. Has Captain Christensen, aka German Harry, found La Peyrouse's cannon?" Harry smiled in his beard and said:
— Imagine making such a big deal out of an old cannon. Had I known about this, it would have thrown it overboard before we reached port.
Harry presented the cannon to the town, who gratefully accepted it. It was erected in the park of the Sydney Domain, where it can still be seen today.
Chapter 11
German Harry saves the crew of "Sunbeam"
The extremely strenuous and eventful life that German Harry led had naturally left its mark on him. Although Harry had a stronger constitution and was bolder and braver than most, he had in time grown tired of the adventures, and during the years I knew him he lived a quieter life. Eventually he had wound up all his big businesses and settled into his boat in Rose Bay. He was still suffering from the effects of the wound which the native of Woodlark Island had inflicted on him with his spear on Christmas Eve. In time, cancer had set in, the disease became more and more severe and finally laid him on the bed of soot.
But one must therefore not believe that Harry aged in the same way as us "civilized people". He was and remained German Harry. The time of the wild adventures, the great coups, the fantastic sailings was over. But for that Harry did not betray what was in life and death his true element: the sea. From Rose Bay he often set out on the open sea on the most daring and foolhardy voyages. The stronger the storm, the wilder he sailed, and it was considered a sure sign of another storm that German Harry was seen out to sea in his little cutter. It was whispered among the sailors that Harry went out into the full storm to drown his guilty conscience. Others claimed that it was to end his bodily pains that he set out in the hope of drowning.
This opinion may have something to say, every now and then Harry was very ill indeed. But a sailor of Harry's caliber cannot walk in the suffocation.
In a steaming storm a steamer came into Sydney one day with the railings completely smashed, the boats washed overboard and damage to the rudder. The crew told us that far out at sea they saw a small open boat with all sails up. A man in a southwest suit and oilcloth had sat at the helm smoking a pipe, apparently in the best of spirits, among the soaring waves. The captain of the steamer could swear that the man in the boat sang, as it lay on the crest of a high lake and through a cloud of foam literally flew past the steamer which was fighting for its life to reach port.
The reporter from a Sydney paper interviewing the captain of the injured steamer suddenly appeared:
Now I know who it was you saw, he said. It could have been none other than German Harry. The boat was white with a red stripe down the side, right? Exactly, replied the captain. It was the worst weather I've been out in, and yet I've been at sea for forty years.
The same evening that the steamer entered Sydney I sat up at Andersen's in Pitt Street and talked to the family. We were of course talking about the weather which was truly the worst in living memory. Out there, the storm was howling through the streets. Suddenly the door was torn open and the door curtains stood straight in the hall, then it was windy.
Johnny, said old Andersen, please close the door, it's such a gentleman's weather tonight.
I got up to walk away and close the door but ran straight into the arms of German Harry's mighty figure. It was he and not the storm that tore open the door. 140 Good evening to you all, he greeted in his deep bass voice, which completely filled the small room. And he added: No, I will not stay here tonight. A large motor yacht has run aground at South Head and the crew must be rescued.
- But, Captain Christensen then, said Mrs. Andersen, who set a chair for him and sent his daughter out for a clean glass. You're not thinking of going out in weather like this, are you?
- Well, that's exactly what I'm thinking, Harry replied. There has been a call from the lighthouse keeper that a pleasure yacht called "Sunbeam" has run aground on the rocks and is being broken up and broken up by the surf. No one from the lighthouse ventures out to try to salvage it. It would be pure suicide, said the lighthouse keeper, and he believed that the crew had long ago been crushed against the rocks or drowned.
But then there's no point in you going out, thought Mrs. Andersen. Harry had a different opinion.
- In any case, I don't think it's too late to try to save them. If those poor people are clinging to the rocks right now and crying for help, then it is simply criminal not to try to help them. He suddenly looked at me.
What do you say, Johnny? Are you afraid of dying? Old Andersen raised his cane with a trembling hand and thrust it hard into the floor.
It is very handsome of Captain Christensen that he wants to save the castaways. But Johnny is a young man and shouldn't risk life and limb unnecessarily!
"Here is a unique opportunity to do a truly good deed," Harry continued relentlessly. Not a single man all over town are venturing outside the lighthouses this evening. But think of the poor people who may be desperately clinging to the wet rocks hoping for rescue. Minutes can be like years to them. Alone no one can do anything for them but two can.
I stood up, shook Harry's hand and said:
I'm coming with.
I knew Harry was worth as much as ten common sailors and I trusted him. Besides, I harbored—I don't want to make myself better than I am—a faint hope that he wasn't planning one of his usual suicide attempts, but that there really was a chance of accomplishing something.
Harry's eyes glinted with appreciation as he shook my hand. That's right Johnny, he said. We must show this town that we are good for more than just ordinary pleasure sailing. But time is precious, we must leave at once! We immediately said goodbye to Andersen's and left. Old Andersen, who had suddenly changed his mind, swung his stick at us and shouted:
Wonderful, wonderful! There are still real men. We stopped the first car we met and ordered the driver to drive to Rose Bay.
There's no time to lose, Harry yelled at the driver. Drive straight through Hyde Park past St. Mary's Cathedral, it's the immediate way.
Ten minutes later we got out of the car at the familiar dock. Harry gave the driver five shillings and didn't bother to wait for change back. There's a new foresail in the foresail, said Harry, when we got on board. Take and get it. I dare not trust the old on a trip like this. I by the way, have a brand new oil coat, you can crawl into it. It's probably going to be a bit damp out there.
The last one almost sounded like a joke. But Harry's expression was grave. He gravitated to bar dunes and braces. A white signal lantern was filled with oil and made ready for signaling. Once we crossed Watsons Bay, we immediately got a small taste of what awaited us. We were still in the lee of the coast, but the lakes were still washing over us all the time. I was curious to know how Harry actually intended to save the shipwrecked crew, if we ever got that far, and so asked him outright. That we couldn't go all the way to the coast, I had that clear to me.
"Well, first we need to find out where they're stranded," Harry said. And it might be hard enough in this weather and darkness. Then it depends on whether the castaways have the courage to jump into the lake again. It will probably be the most difficult. But if life is dear to them, they probably don't think twice. The rest we have to deal with.
I began to think that the whole enterprise was hopeless, and my discouragement was not lessened, when we were soon after almost buried by a great lake. We had now reached the entrance between the North and South Heads, where the sizzling Pacific Ocean faced us. The Pacific Ocean seemed to me that evening to be a most inappropriate name for the great ocean.
When I got my head above water again and gasped for air, I saw Harry sitting with tiller in hand shaking water out of his ears, while snorting and spitting water and words out of his mouth. Right through the storm I could hear crimes such as "damned", "do not hold fire in the barrel", "cursed storms", etc. I myself had other things to think about than pipe smoking. I don't want to deny that I wanted more than anything to be safe on land again.
We had torn the mainsail in half and were just passing the lighthouse, which rose from the dark rocks high above our heads. Despite the darkness, we could make out a few figures waving lanterns and shouting something at us as we swept past like a flying Dutchman. But the howl of the storm made it impossible to hear the words.
Shortly afterwards we had another violent sea upon us.
Take the helm for a moment, Johnny, Harry called. I have to make sure to get the cabin door sealed or we'll be flooded. But it gets better when we round the cape and get out into the open sea. The lake runs higher but more regularly there so you can calculate it and meet it halfway with the helm. In here under the rocks you can't defend yourself, the lake comes from all directions at once.
We had now come out into open water, clear of land and had the wind a couple of strokes to port. Suddenly I heard a loud noise above our heads. I'm sure I yelled "Watch out!" It was a huge breaching lake, a whole mountain of water, crashing down from above. We drove straight into the lake with the bow and were completely under water for what seemed like an eternity to me. As I caught my breath again, I heard Harry call out:
I think it's getting a little humid! But it's just that we only have ourselves to look after. We shook off the water and glided gracefully down the opposite side of the wave. Doesn't she sail well, Harry roared into my ears. Almost like a swan. Yes, I thought. Only she wanted to stop diving like a duck. However, we had come a good way down the coast and had a few more lakes inland, when Harry took out a bottle, the gods knew where.
- Now take a good shot, Johnny. I don't usually drink alcohol at sea but there are times when a good swig of whiskey is warranted.
I took the bottle and took a huge gulp. It did good. Harry immediately followed my example. A couple of lanterns moved back and forth on the rocks and we steered further towards the surf to see if that might be the place of the stranding - but only the black rocks and the surf met our eyes.
"If they're stranded here, they're lost," said Harry. There is not an inch-wide free beach here, but only a giant cave, in which the lake boils.
Eventually we had come dangerously close to the surf and had to cruise a couple of strokes out again. But after half an hour's journey to the south, we could glimpse something bright towards the rocks behind the lakes, which were smashed against the land with a thunderous roar. Harry had been sitting with the binoculars to his eye for a while and now said to me, who was sitting at the helm:
Go a little closer to land, Johnny. I think we found the place. In any case, some wreckage lies there and rolls between the stones.
Harry let the lantern go up to the top of the mast and attached a long thin line to a white painted lifeline. For safety's sake, he fastened the end of the rope to the mooring goods in the stern. He then let the rescue equipment go overboard and drift ashore together with the line.
I now slowly began to understand what he had in mind, as Harry took the helm and let the boat go further in. If there's anyone in there, they can't help but see the lantern, he said. And if they are sailors, they know what needs to be done.
Harry gave way on the rope as the lifeline drifted inwards. The lake rolled over the deck and at times the lantern at the top was completely obscured by the waves. Those were exciting minutes. Every time we came to the top of a wave crest, we scouted intensively for land. Would everyone have drowned?
Suddenly Harry handed the helm to me and shouted: Now it's pacifier, Johnny. Let it go over the stay and keep it clear of shore while I haul in the line.
I put the rudder hard in the lee and brought "Alice" into the wind, the sails flapped over, she obeyed the slightest wave from the helm, while Harry hauled in the line with all his might. I was in the process of going over the stay once more, when I discovered the savior with a head and a pair of arms high above the stern on the top of a lake. The castaway we could now see was a man came closer and Harry leaned over the rail, grabbed him by the neck and hauled him aboard like a big fish.
The man was so dizzy, partly because of the amount of water he had swallowed, that when he got to his feet he went across the deck and was on his way out into the water again. Harry grabbed his arm with one hand while with the other he opened the door to the cabin and led him down the stairs:
— Hello my friend, this way! How many are left out there? The man gave no answer but collapsed on the floor of the cabin. Harry closed the door. That was the first, he said calmly and let the wreath go overboard again, while he let the line follow. He worked as measuredly and confidently as if he had done nothing else in his whole life but save shipwrecked people.
Poor Sate, he is quite out of his wits, he said, and added:
- Let her get a little closer to land again, Johnny. We must first go a little to the north to reach the height of the stranding because the current has carried us a little way south.
The next one we got on board was a woman. There was much more life in her than in the man in the cabin and she could tell us that four men were still clinging to the rocks. The captain and one of the crew had disappeared in the shipwreck. They had been on their way from Melbourne to Sydney when the storm caught them by surprise. The machine had broken down and they had drifted towards land. The yacht had been completely smashed to pieces, there was a piece of the port hatch that could be seen on land. She said that it was her fiancé who was rescued first.
Why weren't you the first to wear the savior's wreath? asked Harry. My fiance was afraid that he would be forgotten in there, when the rest of us were saved, she replied, and so thought..
"Well," interrupted Harry, thus cutting off further discussion and sending the woman down into the cabin, while he looked at me with a telling look.
It wasn't long before we had the rest of the castaways on board. They were sailors who knew how to behave, and therefore the whole thing went relatively easily. After getting all six on board and placing them in the cabin, we took the lantern down from the mast and set a northerly course again. It was even more unpleasant to be on deck now that we had a full load. We had to receive one lake after another. But an hour later we still rounded the headland, and with the storm behind us we began the sailing with the high cliffs on either side. The light from the lighthouses shone down on us from above.
After we arrived in the lee, we still had an hour's sail into the city, but with satisfaction we could state that the salvage was successful beyond expectations. I took the helm while Harry opened the cabin door so our passengers could come up on deck and get some fresh air if they so desired. Harry then passed the bottle around, and to my surprise the woman was the first to take a sip. She passed the bottle to her fiancé but he grimaced and thanked her. While we were away all Sydney had heard the great news that the German Harry had gone out to rescue a shipwrecked crew. We had been out for over six hours, and they had already given up hope of seeing us again, while at the same time, just to be safe, they were preparing to meet us with full respect. As we reached Farm Cove the police boat pulled up alongside us. The men on board waved their hats and shouted congratulations over to us, while asking where we intended to dock with the boat. Harry thought a designated dock at Circular Quay would be the best place. Alright! shouted the policemen, put full throttle on the engine and disappeared again.
Harry sat calmly at the helm and I was in the process of taking the ropes out of the mainsail. We both felt relieved and could talk to each other as usual again. I asked him, if there was not a trace of rescue materials or government-employed rescue personnel who could intervene on an occasion like this.
- No, he answered. The government expects that if a ship sinks, it is hopeless to attempt a salvage. Here there is no beach down to the water, only bare rocks, and a schooner or larger ship could never have accomplished what we accomplished with the boat this evening. In several places, the rocks rise right out over the water and obscure the view from above, as was the case with "Sunbeam". The people with the lanterns, whom we saw up on the rocks, have been out looking for it but have been unable to see anything. They probably went home again soon. Attempting a rescue from the lake is probably something they are grateful for. We now approached the harbor and could see that it was black with people on the quay. We were beginning to understand what awaited us and I couldn't help but be amused by Harry's mini game. As brave and active as he was at sea, as weak and helpless was he when he came into the center of public interest.
I'd rather land among a pack of wild man-eaters on one of the South Sea islands than here, he said helplessly. You take care of the helm, Johnny, and I'll go down into the cabin and put some things in order.
The crowd greeted us with resounding cheers as "Alice" walked up the quay. The good citizens of Sydney greedily seized every opportunity for one experience or another. People were waving their hats, and the police were busy keeping people from falling into the water. Harry didn't show. Then the crowd began to chant in chorus:
— Harry! Harry! Where is Harry? Where is German Harry?
I swore in my quiet mind at the screaming crowd and felt sorry for Harry. It was the first time I had seen him scared. He almost shook with fright when I poked my head into the cabin and explained that he now had to show himself if we didn't want to risk having the boat destroyed.
As a last resort he tried to cling to my arm and then appeared with a pail of water in his hand. He had started scooping up water in the cabin. When the crowd caught sight of him there was a whooping and hollering so that eardrums burst, hats went up in the air and cheers could be heard all over Circular Quay.
The castaways were helped onto the quay to the waiting cars and taken to a hotel, while the police prepared a place and the press photographers' light bombs exploded. When the rescued female passenger was about to land, she suddenly flew around Harry's neck and kissed him on both cheeks. A clever photographer managed to immortalize this dramatic situation and the applause from the crowd reached its climax.
Now a uniformed man made his way through the crowd. It was the chief of the harbor police, Mr. O'Connor. He knew Harry from a long time ago and apparently understood the predicament he was in.
Hey, Harry, old boy! he shouted. You and your assistant will probably have to follow me over to the Paragon Hotel and stay there tonight. It will be calmer for you there. We'll probably take care of the boat.
Harry looked a little disoriented.
—You are guests of the city by order of the mayor, adds O'Connor with a smile. You shouldn't have to miss anything. O'Connor then ordered his men to furl the sails, drain the boat of water, and clean and put everything in order. The policemen waved a hand at the brim of their broad straw hats and we made our way with difficulty across the street to the hotel with journalists and photographers at our heels.
I had probably had some idea in advance that we would be celebrated on our return home, but I had never expected such a spectacle as this. Today's boxing receptions are pure child's play compared to what Harry and I were out for that night.
At the hotel, we were received by the director in person and immediately shown to a couple of elegant rooms with baths. An attendant came along to serve us.
I can still smile at the memory of Harry telling the caretaker in complete confusion that he could certainly take off his wet oilclothes himself. But there was no pardon. The caretaker was there just for that purpose. The only way Harry could calm down for a moment was to send him downstairs for a bottle of whiskey and soda. After we had a bath, one of the city's finest tailors, Mr. Hagon from King Street, accompanied by a man, who carried a mountain of boxes and packages. We were provided with new clothes from head to toe, even shoes. I'm glad there wasn't a shipwreck in the near future, because after that comedy, Harry could never have been induced to embark on another salvaging voyage.
I was just pulling a nice new cuffed shirt over my head when someone knocked on the door. I opened it ajar and saw a man standing outside. It was the reporter from the "Daily Telegraph" who asked for Captain Christensen.
I explained to him that Harry was just changing in the next room and that he could not speak to anyone at the moment. It was about protecting my friend as much as possible from such stories.
Then maybe you can tell me something about the salvage? he said.
At the same moment Harry came in in his bare shirt and asked me to poke a hole in the neckband with my knife, as he could find neither holes nor buttons. I helped him, and in the meantime I told the journalist some of our experiences. Soon after came a man from the "Sydney Morning Herald" and one from "The Sydney Sun". Harry diligently filled the glasses, while I related the events of the evening.
Harry was in the process of mixing a new whiskey and soda, when a janitor knocked on the door with a polite inquiry as to whether it was convenient for us to come down now. They were waiting for us.
We then went down to the restaurant, where a group of tall gentlemen had gathered and where a sumptuous table was set. We were assigned seats between O'Connor and some high official. We could still hear the people making noise outside the hotel. While we were eating, we had to tell the now and then slightly worn story of our little evening trip every now and then. It was four o'clock in the morning when we went up to our rooms dead tired and very soon fell asleep in the comfortable beds.
The next morning we had the fresh newspapers delivered to us on the bed and we had a great time reading all the dramatic accounts of the rescue and seeing ourselves photographed from all sides and angles. It now appeared that the young woman among the castaways was a very wealthy lady, Miss Duncan of Melbourne who together with her fiancé, who was a Lord and Member of Parliament, had made the trip from Melbourne to Sydney as a pleasure trip. The castaways, who also made statements to the newspapers, naturally did not have enough praise for their dashing rescuers! Harry laughed so hard he squinted.
Imagine that I threw the Lord into the cabin like another sack of potatoes. A moment later the phone rang. Harry took it. It's for you, Johnny, he said. It is Andersen's Benny who wants to wish you good morning.
- I got a longer explanation from Benny, who had read all the newspapers and was very proud of us. It was just a shame that there weren't two women on board so you could have each, she finally pointedly said.
— Was she naughty? Harry asked, as I hung up the microphone.
— Yes, not so little, I said.
We got dressed, after which we went down to the restaurant and had breakfast. It was really nice to feel human again after all the fuss. We were slowly beginning to rejoice at the thought that the worst was over the top when a janitor came forward and left a telegram, addressed to Harry.
Read it, Johnny, he said, and handed it to me. I'm getting nauseous. The telegram was from the mayor's secretary with congratulations on the salvage and an invitation to both of us to a party at the Hotel Australia the following evening. Harry stood up hastily and said:
Let's get on board and get away before it's too late, Johnny. We can head up the Lane Cove River and hide. On the way down to the boat I explained to him that it would be too impolite to block our way.
In any case, it's the worst torture I've been through, he said and jumped aboard "Alice". As the next day on board the "Alice" we were in the process of putting on our landing clothes, I had at last succeeded in persuading Harry to join in the festivities, I could not refrain from joking a little with him, declaring that it was absolutely necessary that he should a speech at the table.
Never in my life, he said categorically. I don't care what the others think, but at least I don't say a word.
However, Mr. O'Connor saved the day by thanking Harry on Harry's behalf and Harry politely stood up and bowed in thanks for the applause. It was, by the way, a beautiful and atmospheric party which , despite everything, warmed Harry's heart. At dessert a letter arrived from the "Board of Trade" which the Mayor read out. It was a "Chief Pilot" (master pilot) diploma and captain's diploma for German Harry, which was given to him huxflux without previous qualifications. We cannot, the letter said, from what we have seen, teach Captain Christensen anything in the field of navigation and shipping. Applause broke loose once more. I could tell from Harry that he was moved. I should have had this license a long time ago, he whispered to me, so much would have gone a lot easier.
Later in the party, Harry was presented with precious inscribed binoculars as a gift from the city, and I received a silver cigar case, emblazoned with the Australian coat of arms, kangaroo and emu bird.
The following day we were visited by Miss Duncan on board on "Alice". She offered Harry a larger sum of money but he refused. "We didn't do it for the money and I'm not penniless," he said. But if you happen to shipwreck in this vicinity another time, we are ready to sail out again.
She laughed contentedly and thanked us once more and waved us goodbye. As she took me by the hand I noticed a small slip of paper, which on closer inspection proved to be a bill for one hundred pounds sterling. I kept them. A poor sailor cannot afford to be too proud.
Chapter 12
The last days of German Harry
Late one afternoon in November 1913, Harry was lying down in the cabin reading "The Discovery of the North Pole".
"It seems so cooling in this heat," he said smiling. I was busy cooking supper in a large frying pan and everything was peaceful and quiet as in paradise, when suddenly the snake appeared in the form of a shrill voice from within from land.
Alice, oops! it shouted. I ran up on deck and looked towards land. It turned out that the call came from a corpulent lady, who was swinging a purse while frantically shouting "Alice, oops!" After studying the lady for a while, I called down to Harry:
— There is a lady with a purse who wants to board us. She has called us several times. — Stop that talk, Johnny, he said. Better get the food ready so we can eat and then take a trip ashore.
The lady, however, continued her shouting, now using the umbrella to help her as she waved. Finally, Harry emerged from the cabin and began to observe the lady on land through his binoculars.
"You gentle Chinese," he exclaimed. It is my daughter who has come to visit. Her name is Mrs Roach and she is married to a mining engineer in Cardiff. Mining engineer sounds cool, doesn't it? In reality, the man is a machinist in a coal mine.
— Take the boat, Johnny, and go in and fetch the lady. We have to listen to what she wants. I had soon collected the daughter including the suitcase and umbrella. There was a little hug and a little tear on her part and when Harry quietly asked why she had come here on a month-long and difficult journey instead of staying with her husband and children in England, she explained with tears in her throat, that she longed so violently for her father, and her husband had also thought that she should travel here. Her father surely needed care and attention in his old days.
So, Harry said, stroking his beard thoughtfully. But you could never write a letter. The three of us ate together down in the cabin, and I soon realized that we had indeed brought the snake into paradise. There was much wrong with the food, the boat was not clean, etc. I had gone ashore to fetch a bottle of wine to welcome with, but such wine was certainly not drunk at home in England. The end of it all was that all three of us went ashore and drove into town. Here we had our supper at a hotel and Harry ordered a room for his daughter, after which we returned on board.
For the next four days, Harry was at the hotel every day to take his daughter on excursions in and around the city. He dressed her up from head to toe and followed her home to the hotel every evening like a truly caring father. However, Vera, as she was called, did not like to be followed home by her father and begged him not to bother with all that trouble with her, she loved solitude and could very well find her way home by herself. Harry then left her alone and gave her £25 pocket money. So it happened one evening, a week or so after the daughter’s arrival, that Harry and I came walking past the hotel where Vera was staying. It was around midnight and Harry suggested we go into the bar and have a drink before boarding. Who do we see there but Vera, tap dancing on a table among bottles and glasses and surrounded by a crowd of howling and drunken men.
The following day Mrs. Roach was again on her way to England on board one of the Orient Line's steamers. The eight days cost Harry a hundred pounds.
The apple rarely falls far from the tree, Harry said as the boat set sail.
German Harry's death I will remember to my last hour. The image of what then happened is forever imprinted in my consciousness.
It was, as I recall, a Monday and bank holiday in the month of February four months after the Sunbeam's sinking. I was on my way out to Rose Bay to visit Harry. For the past few weeks I had been with him daily and I knew that his health was rapidly declining.
It was a wonderful evening. The sun was just setting over Mossmans Point. I knew it would be dark just after sunset, but we had a full moon and a flow of stars at night. When I arrived at the landing stage I hailed "Alice" as usual. But no one answered. I shouted once more. The dinghy was moored aft, so I knew Harry was on board.
Suddenly I saw a hand weakly waving over the railing and it dawned on me that Harry must be very ill. Annoyed that I hadn't gotten hold of a dinghy, I hastened to make amends. When I got on board I immediately saw that it was near the end for Harry. It appeared that he would not experience another sunrise. After cleaning the cabin and getting him more comfortable on the couch, I asked if he wanted a doctor on board.
- No thanks, Johnny, he said in a weak voice. There is no doctor who can help me now. I realized he was right. I took the boat and rowed in for something to eat, but he didn't want any food. It was as if he had made up with everything and was now just waiting for death. Now where are all his friends? I said to myself. No one had visited him for weeks.
I sat by his camp most of the night. At times he was unconscious, but sometimes he revived so that I began to believe that he would still ride out this storm as well. He started talking about a trip we had planned together, and of course I told him how delighted I was at the suggestion. We would end up close to the Samoan Islands. But when he then started talking about us going up to England from there, I understood that something was wrong.
I asked once more if he didn't want a doctor on board. The greeting he then gave to all the doctors of the world is not fit to be reproduced in print. The night slowly slipped by as the waves lapped against the sides of the boat. Now and then he grabbed my hand as if he was afraid that I would leave, and his speech became increasingly confused.
At two o'clock in the morning he took my hand in a convulsive grip, and with eyes glowing with fever he began to tell me about the worst things he had been through if. It was as if in this hour he wanted to confess all his sins, wanted to purify his soul before death came. I asked him to stop, but he continued. The moon was shining through the round window on the ship's side, and I can still many years later see his pale face with the pointed beard in the moonlight. A seagull suddenly screeched over the boat, I flinched and felt eerily at ease.
Johnny, he shouted with even, remember 175 degrees 32 minutes east longitude and the Latitudes faded away in an unintelligible mumble.
He then lay still for a few minutes. The last words he uttered were:
— Remember, Johnny!... Clear the cape!
At the word "cape" he half rose, but then fell back and was dead. I sat by his lifeless body until four o'clock in the morning and was somewhat uncertain as to what to do, when I suddenly caught sight of the police boat out on the water. I launched it, the boat docked and the men came aboard. As they stood by Harry's death camp, one of them, a big rough-hewn bastard named James, who had known Harry for many years, took off his hat and said quietly:
— Comrades, let us remember the best sailor who ever sailed the seas. We will in the future miss his cutter here in its old place. The last trader has passed away.
After writing a report the police boat set sail again and early the next morning Harry's mortal remains were brought ashore.
He was buried in the Naval Veterans Cemetery right out on South Head, where on stormy nights you can hear the waves of the Pacific crashing against the rocks. The right resting place for a man like Harry, who all his life loved the lake more than anything else.
"The Sydney Sun" filled the entire front page with an obituary of Harry, worthy of a prince. There were also photographs of the cutter "Alice" and of himself as well as information about the more eventful episodes in his varied life.
His daughter, Mrs. Roach of Cardiff, was allotted the bulk of her father's great fortune, but nevertheless had nothing left for a stone on his grave. The cutter "Alice" was handed over to a Mrs. Rasmussen, who had taken kindly to Harry, and some other of his friends received some small sums.
Several of the city's senior officials were seen at the large stately funeral. On the way back from the churchyard I noticed Miss Duncan in the entourage. She walked alone with her eyes fixed on the ground, and as we approached the high cliffs towards the sea, she went right out to the edge and gazed out over the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
You are thinking of 'Sunbeam,' Miss Duncan,' I said, as I greeted her.
She flinched and turned to me. She had been far away in her mind.
Yes, she answered thoughtfully, looking at me with big sad eyes. I have much to thank your old friend for. Despite his primitive nature, he was a gentleman in the true sense of the word. A man you only meet once in your life. I will never forget him.
Time rolls on and much has changed since German Harry and "The Buccaneers of the South Sea" lived in the South Sea Islands.
Chapter 13
The story from Captain Walker
Chapter 14
The Hibiscus Flower
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Chapter 16
Postscript to the Swedish edition