Code of the Sea

For ruthlessness on land the Japanese yield to no civilized nation. But no Japanese had any particular reputation for heartlessness at sea until, arriving in Manhattan last week on the U. S. Liner American Banker, lanky, 28-year-old Swedish-born Captain Hans Milton and his crew of four from the Gloucester-built schooner Pioneer blurted out an angry tale.

On September 27 the two-masted, 87-ton Pioneer left Halifax with 82,000 feet of lumber stowed in her holds and lashed to her decks. On the second day out, 400 miles south of Halifax, a twister traveling north from the West Indies tossed a monster wave over her, spilled tons of water into her hatches.

Marooned on the deck of the wallowing ship, the crew ran up distress signals* on main-truck and foremast, slung the Stars and Stripes upside-down from the shrouds. Captain Milton dived into the flooded cabin, brought up a case of whiskey, some canned salmon, a flask of water. Diving down again, he found the ship's cat, Fluffy, on a shelf above water level in the cabin, brought her up in a sea bag, along with blankets, the ship's chronometer, a sextant, a flashlight, a picture of his wife.

For 72 hours the five men hung lashed to the rigging, scanning the horizon. Then, early on October 1 they spied a vessel steering southwest through the high running sea. Closer and closer it came, finally hove to less than a mile off. Frantic, the wrecked sailors waved their jackets, made out men sizing up their plight from the newcomer's bridge. On her bows they could see illegible characters and the familiar word Maru,* which all Japanese ships bear. Then this Maru steamed away toward Europe.

Luckily, that night the Pioneer's seamen were able to attract the attention of the U. S. Liner American Banker by soaking their blankets in gasoline and setting them afire, then signaling for help with a flashlight. Carried to London and back to the U. S. by the rescuer, Captain Milton and crew were grimly resentful toward the ship that passed them by. Swore Milton: "If I'd had a rifle I'd have taken a shot at them.''

> The U. S. Line, which usually happens to have a ship on the spot when disaster strikes in the Atlantic, expects no reward for the rescues its ten ships so frequently effect. Last week, as luck would have it, the U. S. Liner American Traveler was just 70 miles off when fire broke out in the hold of the 21,046-ton, U. S.-bound Hamburg-American liner Deutschland 200 miles southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland. At the Deutschland's SOS the Traveler doubled back, stood by with the Norwegian Europe until the Germans whipped the fire.

Aboard the Deutschland the 591 passengers, jarred by an explosion that rippled the floor of the D deck dining room, danced, watched a cinema show, slept while the crew fought ten hours to quell the fire in the cellulose, paper and Christmas-toy cargo. Only casualties were fire fighters who got a taste of smoke; safe in the after hold were 46 tanks of Australian fighting fish, 5,000 Harz Mountain canaries.

At week's end, when the Dentschland reached Manhattan under its own steam, Captain Karl Steincke pooh-poohed the sabotage talk, left cause-finding to marine fire inspectors. A troublemaker since she was built in Hamburg in 1923, the Deutschland in 1925 collided with the Britisher Martin Carl in the English Channel, same year cracked two other ships in the Elbe, had a mild fire at sea in 1929, and in 1933 stove a hole in the Munson Liner Munargo off the Statue of Liberty in New York Bay.

Not so ill-starred as the Deutschland, but almost, was Passenger Thomas C. Smith, special disbursing officer of the U. S. Legation at Copenhagen, whose voyage home was his first vacation in ten years. Uncrossing his fingers when the ship pulled in, Vacationist Smith recalled two other vacations in the last 20 years or so. In 1917 he took a holiday in Petrograd, soon found himself sojourning in the midst of the Russian revolution. To Tokyo he hied in 1923, arrived just in time to tremble through the most disastrous earthquake in Japanese history.

* N over C in the International Code of Flag Signals. The N flag is blue-and-white checkered; the C has five horizontal stripes, the middle red, flanked by two whites, the outsides blue. Both are rectangular. The message, in any language: "In distress. Need prompt aid."

* Maru means circle, is traditionally suffixed to the names of Japanese merchant ships for .good luck. Only Japanese merchant line in scheduled transatlantic commerce is the round-the-world Osaka Shosen Kabushiki Kaisha, which at the time of the Pioneer's, plight had no ship in her vicinity. Best guess was that the offender was one of innumerable tramps that make Japan the world's third largest shipping nation.

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