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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (March 6, 1904)
l I W , , I IIMIIIII III I III. 1 TT'-"' iMmMWMPiwLUiiW.juiJiii j.iiiwmimni. pwm mjmus. i. MiiwmmuimmmBM.m 1-i.muj un ... ., .i., . , p, ,.,,, jiaja ...i.j j,,., ....t, IK i si ' PCTOV H BRAVE BOATMEN OF THE BAY Hon is Tiny Ekifii Who Dars ths Fitrosst Gales in New Tork Harbor. STIRRING AND AMUSING STORIES TOLD Th. Mat Who Wa Paraaed by HI Ttva Wives Skipper Who Wu Palled US 111. Hhla by mm laalsaant Il.tt.r Halt. (Copyright, 1904. by T. C. McClura) Of all the men who follow the Ma there are none braver and toucher than the Whitehall boatmen who ply their trade at the port of New York, carrying passengers. t'&men and owners' agent, out to .hip. which do not come alongside the wharves and docks. They are called Whitehall I 1 tsfme Jt" model i nen after their boats, which follow the of the skiffs In which Dlbdln's "Jolly young watermen used to ply from Whlte- 1 hall 8taira, on the Thames. When winter grip, the river with Its toy hand and the bay Is full of small Icebergs, and wrapped in a pall of fog or lashed by a northwest gale, these man go about in thulr tiny skiffs as nonchalantly as if they were navigating a park lake in midsummer. Rarely, indeed, I. the weather so bad that they will ryt go out Into the open sea, far beyond Bandy Hook, if necessary. If pas sengers can be found to take the risk they are willing. Tears ogo, when selling ships came more frequently to New York and tugboats were not so plentiful, there were hundreds of Whitehall boatmen, for vessels anchored in great number off the Hook and around . the mouth of th. Hudson. Now only about a score of these fine old longshoremen are left. They find It hard to make a living, and their number grows less every year. Most of them have been In the business for a generation or more, and have plenty of stories to tell about their adventures. At Home on the Water. Curiously enough, the oldest men in the business ran only remember one or two rases of Whitehall boatman being drowned, although they dally run what ap SLOAN'S LINIMENT Cures Rheumatism NION To San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and many other Cal ifornia points. To Everett, Fairhaven, What com, Vancouver and Victoria via Huntington and Spokane. To Tacoma and Seattle, via Huntington and Portland or Huntington and Spokane. To Portland and to Astoria, Ash land, Roseburg, Eugene, Albany and Salem, including branch lines in Oregon, via Portland. It will be to your advantage to make inquiry in regard to these Low Rates to the Pacific Coast and principal Western points before deciding on a trip. Ticket Office, 1324 pears to a landsman to be appalling risks. There Is one man now plying off the Bat tery whose boat has been twice cut down by a steamship in a fog. He escaped both j times and grumbled each time because his savings had bean swept away by the loss j of the boat. "Every cent I had in the world was lost when my first boat was cut in two," he said. "Then I went to work for a couple J of years for other men, and saved enough I money to get another boat. I hadn't had It ! more than a month before It went down j Just like the other. But I've kept the one I have now for pretty near a dosen years, j and nothing has ever . happened to me. j though I was out one night In a tearing ! ale off th. Hook which sunk three big , windjammers." There Is one gnarled, wlsened old boat man who hta worked, man and boy, for over sixty years on the broad waters of j th. port. He wa. apprenticed to his uncle as a Whitehall boatman In the days when j seafaring men still turned their heads a second time to look at the uncommon sight of a steamship In New York harbor. He left the harbor for three or four years to j fight for "old Abe Lincoln" in those stormy years of the '60a. When you talk to him about It you dis cover that he knew and cared nothing about the rights and wrongs of that su-! prerne struggle; but he once beard Lincoln sneak, and ever after that moment any thing that Lincoln slid was gospel to him. "The river grows upon a man," said this ajielent mariner. "To wtii of us it be comes more than meat or drink, more than wife or child. It grips you. and you can't get away from It. however much you may try. Th Old Sailor Balked. "The trad, of a Whitehall boatman doesn't pay a It used to do In my young days, and several times I've tried to get out of it and Into something more profita ble. Ot.ce I spent a summer trading down to th. Ban Bias coast for cocoanuts In a trim ll.tle schooner, part owned by my , nephew. He was skipper and I was mate. stand sailing under a hid 1 d spanked not so mr.nv years before. I; seemed only y.,- .eroay m. ...uw.r u.-u me io give him a tood thrashing because he 1 played truant while his father was away at sea. 'Course It tm natural to me to kind o' order him about, snd he used to , remind Te-qulte raety-that he was the , skipper of th. ship. At last we came to a scrap on: aiagua. ana n. .nrr.ien u, pui me In Irone. That was too much for me. so I went sahore. with nil my trap, on the beach. Next week sn Atlna liner rut In and I worked my way on her to gcod oil I New York snd bought another Whltehill j oo1- Tv been whaling, too. snd deep water galling several times; but I sever could j stick to It. I always wanted to get back to New York and be my own skipper of my own little craft There's nothin' ilk. It. "It's funny to s. how scared deep water sailor, get In our llttl. boats when m,n r tondest of telling among them there s -.nythlng like a sea on. 'Cours-. we , lv one of n old retired skipper are ready to go out la pretty nsarly ary whoa, wife mad. hint give up the aca and kind o- weather. Half a gal. o' wind or the -ow Lonf lsni farm. Bhe thickest klud of a fog makes no difference m s a strong-minded woman, who ruled to us. Our prlncluai business Is l.klng i h' with a rod of Iron, and he often men out t windjammer, that lie war down the river, off Bandy Hook or beyond. Seared t Death. "I remember one taking out a skipper of a Nova Scotia bark who was famous for his pluck all through th Nova Scotia trade. That man would f.ght a whole crew single handed or crack on sail In th. teeth of a hurrtcan. But when I got him out In my little boat be was scared to death. "Ther was a tidy Ma running, but I'd been out la lota wore weather. Before we had gut s quarter of a nail, from th. I THE OMAHA DAILY REE: SUNDAY, MAtiCII 6, 1004. wharf he 'began to fidget and suggest that we had better go tack and wait till th. wind went down. Then, as we climbed up some of the big waves and slumped down them, Just like shooting the chutes at Coney Island, h. turned blu. and green and all kinds of colors and swore that I had brought him out to drown him. "When we got alongside his bark at last. it was sawing up and down on Its cable chain pretty fiercely, and he clean lost his nerve and refused to Jump for the pilot ladder. He kept me tossing up and down there for a quarter of an hour, while his foo sle hands leaned over the side and grinned at him. At last he screwed up his courage and made the Jump, fell short. snd got a ducking. I hauled him up by the collar, and his men lugged him over the side on a rope. "No sooner did he feel his feet on Ms own deck again than all his pluck returned to him. 'What In 'ell do you lubbers mean by grlnnln' at met' h. yelled, and he sailed " thoa foc'sle hands like a prise fighter, When I rowed away the fight was still lng on. out he had laid out a couple of tnem ana waa fitting tne test or it. Coarse of Woaaen. "Pluck's a queer thing. You would think a woman would be soared in llttlu craft Ilka mine, but I've carried hundreds of them, and I never knew on. who was frightened yet. They frighten us, though, for they are always wanting to move about in the boat, even when It's tossing up and down Ilk. a cork in a tidy sea. I carried a girl one who was in the chorus at one of the theaters, and she Insisted on doing a step dance on one of the teats ,'ust to show the young fellow with her that she wasn't afraid. She pretty nearly capsized us off the Hook, but when I told her to stop shs called me a coward, and so, o' course, I let her go on. "We don't like carrying women out to ships, but It's a line o' business we have to do pretty often. It generally leads to a row. They go out to try and bring the men back fter th haye h d d . milW. .h 1nr th. when n M , nov, n ,Q , Umrer ,chooner wai Ju,t about ,0 Mi, fw th, Wm In(Jlel Tho WQmen dld k h , - aboard It turned out that they had both mo .ftA, thA ,,..,, ch h, wa, u , had nef marrlae9 nel t0 ,how. S(,y( ther, wal Mmltn,r.s icSr.g on that ship, when they nad got lhroufh teI1)nf wva they thoUBht of hlmi th,t milte ,ooktd ke ,rty. Mnla. bu, h, wouldn., g0 aghore thcm Tnev wcnt bRck wlth me , fL.b th, poc8 but th ,k, ptr ,IeJ before they coul(J re,urn ftnd th. Riat( Mt the ,chooner down , th, West Indies and never came back to the lo my knowledge. I met on of the WOmen years afterwards, and shs told m. ih. wal gtm searching for him." Sea Rover Itoled oa Land. But the story which the Whitehall boat- longed to get out of th. rsngs of her sharp tongue Into th. comparative calm of the bowling tempests with which h bad been familiar from boyhood. He mads frequent attsmpts to break away and get command of a ship again, but she always managed to nip them in the bud. Eventually be played truant successfully, got a ship from his old owners, and was Just about u weigh anchor off th. Hook when Ms wife came alongside la a White hall boat. He turned aa pale as a sheet, but plucked up courag. to explain that he couldn't possibly return at that stags of th. gam, rib didn't say a word, but U AT EVERY DAY Until April 30, 1904. VIA PAC SIDE TRIPS. All passengers holding tlckefs from Cheyenne, Denver, or points east thereof, to points west or north of Ogden, will be furnished a free ticket Ogden to Salt Lake City and return, provided the limit on the original ticket allows a sufficient time for a stop-over. Those side trip tickets between Ogden and 8nlt Lnke City will be honored on either Oregon Short Line or Rio Grande Western trains In either direction whichever may be most convenient for passenger. Application should be made to the Ticket Agent, Union Depot, Ogden, or conductors en route, for side trip tickets to Salt Lake City. STOP-OVERS. On application to conductors, stop-over of ten (10) days will bo al lowed at and west of Focatello, Idaho, on the O. S. L. and O. R. and N. lines, on all second-class tickets sold at or east of Cheyenne, Wyoming, Denver, Colorado Springs or Pueblo, to Nampa, Idaho, or points west of Idaho, Oregon and Washington. By exchange of tickets, Portland Union Depot ten-day stop-over may be secured at any point or points south of Portland to Ashland, .Inclusive, on Colonist One-Way tickets. Fernam simply took hold of him by th. ear am) led blm to the side and into the boat. He sub mitted like a lamb, and the ship sailed away under command of the mate. An unpleasant duty that often falls to the lot of a Whitehall boatman is the pick ing up of corpses In th. river. "It turns me sick every time I do It," said one of the oldest of them, "though I ought to be used to It by this time. It is amaslng how many people oommlt suicide la the Hudson, or fall In and get drowned accidentally. "In one week, a few winters ago. I picked up three bodies, and on. of them 1 a well-dressed man had over 17,000 in his I pocketbook. He had fallen Into the water off the Battery when he was drunk. Just Imagine a man going on the Jag with that amount of money an him. His relatives got it all right, though it was a wrench to have to give it up to the police." The Whitehall boats are shallow skin's, smaller than the average dinghy of a sail ing ship. They are strongly built, with beautiful line and the finest material and workmanship. Thus, In the hands of a skilled oarsman who takes care not to ship water, they are able to ride safely through a pretty stiff gale. "We often get a good line of fun out of some of the college boys and rowing club men," said an old boatman. "They hire the skiff and take the oars, while I sit in the stern and watch 'em. They think they know all there la to rowing because they have won races on calm rrVers In cockle shell boats that fly along If you only crook your little linger on the oars. But they llnd It's a different business In the short, choppy seas we get here, and they're us ually glad enough to let me row 'era home." LESSON OF BALTIMORE FIRE Necessity et Detnjr Properly Iasorvd Shown by Experience la that Ooaaaara4loa. Under the caption, "Th. Expected Hsp pened," th. Spectator of February a thus discusses the Baltimore conflagration and one of Its leading lessons: On. of the phases of the Baltimore fire, of which underwriters are constantly re minded. Is the fulfillment of the oft-repeated prediction that such a disaster was likely to occur at sny time In any one of a dosen oltle. of this oountry where the conditions were ripe This was a nearer approach to the Boston Are conditions than those of Chicago or other cities. In deed, the Chicago conflagration, apart from Its enormous loss, waa u history In Itself, for not only was ther. an enormous de struction of mercantll and manufacturing property, but the fire spread to the residen tial districts and laid wasts block after block of fine dwellings. The great fire In Galveston, about 1888. was famous for its destruction of dwellings and ths escape of the business district and warehouse. Jacksonville took In both classes of prop erty. Boston, however, snared the resi dence and swept away mercantile risks by the' hundred. Its narrow streets aa slsted In earning the Are from block to block, but it has always been to Boston's credit that a stout Rght against the flames was made from start t finish and with final succeas. These conditions and occur rences were repeated In Baltimore. The fight to atsy the fire was kent up to the lsst, and the heroes of the flnsl struggle were the firemen from New York. Ti e praise bestowed upon the labors of our fire boys is unending and unstinted. The second fart which shows that the expected happened waa the obliteration of me local companies. There were not many of them. They were rcarjectable. well managed, honorable and sound for the every day life of Baltimore for the last nstr ceniury. i ney met every demand, and served their turn to the satisfaction of the public. If not to the stockholder We mistake the spirit of the city If upon the ruins ther do not create a nmninv with tl BOO.OIjO of capital and fl.000.000 of nai surplus, znevermeiesa. in spite of such an excellent record, they have gone the way of the Chicago and Boston locals and of all other local companies In great free sweeping through their home cltlea. Pre cisely this experience waa expected, and the prediction has been reiterated by tin derwrlters tn conventions and out of cuo. ventlon. for many eaT, Only a )ear $22.)0 Street. 'Phone 316 ago, at Milwaukee, President Washburn of the Home of New York referred briefly to this subject, and "his words of warning then uttered now seem like the voice of prophecy. There is plenty of food for re flection in this fact, and the obvloua moral of it for th. insuring publio is palpable as daylight and darkness. Dependence upon local Institutions In a great conflagra tion i. like building upon a sandy founda tion. At the same time It suggests that to make their policies solid and to live through such emergencies the local com panies everywhere should reduce their holdings In well defined fire districts. Just as we have In this city divided by wide thoroughfare, to the limits of safety. No company will risk its capital upon a single block. Why should capital and surplus be held at the risk of a sweeping conflagra tion In a district? The third fact which shows that the ex pected happened Is the discovery by the sufferers and their onlookers from a dis tance as well, that the Judgment of under writers condemning the Inferior methods of construction in our large cities has teen vindicated. The desirability of safeinnrd tng buildings in various ways provided by the building laws of this city, and sugges gesflons of underwriters' schedules and suggestions of how to build wisely. 1 bra matters which have been repeated and re iterated for many years. The few attempts to erect ito-called fireproof buildings In Bnl tlmore demonstrate how easily the fire might have been controlled If a few more of them had been built and all of them had been provided with secure protection to the openings and fronts, rears and sides. As It wsa. the inside structure was destroyed and th. contents burned clear.. This mis fortune came through failure of architects and builders tc cover th. openings. What haa occurred In Baltimore with regard to Inferior construction may happen In any of a doren American cities, and It behooves the underwriters to agitate measures to Improve building laws everywhere. There are few cities which possess sufficient build ings of nrenroof construction capable of resisting such a conflagration as that which raced in Baltimore. The fourth fact which shows th.it the expected happened Is the enormous Iofs In Baltimore over snd above the Insurance. The total fire loss, according to latent In telligent estimates, amount to JliVi.noo OX'; ths Insurance involved la about $70,000,000, 'j wst md Won't Freeze Won't Break Won't Spill Won't Spot Clothes Costs 10 Gents and Equals 20 Gents worth of any other kind of bluing. Wiggle-Stick is a stick of soluble blue In a filter bag Inside a perforated wooden tube, through which the water flows and dissolves the color as needed. Manufactured only by EBB FIG To Spokane, all intermediate main and branch lines on O. R. 6VN. also to Wenatchee and intermediate points. To Butte, Anaconda, Helena, and all intermediate points, in cluding Ogden and Granger. To Ogden and Salt Lake City and main line points on U. P. where regular second-class rates are higher. and the net loss sustained by the com panies Is abOJt t&o.uuu.uuu. According to these figures, the Baltimore conflagration is only second to the Chicago disaster In 1871 in being the greatest fire calamity, so far as property loss Is concerned, ever ex perienced in this country. The foregoing estimates of losses war. received from Psul Turner, chairman of the general loss committee of the under writers. Other prominent underwriters, however, do not anticipate that the net loas payments of the insurance companies on account of the Baltimore conflngiatlon will be much. If a'ny, in excess of SO.uiM.Oo). There are some remarkable instances In the Baltimore Are of Immonse valuea being dert'oyed upon which r.o Insurance what ever was held. The buildings of the Johns Hopkins hospital endowment were valued at nearly 12,000,000, and the insurance thereon was a tagatelle. Other instances are reported which tend to prove that, aa a whole, Baltimore people were poor In surers. Underwriters who have for many years criticised the small amount of pre miums reported to the Patrol have fre quently said the Insurance to values In Baltimore was too low. Attempts to regu late this defect by SO per cent co-insurance clauses have failed. Mortgaged buildings have generally been well Insured, tut many others have not. Faith In the solidity of the city and of the ability of the Are de partment were boldly announced In a peti tion offered a few months ago for a reduc tion of rates. Some of the signers must feel pretty cheap at thla time, remembering their boasting In support of the demand for reduced rates. The Afth fact which shows that the ex pected happened was the inability of the firemen to cope with the conflagration, ar.d this leads up to another contention of un derwriters which on various occasions has been scoffed and scouted by the public we mean the "conflagration hasard which now appears In all well-matured rating schedules as an element of danger to be charged for ust the same aa defects or weaknesses. The underwriters have Ipamed by bitter experience that this hazard Is a real one, and their treatment of It In schedules has been vindicated -once more. They ruld roundly for It In Chicago. Bos ton. Galveston. Jacksonville, Wsterbury, Peterson and elsewhere. In Now York we have not only a conflagration hatard charge, but also a neighborhood hasard. In addition, which Is applied to the vicinity Laundry THE LAUNDRY pLUE of the department stores on Twenty-third sireet and the avenues. Who shall gainsay its correctneaa? Not the Baltlinuieans, cer tainly. The losses in that city should con firm and enlarge the charge for this hasard' In all cltlea. Only deuched risks in the suburbs, 100 feet irom .'.ny exposure, should be exempt 'rum the o-nflagratlon hasard oharge, although some modification of It may be admit. ed on blocks of dwellings known as semi-detached or fifty feet apart. In Galveston and Jacksonville the dwell ings burned like Under, even when semi detached. There vere no dwellings de stroyed vorth mentioning in Baltimore, nevertheless the conflagration hazard Is' Justly chargeable apnlnat dwellings aa gainst mercantile risks. This Item haa, we are Informed, been removed from sev eral schedules in other cities. The Haiti more experience shown that It Is a necessity to any system of rating which pretends to charge for real hasards. Doubtless there are other facts to prove that the expected happened, but under writers hsve plenty of material to work upon already In devl-m ways and means to meet all emergencies. Twere Is abundant wisdom in the management of our Are offi cers, and there is now a wider opportunity for its application than we have had for several years. Whatever Is done In the Interest of safety Is a nervlce of Incalcula ble benefit to the countrv. to hu.nknlty and th. preservstlon of property. . Trained Karaes far Capan. Dr. Aitfta Newcomb Mc3ee, who la to take to Japan a corps of talned nurses for hospital service with the Japanese urmy, will operate under the protection of the Red Cross society, tine was prominently Identified with the American hospital service during the Spanlsh-Amurlcun war. ' Dr. MoGee became well known In iMS by ' her appointment as acting assistant sur geon of the United States army, a position never held by any other woman. At tho nulbrek of the war with Bnnln Dr. Mo-' Oee became director of the hospital corps of the Daughter of the American Revo lution, which selected and iralnod nurses for army and navy service. In August, 18!W. she rooi-lved her appointment as acting asHlatant surgeon In the urmy, and whs assigned to duty In the vurge on general's office, being put In charge of the army nurse corps, which she organized. Blue At All Crocers 1 DIRECTIONS FOR USE: Wiggle "Stick around in the water. COMPANY, CHICAQO