Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1942-07-23, Page 6PAGE, SIX TEE S1 '(.?13TH NEWS Overconfidence "It's the expert swimmer who .us, nay gets drowned," said Jackson, throwing down the newspaper he had. beefs reading aloud, and gazing oft upon the lake. "In Insist that my. boy learn to swim, but right.there I stop. I don't want him to be what they call a 'crack' swimmer;" "What are your reasons?"'•I asked carelessly, The expert is too venturesome," he replied. "He overestimates his powers, takes chances, gets exhaust- ed, or is seized with cramp, and goes down. Every one should swim well. enough to keep afloat for a time in an emergency. That degree of skill would save hundreds of lives now lost through complete ignorance of a very useful art. But every one also should have a wholesome respect for the superior powers of nature. The expert loses that respect; the indif- ferent swimmer knows his limitations and keeps within the margin of safety." "How about your own experience, you're a crack swimmer, and you have never been drowned," I said. "To all intents and purposes I have been," he said, earnestly. "True they revived me before life was quite extinct, but I had all the sensations of a drowning man, and lost con- sciousness as completely, if not as permanently, as if I had been dead. And I also fully illustrated the fool- hardiness of the expert, just as diel the lad mentioned in the article I have been reading. "The thing happened nineteen years ago this summer, while I was here on a visit to my uncle. I had won two swimming races that season and felt as much at home in the wa- ter as I did on land. I had absolutely no sense of fear when swimming— like the young fool that I was. "I heard that Davy Brown had set a number of lines for sturgeon out there in the lake and I wanted to see how that type of fishing was con' ducted. When he and his son-in-law, Henry Simmons, went to visit them one morning, I asked permission to go along. "We rowed out in a heavy scow— the kind they used to draw their seine with,—and the trip took some time, deceiving me as to the actual distance. I estimated it at less than a mile, because their boat rowed like an ore barge; but we must have gone faster than I thought, for the ' dis- tance to the bar is approximately a mile and a half. "I had on swimming tights and the moment we reached the shallows on the 'old bight' beach, as they called the bar,—out where you see the waves breaking—I sprang overboard. The water at that point was not more than two feet in depth, and I waded across to where they had a spar as thick as my leg deeply planted among the rocks. It stood fifteen or twenty feet out of water. The fishermen had a guide -line leading straight out from the spar for about forty yeards, to where one end of a set -line was anchdred. The set -line, kept afloat by kegs used as boys, extended along the deep water outside the bar and parallel with it for a hundred rods, to where there was another anchor, similarly equipp- ed with guide -line and pole. Brown and Simmons had three set -lines, fixed thus end to end, reaching near- ly a mile, or most of the -way across the entrance of the bight. "There was merely a light breeze at the time, and the low waves did not break on the shallows as they do now, so I was not bothered by them as I splashed along; but I soon found that where I had jumped from the boat was the shallowest spot on the submerged beach. There also were gaps in the bar, wide enough for ship channels, where the water was at least one hundred feet deep, per- haps more. You can see three or four gaps in the breakers from here. "Well, I swam across those places and along not a few other stretches, too, for everywhere toward the north east shore of the bight the water was at least breast deep. Finally, when the end of the last line had been reached, I climbed back into the scow and helped to row it ashore. Thus my first trip to the drowned beach was, as you see, without incid- ent, "The second day following this trip was a scorcher. The thermometer registered ninety degrees in the shade and directly after my aunt's noon dinner I resolved to cool off in the lake. "I walked three miles to the beach and when I reached there was dripp- ing with perspiration. In I plunged, with the smallest possible delay, however; and the only wonder is that 1 didn't have a cramp at the outset, "Near the short the water , was almost too warm, but once out a few rods, f had only to let my feet down to strike a temperature that seemed arctic by comparison. The depths of the Great Lakes are always cold. "I had been accustomed to bathing in, the Atlantie, and though I had swum in fresh water,, it had. been only during contests. of limited dura- tion. The difference in buoyancy is very' noticeable, if you are not MO-, ing. I swam a hundred rods or o from shore, turned upon my back,. and tried to float. In five seconds 1 was standing upright, treading 'wt' er. This. was repeated again and again but' at last I learned the knack, and' drifted easily for a. long time --per- haps an hour; much longer, in fact, than I should have remained in the" water. The rely sin was blazing hot- ly overhead, but, finally a chill began to penetrate my flesh and soon seem- ed to reach the marrow of my bones. "I turned over, to swim ashore, when in an evil moment my eye fell upon one of the spars by which the set -lines were guyed, and without thought I started to swim out there, my plan being to stand knee-deep in the shallows till warmed through and.. then swim ashore, Distances on the water are deceptive, and it seemed to me that the spar was much nearer than the beach. "I must have been nearly a mile from it, and the swim in my condi- tion, proved very exhausting. To make matters worse, a thunder -storm was gathering in the northwest, and, the wind that preceded it began to ruffle the lake. The waves, converg- ing on the bight, roce very rapidly there. Within five minutes I could hear them pounding on the bar. . "Of course I should have turned back at the first thunder -peal, bub pride kept me going—pride, and ig- norance of conditions on the lake and of my own. limitations. When at last I felt that I was making very little headway and was minded to turn for the shore, I did not Clare. For the first time I was really worried, -forc- ed to the conviction that my strength would be exhausted if I tried to cov- er the mile of tumbled water bet- ween me and the beach. "I set my teeth and kept doggedly at it, husbanding my breath and fighting off the sharp pain that kept returning to the, muscles extending from beneath my right shoulder - blade down to my hip. For ten min- utes I seemed to gain hardly at all, but I really was going ahead, 'though slowly, for suddenly the breakers were on both sides of me, and the, air was thick with spray. In a few seconds I was clutching the spar, with my back turned to the wind. "It seemed as if the waves were high enough and extended deep lenough to expose the sand and rocks between crests, but I could see noth- i ing but roily water, even in the 'troughs. I lowered my feet to touch bottom, and went down nearly to my eyebrows before my toes came in contact with the boulders that were 'piled at the foot of the spar. I gasp- ed, climbed hastily up the thick stick and looked about me. "Then I knew that, instead of swimming to the pole near which I had alighted before, I had reached one farther to the east, where the, water on the bar was deper. But it had then been only four feet deep and was now nearly six. Were there tides on the Great Lakes? "There are such things, as I now know, although the rise and fall ord- inarily is only a fraction of an inch. But a northwest wind will raise the water two feet in this bight in a very short time, if it blows hard enough; and that squall was a record -breaker. Even with my back to the waves, I soon became afraid of being smoth- ered. I climbed higher and higher up' the spar. "The land was hidden, the sky had become a dull lead color, splashed with black, and the thunder and lightning roared and flamed incess- antly. Just before the rain came and with it a slight lessening in the violence of the gale—the highest wave of all broke over me with stunning force. 'As it descended I felt myself fall- ing—and the spar falling, too.' It had pried loose at the bottom under 'the impact to which my weight gave added force. Somehow I clung to the stick, which, held in leash by the guy line, rose and fell with the breakers now banging its water soaked butt on the bottom, and again tossed high ' in the air. It seemed as if the life would be beaten out of me by this pounding alone, besides which I could catch my breath only at inter- vals and was half -smothered. "The set -line anchor dragged, and inch by inch I drifted across the bar. The sleeper water inside no longer permitted the stick to touch bottom. That was a marked relief, till the anchor caught firmly against the outer edge of the bar, and the pitch- ing became so violent that T was sure I -should be torn from the spar. "Suddenly, however, just as my strength collapsed, the pitching gave place to rapid drifting; the guy -line had parted, T "About ten feet of it remained at- ,tached to the stick. I drew it in and 'began feebly to wrap it about my waist and the spar to bind myself fast, I remember taking two ' turns. .Afterward I must have taken anoth. er and made a couple of half-hitches, but. I donot remember doing it. "I was drowning by inches—and I knew it! I had no expectation of reaching shore alive, for I was sure the breakers inshore would finish me but I wanted the timber to keep mY body afloat, "They say when a man is drown- ing his entire life passes like a pan- ornn through hi mind. I doubt it; certainly nothing of the kind, hap- oened to me, Before the pole came loose, I had been too scared. to think of anything except the perils sur- rounding me. After that my mind seemed sodden, like my .body, and there was no consecutive' thought; only blind instinct. "I felt as if an iron band were bound about my chest.Then con- sciousness floated from me. The last I remember was when the spar tarri- ed over with me plunging my head beneath the surface. "It seemed only a second later, though a half hour had elapsed, when I opened my eyes and saw Henry 'Simmons kneeling back of, my head, grasping my wrists and working my arms like pumps, to force respiration. I knew I had drift- ed ashore and been picked up by the fishermen, but it was an hour before I could talk with them coherently. "I was bruised and battered from, head to foot, and was sick in bed for several days. Simmons had seen me from the bluff and had dragged nee, out of the breakers, or I should have stayed drowned. 'I ani now one of the few good swimmers who have learned how helpless a man can, be when he is really exposed to the fury of the el- ements. That, perhaps, is best of all; but only about one in a hundred would have the good fortune to ac- quire my experience and come through it alive." The Battleship vs. the Aeroplanes Are surface navies, the floating fortresses of today, to disappear from the oceans of the world? Is sea power, in terms of great armored dreadnoughts, to be supplanted by navies of the air? One of the first exponents of air versus sea power was the late Gener- al Billy Mitchell. Nearly twenty years ago he showed how aircraft could destroy surface craft. With an obsolete cruiser he staged a demon- stration off the Virginia coast. A handful of comparatively light bombs blasted the old ship beneath the waves. The demonstration was not spectacular, but successful. General Mitchell died a few years later, saddened by the scepticism of naval authorities,but certain in the depths of his heart that the modern dreadnought or battleship was doom- ed. Pearl Harbor would seem to have justified General Mitchell. On Dec- ember 7, 1941, Japanese planes prac- THURSDAY, JULY 23, 1942 A beaver in one of Canada's National Parks tically wiped out American naval strength there. The battleship Ariz- ona was sunk; the Oklahoma was so damaged that she capsized. Three destroyers and a modernized target ship, the Utah, succumbed to the Japanese plane attacks. Casualties included 91 officers and 2,628 men. Within a few hours a Japanese battleship was sent to the bottom by bombs from a Boeing B-17. On Dec- ember 10 the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk in less than eighty minutes by Japanese torpedo bombers. Then there were the battles at Taranto, at Cape Matapan and in the Ionian Sea where British carrier -borne torpedo bombers doused whatever hopes Italy might have hid for naval dominance of the Medit':i rnean. In these bat- tles eight Italian warships were eith- er sunk or damaged beyond immed- iate repair. In the Cape Matapan episode, tor- pedo bombers from H.M.S. Formid- able so damaged the vessels of the trapped Italian fleet that it was a simple matter for thesurface craft to close in and finish them. A short time later, officials of the British Fleet Air Arm announced that. dur- ing the first two years of war, tor- pedo bombersand other bomb-cerry- ing aircraft had sunk or seriously damaged forty enemy warships, In addition they had sunk 440,000 tons of enemy shipping and had accounted for 230 enemy aircraft. The Bis- marck, too, was stopped and set up for a killing by Fleet Air Arm bomb- ers. Defenders of the battleship sought vainly for excuses. One naval expert pointed out that had the Prince of Wales and the Repulse been given suitable air protection both might have been saved. At least thirty Jap- anese torpedo bombers had fired that many torpedoes at the British ships and nineteen had found their marks. He claimed that had they been har- ried by British air fighters the Jap bombers would. probably have been driven off, or at least prevented from making accurate hits. It is true that were were no def- ence fighters over the British battle- ships until too late. Bub it must bo pointed out that at Matapan British torpedobombers scored just as well when they had to face the onslaughts of Italian cruiser -catapulted planes,. and defence fighters that were able to take off from nearby land bases. Germany's navy has been all but swept from the sea, mainly through the efforts of British aircraft. The Graf Spee was spotted and trapped by Fairey Seafox seaplanes catapult- ed from the Exeter. They bombed and shattered the German pocket battleship's intricate and valuable range -finding and gun -laying equip- ment before the British cruisers caught up with her. The Seafox planes laid the smoke screen that shielded the British ships, and enabl- ed them to put the Graf Spee out of action. Germany has lost most of her pocket battleship fleet to British air bombing. The Fleet Air Arm has ac- counted for dozens of Hitler's 1. - boats. . The British Navy has suffered from enemy air attack. The aircraft carrier Illustrious was put out of ac- tion for months by Italian and Ger- man dive and torpedo bombers. In two weeks of actual warfare the Un- ited States Navy lost two battleships, three destroyers and several less im- portant surface 'craft to enemy air- craft attacks. A modern battleship costs about $76,000,000 to build. Every ten or fifteen years another $30,000,000 is expended to modernize it. We can, wipe off $100,000,000 every time we lose one battleship, along with its complement of skilled .officers and other man. A modern dive bomber or torpedo plane may cost anywhere from 875,- 000 to $300,000, and probably con- siderably less if they are' ordered in large quantities. For the bost of a battleship, then, we can buy more than three hundred of the best tor- pedo planes in the world. The British actually had a torpedo carrying plane as far back as. July 1914. On August 12, 1914, Flight Commander Edmonds, hying a Short seaplane, carrying a 14 -inch torpedo from HMS Benma-chree, took off from the Gulf of Xoros, and near Injeh Burnu attacked and sank a 5,000 tin supply ship. Still the Bri- tish did not make much effort to im- prove on the idea, and it was not until September, 1918, that HMS Argus, one of the first naval aircraft carriers, was able to go to sea with a number of Sopwith Cuckoo torpedo carrying planes. By that time it was obviously too late to do much `harm. But the British did hang on to the idea and improve it. AUCTIONEER F. W. AHRBNS, Licensed Auction- eer for, Perth and Huron Counties Sales Solicited. Terms on Application. Perm Stock, chattels and real estate 'props"ty. R. R. No. 4, Mitchell: Phone 634 r 6. Apply at this office.. , HAROLD JACKSON Licensed in Huron and Perth coun- ties. Prices reasonable; satisfaction guaranteed. For information, write or phone Harold Jackson, phone 14 on 661; R. R. 4, Seaforth. Coijnter Check Books We Tire Selling Quality Books Books are Well Made, Carbon is Clean and Copies Readily.. All styles, Carbon Leaf and Black Back. Prices as Low as You Can Get Anywhere. Get our Quotation on Your Next Order. • The Seaforth News SEAFORTH, ONTARIO,.