The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 29, 1901, Page 2

e OOD L0 T2 1 A el e 2] femr NG { o \ PORT 2L [ piratical St. in, for wi little wom: the sea port looking Michael— oyage the wife the hom the an had dog in m star- Heald it suited her has kept evenly ndred miles forward g along beh bac ahead ed miles he wa r'ble expericnce time Fia- 2 it was found ckward had he vessel was n Pedro done. and house- the cated boat in to studying and reminiscencing to be counted by hours, water when a he summer rolled little sea-tosser ) ton and 73 feet in lengih ath River on July gold, and, as e four months of wi m and calm. and to the gation re- hout having iden ¢ tered the Klamath and with two men whom the a has been kind In send- £ them t For the Cordelia Heald had way, drifted when she Jlcased, and safled when the wind d not help ft. Now she % & up her heels over in Oakland « 1 wondering xt spring, i e 1 wiil com the change- ers the o an in another at- to reach tk Klamath River, she a master who is %5 reminiscen h 0 life as to tell her to “lay ) '%%mfl[j/fl'fla/fflmmm CAPT_ HEALD " AND CREW.. { 4 L q’”,,,fll”fl Ve s s THE SUNDAY The Strangest Crait That Ever Put to Sea, ‘f - Manned by the Oddest Crev, ' And Met With- the Queerest.of Adventures. cap with a good deal of knowingness. He is a bachelor, and his idea of home is not the cabin of a home-made schooner. He was after gold when he started on the trip. He knows a few things now that he didn’t know then, and when the Cor- e, AW to” when he means ahead.” s bad enqugh to be a captain, but it is worse to be the first and second mate, the pilot, the cook and the crew; all hands rolled into one man, and a rather 1 man, too. A. A. Platt, formerly a for her to *“go small fruit grower near Los Angeles, has filled all these berths at once on the Cordelia Heald, and still he swears that the sturdy craft is the finest mea boat afloat, except that “she can't sail and she won't steer.” He had to work sixteen hours a day, and it was a “‘heave ho™ sort of time with him at first, for the sea acted as If it knew he was a landlubber, and aven his own cooking made him sick. He was chief cook and bottle washer, and about the only thing he did not have to wash was his clothes, and those he never got time to change. He had about as much idea of making bread as he did of salling a boat, but how gould any one make even hard tack when they had nothing but sea water to mix it with? So it happened that the first loaf made by the jolly tar was consigned to the ocean at once, and he says he saw the fishes playing marbles with it several times afterward. The next worst job, after playing sailor, of course, was washing dishes. For that sea water must be piping hot and needs a ruinous amount of soap in order to make it efficacious. Platt is a little man, with a jolly twinkle in his eve. and wears a nautical looking delia salls agaln next summer for the mold flelds she wili go without him. She is too rapid and bard to control, he sayw. If they would give him $5000 he would prefer after this to make (he journey by land. He remembers the trip as a vast expanse of work, with a little sleep thrown in. But it 1s over now, and he is the sort of a man to remember the pleasant things, and when he takes another tack be all the be ter for his varied experiences. There was not all comedy this search for the sands of goid. and Captain Heald 1s as glad as any lands man ceuld well be to be back on terra firma again, and it does his heart goo to hear the song of the birds and grass springing up among the h looks more like an old salt than he ever did before, and he certainly knows m about the sort of man a real old s should be. But he is going to have t gold, and he is going to have the Cor Heald take him to get it, for he s $30,000 in building her for that And he has as much obstinacy as she an regards her as the finest vessel of he. class to keep afloat most anywhere in t however, in purpose. sea. notwithstanding that he never ha such a four months in his life as those just spent. “Now, I'll tell you,” he say dentially, with a stroke of his and 8 tug at his sou-wester, you to have a mighty good imaginat t think you're on a steamer when you'rs on board of the Cordella Heald. She's fitted for steam all right, but it has been used, and 1 begin to think now tha a landlubber like me, who didn't know the fo-castie from the poop, would net have made much show with a lot valves and whistles. It you don’t know how to run up a sail just right it won't explode on you! But, I tell you, the Cor della is about as good a sea boat as there Is afloat. She's 8ot steel ribs closer to- mether than the whalebones in a wom- an’s stays, though her sides are not mors than two inches through. “From the time we left San Pedro on July 22, 1901, till now, never but one or two seas broke over us, and she is as dry #S a bDone, When we left San Pedro it Was with a crew list of four men. One of them was a navigator, something that 1 » thought It might be handy to have nround, seeing as most of my navigating had been done in a bath tud. He was s Blue Nose from Nova Seotia, by name Moctler. The Cordelia thought he knew too much, ¥ think, for she humped up her Aeck and acted kind of cantankerous, and when we got to Port Harford the navi- gator got up some excuse about his health and left me. ‘“That left it to me to run the ship. “I had then a cTew of two besides my- self, George Moseley, a young sallor, a good lad of about 25, whom I hired as Continued on Page Three.