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White Wings Vol I. Fifty Years Of Sail In The New Zealand Trade, 1850 TO 1900

Met the Oban in a Fog

Met the Oban in a Fog.

"Off the Lizard the wind again failed us, and we got light easterly airs and calms, and here we met our rival for the third time. We were laying becalmed in a thick fog on the Sunday morning when we heard a sailing vessel's foghorn somewhere off our starboard quarter and not far away. As we were motionless, there was nothing we could do but give blast for blast on our horn. Towards noon the fog cleared away, and there was the Oban Bay less than a mile off on our starboard side, just wallowing in the swell as we were. As there was no indication of a breeze, the skipper decided to return Captain Gourlay's visit of a few weeks before.

"During the first watch a south-westerly breeze sprang up, and at daylight the Oban Bay was again out of sight, ahead or astern—we could not say. We carried the breeze well up channel, but it failed us off St. Catherine's (I.W.), and here again we got foggy weather. This time, instead of a sailing vessel's foghorn, we heard a steamer's whistle near us, and she turned out to be the powerful tug Zealandia, and by a coincidence the same tug as had towed us to sea when leaving London for that voyage. Had he seen anything of the Oban Bay? No; he had seen two or three windjammers in the Channel before the fog had shut down, but had not spoken them. Would we take his rope, as he knew we were in channel and had been told to look out for us? This was daylight on the Thursday morning. Gladly we took his rope, and gaily he yanked us up channel. We were no more than a dinghy to him. Again—and for the last time—we met our rival, and again she was ahead of us. She was in the Downs on Thursday evening, but, alas for him! he had picked up a small tug which could hardly get out of her own way, and this time we went gaily past him, shaking ropes' ends at him and indulging in other little pleasantries which the fastest ship generally passes to cheer up the loser.

"Thanks to the superiority of our tug, we docked a tide ahead of the Oban Bay, and all bets were settled at the shipping office at Green's Home on the Saturday. We had been 110 days on the passage, and had beaten the Oban Bay by 10 days, and, though not by any means a record passage, the fact of the two ships meeting so frequently on such a long journey was almost as remarkable in its way as the famous race between the tea clippers Ariel and Taeping from Foochow to London in 1866."