the Margaret Galbraith (or the old "Maggie," as she was familiarly called), one of Duncan's ships, sailed under the Shaw, Savill flag, and made 21 voyages to the several ports of New Zealand between 1873 and 1900, bringing a very large number of immigrants from London and Glasgow. She was a comparatively small iron vessel of 841 tons. In 1880, in command of Captain Fergusson, she ran out to Port Chalmers in 87 days, or 75 land to land. She left Greenock on October 23, 1879, had a smart run of 19 days to the Equator, passed the Cape on the fiftieth day out, and the Snares on

The Margaret Galbraith.

January 5, arriving in port on January 7. The following year Captain Fergusson brought the ship to Auckland in 85 days from London Docks.

On her last voyage to Auckland in 1882 the Margaret Galbraith brought out the plant of the Devonport Water Works. After discharging, the ship sailed from Auckland for Timaru. When about ten miles off Lyttelton she was caught in a very severe S.E. gale. She had on board 100 tons of pig iron, which shifted during the gale, and the vessel was thrown on her beam ends and had a narrow escape of foundering. Mr. Claude Fenwick, of Auckland, was a passenger by the ship on this occasion. the Margaret Galbraith was towed into Lyttelton by a passing steamer. In the Old Colonists' Museum, Auckland, may be seen a photo. of the Margaret Galbraith inside of the Calliope Dock unloading the pipes for Devonport.

the Margaret Galbraith, on the passage to Napier in 1895, met with a succession of gales and light winds prior to crossing the Equator, 44 days out from London. When in latitude 44 south and longitude 25 east the ship was surrounded by icebergs for six days.

Captain Renaut, who brought the ship out in 1899, reported a most trying passage. He said: "The vessel rolled out, rather than sailed out," occupying 114 days from London to Port Chalmers. All the ships arriving during the latter part of 1899 made long passages, owing to terrific gales met with in the Southern Ocean, and all were more or less seriously damaged, including such clippers as the Canterbury, Oamaru, Waitangi, Turakina, and others—the Turakina making the best run of the season—93 days.

From the coast of New Zealand to Cape Horn sailing ships were generally given a good start on the long sail home. All day and every day the good breeze blew anywhere from south-west to north-west, and often as not the wind was piping anything from a half-gale up to a full gale; but what matter, it was blowing the old hooker home! Remarkable runs were often made on this stretch across the South Pacific, but it was always an anxious time for captain and crew, because there was always the possibility of meeting ice. You never knew what you were going to meet in that long run over the stormy Southern seas.

Who can tell how many tragedies those seas hide under their long grey rollers that break in a smoke of spray? Good ships, well-found, well-manned, and in command of skilful navigators, have started out on this long sail and have never been heard of again, and in the many speculations as to their fate

"Castle Rock" In Ice.

the dreaded iceberg has always loomed large and grim.

Among The Ice,

the Margaret Galbraith had a narrow escape of ending her career in 1893, when bound Home from a New Zealand port. "Before sailing," writes Mr. H. N. Burgess, of Auckland, who was second officer of the ship, "we had instructions on the Homeward trip round Cape Horn to keep a good look-out for ice, as a lot of it had been reported by other ships that had preceded us. We used to take the temperature of the sea water every evening, especially during misty weather, the idea being that the presence of an iceberg lowers the temperature of the sea, and if the thermometer showed anything out of the normal we would know we were in the vicinity of ice. In addition to taking this precaution I used to go up to the cross-trees at sundown, or send a hand aloft to see if there were any signs of ice about on the horizon.

"After we had got well round the Horn, and to the north of the Falkland Islands, the weather grew warmer, and there was a perceptible rise in the temperature of the sea water, so we naturally thought we had passed the danger zone and relaxed the precautions we had been taking. This had been going on for two or three days, when one night we had a marvellous escape. It was evening, in the second dog watch, the weather squally and thick from the north-west, and the air was full of strange noises, something like distant thunder. Peering to windward I thought I saw ice, but the wind being comparatively warm I felt that I must have been mistaken. However, I called the skipper. He had a look round, but could see no ice, and told me that I was not likely to see ice in those latitudes with the temperature of the sea water between 45 and 50 degrees.

Only Just In Time.

"When I came on deck again in the middle watch (midnight) my little weather glass told me there was some dirty weather coming, and I tookpage 56 in some of the small sail. About four bells I caught sight in the glare of the starboard light of something that was not the wash from the lee bow. It was a huge slab of ice a few feet above the water and stretching as far into the mist as I could see! I did not take long making up my mind about it that time, but yelled to "down helm," and it was only just in time. As we slithered alongside the ice I held my breath for the "crash," but we cleared it.

"As we swung up into the wind you could have jumped from our quarter on to the ice that had so nearly been our doom. I got to work 'quick and busy' shortening sail.

"Just as day was breaking, the

Enormous Iceberg.

weather cleared, and a remarkable sight met our eyes. We were surrounded by bergs of all shapes and sizes. Right in our wake there were several big fellows, and how we had cleared them has always been a mystery to me. The day turned out fine, the sun shining brightly, and a fresh south-west breeze blowing, so we made sail again, and sailed amongst the bergs the whole day. At night the weather came on thick again, and so we shortened down.

Queer Shapes.

"For the next three or four days we were among the ice, and saw some very beautiful sights. One morning a boy called me to see the 'Cliffs of Dover.' It was a mighty good representation of them—a long white berg about 14 to 16 miles long and about 150ft to 200ft high, clear cut on the face and a lot of black patches on top. Another berg we called 'Cleopatra's Needle,' a practically square column of ice about 200ft to 300ft high. When first sighted it was at a big angle. As we got nearer it straightened up, and was rocking slowly, evidently getting a bit top heavy. We saw a tremendous splash astern and heard a noise like heavypage 57 thunder, and 'Cleopatra's Needle' was no more.

"Another very striking berg was one we called 'Castle Rock.' It was a beautiful 'hummocky' island of ice several miles long with what looked like a big black basaltic rock sticking out of the top of it—not unlike 'Castle Rock' at Coromandel, Auckland. A lot of the bergs seemed to have black rocks or 'morraine' matter in them.

"After sailing for three or four days in this field we seemed to get clear of it for a couple of days, and saw no more until one very calm night, with hardly a breath of wind, you could 'hear' the ice. Salt water goes through some peculiar process when freezing, and leaves the salt behind, so that it is really a mass of myriads of minute bubbles frozen together, and as these melt on a calm night it sounds like the effervescence of soda water, or like myriads of tinkling bells in the distance.

An Ice Continent.

"The climax came one Sunday morning. We were running along before a moderate north-west gale, and things looked very black ahead, but the day broke clear and fine, and then we saw a sight. More ice. Not huge bergs such as we had been sailing through before, but a veritable continent of it, stretching away to the eastward as far as the eye could reach. We were off the south-west corner at 8 o'clock in the morning, and a wonderful sight it was to watch the seas breaking against the icy shore just as they do against the rock-bound coast. The big westerly seas came sweeping in from the ocean—not like the gradual shelving of the shore on our New Zealand West Coast, for instance—but a mile or so deep, and than hurling themselves against the ice cliffs were dissipated in showers of spray hundreds of feet high. It was a glorious sight, and we saw as much of it as we wanted, for owing to the fact that there were a number of loose bergs to windward—probably calves from the large mass—we had to sail along the edge of the 'continent' all day, finally getting out clear at the north-east end at about 4 p.m., and that was the last we saw of the ice on this memorable passage."

Enormous Icebergs.

Mr. H. N. Burgess' experiences among the ice in 1892 and 1893, when published in the "Auckland Star," caused a lot of arguments about the size of 'bergs and the extent of ice-fields met in such circumstances and some of Mr. Burgess' estimates were frankly doubted. But this is a matter in which you won't get a careful sailor tripping. As many landsmen are aware the sailor can estimate to a nicety the distance he is from any seen point, and his sextant gives him a very good instrument for measuring heights once his distance from an object is known. Mr. Burgess is able to prove his figures quite easily by authenticated reports in the "Nautical Magazine" and the "Shipping Gazette" given by ships that had met the same ice that Mr. Burgess recorded in such an interesting manner. And their estimates agree within a very small margin. For instance the Curzon and the Loch Eck both fix the 1892 ice at 1000 feet. For the ice that was met in 1893 there are the figures of the Loch Torridon, Cutty Sark, Turakina, Brier Holme and Charles Racine. Three of them give 1000 feet, the same height as the Margaret Galbraith (Mr. Burgess' ship). The Torridon saw ice 1500 feet high. and the Turakina fell in with some 1200 feet high. Then as to the extent of some of the fields. The Cromdale, Strathdown, County of Edinborough, and the Curzon sighted the same field as the Margaret Galbraith, and they reported it to be about 400 to 500 miles in extent. In the publications mentioned there are many well-authenticated instances of 1000ft bergs and fields of an extent that might well make the landsman wonder.

the Margaret Galbraith came to grief in 1905. She sailed from the River Plate for England with a cargo of grain, and on leaving port she stranded and became a total loss on March 27.

Following are the passages made by the Margaret Galbraith to New Zealand:—