The Antiope

From The Radio Record, in several parts in June and October 1933, reviews of radio broadcasts by F. M. (Bob) Renner, written by the editor of the magazine. A final, longer article on 27 May 1938, appears to be an entire interview.

The text was taken from Papers Past.

WHAT promises to be a most interesting serial was begun by Mr. A. C. Renner [an obvious error] at 2YA on Tuesday. As a boy he had a consuming ambition to go to sea, and while working on a farm news came that he was to join the three-masted ship “Antiope” as an apprentice. Listeners can imagine the joy with which he received the information and his pride when he arrived in Auckland and saw the Antiope’s masts towering above the wharf sheds. Her name, mispronounced, caused many a superstitious sailor to give her a wide’ offing, but Mr. Renner said that she was one of the luckiest ships and a good sailer. Her passage, Liverpool to Melbourne in 68 days, proved that she was not a drifter.

The newest apprentice was allotted the bunk in the half deck nearest the door. This was not wanted by any older boy, for it was the wettest, the coldest and in every way the least desirable. Auckland, was duly left, but the wind fell off and the Antiope anchored in the Gulf, and when the slant came the new boy and his initiation in weighing anchor per medium of the capstan. Going aloft had been dodged, but heavy weather made it necessary for him to funk it no longer, and although he got in the way of others and became entangled in ropes he did his bit. First experience aloft was anything but pleasant. The man to windward chewed tobacco and the juice got in the new apprentice’s eye. The new lad was seasick, and he was not at all popular with the men to leeward, but after seventeen days his ship made Wellington. Listeners will look forward to the next instalment of Mr. Renner’s breezy episodes.

Radio Record 9 June 1933

In resuming his narrative on life aboard the famous old sailer “Antiope,” Mr. F. M. Renner (2YA) told how discharge of cargo was completed at Jervois Quay, and a new charter was obtained to load copper ore in Suva for London. The boys were in high glee, and little did the narrator know that he was leaving New Zealand not to return for four years. While awaiting orders, the boys were busy on real sailor work, polishing, painting, and holy-stoning, while the new apprentice was given the job of picking the eyes out of the potatoes.

A FEW days after she left Wellington the ship made the “variables,” the “passage proceeded slowly, and disaster nearly overtook her when she was caught aback. The new apprentice was too raw to be given a trick at the wheel, but took his share on the look-out; and learned that tarring down above snow-white decks was an intricate job, which could make a mate talk marine English if a spot of tar fell on the deck.

In 13 days the “Antiope” was anchored in Suva harbour, sails furled, and the boys betook themselves to the shore to see what fun Suva afforded. Sailorlike, it was not long before they were in trouble. One of them needed a match to light a cigarette, and as no match was forthcoming, a light was procured from the holy fire at an Indian festival.

Radio Record 16 June 1933

LITTLE boys all brass-bound are not invariably so angelic as their looks would indicate, and the newest apprentice aboard the ship Antiope was soon to be initiated into the half-deck’s idea of sailor decorum so far as thirsty ladies were concerned. Four older boys drew lots as to who was to lick him first, and the salutary lesson left a lasting impression. The mercantile marine’s replica of the “snotty” was next to learn that it was customary for each to add to the larder in time-honoured fashion, and Fiji’s hen-roosts were duly deprived of a specimen of domestic fowl, which was promptly christened Maud, and continued to exist until the ship was off the Falkland Islands.

THE Antiope was eventually loaded with the vile-smelling copra, and its particularly loathsome bugs, and the lad as traditionally habitual had his share of the uncongenial work. Copra is a good cargo for sailing, according to Mr. Renner, and at ten knots the ship slipped through the water without a ripple. On the way to Cape Horn down in the roaring ‘forties, the old sailor reeled off the casting at fourteen knots per hour. Fresh winds, gales, and plenty of seamanship saw the Antiope in 63 south and off Cape Stiff in 25 days. But the new apprentice was not yet a sailor, and could not spit to windward. That’s only permitted when the Horn is rounded west about. Besides he refused a helping of Maud.

Radio Record 23 June 1933

ON resuming his narrative of the Antiope’s passage from Suva to Great Britain, Mr. F. M. Renner recalled how dreary the food became after a few weeks out and the storeroom was depleted of such common articles as potatoes. The boys held the efficient sailor in great esteem, but their idol was ever the lad who could retrieve delicacies from the galley that were intended for the cabin. Hungry boys aboard a windjammer soon devise ways and means of purloining food, and the new apprentice learned another nautical art before Cape Stiff was rounded.

AFTER clearing the Falklands the old ship did some fine sailing. She had been contending with a head wind and a northerly swell when a southerly came up. This drove her into a heavy sea, and the water came aboard green. About five o’clock one of the boys was on the fo’castle head when she shipped a heavy one, tons of water that rushed aft in a wall of foam. “Man overboard,” yelled the mate, rushing to the wheel, but the “old man” took one quick glance at the sea, quietly ordered, “Keep her as she goes, we can do nothing.” The boy was not gone, however, for he was found when the water cleared away, lying … [cut off]

Mr. RENNER told of experiences with water spouts, of the ship’s cat that caught flying fish in the air so that it wouldn’t get its feet wet, of the Indian who, for no known reason, said good-bye to the captain and jumped overboard, and of the meeting in the English Channel with H.M.S. New Zealand, a vessel that had been in Suva with them. To the disappointment of all the boys, orders were received off Dungeness to proceed to Rotterdam, which was “fetched” in 102 days out from Suva. The old Antiope no longer sails the seas, but to-day lies a store hulk in Beira, Portuguese East Africa.

Radio Record 30 June 1933

THE account given by Mr. F. M. Renner of the passage from Rotterdam to the Gulf of Finland in the famous old sailer Antiope was a very lively story. The Bolsheviks had been busy laying minefields in the Baltic, and the captain, prompted by the principle that safety precautions make the mariner bold, engaged a pilot accredited with an up-to-date local knowledge of the route. This official was a typical Dutch sailor (I wonder if he had red carpet slippers) and although he may have been familiar with the Baltic many years before it was soon evident his knowledge was rusty, and, said Mr. Renner, about equal to the typical sailor’s knowledge of horse-racing.

IN the “Narrows” the crew went off regular watches in readiness for frequent all-hands manoeuvres, and under light canvas the Antiope bowled along at 10 knots, past minefields, submerged wrecks, and dangers well known to Baltic traders, but not included in the pilot’s fund of local knowledge. Rapidly overhauling a steamer information respecting the course was sought, but the usual courtesy of the sea was forgotten in thoughts of the indignity of being beaten by a windjammer, and the complement of the Antiope were invited to go to unmentionable destinations. At a Swedish port a tug-boat took charge of operations, and after proceeding about half the journey a halt was made for the tugboat to disappear for a couple of days. Upon return “cash up” was demanded, just as though the gallant sailer were in an unfriendly shopkeeper’s establishment, but the Antiope wasn’t a beggarly relic in the mechanised age and the loading-port was “fetched” in time to see the stumpy masts of a steamer shattered by a flash of lightning.

Radio Record 13 October 1933

IN days of sail a vessel fitted with a large number of masts may have impressed a landsman without arousing the slightest admiration in an old shellback. With him it was rig that counted and on occasion a long row of sticks might even imply an insult. At the Finnish port where the Antiope lay there was but one cafe, and here in the evening gathered the sailors from all the ships. Although an implacable conservative, the old-timer was a cosmopolitan, and providing a man was a competent sailor his race or colour mattered not. When, however, the sailor from the French seven-masted schooner began to fraternise with the crew of the Antiope, who were proud of their competence to man a square-rigger, the masonry of the sea blossomed until the Frenchmen presumed to meet them on equal terms. That couldn’t be tolerated and rancour developed. No row was engineered, said Mr. Renner, but a donnybrook exploded, and afterward the French were perforce required to seek relaxation where oldtimers were not.

SAILORS don’t go to sea to remain in port where long hours of idleness foster the seaman’s prerogative to growl and breed discontent. It began by someone taking notice of the everlasting recurrent remark that the food was not good enough. Unmeant threats to desert were made, and the narrator and another improved them by being a little more emphatic. That did it! They were then dared, and bravado compelled two unwilling lads to stow away aboard an American steamer loaded with pit-props in such a manner that she was unstable. When they clambered aboard the steamer had a 17-degree list to starboard, and when under weigh each reversal of the helm reversed the list. Upon reporting themselves they were threatened with fearful punishments that did not eventuate, for the captain put them to work, and when they were allowed to depart at Sunderland by connivance between the “old man” and the boarding officer, they went with 10 dollars each in their pockets.

Radio Record 20 October 1933

This last piece was a large article on its own, published five years later than those above.

MEN WHO GO DOWN TO THE SEA

SHE was called Antiope and she was built in 1865 for Joseph Heap and Sons, of Liverpool, for the rice trade. She made her first voyage to Melbourne in 65 days, under Captain Withers, after being becalmed on the Line for 10 days. “Which shows what she could do,” said Mr. Renner, “when you think that the Thermopylae, the ship that held the record from London to Melbourne, took 63 days.

SHE had a variety of experiences. She was captured by the Japanese when under the Russian flag in the Russo-Japanese War. When she was bound for Bluff from Newcastle in 1913 she went ashore at Port Chalmers and lay on the rocks for two years, until an inquisitive reporter was out seeing her one day and found out where the hole was. Largely through his observation, she was refloated, and recommissioned again in 1915 for the Otago Rolling Mills.

One of Her Apprentices

FRANCIS M. RENNER, aged 14, went with her as one of the apprentices.

“Why? I asked again.

“Well,” said Mr. Renner, “my father was the first oldest son in our family who hadn’t gone to sea for something like seven or eight generations.”

The tug of the generations.

It would have been queer if he hadn’t gone to sea. He left Wellington under Captain James Broadhouse bound for Suva in ballast. They loaded copra there and went Home round the Horn.

It wasn’t luxury touring on those journeys round the Horn. There was that time they struck the black cyclone off Rio, the pampero cyclone, bred inland, that swept dust, sand and insects out to the ship and blew a really dangerous wind. “We had shortened sail, but she threw the ship on to her beam-ends so fiercely that we were thrown out of our bunks.”

There was that time they ran out of potatoes between Suva and the Horn, and all they had for 70 days was pork and beans. Hashed for breakfast, boiled for dinner, baked for tea. . .

THE Antiope arrived in the English Channel and was taken in tow to Rotterdam. She was put in dry dock there, and the youngster Renner saw the remarkable durability of iron as against steel. The ship had been built for over 50 years, and her bottom plates right up to the waterline were absolutely solid. They showed no sign of rust or erosion. The youngster took a boat and paddled round the ship to study her. The hull was sound, but on the waterline he saw a number of small holes, particularly at the bow of the vessel. Going round the ship he twice put the boathook through the ship’s plates between the wind and water-line.

THEY left Rotterdam for Viborg in Finland, sailing up into the Baltic. But at Stockholm the ship was advised that the Gulf of Finland was full of mines and that they would have to tow from there to Viborg. This was in 1917, the year of war. From Viborg they sailed off for Delagoa Bay, and while there the youngster deserted and stowed away with a friend on the American ship Lake Gratis.

“An extraordinarily cranky vessel,” said Mr. Renner, “built by the mile and cut off by the yard. She was one of those built by the U.S.A. to capture world trade during the war.”

THE phrase, “a cranky” ship, reminded me of something that I wanted to ask him. Did ships really have those human, and sometimes inhuman, traits? The former sailor had no doubt about it.

There was one ship that would balk, he remembered. The skipper was trying to get the ship to come about going up a narrow sound in the face of a head wind. She refused to come about, she missed her stays every time. Until by chance when a young apprentice took the wheel, the ship went round. Every time the boy went to the wheel there was no chance of the ship missing her stays.

And there were some ships well known as mankillers. Others never lost a man. The Thermopylae never lost one, and the Cutty Sark only one, and that through no fault of hers.

Ships had their ways, all right.

Stowaways

THE Lake Gratis had cargo of pit props for the mines in Sunderland. While the two young stowaways were in hiding on deck the ship took a toss in the North Sea and fell to a list of 37 degrees. All the deck cargo went overboard and the stowaways quickly came out of their hiding-place.

They avoided jail at Sunderland for stowing away and were offered jobs by the skipper of the Gratis at £20 a month. Luxury, indeed, for on the Antiope, as apprentices, they had got only 13/4 a month.

THEN began a series of voyages all over the world for Francis Renner. He was in the States for a time, including seven days “on the beach” (out of work) in New York; trips to the East in the City of Hankow; and a call at Delagoa, Bay. in which he saw again the old “Antiope,” burned in a fire and abandoned now to the underwriters; a fall of 36 feet down an uncovered hatch and a lucky escape from death through having his fall broken by a heap of rubbish; journeys to Calcutta, Madras and Ceylon; the memory of loading coal by baskets at Perim while the ship lay head to the wind and got blackened with coal dust from stem to stern; return to New York, and at last a voyage home to New Zealand as quartermaster in the City of Chester. Even then, after a short time ashore, the sea called again and he set off as quartermaster in the Port Albany under Captain Fishwick.

Until at last the sea let him alone, and he came back to land.

HE never regrets his seafaring. “It gives a sense of values to a young man that he never loses in after life,’ says Francis Renner to-day. “It teaches him the great lesson in the finish that he is after all the master of his own destiny.

“It lets him know that there are few things in this world on which a man can rely other than his own initiative and his own ability and his own perseverance.

“When the boy goes to sea from the background of a good home, kind parents and his friends, he finds it is up to himself to make his own way. If every young man could face life that way early in his existence, it would be much to his good.”

Radio Record 27 May 1938