Parting Shot Opens Gusher.
An oil well which it is believed will be in the five-thousand-barrel class and will cause the opening of an extension of the famous Cushing field, near Muskogee, Okla., was started to flowing by a twenty-seven quart shot of nitroglycerin made as a parting slap by the owners, who thought the well was worthless.
This well was sunk in the sand in the edge of the Oilton oil pool. It showed no signs of being productive, and there were no productive wells around it. The owners were about to abandon it, but decided to try one more shot of nitroglycerin. Then the oil spouted all over the lease.
Aged Ship, Success, is Safe in Oakland.
On April 14, 1912, an old, storm-beaten, odd-looking, three-masted sailing ship—the oldest vessel afloat—set out from Lancaster, England, and dropping away from Glasson dock, veteran of all piers, seized the wind in her teeth and sped away on a voyage across the western ocean. At different times in her career the old barkentine Success, for such is her name, had been a full-rigged merchantman, a convict transport ship, and a despised prison hulk, but just what she is to-day can be ascertained by all who care to go down to the harbor at Oakland, Cal., and devote an hour or so to an inspection of the age-old craft which has just arrived here.
High of stern—almost a galleon in lines—bluffy, "apple-bowed," with an out-of-date figurehead sprawling beneath a skyward bowsprit, she sailed, alone of her kind, an anachronism, a curiosity, a craft as out of place among modern hulls, her foremast hands declared, "as an alligator ashore."
And that was why she sailed uninsured, for Lloyd’s—that gamest of all maritime-insurance companies, in whose rooms a gamble will be taken even upon a ship whose skipper "cracks on sail into the Day of Judgment"—had refused her as a risk.
She had been denied British clearance, too, and her only papers were a board-of-health certificate, countersigned by the American consul in her port of departure.
Before her company was filled, a score of captains had thrown up their sea-calloused hands in holy horror when offered the master’s billet aboard her, and two crews had deserted before her forefoot could bruise the ocean swells. And even now the old craft is short-manned.
The date first set for the sailing of the Success from the port on the River Lune saw the Titanic clear South[Pg 65]ampton upon her memorable and tragic maiden voyage. The old barkentine, however, was delayed by an inability to fill her crew.
"If I hadn’t known the sort of stuff that the old girl was built of, I’d have been as skeptical of her chances as the rest," Captain D. H. Smith, her owner, admits. "As vessels go nowadays, she isn’t any giant. She is only one hundred and thirty-five feet over all, with a beam of twenty-nine feet, and registered at five hundred and eighty-nine tons. And then consider her age and history.
"She was built of teak throughout—what they used to call ‘black ship’—and that’s why I have such faith in her, even though she was battered up some in her early youth by the Indian Ocean pirates, and after she fell from caste was moored for so many years as a prison hulk.
"But she made the thousands of miles between Australia and England under her own sail, and then I determined to bring her to the United States."
The Success, all sail set to catch the last of the easterly winds she had counted on to carry her across the north Atlantic in forty-six days, left Lancaster with fair weather. She was provisioned for fifty days and carried eighteen thousand gallons of water.
Cordage humming, she stood bravely on the out course, and when she was ten hours beyond sight of land, her wireless operator, Gallagher, sat at a little petrol outfit which had been installed aboard her, sending the last good-bys of the little ship’s company of nineteen over the evening sea.
Crook Haven, the great Irish station, was taking his messages, the Success, with her call of "I. D. B.," having been given right of way over all other craft. Time and time again other ships tried to cut in, but Crook Haven "turned them out" until Gallagher finished.
Then Gallagher, with his earpieces still on, heard the message which he had shut out come spluttering out of the night. It had been relayed from the Carpathia. She was picking up the Titanic survivors.
Upon the old barkentine the news of the disaster fell like a thunderclap, and the fear of death took each of them by the throat.
"What chance have we," they asked, "with nothing but a century-old bottom between us and losin’ the numbers of our mess?"
And it was not cowardice, either. There was not a man for’ard on the Success but who would cheerfully take every chance that comes in a sailor’s twenty-four-hour day.
There came a time when the Success was sixty days from port and apparently far out of her course. Consequently every time their puny wireless would sputter into the night in a vain attempt to give their location to the ships which were looking for her, the crew, spirit broken and diseased, would jump to the conclusion that their captain was sending the "S. O. S." call for aid, and a strong hand was needed to drive them to the back-breaking task when both watches were required on deck constantly to tack her, and to wear her when the proximity of a great iceberg would not permit them to tack.
When they were twelve days out, four hundred miles due east of Boston, trouble broke out among the crew. Five of the Liverpool bullies grew unruly and demanded that the Success be headed for Halifax, which lay a bit over four hundred miles west and about one hundred and[Pg 66] fifty miles north of their then position. That same night, while asleep in their bunks, they were made prisoners and were kept locked up until Boston was reached.
The famous old hulk finally dropped anchor off of East Boston flats, thus closing one of the most remarkable voyages in recent years. The five malcontents, and one other who had made trouble for the captain, were sent back to their native countries for punishment. From Boston she went to New York, Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia prior to her sailing for San Francisco.
She will remain in Oakland for a brief period only while she is being fitted out for her voyage to British Columbia, whence she will sail direct to Melbourne, her home port. She will never return from the latter port, as she will then have completed a tour of the world.