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sede take Wie Gis <ninkes ‘adeaies a he DES ht 4 2a Bialn| ao 8 a aha Sat ea hate Bet ck RRO Ny FEE TR TT Te ASST alee Cee T NS RISE NR ee ee PCy sai Op ee .194 THE MARINE REVIEW He found the quadrant jammed hard over, but apparently the rudder stock had either been twisted off or else the rudder itself was gone. It was not long before the AccoMA turned into the trough of the sea, ship- ping much water. Captain Phillips said he did not believe any ship could stand the punishment which the AccoMA re- ceived all that night. The heavy seas crashed on her deck with the roar of surf breaking on a rocky coast. The only dry place on board was in the captain’s cabin. None of the crew even attempted to reach their quarters in the forecastle or in the poop. For a while Captain Phillips had the engines re- versed in the hope that he could pull the boat out of the trough of the sea, but finding that this was ineffectual, he finally had the engines shut down. Trouble then developed below decks. This was described afterward by the chief engineer. “About 8:30, after the captain had reported the disabling of the rudder,” stated the report of A. C. Kick, chief engineer, “and after the engines had been stopped, the engineer on watch supplemented the two bilge pumps which were not able to hold their own with the condenser circulating pump. He said that this pump had only a small suction pipe and was. not able to work up to full capacity. Neverthe- less, all three pumps were discharging ‘a large volume of water. “Vessel Listed to Port “Earlier in the afternoon, it was dis- covered that the starboard fresh water tank in the after-hold was empty. Some repairs were made on this tank before the vessel sailed, and the engineer be- ieves that a plug must have been. left out. The loss of this weight gave the AccoMA a list to port. This was in- creased by a leak which admitted water to the port ’tween deck coal bunker, the water saturating the coal and leaking into the boiler room around one of the hold-beams. “One of the mates told the engineer that there was a half round scupper opening outboard from the coal bunkers, and he thinks it is possible that owing to the list and the rolling in the trough of the sea, the water was admitted by this scupper. The engineer thought that no opening should have been made outboard from the coal bunker, and he commented on the fact that similar scuppers opened outboard from the fore- castle instead of on to the forward well deck. “As the list of the AccomMa increased, the water on the port side became so deep in the boiler room that it was im- possible to keep the fires going under the port boiler. They had great diffi- culty in firing the starboard boiler, be- cause as fast as they would pile up some coal on the plate floor, it would be washed away by the rush of water as the vessel rolled. stokers, who were Greeks, kept the star- board boiler fired up until about mid- night. The water had then risen so high that they were forced to leave the stoke- hold. “Meanwhile the engineer had shut off the circulating pump so as to prevent sea-water from running back through it into the hold after it had stopped. The two bilge pumps and the dynamo en- gine ran slower and slower, until about 1 o’clock in the morning, when the boiler was no longer delivering steam.” Captain Phillips sent out wireless calls for help and received replies from a Spanish steamer, the J. D. ARCHIBALD and the DonGArRA. The captain, his wife and the crew were taken from the Ac- coMA the next morning by the rescuing vessels. After the first boat had been launched the Accoma took a heavy list to port due, undoubtedly, to the collection of water in the port coal bunkers. This rendered the starboard lifeboat useless, but made it easier for them to launch the port boat. The DoNGarra was not able to send any assistance because she was riding high in the water and rolling too violently to permit the launching of a lifeboat. The first boat load succeeded in getting aboard the Doncarra, which then furnished a crew to take the life boat back to the Accoma. At about noon, the 22 men remaining on the AccoMA were taken off and the vessel was aban- doned. Captain Phillips thought that the prin- cipal leak might have been due to the damaging of the ash ejector, which was in the port coal bunker above the water line. The Accoma had left New York with her winter North Atlantic mark about 4 inches above the water line. In the trough of the sea, however, the ash ejector was frequently submerged. The chief engineer said that the only place he could see water coming in was where it leaked through frofi the coal bunker. He thought that as the vessel rolled in the trough of the sea, she gradually opened up her seams so that water was leaking into all the holds. Engines Not at Fault The engineer expressed a doubt whether the ship would have been able to weather the storm even though ‘she had not lost her rudder. He said that although he had never sailed on a large wooden vessel before, he had often talked to the skippers of the sailing ves- sels, who said that in heavy storms it was necessary to keep tthe pumps going all the time. “It sailing vessels opened up in this way, it was natural that a steamer with her engines amidships, under much heavier strain, would be loosened up even more rapidly,” he said. Nevertheless, the . April, 1919 The engineer mentioned the fact that the engine was well balanced, and so firmly secured that when he was in his cabin directly over the engine room, he could not tell whether the engine was running unless he opened the door. There was no appreciable vibration. He had no complaint to make about the opera- tion of the engines or boilers, and in fact said that he did not think any wooden vessel even though it had. been built of hard seasoned wood, and from the best design, could have weathered the storm which overtook the AccoMa, The AccomaA was in 37 degrees north latitude and 62 degrees, 30 minutes west longitude when she met with her fate. When last seen by the crew, she was sinking gradually by the stern, her after- well deck awash. She had a heavy list to port, and the captain was of the opin- ion that she was gone before dark. The ocean in that vicinity is about three miles deep. Considered an Able Vessel The Accoma was built at the Passaic river yard of the Foundation Co. She was launched on April 27, 1918, and placed in commission by Messrs. Smith & Terry in September. Among shipping men she was considered one of the best built of the wooden fleet, and it was for this reason she was assigned to the first transatlantic voyage attempted by any of these steamers. In its Pacific coast yards, the Founda- tion Co. built last year 40 wooden ves- sels of a different désign for the French, all of which are now in commission. Of these 40 vessels built for the French, not one has had trouble with its hull and all are now in commission on the Atlantic and the Pacific. Of the total built for the French, two vessels have reached La Pallice successfully, one has gone to Casa Blanca, Morocco, four are on the ocean voyaging to France, four are on the west coast of South America, five are on the east coast of South America, five are at Panama, one at Colon, five are in the Gulf of Mexico and the remainder are at various ports of the United States. The Institution of Naval Architect of England will hold its annual meeting on April. 9,10 and --11 at London. The president of the in- stitution is the Earl of Durham. The law firm of Hoyt, Dustin, Kel- ley, McKeehan & Andrews, Cleveland, has been dissolved. Hermon A. Kel- ley and George William Cottrell have taken over the admiralty business of the old firm and plan to continue the general practice of law under the firm name of Kelley & Cottrell with offices on the fifteenth floor of the Rockefeller building,