A FRESH LOOK AT AN ALLEDGED SHIP ON FIRE AND THE ss HARLOW.
So much has been written about the ss Harlow and what Captain Bruce of the Harlow saw and claimed that there was a ship on fire right astern of him, this vessel was supposed to be coming up fast behind his own ship, this vessel then allegedly blew up and was immediately lost from view. At the time Captain Bruce had no idea as to which ship it was if indeed there was a ship on fire, it turns out that at a later date he thought it may have been the ss Waratah the Blue Anchor Line passenger ship that went missing after leaving Durban bound for Capetown.
Waratah at Capetown on her maiden voyage 1908.
On the 26th of July 1909 on her second voyage as a new ship, Waratah departed from Durban harbour at 8.15 pm on her homeward run to England and was due to call in at Capetown some 830 nautical miles from Durban but disappeared along the way never to be seen again. Before proceeding with the Harlow account I should like to point out to the reader that while newspaper reports of the time carried the stories involving the Waratah, there was a great deal of truth in them but at the same time there was a lot of misreporting especially when positions in terms of latitude and longitude were seriously incorrect. For the reader to understand fully they should study the following map which highlights quite clearly a case of careless reporting in the press.
In the above map we see the correct position of the Waratah indicated by a yellow pin at 6.00am on the morning of the 27th when in latitude 31degrees 36minutes south longitude 29 degrees 58 minutes east where she was last seen and spoken to by the cargo ship the Clan Macintyre. Above that we see another yellow pin indicating an incorrect position of the Waratah given by a newspaper report. This position is given in the paper as, latitude 29 degrees 17minutes south longitude 29 degrees 17 minutes east, this bears no relation to the correct position. In fact it shows the Waratah as being 122 miles inland from the nearest part of the coastline and 143.5 miles away from the correct position in a slightly N Westerly direction.
In the Annex to the Court Report Preliminary observations, section V11 headed Theories of the Vessel's loss it reads as follows;
One suggestion put forward to account for the vessel's loss, a suggestion based upon a statement of the master of the "Harlow," Captain Albert John Bruce, was that her bunker coal had heated, and she had blown up. Summarized briefly, his statement is as follows:-
At about 5.30pm on the 27th July, he was to the southward and west of Cape Hermes, proceeding on a N,E by E. course, at a distance from the coast varying from 1 to 2 1/2 miles. He saw smoke about 25 miles astern, which he took to be from a fast steamer coming up behind him.
The yellow cross indicates the Harlow's position southward of Cape Hermes and 2miles off Rame Head. Further down the coast there is a figure indicating the black smoke some 25 miles behind the Harlow as estimated by Captain Bruce.
Later, about 7.15, he saw two masthead lights and a red light, right astern, about 10 or 12 miles away.( Please note right astern means in line with his ship, it is the opposite to dead ahead. Andrew Van Rensburg in one of his blogs informed readers that right astern meant to the right of the ship, and further out to sea, this is incorrect.) The lights were at times obscured by the smoke, which was blowing forward.
Alleged lights hidden at times from the Harlow by smoke, yellow cross indicates Harlow.
At 7.50 pm, the master of the "Harlow" went to consult his chart. When he returned a short time after, he saw two quick flashes astern, one of which went about 1,000 feet into the air, and the other one about 300 feet. The flashes were narrow at the bottom, widened out as they ascended, and were red in colour. He heard no noise. His own eyes were dazzled with the strong light in the chart room, and he asked the chief officer, who was on the bridge, where the steamers lights were. the reply was that they were obscured by the smoke. No steamer overtook the "Harlow," although judging by the rapidity with which the following alleged ship had hitherto come up, she should have overhauled the "Harlow." Long after, on hearing of the loss of the "Waratah," Captain Bruce arrived at the conclusion that her bunkers had fired, she turned back to Durban, the nearest port where the fire could be dealt with, and when between Cape Hermes and the St John's River, near the hole in the wall she had blown up.
Two flashes off Port St John's , one 300 feet high and one 1,000 feet high. (estimated by Bruce)
the red line was the Harlow when 2 miles off the light house, here he altered course out to sea to a position 31degrees 36minutes south longitude 29 degrees 55 minutes east, indicated by the centre of the yellow circle. From here he set course giving him sea room from the coast and to clear Aliwal Shoal all the way up to Durban and staying 5 miles offshore in the dark for safety on a virtually unlit coastline, the yellow cross is the position of the Harlow at 8.00pm.
The Harlow's courses towards Durban.
( Court report continued). Of course, such an occurrence is within the range of possibility, but there are several circumstances which tell against its probability in this case. The wind was blowing from the direction of the flashes to the "Harlow." and such a violent explosion ought to have been heard as well as seen. Reports were received from the lightkeepers at Cape Hermes Lighthouse. They saw no flares or fires at sea. Another circumstance is that a bunker explosion would have taken effect inwards, and not likely to have destroyed the floating power of the vessel so suddenly as to prevent the boats being lowered.
It is to be noted that the chief officer of the "Harlow" does not support Captain Bruce in his account of what he thought he saw. The chief officer says that what Captain Bruce took for steamers lights was really the flare of a distant bush fire, several of which were visible at different heights, some on the hills, and some low down towards the shore. The chief officer adds the pertinent observation, of which the Court agrees, that had any steamer on fire in the vicinity, she would have been sending up rockets and signals of distress, and these would have been easily distinguishable from the bush fires and flares. The facts that Captain Bruce made no attempt to verify what he believed himself to have seen, and made no report at Durban, indicate that he could not at the time attached much importance to his observations.
The only circumstance which does lend some weight to this suggestion is the bunker fire on the first voyage, which has already been dealt with at length (see anti); but if the repairs mentioned were properly effected, a second outbreak was extremely unlikely.( Especially seeing that Mr Hodder the chief engineer was a Board of Trade engineer surveyor working ashore prior to joining the Waratah and after the first voyage when the Waratah was laid up for weeks, would have certainly seen to any further faults in the engine room. ).
On the whole and in view of the much greater likelihood of the ship having met disaster in the storm of the 28th of July, the Court is not disposed to regard a bunker explosion as the cause of her loss. The theory put the Court by Mr Bucknill was that she was an unstable ship, and that she had capsized. The question of her stability has been very fully discussed, and all the opinion of the Court can express has been set out in the Board of Trade questions.
Where so little is known the range of conjecture is wide. It would be idle to discuss in detail all the many guesses which might be made to account for the loss of ship. This must not, however, be supposed that the Court has lost sight of other possibilities merely because the are not set forth here.
Every suggestion which could be extracted from the evidence, or evolved from the Court's technical assessors, has been carefully considered. The dismissal of the Harlow evidence was in my view a reasonable assumption and if we look further we can see why they drew the conclusion that they came to.
In further evidence Captain Bruce said, " THE WEATHER WAS CLOUDY WITH A HEAVY GROUND SWELL FROM THE SOUTH AND HE SAW SMOKE ASTERN OF HIM FROM ABOUT 25 MILES AWAY AND ALSO A MODERATE WIND WAS BLOWING FROM THE SOUTH." In an earlier affidavit held in the admiralty files he claimed the smoke on the horizon was about 14 to 15 miles astern, in order to understand this further let us analyse the following photograph.
Here we have three ships photographed in 1914 travelling north on Port Phillip Bay in Victoria Australia. The object on the left is a pylon lighthouse. The wake of the ship on the left is clearly seen and she is obviously in light condition as indicated by the white water being churned up because her propeller is not fully submerged and is threshing the water, this ship as about 3/4s of a mile ahead of the camera. The ship in the middle is about 4 to 5miles away and the ship on the right is about three miles away, the question is what would you see at 25 miles away just on dark as described by Captain Bruce. The light wind carrying the smoke away from the ships is from the north to slightly north west and the sky is very cloudy and overcast. I am of the opinion that Captain Bruce and his estimate of 14 to 15 mile is possible, for it to be about 25 miles would have to be a very large volume of smoke from bush fires high on a mountain side. One thing to bear in mind when looking at this photograph is that if the height of the bridge on the ss Harlow was 35 feet above sea level and the height of the observers eye 6 feet above the deck we have a total height of the eye above sea level of 41 feet, at this height the distance of the horizon would only be 7.3 miles, so was the smoke closer than he claimed?.
A daylight version of what the captain of the Harlow probably experienced on the night of the 27th of July, bush fire smoke travelling along the coast towards the cargo ship in the far right of the picture.
Bush fires overtaking a modern cruise ship at Esperance West Australia.
Bush fires viewed across a bay , this last photograph could be misconstrued as ships on fire.
Now we come to the case of ships lights supposedly seen by Captain Bruce in which he stated the following. "AT 7.15 PM I SAW TWO MAST HEAD LIGHTS AND THE RED LIGHT OF A STEAMER COMING UP ASTERN ABOUT 10 OR 12 MILES AWAY, AT THE TIME THE BACKGROUND WAS ALL BUSHFIRES AND FLARES." THERE WAS NOTHING TO SHOW SHE WAS A PASSENGER SHIP THERE BEING NO LIGHTS AROUND HER DECKS. I COULD NOT TELL IF SHE WAS A LARGE SHIP HER LIGHTS BEING END ON. I COULD NOT SEE IF SHE WAS SMOKING OR NOT AS SMOKE FROM THE BUSHFIRES WHERE FORMING A HEAVY CLOUD. Here we need to analyse this his statement carefully, if a ship is astern of you with all it's lights in line with your ship it would look like this.
So what happened to the green light? was it extinguished? this would be highly unlikely because ships with electrically lit side lights and other navigation lights carried emergency oil lanterns at the ready on the bridge for such an eventuality and were kept filled and primed by the ships light trimmer. Was the green light obscured by the ships own smoke from its funnel I would say no for two reasons, the height of the funnel and the wind blowing from astern of the ship would blow it forward in a horizontal line well above the side lights. Secondly the regulations of that period 1909 state quite clearly that side lights must not be obscured by rigging, or equipment of the ship, or by the smoke and steam from the funnel. Captain Bruce could not make out if she was a large ship her lights (mast head lights) were in line with the centre line or stern of his ship. Ships usually cargo over 150ft in length or a larger passenger ship carried two white lights. The regulations specified that on the foremast a white light not less than 40ft above the deck must be displayed and be visible to other ships for a distance of 5miles. The after masthead light must be 15 feet above the foremast light and visible for 5miles, side lights had to be visible at a distance of 2 miles away.
The lower white light is the foremast white light, and the upper white light the aft mast light
After altering course out to sea with the Cape Hermes Light now astern of him, and if there had have been a ship on the coast behind him travelling north before he altered out, her masthead lights would now been wide open and her starboard light visible to the Harlow but there was no such mention of this.
If there had have been a ship he would have seen these lights behind him when he altered out to sea.
To be continued with an explanation as to why the lights suddenly disappeared from view of the officers of the ss Harlow.
