334 * The Atlantic 



tened the Fox in honor of the man who backed the plan. Once they 

 capsized, as they were almost bound to do when the heavy weather 

 hit them. But they had built-in tanks for buoyancy and succeeded in 

 righting the boat and in bailing her out. They had spare oars lashed 

 in the boat, so they were able to carry on, but they had lost all their 

 provisions. However, five days later, on July 15, they encountered the 

 bark Ska. They went aboard the Sita and had a hot meal, secured a 

 few provisions and then started off again. From another bark, the 

 Eugene, they later secured water, for their tanks were beginning to 

 run dry. They were reported passing the Scilly Islands on July 31, 

 1896, having rowed across the Atlantic Ocean in fifty-four days. 



They took passage back for New York on a steamer which encoun- 

 tered such terrific gales and continual head winds that she consumed 

 all of the coal in her bunkers and used even the woodwork and par- 

 titions of the ship in an effort to keep up steam. Finally the vessel 

 was left helpless 250 miles out in the open ocean from New York. 



At this point Firbo and Samuelson volunteered to row to New 

 York and send help. They had the Fox put into the water and, row- 

 ing almost continuously, made the trip in four days' time and re- 

 ported the plight of the steamer. 



We are now in the mid-century going through a period of clam- 

 orous nonsense, with people dashing off to sea in ill-found equipment 

 on ill-considered adventures. When Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 drifted 

 from South America across part of the Pacific on a large balsa raft 

 he may have added very little to Polynesian ethnology, his announced 

 reason for the trip, but he did add some very interesting observa- 

 tions on life close to the sea and he and his companions had a rousing 

 good time. He seems to have stimulated people to less worthy drift- 

 ing matches and to a belief that anything that will float will get them 

 across the ocean. One adventurer has even put to sea in a sort of 

 amphibious motor wagon left over from the war. Such ventures are 

 usually announced as undertaken to "prove" something but actually 

 prove little beyond the capacity of human endurance and the for- 

 bearance of Father Neptune. Some of these adventurers might develop 

 into good seamen if they became familiar with the seaman's tools. 



A real seaman is Mrs. Anne Davison, from Gloucestershire in 

 England. She and her husband started across the Atlantic in their 

 twenty-three-foot sloop Felicity Ann. His untimely death terminated 

 this venture but since then she has crossed the Atlantic alone and 

 thus become the first woman transatlantic singlehander. 



These stories are interesting as examples of human courage and 



