1902] The Night of the Ships 



houses along the beach, glossy Vaea in the back- 

 ground doubly pleasing also, after our weird night. 

 Yet there before our eyes lay the rusting hulk of the 

 German warship Adler, grim reminder of that terrible 

 "night of the ships" of March 16, 1889,* when a 

 hurricane struck Apia and tore its confused inter- 

 national politics into "ropy spindrift." For it will 

 be remembered that Germany's huge iron watchdog 

 was not sunk like the Eber, Vandalia, and Trenton, 

 nor yet rolled over on the beach like the Olga and 

 Nipsic, but was lifted by a gigantic comber high 

 above the reef, then dropped down into it with a 

 tremendous crash. 



Upolu is made up of a long, volcanic ridge once 

 poured out from its overtopping "crater lake" 

 Lanuto and bearing on its sides a curious, exuber- The 

 ant medley of trees mostly strange to us. Some have " Sush " 

 brilliant red flowers, and one called by Stevenson 

 the "slab tree" looks like a beech, but throws out 

 the whole length of its trunk a number of stiff 

 buttresses. 



Landing, we took rooms at the "Hotel Tivoli" 

 owned by Moors, the American capitalist and friend staen- 

 of Stevenson, who afterward published an interesting son ' s pal 

 volume entitled "With Stevenson in Samoa." A 

 native of Vermont, Moors went as a venturesome 

 youth to California to seek his fortune; later he 



1 In connection with the international squabble so dramatically interrupted 

 by this awful storm, I may recall Stevenson's prophetic words: "Thus in what 

 seemed the very article of war, and within the duration of a single day, the 

 sword-arm of each of the two angry powers was broken, their formidable ships 

 reduced to junk, their disciplined hundreds to a horde of castaways. . . . 

 Both paused aghast. . . . The so-called hurricane of March 16 made a mark- 

 ing epoch in world-history, and at once it brought about the Congress and 

 Treaty of Berlin; indirectly it founded the modern navy. Coming years and 

 future historians will declare the influence of that." 



C 103 3 



