Noah's Ark as Model for Boat

1920

Lake Erie Fisherman Had Faith Enough in Idea to Build One

Saudusky, Ohio — Ed Lampe, a fisherman at Vermilion, a Lake Erie port town twenty-two miles east of this city, was reading a story about Noah's ark to his children one night several months ago, when it occurred to him that were the craft of Noah's time resurrected and modernized a little it might have a tendency to lessen the toll that storms take annually in the Great Lakes section.

Lampe is a gillnetter of many years' experience, and in the picture of Noah's ark that embellished the story he was reading, he recognized wonderful possibilities. The storms of the Great Lakes section rage furiously in spring, following the opening of the navigation season, and again in fall, just before the season closes. Many men lose their lives and much valuable property is destroyed.

The gillnetters, as those fishermen who fish with gill nets are known, are oftener the victims than are the members of any other body of men engaged in fishing; their work is more hazardous. When disaster comes it is usually the gillnetters' boat, or "tug," that is destroyed.

A Real Success

Lampe designed a boat on the plan of Noah's ark. With the aid of several fishermen friends he brought his design to materialization. He tried the craft out and it met every expectation. It ploughed the most vicious billows, going out and returning when other boats had to be kept in port.

Lampe's craft attracted the attention, of the commercial fishing interests of the Lake Erie section and investigators were sent to Vermilion. If it were true that a Vermilion fisherman had invented a boat patterned after Noah's ark that would lessen the risk of spring and fall season fishing they wanted to give the fishermen the benefit of the discovery, they said.

The Vermilion gillnetter would not listen to a proposition to sell his idea, nor would he talk of royalty.

"If you can save some poor devil's life by using my style of boat, go ahead and use it," he said.

The United Fisheries company of this city, one of the largest organizations of its kind operating on Lake Erie, recently completed the first of six gillnet tugs of the type designed by Lampe, at a shipbuilding plant in this city. The other five are to be ready to be commissioned at the beginning of the spring fishing season of 1920.

Lampe christened his boat Victory, for the reason that she is believed to have triumphed over the storm. With a bow like that of a battleship, and a body otherwise that resembles the conventional pictures of Noah's ark, she has been successfully combating the roughest seas that the Lake Erie nor'easter has been able thus far to kick up.

Victory is fifty-five feet long, with a fifteen foot beam. She is equipped with two power plants, so that if one should happen to "go bad," the other will be available. Her upper works are so constructed that they can be made almost water tight and her hull bears the weight required to right her immediately if she should happen to turnover.

"I would as lief be sitting in the cabin of Victory as in my office or my home, no matter how severe the storm," said Charles F. Mischler, president of the United Fisheries company, discussing the new gillnetting craft.

Fishermen say that boats of this kind will, in the near future, replace the old-time gillnetting tugs now in use, and that a big saving in life and property will result.

Derelicts

1895

"These are the wrecks of abandoned vessels turned loose to be carried hither and thither by winds and tide. They form one of the serious dangers to ocean navigation. In spite of all efforts to rid the sea of them, many of these unguided prowlers still drift and toss up and down the deep, threatening every passing ship with wreck. May we not find in this a parable? Derelicts — social, moral, religious — are the chief danger to safe sailing on the ocean of life. And such are found drifting everywhere. Your son and daughter and yourself would be safer if it were not for these wrecks of humanity lost to conscience and morality and to God. Every ruined soul threatens others with ruin. One misguided or neglected youth may, in the course of a lifetime of drifting and sinning, wreck a hundred others. It is a peril, as well as a crying sin, to let any boy or girl be turned adrift without moral restraint or guidance, or to allow those already lost to continue drifting while we put forth no effort to arrest or save them. Prevention is better than cure. Parents should see that the hearts of the children are so anchored to Christ, and their lives so trained for Him and ruled by His love, that no derelicts shall go forth from their homes." — Cumberland Presbyterian.

Ship's Boy Gets Sacred Black Cat from Hindu Temple

1912

SHIP'S BOY GETS SACRED BLACK CAT

Strays Into Hindoo Temple at Bombay and Escapes with Life and Feline.

SOMETHING HIT HIM

Daring Apprentice of Tramp Steamer Who Went in Search of Adventure at an Indian Port Had Plenty of Excitement

Philadelphia.—A daring apprentice who had the audacity to steal into a Hindoo temple and kidnap a sacred cat is the tale that a tramp steamer brings to this port.

The apprentice, Albert Berrige, passed behind the veil of one of the most sacred temples of the Hindoos in Bombay, saw with his Caucasian eyes the great idols and returned to the outer world with the sacred cat. The cat once bore, no doubt, a strange Indian name, but since joining the tramp ship the sacred feline has been dubbed Tommy. Tommy is as black as the conscience of a bigamist and is not very different from other cats. Black cats bring good luck to ships that plough the seven seas, so Tommy is held in great esteem. While Berrige's ship swung at her anchor off "The City of the Dreadful Night," as Kipling has called Bombay, the towering domes of the Hindoo temples kindled Albert's imagination, and he chafed at the bit until he had obtained shore leave.

"Be back by sundown, young man," ordered the captain as the apprentice went over the side about midday. There was so much to interest Albert that he forgot altogether the captain's injunction to be back by sundown. Darkness had enveloped the city when Albert reached one of the Hindoo temples, probably the most sacred in all Bombay.

"It was all dark and scary in that temple," said the apprentice in telling of his adventure. "There were big pillars all round with the most scary looking carvings you ever saw. I got behind one of these pillars all by myself and tried to see what was going on. Away off in the distance I saw some lights burning in front of a row of big idols that looked like huge monkeys. The Hindoos who were coming into the temple were making their way toward those idols, bowing and sort of sing-songing. They were so busy in their worship of the big gilded monkeys and things that they would not have seen me if I had been on fire.

"I was so encouraged by my success in getting to the front, near the big show, that I kept on the move through the dark. Suddenly, as I tiptoed along, I put my foot down on something soft. The next thing I knew there came a yowl and screech that made my backbone feel as though a bolt of lightning was running up and down it. The sing-song and the moaning had ceased. There was absolute silence for a moment.

"Suddenly I felt something hit me in the middle of the back. Then I felt sharp claws digging into my hide. The next instant I was traveling like a meteor toward the temple entrance and every manjack of these Hindoos in pursuit.

"When I reached the door two husky Hindoos jumped in front of me. I lowered my head and struck one of them amidships. He went down with a gulp like a man swallowing his adam's apple. I dodged the other fellow and jumped and half tumbled down the steps from the temple doorway. When I hit the street I kept up my running. The Hindoos were soon distanced. I must have run for a mile with that cat clawing at my spinal column. Then when I got up a dark street I stopped and tried to dislodge the cat. I finally had to take off my coat to get the beast to release his claws.

"When I got Mr. Cat into my arms he was as docile as you please and purred in real cat fashion. So I says to myself, 'It's a black cat and that means good luck, so I'll take him on board.' I had some explaining why I was so late, but I had the cat to prove my adventure in the temple and the old man let it go at that."

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, October 21, 1912, page 3.