AN OLD COMMAND.
EXPERIENCE IN THE ATLANTIC.
In 1892 Captain Bowling, who had been in command of the Akaroa and other ships, relieved Captain Muir as master of the Invercargill. In one of his many voyages Captain Bowling had a most exciting turn which has been reported as follows. The biggest gale of Captain Bowling’s experience, writes Mr Basil Lubbock, in his book “Colonial Clippers,” was in 1904. On December 8, in the Atlantic, she again ran into heavy weather, during which a huge mountain of water broke over the port quarter and swept the decks the whole length of her.
All hands worked hard in bailing out the water from below, which was up to one’s waist in the cabin. During the night the ship was rolling heavily as she ran before the gale. Early the next morning a big sea washed out the carpenter's quarters, and "Chips,” under the impression that the ship was sinking by the head made the best of his way aft. Captain Bowling and his officers were all below clearing up the wrecked cabin. The carpenter thereupon informed the man at the wheel of his fears, with the result that the latter had an attack of nerves, thought he was running the ship under, and allowed her to come-to.
As the ship broached to, the cargo shifted and the Invercargill went, over on her beam ends. Many of the sails blew adrift, and the lifeboat was swept away. Then when the ship lay down with her lee foreyard arm dipped 6ft into the broken water, the sea worked havoc on the flooded main deck. Daylight disclosed that nearly everything had been washed overboard. All that day and the next night, the ship lay down with her lee rail buried deep and her main deck full of water. On the morning of the 10th, when the wind dropped, cargo was jettisoned to bring the ship on an even keel, and at last she was got away on her course.
SAVED THE SHIP.
The next, difficulty was making a land fall without a reliable compass, as only an old compass which had not been adjusted was available. In spite of a large allowance made for his defective compass, Captain Bowling found himself nearly ashore amongst the Reilly Isles, but his fine seamanship, says Mr Lubbock, saved the vessel and on December 18 he brought her safely into Queenstown, 115 days from Sydney. -Otago Daily Times, 19/12/1925.
NOTED SHIPMASTER’S DEATH
CAPTAIN THOMAS BOWLING
Death has claimed one of the most widely known and remarkable sea captains associated with the early history of the Dominion in the person of Captain Thomas Bowling. The deceased passed peacefully away in a Dunedin hospital on the 12th, after a brief illness, at the advanced age of 84 years. The late Captain Bowling had a remarkable career as a sailor, and there are probably few sea captains alive to-day in New Zealand whose lives were so crammed with adventure. The deceased was born at Kingston (Ireland) in 1841. He came from a hardy stock which had been associated with the sea for generations back. His grandfather fought under Lord Nelson, and his father was a captain in the Royal Navy. The late Captain Bowling had six brothers, all of whom were sailormen, and all met their deaths at sea.
Captain Bowling went to sea in and served his apprenticeship before the mast. His ship made one trip from England to the Crimea with troops before he served on several of the famous China tea clippers, and he was associated with the latter trade for 10 years. He saw many stirring times in the China seas, and his tales of these days would fill a volume. Captain Bowling’s first command was the full-rigged Wynod, of 400 tons. Subsequently he entered the service of the Savill Company and made his first voyage to New Zealand as an officer of one of the company’s ships in 1866. His first command under the Shaw, Savill flag was the Adamant, his second the ship Akaroa, on which one of his sons, Captain T. Bowling, who now holds the position of assistant wharf superintendent for the Union Steam Ship Company at Dunedin, was born. Captain Bowling s next command was the fine ship Euterpe, and his last the ship Invercargill. As master of the Invercargill ha made his first visit to Wellington in 1892.
Captain Bowling remained with the Shaw. Savill Company after it was merged into the Shaw, Savill, and Albion Company, and served altogether 40 years with the line — a proud record for any ship's master. He was a master for 24 years and retired in 1906 on a life pension.
The late Captain Bowling, on his retirement, resided at Auckland for some time. He later removed to Christchurch, and about 18 months ago came to Dunedin to reside with his son. He had enjoyed wonderful health up to about two weeks ago, when he had a seizure from which he never rallied. The late captain was a giant in his younger days, being over 6ft in height and weighing 16 stone. He was widely famed for his pugilistic powers, and on necessity never shirked an encounter. He had been known to knock out half the members of a sailing ship’s crew.
Captain Bowling was a member of the Zealandia Masonic Lodge, Port Chalmers. It is worthy of note that none of the ships of which he had command met with any serious accidents during all the years he was at sea.
The deceased was interred in the Anderson’s Bay Cemetery on Tuesday afternoon. -Otago Witness, 22/12/1925.
VETERAN SHIPMASTER.
CAPT AIN BOWLING’S DEATH.
AN ADVENTUROUS CAREER.
Death has claimed one of the most widely known and remarkable sea captains associated with the early history of the Dominion in the person of Captain Thomas Bowling. The deceased passed away in a Dunedin hospital after a brief illness, at the advanced age of 84 years. The deceased was born at Kingston (Ireland) in 1844. He came from a hardy stock which had been associated with the sea for generations back. His grandfather fought under Lord Nelson and his father was a captain of the Royal Navy. The late Captain Bowling had six brothers all of whom were sailors, and all met their death at sea, being either killed or drowned.
Captain Bowling went to sea in 1855 and served his apprenticeship before the mast. His ship made one trip from England to the Crimea with troops before the lad crossed the seas to foreign lands. He then served on several of the famous China Sea clippers, being associated with this trade for ten years. He saw many stirring times in the China Seas, the whole crew on one occasion being called upon to fight for their lives against the Chinese pirates. His tales of these stirring days would fill a volume.
The late Captain Bowling’s first command was the full-rigged ship Wyno of 400 tons. This vessel was armed like a man o’ war, and her crew had many a fierce encounter with pirates while engaged in the South Sea trade.
Subsequently he entered the service of the Shaw, Savill Company, and made his first voyage to New Zealand as an officer on one of the company’s ships in 1866. His first command under the Shaw, Savill flag was the Adamant. His second was the ship Akaroa on which one of his sons, Captain T. Bowling, who now holds the position of assistant wharf superintendent for the Union Steam Ship Company at Dunedin, was born.
The deceased remained with the Shaw, Savill Company after it was merged into the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company, and served altogether 40 years with the line. He was a master for 24 years and retired in 1906 on a life pension.
On his retirement the deceased resided in Auckland for some time. He later removed to Christchurch, and about 18 months ago came to New Zealand to reside with his son. He was a giant in his palmy days, being over 6ft in height and weighing 16 stone. The story is told that on one occasion when his ship visited Dunedin way back in the “eighties” he fought four burly seamen to a standstill on the old Dunedin wharf. He was also widely known for his genial personality and driving powers.
Captain Bowling saved several lives during his adventurous career and held the Royal Humane Society's medal awarded for rescuing a girl who fell overboard when the ship on which he was serving was in the Thames River. Young Bowling plunged to her rescue without a moment’s hesitation. He grasped the girl but they were carried nearly three miles down the river by the swift current before they were picked up. -Taranaki Daily News, 24/12/1925.
TEA-CLIPPER DAYS.
REMINISCENCES.
TOM BOWLING TAI.KS.
SAILED MOKE THAN A MILLION MILES.
(By J.C.) Captain Tom Bowling — christened Thomas, but always called Tom — who died lately in Dunedin at the age of eighty-four years, was a perfect type of the "sailor of the sail" who has all but disappeared from the deep-sea routes of the globe. Dibdin's grand old sea-song exactly described this grand old sailor. Dibdin, I have read, wrote his deathless ballad in memory of a brother whose death occurred at sea. He borrowed the name of a real Tom Bowling, and it is likely enough that it was one of Captain Bowling's forebears. The grandfather of my old friend was a master gunner who fought under Nelson at Trafalgar, and his father was a captain in the Royal Navy; a family which has given many of its sons to the deep. Several of Captain Bowling's brothers were lost at sea — the last was killed by a German shell on the bridge of his steamer in the Great War — and a son, a young sea-apprentice, was lost in a ship that went missing some years ago.
• • •
There is a whole bookful of sea reminiscences in the memories of such a man, who served all his working life under sail. For half a century Tom Bowling handled canvas, used sailneedle, navigated square-rigged craft, developed to a fine art the using of the wind as motive power. For forty years he served the Shaw, Savill Company; his last command was the ship Invercargill. He made forty-one round voyages between New Zealand and the Old Country; when we were discussing those voyages one day he made a rough calculation showing that he had sailed in this trade considerably more than a million miles.
• • •
"Ah, that old Scotchman," Bowling used to say; "he worked us boys like n......, but he made us sailormen." He was speaking of Captain Reid, the commander of the ship Wynaud, in which he served four years as an apprentice. It was the most romantic and exciting time of his life and the hardest and roughest. A whole bookful of stories Bowling told me one time and another, yarning about those tea-clippers and the most wonderful races ever seen, squarerigged races round the curve of the world.
• • •
The Wynaud was engaged in the China tea trade, a business in which the finest of the world's sailing ships were engaged, and one in which the commercial profits were great. She was small for her full ship rig, a beautiful model built of British oak, and she sailed like a yacht. "Her bow," said Bowling, "was like a chisel." This "three-piecee-bamboo clippa' ship," as the Chinese called her, had been built originally as an opium clipper, to carry cargoes from Calcutta to China. She was loftily and handsomely sparred. Her old-fashioned whole topsails were replaced while Bowling was in her with Cunningham's patent reefing topsails, which worked well once the sailors "got the hang of them," but which had a fashion of getting twisted; these were the immediate forerunners of the modern plan of upper and lower topsails. The Wynaud did not carry a big crew, twelve or thirteen men before the mast and four apprentices, and it was hard work from the time the topsails were hoisted at Hongkong, Foochow or Shanghai until the tug took hold of her off the cliffs of England.
• • •
There was a great race home with the new season's teas against the ship Assyrian. The Assyrian left her China port a day before the Wynaud, but Bowling's ship won the race — she was towed into London docks a tide ahead of her rival. There was thrilling work in "carrying on" all possible sail in that great flight through three oceans round the Cape. The two ships passed Cape Anjer in close company; there was only a day's difference between them rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and they both, passed St. Helena on the same day. Probably never in all the history of the China trade was there a closer race all the way, though, there were even closer finishes.
• • •
What piles of canvas they spread, those flying ships bf the Sixties! Bowling said the Wynaud set studding-sails right up to the royals, and many an hour he spent "up among the branches," rigging those "angel's wings" in and out. But there was a ship that outdid all the others in this kite-carrying. This was the splendid ship Caliph, the last teaclipper ever built. She set a main sky sail — studding-sail! This beautiful craft, built in 1869, made but the one China voyage and then disappeared. "I believe the pirates got her," said Bowling.
• • •
All the ships in the China trade were armed in those days for protection against pirates, and the sailor of the Fifties and Sixties had to be something of an artilleryman and musketeer. The Wynaud had six nine-pounder brass guns mounted on carriages on the main deck, and a gunner was carried, whose special care it was to keep the pieces in good order, with ammunition handy for use in the pirate seas. There were three gun ports on each side, ready to be triced up for action. The guns were always kept loaded when in China and Malay waters. Also there was a full stand of arms and boarding-pikes, and cutlasses were kept in racks round the main and inizzen masts. Gun drill was held regularly, and the Wynaud's crew, small as it was, was well equipped for a battle with the night-prowling proas of the Malay seas or the junks of the sneaky cut-throat Chinamen. The pirates were an ever present danger of the narrow seas. After working down through the China Sea with the forest-hung mountains of Borneo close on the port hand, the teaclipper would pass through the Strait of Sunda between Sumatra and Java, reporting off Anjer Point as she went through. Sometimes going further eastward, the Wynaud would sail through the narrow strait of Lombok and Baly. The Strait of Malacca, a longer and more intricate passage, was also sometimes navigated. All these waters, reef dotted, shoal infested, and the coasts of the great islands that hemmed in the shoaly seas swarmed with pirates of China and Malay breed. When the wind came ahead in restricted waters and the ship had to drop anchor to save herself from being swept back or shoreward by the strong currents, a close watch was kept for the silently stealing proas and junks. On such occasions, an armed anchor watch was set, one man with a loaded rifle on the poop, and another similarly armed on the fore-castle-head, with orders to fire the instant any craft was seen approaching. The six nine-pounders were kept loaded, and the poker was ready hot in the galley fire. Later, the primitive method of firing the guns was superseded, on the Wynaud, as Bowling remembers, by detonating quills, with percussion cap or match-head on the top; this, when struck ignited the charge of gunpowder in its calico bag. The shot used was canister and grape. Pirates in the Sixties, they are pirates still. But it is unlikely that if a Bowling were in command, we would hear of steamers being captured in the fashion reported by cable even to-day. -Auckland Star, 23/1/1926.
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