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disloyal Finns, and dejected 46th Battalion Royal Fusiliers, Russians, without concerning the vanguard of the North themselves with so much of a "side show" as Salvage.

Moreover, ships do not, as a rule, choose the most accessible places to go ashore, even on the British coasts. But on the British coasts it is only a question of a few miles from the nearest town in a car, or a few miles from the nearest port in a tug-boat.

In Russia distances are measured by days. That the information in the file was not exhaustive was therefore disappointing but not surprising, and we soon came to the conclusion that the best course was to go and see on the spot what salvage work there was to be done.

The Admiralty and the Ministry of Shipping were ready to encourage British enterprise, for they had & natural disinclination to dispose of what might still be valuable property for a few thousand pounds to Russians who were, so far, the only prospective buyers, and would not discuss salvage except on the basis that all their expenses should be paid, whatever the results. It was therefore with every kind of official pass, and with the official list of wreeks in my pocket (on which the Ulidia was marked with blue pencil

of the "possibles"), that I left Tilbury on May 31st, 1919, in the Prætorian, which, in addition to Cæsar and his prospective fortunes, carried General Sadleir-Jackson and his brigade staff, and the

Russian Relief Force, whose adventures readers of 'Maga' have followed during the past few months.

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At Murmansk-a village of wooden huts built in mud and inhabited by mosquitoes .I met a representative from the Admiralty Salvage Section, together with a Russian salvage expert, Captain G., with thirty years' experience in the Baltio. After an evening's discussion, we came to the conclusion that the the Ulidia was the first ship to inspect.

The next evening (June 14th), we took the train from Murmansk for Soroka, vid Kandalaksha and Kem.

The railway had only recently been finished, and, but for the war, it is doubtful whether it would ever have been finished at all, in view of the appalling death-rate from fever of the labourers employed upon its construction. Chinese bad been tried, but these died faster even than the native Russians; and it was not until practically unlimited supplies of German and Austrian prisoners were available, who, as they died, could be buried alongside, or incorporated in, the permanent way, that any real progress was made.

It was six months since the armistice, but some of the survivors of these prisoners were still about; whether because they had no means of returning home, or from comprehensible preference for Murmansk, I did not discover.

One large and typical Boche was cook to a lance-corporal and three o.r. (M.F.P.) who lived on the quay, and appeared to be both a good cook and a popular member of the mess. The function of the lancecorporal and his command was to prevent the looting of cargoes of ships in the port, or the sale of them by the crews to the local Russian. As one instance of which I heard was the disappearance of the entire cargo (general) of a 5000 ton steamer in about a fortnight, their job can have been no sinecure.

For two days we travelled through scenery like that of Canada-pine forests with broad rivers tumbling headlong through them, over very temporary wooden bridges and a track which, having been built largely on mud previously frozen and now thawing, was none too secure, and reached Soroka on the third day.

In this I gathered, from a snatch of conversation overheard, we were lucky.

Young Bill, just out, was complaining of the length of the journey and the tediousness of trains.

"Three days," said old Bill, who had apparently settled down in Russia as he had settled down previously in Flanders, and spoke the language with the same facility "Three days, that's dobra, that is. Why, we took ten when we come down. The Russki engine-driver went off home and got married half way, and never came back for a week,"

In this he was more true to type than another Russki, whose history I heard from a corporal in the Royal Sussex, thrice wounded,-in France, Gallipoli, and Palestine,-who ran the canteen car up and down between Murmansk and the front line near Onega, and was very friendly because he lived in Fulham, while I live in Chelsea.

"We had a Russki oarpenter once," he said, "when we were cutting down trees behind the line for roads, and nothing we could do would make him work. He didn't seem to have any heart for it. Then some one suggested dressing him up in khaki and putting three stripes on him. It had an effect like magic. After that we couldn't stop him. He would go on for sixteen and more hours on end, and I don't know how many trees he wouldn't out down. In fact," he concluded unemotionally, "we had to kill him when we come away-to save the forest."

Soroka is a little fishing village dating back to the twelfth century-a place of banishment in the days of the old régime for those suspects who were not considered dangerous enough for Siberia.

It is built on either side of a shallow rocky river. On the opposite side from the railway station is the sawmillPeter Belaieff's-which, with Stewart's on the far side of the bay, provided the main industry of the place, and, incidentally, the reason of the Ulidia's presence there.

The two portions of the

town were connected by a ferry service of canoes managed and propelled by the local flappers, who must, like many of their kind at home, have hoped that a war which brought their average earnings up to about eighty roubles (£1) a day would continue for ever.

They conducted across odd British, French, Americans, Italians, and Serbians, with good humour, but without curiosity, and no over-payment, however large, could extort from them any expression of gratitude or even surprise.

I shall always remember my first sight of the Ulidia. She was lying about four miles from the shore, and normally little more than her masts and funnels would have been visible from the beach. But when the sun shone, as it did on the day we arrived in Soroka, by some curious effect of mirage she appeared to be floating in air, every detail of her distinet, just above the surface of the sea.

From the sawmill we chartered a tug and went out to her. The channel into Soroka would only allow of small tugs going up it, and then not at dead low water. Big ships had to load their timber from lighters a couple of miles out in the bay. Later I grew to know this channel, and I am one of what is, I suppose, a limited number of people who could find their way successfully up and down it. Whether this accomplishment is likely again to prove of value to

me I do not know. I trust not.

The channel was marked, with a charming rustic simplicity, with the branches of trees stuck in the sand. Trees with a certain variety of leaf had to be left on the port hand, those with another species on the starboard-so that, as an aggrieved naval officer remarked to me after he had piled up a picket-boat through disregarding these marks and trying to come in by the chart at full speed, "You've got to be a botanist as well as a navigator in this place."

The branches were, of course, carried away by the ice every winter and replaced by the oldest inhabitant every spring, as nearly as possible in the same place.

It surprised me when our tug bumped continually over banks and shoal all the way down the channel, but it caused Belaieff's manager no concern; and I learned later that these bumps were a part of the daily routine, which explained another local custom, that of ordering spare propellers for the tug-boats by the dozen.

There can be nothing, I think, so pathetic, or which so gives the effect of loneliness, desolation, and decay, as & wrecked and deserted ship. It is the most melancholy sight in the world, more melancholy than overgrown gardens or uninhabited cities.

We came alongside the Ulidia and climbed up a boatfall. Our footsteps sounded

hollow on her iron decks, on which the rust was thick. The hatches were gone, and, looking down the holds, one could see the ice, which had disappeared from the sea outside, still floating in the dark body of the ship in huge lumps which the sun could not reach to melt. The engine-room and stokehold were more gloomy still, as one peered down through the gratings and saw the level of the water showing black and oily among the rusting masses of machinery. There was no trace of life aboard, save the mosquitoes rising in clouds from the piles of old rope. There had been a watchman the first winter, but the darkness and the ice grinding against the sides of the ship, and the water moving about in her empty holds, had been too much even for Russian nerves, and he had left.

Everything portable, down to the brass handles of the cabin doors, had been stolen by the natives who had come across the ice in the winter from Soroka.

None the less, in the rake of the masts and funnels there was something of life, and she looked too good a ship to be left there until the ice and the gales should destroy her. Then again I felt (or perhaps I only feel now that I felt) a premonition that our hopes and interests were to be bound up with hers.

More important, however, than premonitions was the fact that, in spite of the pounding she must have received on the

patch of, fortunately, flat rook on which she had lain for over two years, there was no sign of her having broken her back. Stanchions in the holds were, it is true, set up, and there was a perceptible upward bulge in the deck; but a very small strain down below is sufficient to show considerable indications above, and, had the ship been broken or very seriously strained, there would have been much more evidence of it. Moreover, though every compartment in the ship had water in it, observations showed that they were not all equally damaged, and that some at least of the bulkheads must be intact.

The total rise and fall of tide in the White Sea is only about six feet.

In the two after-holds, Nos. 3 and 4, the water only rose and fell eight inches, while it rose and fell six feet outside. This clearly showed that the leak in these compartments was trifling, and that the greater part of the water here was probably rainwater accumulated through the hatches being off. The fore-peak was dry.

In No. 1 the water rose and fell about two feet, while in No. 2 and the engine-room and stockhold it rose and fell equally with the tide. position was therefore clear enough, even before the diver's examination.

The

In the ordinary way this would have been a simple case, since the ship would easily have floated with the forepeak, Nos. 1, 3, and 4 holds.

empty, even though there was water in No. 2 and the engineroom and stockhold.

The problem here, however, was not how to give the ship sufficient buoyancy to float, but how to make her light enough to float off the rock. She had been half-loaded when she went ashore, but as the cargo was discharged she had worked farther and farther up on to the rock until it was as if she had gone ashore empty, that is, at her minimum draft, whereas she was now partially loaded with water.

Had there been a big rise and fall of tide it would only have been necessary to make tight and pump out Nos. 1, 3, and 4, where the damage was obviously slight; but with a rise and fall of only six feet it was evident that the engine-room, stokehold, and No. 2 must be emptied also to give the necessary flotation. From the way in which the water rose and fell in these compartments with the tide, it was clear that there was very serious damage (local rumour said that there was a rook through the bottom of the engine-room), and this must somehow be dealt with.

Fine weather could only be expected until the end of August or middle of September. We had therefore very little time, for already it was June 19th.

It was a time for quick decision; but I often wonder whether, had I been able to foresee the hazards and anxiety of the next few months, I should have decided as I

did, that we would make the attempt to salve the ship. Another decision had to be made at the same timewhether I should cable to England for our salvage steamer, which was ready to sail with motor- and steampumps, pneumatic tools, oxyacetylene plant, air compressors, and all the rest of the gear necessary for salvage work, and a picked crew; or whether I should listen to the old salvage expert from the Baltic, charter a ship locally, collect pumps, diving gear, &c., and men in Archangel, and do the work with local resources.

This was not so wild an idea as it may seem, for I knew that in Archangel were a number of divers, engineers, &o., who had fled from the Baltic, and had had long experience with Captain G. before the war, and were really good workmen, as the Baltic salvage workers are known to be.

It would be at least a fortnight before our own ship could arrive, and then there was not enough water for her to come close to the wreck. Also, she could not carry as many men as it was obvious we should require, and I knew that the experiment of trying to make English and Russians work alongside each other would be foredoomed to failure. Moreover, there was to be taken into account the dead loss on wages, provisions, and, above all, bunkers, on the voyage to and from England.

I therefore made up my mind to employ Captain G. and local labour. Though I

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