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1939 A
SAW CUT
It
was evident, from the events of the past year or so that war was in the air. War on a grand scale, and here we were, on the German steamer Erlangen in a quiescent
enemy port, waiting as it seemed to be seized with the first official announcement of hostilities.
There was considerable interest and gossip from the people of this place about the movements of our ship due to the imminence of war and we sensed that a prolonged stay in this area of the world could be folly. We
were the chinese crew accompanying the German officers of this vessel
which was berthed at Port Chalmers 
,
in New Zealand. There had been much talk about the boat on the street,
and that which we could understand suggested the captain was well aware
of the situation, though here we were, tied up and about to be impounded
at any moment it would seem. We became frightened for our safety in
this place and felt the sooner we left this port the better.
On
the 26 th August, as unassumingly as possible with a ship the size of
the Erlangen, about 6000 tons, we slinked quietly out of Dunedin Harbour
and with a coil of black smoke from the furnace as the only trace in the evening sky and disappeared without any alarm
or problems out in to the vast safety of the southern ocean. Captain
Grams, we presently found out, had a problem we had not realized. The
haste in our departure meant we had insufficient coal in the bunkers
to steam to any amicable port, and this was the predicament we were
faced with.
This
news had spread through out the ship once we were well under way and
was backed by the fact that we were only steaming at half speed and
had been making such slow progress now we had the sanctuary of the open
ocean. Early
on the morning of the next day, the captain called a meeting of all
officers and crew in the mess. It was true, we did have a problem and
the captain, after clearly explaining the circumstances we now faced,
asked all of us as equals for any ideas that we may have or could offer
to the situation. We had never been asked, or
included in any such meeting before, as these were usually only for
the German officers.
To
us, it underlined the severity of the position we all now found our selves in, though none of us Chinese had any real idea of a convenient plan and added no real comment. At
the meeting, the captain told how he had briefly studied astronomy at higher school and in particular the transits
of venus. These he said occur many years apart and are always followed by serious scientists zealously. He recalled the relative success of the
German Expedition in 1874 
that travelled to the Auckland islands just south of our position, and he had even read the journals of some members of the expedition and even seen some
of the photographic plates taken on
that expedition.
These
islands were near ,
and his feeling was that we should steam as quietly as we could there and wait further developments
there via the radio as his original idea of steaming for Port Kembla in
Australia now seemed equal to staying in Dunedin, in terms of our fate.
After
some debate, much of which was in rapidly spoken German that we could
understand little of, the captain decided to attempt this game of waiting at these
southern islands, as no other ideas were forth coming from any other than himself.
These
islands were a few days distant and to the south of our position. Once we reached them we found the shelter of a wide open harbour at the north west end
of the bays at the southern end of this island. There, we found ourselves
at anchor in an arm of this large inlet. After some days of anticipation,
it was suggested that the large trees of the land could provide an answer
to our current fuel problem, for there was an abundant forest of great
trunks, thick with wood. This idea was soon adopted as our only means
of escape and we were all now put upon the task of felling and splitting the timber to fill the bunkers as fast as we were able.
Days
later, the captain had the ships engineers examine the chance of making
saws from the fittings on board. After a few days they had been able to
fabricate a type of toothed saw from the curved winch covers. With a great
deal of effort one cover had been shaped into a usable blade, with each tooth filed out separately by hand and set with a strong pair of pliers. This, rough blade, then had to hardened and a great
fire was lit on the beach, that heated the blade to red hot, at which
point it was rushed to the water and plunged in deep with a bang, and great hiss and smell of
steam.
As
this blade worked well, being much easier than the axes to cut through the trunks, the captain had the officers and engineers embarked upon the task of manufacturing
as series of saw blades from the other winch covers. Initially, it was
us Chinese that engaged the cutting, but as more blades were finished,
we all joined in the cutting and splitting. Except for the few men whose
task it was to continually sharpen and set the make sift saw blades
.
During the time of the cut, with the constant filing, these wore down at an alarming rate,
what with us continually sawing and the sharpeners filing and resetting the blades.
We
all sweated, under the strain of obtaining supplies of this hard wood .
The saw work was hard enough, as the rough fashioned handles cut blisters in our
hands, but the splitting was even worse as the twisted trunks over the
years, seemed to have wound around themselves in a way that made them impossible to tell which way the grain ran. It
was a physical task with a special jigsaw to fathom. We would joke with
the German officers that it was in the way one held their mouth and worse
than a Chinese puzzle.
The
dry twigs and branches of the dead wood on the ends of the trees, could
inflict a nasty scratch, but sore as they were, few caused bleeding. A few
days before the finish of the cutting however, I caught a particularly nasty piece of dry branch and cut my arm quite
deeply. This cut was a very sore, and required a more elaborate dressing
which I had to return to the ship for, than the simple plasters most of
the others were covered with.
Transportation
of the timber was the next difficulty. Once cut, it became quite an effort
to move the weight this fire wood, as most of it being newly felled, was wet and heavy. We were making slow progress and
it seemed it could take months to move it, until the captain decided to risk
beaching the ship to allow easier access to the winches on the boat. This
worked well, and we soon established a system where by we could manage
to cut, transport and load from 20 - 25 tons of wood a day. There was some hazard in this, as the ferocity of a storm could drive the ship high up the beach preventing our escape, or even break the Erlangen
amid ships. There was also the chance that once loaded, the ship would not refloat, or perhaps the war
would start for us and somehow we would be caught here high and dry.
As
we continued with the wood, the chief officer and the chinese quartermasters
worked at fabricating two improvised sails from the heavy tarpaulins used
to cover the deck cargo. In a rig with yard arms made up from the derricks
they managed to fix the sail in such a way that it would fill with the wind and offered the hope of some extra sail assistance
to the wood we were cutting.
The
ship had been beached with specially selected round logs under the keel and then winched up onto these rollers.
It now sat fully loaded and waiting. As with the make shift saws, we had
dispensed with much of the unnecessary fittings on the boat into the waters's of the bay. Many of these were made of iron and it not only lightened
the ship but also created more space for the wood.
On
the highest tide in that last week, it was with a great cheer, the chains
was released that held the ship and as to plan, with no problems at all, it rolled with a great splash backward into the ocean once more. It took some time to fire up enough steam to drive the
ship, and during this time we spent some energy to conceal our well worn tracks as best we could. By the time this was finished, the ship had steam up and we were under way for Chile,
safe at last.
