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loaded into barges succeeded only in putting her in a worse position, since those responsible omitted to lay out anchors to prevent her driving further up on the rocks as she was lightened.

The Russian iee-breaker service from Archangel then took a hand, and, doubtless with the best intentions, made fast two powerful ice-breakers to the stern-post and endeavoured to tow off the vessel, now damaged and partly filled with

water.

Beyond carrying away the stern-post and rudder they achieved nothing, and returned to Archangel. This was the extent of the salvage operations, and there the ship still lay. Two winters in the ice, with the water rising and falling with the tide in the engine - room and stokehold and all four holds, two years' exposure to the winter gales in the White Sea, two years' straining and pounding upon the rocks, to say nothing of a passing Bolshevik occupation of Soroka, could hardly be expected to have improved her condition.

Yet, from the first time I read her name, I felt a premonitory interest her,

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though I did not realise that for the next six months she was to be a constant preoccupation, an obsession, and often a nightmare to me.

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For one thing, various Russians in Archangel, whose names were afterwards miliar enough, but then were only a jumble of consonants at the end of a telegram,

seemed very anxious to buy her as she lay-though, with remarkable unanimity, the prices they offered never rose above about eight thousand pounds.

At the time I knew nothing of Russians - an ignorance which I was not long to enjoy; but it needed no great discernment to see that any one prepared to pay eight thousand pounds for a ship in such a position and such a place must have some reasonable hope of refloating her, and if she could be refloated, her value, at current prices, was nearer to eighty thousand pounds than eight.

The Admiralty Salvage Seotion had themselves done the majority of the possible salvage cases in home waters during the war; but North Russia had necessarily been beyond their beat, although casualties on those unfriendly and often unlighted and badly charted coasts were only too frequent, even before the German submarines came round the North Cape into the Arctio Ocean and thence down to the White Sea. Information as to the actual position and condition of ships wrecked up there was difficult to obtain ; for cables were delayed and mutilated, while the Naval and Transport Staffs at Archangel and Murmansk were sufficiently occupied during 1918-when Admiral Kemp and General Ironside Ironside were holding on to hundreds of miles of the most desolate country in the world with a few hundred "category" men

Marines, Serbians, Frenoh,

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 a 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 wrecks in my pocket (on which the Ulidia was marked with blue pencil

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

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 Baltic. After an evening's discussion, we came to the conclusion that 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 had been tried, but these died faster even than the native Russians; and it was until practically unlimited supplies of German and Austrian prisoners were available, who, as they died, could be buried alongside, or incorporated in, the in, the permanent way, that any real progrees was made.

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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 oook 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 orews 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.

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In this he was more true to type than another another Russki, whose history I heard from a corporal in the Royal Sussex, thrice wounded,-in France, Gallipoli, and Palestine,-whe 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 carpenter 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 cut 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

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town were connected by a me I do not know. I trust 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.

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They conducted across odd British, French, Americans, Italians, and Serbians, with good humour, but without euriosity, and no over-pay ment, 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 distinct, 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

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 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 pro. pellers for the tug-boats by the dozen.

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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 melanoholy 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 oabin 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. The position was therefore clear enough, even before the diver's examination.

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

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