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[[Newspaper Article attached to page]]

Detectives Given The Works as Ship Crosses Equator

Mysterious Pair Led Handcuffed Before Neptune on the Uruguay

Bearing gifts for South American zoos, Dr. William M. Mann, director of the National Zoological Park, is en route to points in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay to collect birds, reptiles and animals.  Among those on board his ship is William H. Shippen, jr., feature writer of The Star staff, who here presents the seventh of a series of articles about Dr. Mann's expedition.

^[[ May 2]]

By WILLIAM H. SHIPPEN, Jr.
Star Staff Correspondent.
[[image - photograph of boat with visual warp captioned "HITTING THE EQUATOR"--By a little trick photography, how it feels for a ship to cross the equator is shown here.]]

ABOARD THE S.S. URUGUAY.  -- All day we have been skirting the east coast of South America while King Neptune dunked his neophytes in the ship's pool.

His majesty of the long, flowing beard and trident commanded a score nimble assistants who began the initiation with a bridge and a bridegroom and worked up to a pair of mysterious, well-dressed, cigar-smoking detectives.

The latter passengers are on some rather grim business of their own.  But on the southward journey they can and do relax.  Oddly enough they're both Irish and tops at deck sports and horse play.  Thus they have become popular and well known.


When they were led blindfolded and handcuffed before the throne of Neptune a great shout went up: "Here come the cops!  Give 'em the works, your majesty! So they won't talk?"

Plastered With Spaghetti

To say the detectives got a thorough going over would be putting it mildly.  It was no fault of Neptune or his assistants if the policemen failed to notice the bump going over the Equator.  (See picture above.)  The blindfolded victims got an egg shampoo and ice in their bathing suits.  They were plastered with a hundred yards or so of spaghetti and seasoned with ketchup and various sauces.

Little is visible on the flat, low coast of South America -- now a purple rim on the horizon some 20 miles off the starboard side.  With binoculars one picks out an occasional exotic-looking palm and pillars of smoke in an otherwise flawless sky.  The smoke must rise from swamp fires -- like those in Dismal Swamp, near Norfolk.

The ship is continually passing strange little fishing vessels with sails of fantastic shapes.  They bob about on an ocean which seems too immense for them.

This is Monday, five days out of from Rio.  Even the ship's officers are surprised at the distances in this part of the world.  These big boats, the Uruguay, the Argentina and Brazil, have been in regular service down this way only a few months.  All the ship's officers are studying Spanish and Portuguese.

The Tables Are Turned.

It's amusing to see big, sunburned men accustomed to bawling orders now having to take them from a tiny Spanish school teacher.  The officers come sidling in when they're tardy, and they don't talk back to the teacher.

"Senor," said the little teacher to one of the navigating officers, "tell me in Spanish what fruits you like."

"Only apples," declared the officer in pretty good Spanish," and then added in English, "You can believe it or not, but I never touch any fruit but apples."

"All right then," snapped the little Spaniard, "Please inform me in Spanish what fruits you don't like!"

The officer went to the foot of the class.

This crew of 330 members is fed well.  In the crew's galley forward (from which I carry water for Dr. Mann's thirsty animals) are prepared such dishes as roast lamb, goose and chicken, done to a turn by Charley, a huge German, the chief cook.  Charley, who is now closer to 50, has been sailing various oceans since he was 16.

He dishes out food in a striking contrast to that I saw aboard the Silver Ash, a British freighter in which Dr. Mann brought back animals for the Smithsonian-National Geographic Society expedition in the fall of 1937.  I went to meet the Silver Ash in Halifax.  The freighter had pick up a gang of Chinese coolies in Shanghai, shortly before the Japanese began to bomb that city.

The members of the crew worked for something like six cents a day.  Out of that sum they bought their own food -- a community pot of rice.  In the forecastle they squatted about their bowl of rice and curry on the floor, using chop sticks.

In port at Halifax, Boston and New York an officer, with a gun tucked in his pocket, stood guard over the gangway.  The owners of the freighter would have been been liable to a fine of $1,000 had they lost a Chinese at any of these stops.  All of which might present a rough idea of what it means for American ships to compete on the oceans.

Tomorrow: A 10,000-mile fishing trip.