Wake's Anchor

Ever since Pan American Airways established tiny Wake Island as the third stop to & from China, the airport's chief ornamental feature has been an old anchor. Corroded by decades of salt water, its flukes almost rusted away, the ancient piece of iron rises seven feet above a rough concrete base in the centre of "The Park" between the landing stage and hotel. But until last week nobody was able to tell passengers much about Wake's old anchor.

Last week, P.A.A. announced that Section Superintendent George Waldo Bicknell, book-browsing in Honolulu, had solved the mystery of Wake's anchor and uncovered a sea story as epic as the voyage of Captain Bligh of the Bounty. As builder and first airport manager at Wake, Colonel Bicknell discovered the anchor imbedded upright in the coral reef mile-and-a-half down the beach, moved it to its present position. A partially obliterated date and three letters at the tail end of a word were its only markings. When he was transferred to Honolulu he continued his quest, by chance finding the answer in the blurred, weather-stained pages of a magazine published almost three-quarters of a century ago.

In 1865 the German sailing bark Libelle (Dragon Fly), laden with trade goods and gold, unwarped from Bremen for a year-long westbound voyage to the Orient. Of the 31 souls aboard, five were passengers, among them Charles Lascelles and Madam Anna Bishop, English concert singers of the day. By midwinter Captain Tobias was beating his way around Cape Horn. In January 1866 his anchor dropped in Honolulu's Pearl Harbor. The following months, refurbished and provisioned, the Libelle splashed out of Honolulu with the evening tide, sailed westward into the flaming Hawaiian sunset on the last lap of her 19,000-mile journey to Hong Kong. She was never seen again.

Two weeks out the favorable breeze freshened to a furious gale that threw the little bark high ashore on "an uninhabited and dangerous reef known as Wake Island." Before the storm pounded her to pieces, passengers and crew, thankful to be alive, recovered bit by bit stores and cargo--burying the latter deep in the coral sand. But their thankfulness turned to horror as the most intensive search produced no fresh water. Deciding to leave this dread, lonesome spot, they labored for three weeks to repair & supply longboat and gig salvaged from the wreck. Twenty-two set out in the 22-ft. boat; eight went with Captain Tobias in his even smaller gig. Overcrowded from the start there was scant room for the severely rationed water and food. To the south lay cannibals of the Marshall group of islands; westward 1,500 miles was Guam. They sailed west again.

Before they were out of sight of Wake Island, rolling seas separated the two boats, and neither Captain Tobias--who had previously lost two ships--nor his men were ever found. The longboat with its spindly mast and tattered sail struggled on. The concert singers cheered the company with song. Eighteen days from Wake Island, the forlorn, pitiable band, too weak to row or bail, burned black by sun, grounded their boat at Guam. Only account of this extraordinary voyage seems to have been published in the magazine, The Friend, which Colonel Bicknell ran across.

Last week Colonel Bicknell's researches were expected to give Pan American's passengers something else to do during their afternoon at Wake beside swim and spear fish. Somewhere among the bones of the Libelle that lie under Wake's waters or deep in the sand of her beaches lies the "fortune" unlucky Captain Tobias brought from Bremen.

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