Cattle Crossing

 More Flotsam

   The news is generally bad here and one can't avoid it even in the antipodes. I am referring to the recent story about a large ship sailing from New Zealand to China which capsized in the East China Sea off the coast of Japan. I mention it only because of the magnitude of the disaster and because I happened to have read about a similar one that happened over 100 years ago. If you are an animal lover or vegetarian, you might want to wait for my next post. 

The Recent Maritime Disaster

   A container ship experienced an engine failure during a typhoon and sank. It was an Exxon Valdez-type disaster, but almost 6,000 live cattle were lost, rather than millions of gallons of crude oil. Of course, one assumes there was also a fair amount of manure on board. I have generally assumed that when we eat meat from far away, it was shipped as steaks and chops, not as live cows or lambs. Apparently, however, the shipment of live cattle is quite common so that they can be fattened upon arrival and butchered appropriately in observance of religious rules.

The Older One

   The ship involved in this incident left the port of Baltimore bound for England in the early 1900s. One of those employed on the ship was W.H.Davies, the author of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, where the following description is found. I will spare you the details involved when loading seven hundred and fifty cattle and begin with a brief sample of what it was like once on board and what happened to the 2000 other 'passengers':

What soon breaks the spirit of these wild animals is the continual motion of the vessel. There is always plenty of trouble at first, when they slip forward and backward, but in a few days they get their sea-legs, and sway their bodies easily to the ship's motion. The wild terror leaves their eyes, and, when they can no more smell their native land, they cease bellowing, and settle calmly down. This restlessness breaks out afresh when nearing shore on the other side, and again they bellow loud and often, long before the mariner on the look-out has sighted land.

We also had on this trip two thousand head of sheep, quartered on the hurricane deck. When we were six days out there came a heavy storm, and the starboard side was made clean, as far as pens and sheep were concerned, one wave bearing them all away. This happened at night, and on the following morning the sheep men were elated at having less work to do during the remainder of the voyage. 

   It is difficult to avoid bad news even when one leaves behind current events and retreats to the past.

The Bonus Material

   Although I have not searched through this blog, I am sure the content may not be as 'diverse' as it should now be. For that reason, I will mention some additional material found in The Autobiography... which will be of interest to some of my readers who identify with the LGBTQ segment of the population. If I had any readers at all, I assume this would be a sizeable segment. 

   The description I provided above is found in Chapter X: "The Cattleman's Office". What follows is from the following chapter, "A Strange Cattleman" which begins this way:

Some days before this, a man came to the office, whose peculiar behaviour often drew my attention to him. He asked to be allowed to work his passage to England, and the skipper promised him the first opportunity, and a sum of ten shillings on landing there. This was the reason why some of us had to wait so long, because, having made trips before, more or less, we required payment for our experience. The man referred to above, had a white clean complexion, and his face seemed never to have had use for a razor. Although small of body, and not seeming capable of much manual labour, his vitality of spirits seemed overflowing every minute of the day. He swaggered more than any man present, and was continually smoking cigarettes—which he deftly rolled with his own delicate fingers. In the intervals between smoking he chewed, squirting the juice in defiance of all laws of cleanliness. It was not unusual for him to sing a song, and his voice was of surprising sweetness; not of great power, but the softest voice I have ever heard from a man, although his aim seemed to make it appear rough and loud, as though ashamed of its sweetness. It often occurred to me that this man was playing a part, and that all this cigarette smoking, chewing tobacco and swaggering, was a mere sham; an affectation for a purpose. I could not, after much watching, comprehend. He was free of speech, was always ridiculing others, and swore like a trooper, yet no man seemed inclined to take advantage of him.

   If you are interested and want to learn more about the "Strange Cattleman" you can read The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, for free on Project Gutenberg. 

Sources: 

   The recent disaster happened in early September, 2020 and many articles can be found. See, for example: "Cattle ship Capsize: Role of Live Export Trade Under Intense Scrutiny," Natalie Akoorie, New Zealand Herald,  Sept. 5, 2020:

A Government review into the live export trade will not be released before the election despite calls for it after the capsizing of a ship carrying thousands of cows and two New Zealanders, during a typhoon.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she would not pre-empt the outcome of that review or be drawn on whether the trade should be banned.

It comes three days after the Gulf Livestock 1, a container ship carrying 5867 New Zealand cows and 43 crew, is believed to have sank in the East China Sea near Japan after its engine failed during a typhoon.

   I learned, unfortunately, that there have been other recent examples. See:

"4,400 Dead Cows Are Decomposing in a Sunken Ship in a Brazilian River," Thiago Medaglia, Mother Jones, Oct. 28, 2015:
Shipping live cattle is a relatively common practice in Brazil—last year, according to the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, it exported 646,700 live cattle with a total value of $675 million.