Word: port
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...understand you." After the near shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef, the Endeavour was badly in need of a drydock, and Cook put in at Jakarta (then Batavia). The two-month stay salvaged the ship but wrecked the crew. Seven men died of malaria and dysentery in the fetid port, another two dozen on shipboard as the Endeavour limped her solitary way around South Africa, back to the Thames and into the history books...
...first swimmer to cross the strait, four men and three women have tried for the prize, have been defeated by the channel's fierce tides and unrelenting chop. Last week a barrel-shaped Tacoma logger named Bert Thomas, 29, slipped into the water at Port Angeles, Wash., swam through the night, and eleven hours, 17 minutes and 30 seconds later emerged cold and grinning on the Canadian shore...
Last week Thomas changed his strategy, decided to try the crossing the other way. He timed his 6:50 p.m. take-off from Port Angeles with a gentle evening ebb tide, put nearly four miles of water behind him in two hours. For once, the wind lay still and a gentle swell replaced the usual nasty chop. The water temperature was 48°. While a schooner scouted a mile ahead for friendly currents, the cruiser King Bacardi stayed with him. Once each hour, as Thomas rested, his handlers fed him orange juice through a plastic tube, gave him cigarettes...
Porpoises played off the port beam of Hurricane III on the first leg. Under the muggy mist there was no breeze, and beyond Execution Rocks the boat passed no buoys where Skipper Du Mont could check for the telltale ripples that would help him estimate the tide. Still, he had a feeling he was moving too fast; he reduced engine speed as he pulled up to the first marker. Then the breeze freshened...
...feet," the commander, Lieut. Richard Fischer, said a few hours later, "when ordnance [i.e., his aviation ordnanceman] reported a Russian plane. 'I have an aircraft! It's firing on us!' I took immediate evasive action. A hail of machine-gun bullets hit the fuselage and port wing, and injured three or four men. We had no opportunity to return fire...