Word: reefed
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sullen waters spumed in white fury along the Great Barrier Reef, steely, hidden fingers of coral dug into the bottom of the Endeavour and the hearts of every man aboard. Ordinarily, 18th century seamen panicked fast. Most of them were too superstitious to learn how to swim; they felt it would only prolong the agony of drowning. The only rule of shipwreck and death was to loot the liquor supplies and drink oneself insensible in the short time left to live...
...Juice. In Australia he made a more amusing error. Spotting a strange new hopping animal, he asked the aborigines about it, was answered with the word "Kanguroo" and never learned that the word meant "I don't 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...
...lions with sad-princess eyes go flitting through the gold and violet depths, as light as swallows in a summer sunset; while under a red reef the huge sea elephants loll and preen themselves like odalisques in a sea god's harem; one of the beauties puckers up to kiss the camera, and the theater rocks as if it had been hit (as in fact it has) by a two-ton buss...
...picture's inevitable shortcoming is simply that neither one of these two different types of movies is executed successfully. The underwater shots seem almost stolen from the routine Beneath the Twelve-Mile Reef rather than the superior Sea Around Us and only tend to slow down Jules Verne's famous thriller to a turtle--and sometimes snail--speed...
Gulf are not very different from their fossil ancestors. Each species has its preference for sand, mud or shell bottom. If scientific frogmen learn enough about the modern sea creatures, they may be able to use their forebears in the deep rocks to point where a reef or sand bar (now saturated with oil) lies hidden not far away...