Three large snakes escaped a circus crate and wind up in the ship’s hold. Obviously, not something people want to find in the dark underbelly of the ship, but there they were.
Snakes 20 Feet Long in Hold Of Ship That Had Just Left Cuba
Skipper, Suspicious at First, but They Were Real Snakes — Dry Agents Get Scare of Their Lives
The 114 passenger of the Ward liner Orizaba, arriving today from Havana, came down the gangplank looking backward, registering nervousness, not to say regret and remorse.
The Orizaba left Havana Dec 16. Late in the evening of Dec. 17 Second Steward Charles Haggerty went down into the hold looking for something. He came up through the gangways wit his coattails fluttering behind him and reported to the Captain that the hold was full of snakes a mile long.
“We have been out of Cuba for twenty-four hours,” said the skipper. “There’s no excuse for this sort of thing.”
Chief Engineer Albert Torrison happened to be sitting with the skipper at the time and volunteered to go down and make a survey which would serve as the basis for disciplining Taggerty for making such disquieting reports. In about two minutes Torrison was back.
“Skipper,” he gasped, “it is true! The man is right! There are two of them.”
An emergency detachment of twenty men went down into the hold with marlinspikes, corkscrews and ice picks and killed two twenty-foot boa constrictors which had leaked out of a circus cargo shipped to Havana on the southbound trip of the Orizaba and had not been missed.
Yesterday noon Haggerty burst into the skipper’s office again.
“There’s another one down there,” he said.
The skipper called in the purser and had an order posted forbidding Second Steward Haggerty from going below the saloon deck on return trips. Then he sent for the chief engineer and had him recruit an assassination party, which slew the third of the escaped snakes.
The Prohibition enforcement agents who met the ship today were told this story. But they said they knew their duty. And they did it, white faced. But they didn’t find any more snakes.
Source: The Evening World (New York City, NY newspaper). December 19, 1922.
