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| San Francisco Call, 08-June-1895 |
A SPEEDY SAILING JUNK
Among the craft of the bay merchant marine are three strangers, which, though they sail in and out among the vessels of deep and shallow water of this harbor, are strangers still. They are waifs from other seas, and the isolation and seclusiveness of foreign waters is around them. They are the junks Lund Sune, Fung Hi and Mong Lee, and are owned by the Chinese shrimpers that operate near California City. A reporter yesterday, desiring to learn something about these floating visitants from the Yellow Sea, stepped on board the Lund Sune at Second-street wharf, whose name, in Roman characters, painted upon her stern, made her the most modern of the three.
The Lund Sune looks as if her builder got tired of looking at the results of his handiwork and quit the task, leaving her uncompleted. Her ribs come up a few inches above the deck and stop, and rail, cap or anything tending to ornament the hull is religiously omitted. The planking of the deck runs athwartships with the usual contrariness of things Mongolian. The anchor hangs over the stern like the whaleback's, and in this the most modern shipbuilder has not gotten far away from his brother of ages ago. But the beautiful appliances for hoisting the single batwing-like sail and the mudhook strike hardest the enthusiastic and esthetic child of the sea. They are uncouth windlasses with four long pegs stuck at right angles through the central timber or roller, upon which the halliards are slowly wound by the crew, dragging the sail inch by inch up to the masthead. It apparently does not occur to Captain Sam, her skipper, that a few pulls on the halliards, occidental fashion, would send the light canvas flying aloft, but he must make sail as his ancestors did before Magellan steered the first "'foreign devil's" ship into the Pacific.
The rudder-post stands above the deck like a stump-jury mast, and the tiller sets horizontally forward like the arm of a gibbet. The rudder itself is a wonder. Through it are a large number of diamond shaped holes, which, when the helm is put hard over, will permit the water to flow from side* to side — the very thing, it seems to anybody but a Chinaman, that should not happen — if the vessel is to be turned to starboard or port. Captain Sam is a very intelligent man, but his explanation of the phenomenon couched in tine pigeon-English was misleading.
The Lund Sune's side planking runs beyond her stern as if the junk-carpenter intended to saw the ends of the boards off but forgot to do it. She is larger than her sisters, the Mong Lee and Fung Hi, which are built on the same elaborate Chinese lines. Captain Sam, who is a sort of admiral over the junks, says they are fast sailers, and he is ready any time to race the fast scows on the bay. He wants to know if there is to be a regatta on the Fourth of July, and will enter his flagship, the crack craft Lund Sune, for cups or coin.
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