The Osage County Chronicle
Burlingame, KS
Thursday, October 18, 1917
Page 1, Column 5
DEATH CLOSES THE CAREER OF HUGH JONES WHOSE EARLY LIFE WAS FULL OF ADVENTURE.
Hugh Jones, better known as “Sailor” Jones, passed away about 9 o’clock yesterday morning at his home on the eastern outskirts of town after long years of suffering from a chronic trouble following injuries received early in life. The funeral will occur tomorrow (Friday) afternoon at 2 o’clock, from the Methodist Church, of which he was a member, Rev. W. J. Marshall officiating.
Only on August 9 last the Chronicle published a two column sketch of Mr. Jones, who has had a life full of adventure on land and sea, suffering shipwreck, enduring the hardships of the gold hunter and the dangers of the diamond fields of Africa and that story is too fresh in the minds of our readers to require repetition. Mr. Jones was born Nov. 9, 1848, at Garne, Wales, and at nine years of age, apprenticed as a cabin boy on a sailing vessel, began the life of adventure of which we wrote.
Thrice married, he is survived by one daughter, in England, by his first wife and two by his second wife—Mrs. Lena Carnine of Emporia and Miss Jane Jones at home. His last wife also survives him. For 33 years he has lived about Auburn and in this city, and his death will be mourned by scores of friends.
The Osage County Chronicle
Burlingame, KS
Thursday, August 9, 1917
Page 1, Columns 1 & 2
“SAILOR” JONES’ LIFE STORY
MUCH TRAVELED BURLINGAME MAN WHOSE ADVENTURES ON SEA AND LAND MAKE A TALE THAT READS LIKE ROMANCE.
Most men who have traveled at all have met with some experience or adventure out of the ordinary—something that they recall in later life with a thrill that never ceases to lose its poignancy and never grows old by the repetition of its telling. Yet it is given to but few out of the millions who people the earth to have had a wider, more varied or more exciting experience in “knocking about the world” than one of Burlingame’s citizens who now, while not yet an old man as we are given to counting years, is a hopeless invalid by reason of infirmities that follow the hardships endured while he followed a seafaring life with all its dangers.
The Chronicle refers to Hugh Jones, who resides just east of town and is best known and oftenest referred as to “Sailor” Jones by those who have known him during the 33 years he has lived about Auburn and in this city. Born November 9, 1848, and left an orphan at his birthplace at Garne, Wales, in the care of an aunt who was not situated to care for him, he was at the age of nine years apprenticed to the captain of a sailing vessel as cabin boy and during the many years that he followed the sea, as cabin boy, cook and seaman, he made, in addition to numerous trips between ports, three trips around the world, visiting practically every port of consequence on “the seven seas.” And some of them were long, hard, dangerous, nerve racking voyages, fraught with peril and filled with days of storm and terror, with death ever lurking near.A few days ago the Chronicle man, who had at one time referred in a brief item to the adventures of Mr. Jones, made a visit to him just to be neighborly and for two long hours, tho suffering excruciating pain from a disease of the nerves that has made him almost helpless, the old sailor talked of his adventures on land, as well as on the sea. Many, many years ago, when he was yet a young man, he was in the storm on the Bay of Biscay in which the English ship London foundered with all on board except two sailors who succeeded in launching a dinghy and were finally picked up by another ship. Within speaking distance of the London several times during the storm in which she was lost, the smaller ship on which Mr. Jones was a sailor was unable to extend succor, having all she could do to keep herself afloat. An incident in the loss of the London that has become history is the story of a wealthy woman passenger who offered a thousand guineas to the two sailors in the dinghy to take her with them was given the chance, and then deciding to save her money and believing the vessel would safely ride the storm, went down with it.
Beset in his years of sailoring by many storms, Mr. Jones but once experienced real shipwreck and this was on Christmas day in 1871 when rounding Cape Horn. With 13 other sailors who escaped in one of the ship’s boats they spent three terrible days at sea, wet, cold and without food or water, buffeted about by the waves and not daring to sleep or rest. Picked up at last by a passing ship they were taken to Valparaiso where, after weeks in the hospital, Mr. Jones was once more able to ship. But it was the hardships of that experience which in these later years has developed the disease of the nerves that has practically robbed him of the use of his right arm and both lower limbs and made his life an almost unbroken chapter of pain which he endures with a stoicism that is remarkable.
The dry weather and need of rain recalled to Mr. Jones the greatest rainfall he had ever witnessed. His ship crossed the equator the same day as the sun and it was the occasion of one of those tropical deluges to be seen nowhere else. The rain did not fall in drops, nor come in sheets, but came by the tubful, an almost unbroken downpour that threatened to engulf the ship. “Such a rain as that,” said Mr. Jones, “would stop the complaint of drouth, just now.”
In addition to his experiences at sea Mr. Jones has had some on land—in the diamond fields of Africa; in the Black Hills of the United States as a gold seeker; in Old Mexico where, as he said, he painted every section house on the Sonora railroad when that line was built; in China, Japan, India, Australia and on the African gold coast; in South America where during the war between Chile and Peru he was on a merchantman.
With no opportunity as a boy to secure an education and dependent wholly on the “School of Hard Knocks” for such knowledge as he possesses, Mr. Jones yet is an interesting talker and reads three languages readily. In spite of a busy life he found time to listen to the “home” call and has thrice married, two daughters being born to the first and second union. One daughter by his first wife still lives, residing at Manchester, England, and he has two grandsons in the British army at present. The daughters born to his second wife are both living—one, Mrs. Lena Carnine, at Emporia who was a teacher of more than ordinary ability, and the other, Jane, who devotes the major portion of her time to the care of the invalid.
Tears often filled the eyes of the old sailor as memory recalled some incident or some face now gone or as he would show some of the curios brought from far distant lands. Odd shells from the Gulf of Eden, a bottle filled with 28 different colored layers of guano from one barrow load by a Bolivian Indian, and other curios are among the treasures which form the link that holds present days with those of the past. It was in 1884, after long years of wandering, that “Sailor” Jones became a real landsman and took up farming near Auburn and it was some 28 years later that he became a resident here. And now, quite helpless, he lives largely in the memories of the days that are gone and to hear him tell of them is as good as reading one of Jack London’s tales of adventure.
