Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1889 — AN AWFUL PLIGHT. [ARTICLE]

AN AWFUL PLIGHT.

Three Americans Abandoned on a Barren Island Without Provisions. A peculiar letter has been received at the Treasury Department at Washington from the collector of customsat Mobile, Ala., who writes that three members of the crew of the Americanschooner Anna had been left on an uninhabited guaro island called Arenas key, forty miles northwest from Sisal, to care for the property of the company. The captain brought back from the island fourteen laborers, and, being short of provisions, all that he could leave the men was a barrel of beef, four barrels of flour, and a peck of white peas and beans. In an affidavit accompanying the collector’sletter the captain says that the superintendent of the company working the island promised to send, a vessel at once to bring back the three men, but ho has not doneso, and unless assistance is at once sent to them they will perish of starvation. The island is out of the track of navigation, and, as it is utterly barren and the men were left without a boat, unless assistance is speedily sent to them they will die. The collector says he does not know what thegovernment can do in the matter, but he presents the facts to the department in the hope that some attempt will be made to save the lives of the three unfortunatemen.