Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 264, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1912 — TELLS OF HORRORS [ARTICLE]

TELLS OF HORRORS

Terrible Experience of Wrecked Party Is Revealed. Woman and Child in Open Boat With Crew in Ice Off Cape Horn —Seventeen Men Lose Their Lives in the Disaster. London. —The terrible experience of a party of shipwrecked sailors who spent a week in an open boat in the icy neighborhood of Cape Horn are described in a letter which has just been received from Port Stanley, Falkland islands. The men were accompanied by the captain’s wife and child, and no fewer than six of the original occupants of the boat succumbed to cold and exposure before the exhausted survivors reached the Falkland Islands. At the same time comes the news that Captain Thomas, his wife and child and three sailors reached Liverpool on the Pacific liner Orepesa. During a storm which broke suddenly the large sailing ship Criccieth Castle, belonging to Carnarvon, met with disaster off Cape Horn. The rudder post gave way and the rudder damaged the sternpoat so much that the vessel was filling with water. The captain, Robert Thomas, his wife and son (aged four years), the second officer and 13 of the crew left the ship in the large lifeboat, while the first and third officers and five of the crew left in a smaller boat. The experience of the former party during the first night in the open boat was terrible, the captain describing it as the worst he had known during the 22 years of his seafaring life. That night, the captain thinks, the second boat must have been swamped, as nothing was seen of it afterward. Captain Thomas was washed out of the lifeboat, but was saved by his wife, who caught him by his clothing, enabling two of the men to pull him aboard. Three of the men died during the night and they were followed by three others before the survivors reached land, seven days later. Those who know any thing of the icy region around Cape Horn in winter can imagine the sufferings of the unfortunate people who were for seven days in an open boat, which, moreover, was leaking badly as the result of striking the ship’B side while It was being lowered. On the second day a Finn, a French cook and a Japanese died; on the third day a German and an Englishman died, and on the morning of the fourth day those who remained were horrified to find that during the night Another man, a Welshman, had died. By the fourth day nearly all who remained were frostbitten. All suffered agonies. Then the water supply gave out So exhausted were they that no one seemed to care what happened to him. All hope of rescue seemed to vanish, but on the seventh day an outlying island In the Falklaads was sighted. Fire was lighted as soon as they landed and the survivors were able to enjoy a drink of melted snow. But the relief afforded by the islet was only short lived, and the’ party put out to sea again in the hope of finding an inhabited island. This quest was attended by misfortunes, and the boat was blown out to sea and beyond sight of land. Ultimately Port Stanley was reached. Altogether 17 men perished. , ®* 0 .