Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1913 — Rats Keep Stowaway Warm; Potatoes Sole Diet [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Rats Keep Stowaway Warm; Potatoes Sole Diet

BALTIMORE. MD—Bringing a man who escaped decorating the locker of Davy Jones because Capt. Knudson wanted potatoes for his breakfast one morning, the steamer Maine has arrived here. The man was Edward Benson and the tale of his sufferings is a wondrous one. “I was working at Sparrow’s Point Steel works three months ago.” said Benson, “when I decided I would like to see Europe. I shipped on a cattle boat with a few dollars in my jeans. Two weeks ago I was in Liverpool, broke, when I spied a boat Baltimore bound. I asks a stevedore to smuggle me aboard. He says there’s nothing doing. t “I sees the ship is loaded with Irish 'spuds’ and I figures the hatchway would be opened often for potatoes for the crew’s meals. I jumps in the forward hatch and lays low. “But that there captain, he must a got his potatoes from somewhere else for I stayed in that hatch four days and no one came near. It was freezing and I had nothing to eat I gnawed potatoes raw and they made my mouth jgore. I licked the moisture from the

sides of the ship, but the paint feased me. The cold was awful. I remember laying awake at nights when the rats would crawl about me. I hated the things at first, but I came to like their company. They was company, I can’t deny. At night they crawled over me and I kept them warm and they kept me warm. It seemed like I done this a minion nights until I lost all count.” One morning the Chinese cook of the vessel opened the hatch when a crazed man leaped QUt and jumped for the sea. The cook and two seamen caught him and three others helped subdue him. The best efforts of the ship doctor, who is also captain, had him in almost shipshape style when the ship reached port.