Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 287, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1913 — SKELETONS ON SHIP [ARTICLE]

SKELETONS ON SHIP

Captain of British Vessel Reports a Weird Discovery. 111-Fated Sailing Ship Said to Have Been Sighted in a Rocky Cave in Magellan Strait —Craft Missing Twenty-three Years. London, —A weird story of the sea has been briefly cabled from New Zealand. It is the story of the finding of the sailing, ship Marlborough with 20 skeletons on board. The Marlborough, a Glasgow owned bark, belonging to Messrs. Leslie & Co., sailed from Lyttelton, New Zealand, with several passengers and a crew of 33 under the command of Capt. Hird in January, 1890. She was homeward bound by the Cape Horn route and was spoken in midocean in the southern Pacific after which no other word of her was ever heard. In April of that year she was posted as missing, and later on was given up as having been lost around the Horn, where the bones of many a good ship and many a hundred seamen lie. A government cruiser searched the rocky and tortuous coasts of Patagonia, but no trace of her was found. The Marlborough became just another of the thousand mysteries of the sea. i A day or two ago ahother British sailing ship arrived in Lyttelton with the story that she had found the Marlborough and the skeletons of 20 of her crew in one of the rocky coves near Punta Arenas (Sandy Point) in the Magellan Strait The bap tain is quoted as telling the story in the following words: “We were off the rocky coves near Punta Arenas keeping near the land for shelter. The coves are deep and silent, the sailing difficult and dangerous. “We rounded a point into a deep cleft cove. Before us a mile or more across tire water stood a sailing vessel with the barest shreds of canvas fluttering in the breeze. "We signaled and hove to. No answer came. We searched the ‘stranger’ with our glasses. Not a soul could we see, not a movement of any sort. “Masts and yards were picked out in green—the green of decay. “At last we came up. There was no sign of life on board. After an interval our first mate with a member of the crew boarded her. The sight that met their g.tze was thrilling. “Below the wheel lay the- skeleton of a man. Treading warily on the rotten deck, which cracked and broke in places as they walked, they encountered three skeletons in the hatchway. “In the messroom were the remains of ten bodies, and six were found, on# alone, pofisibly that of the captain, on the bridge. “There was an uncanny stillness around and a. dank smell of mold which made the flesh creep. A few remnants of books were discovered the captain’s cabin and a rusty cutlass. "Nothing more weird In the history of the sea can ever have been seen. The first mate examined the still faint letters on the bows and after much trouble read. ‘Martborough, Glasgow.’ ” Punta Arenas is a pretty large place as South American towns go. It has a population of several thousands, and. of course, the Magellan Strait is a great highway traversed by hundreds of ships yearly, wljich take this way to avoid doubling the Horn with Its furious gales. The whole of the Magellan Strait, from Cape Vlrgus to Cape Pillar, is familiar to thousands of seamen and Indented and rockbound though It Is it seems Incredible that a ship coufd lie concealed for nearly a quarter of a

century in that part "near” a place like Punta Arenas. Had the discovery been made among the desolate and multitudinous isles of the Cockburn channel or down about Cook bay or False Cape Horn —perhaps the wildest coasts in the world —it would have been more credible. Indeed, shortly after the ship was lost there was a report that the crew of a passing ship saw seamen signaling from an island down that way which is 300 or 400 miles from Punta Arenas.