Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1902 — TREASURE SHIP FROM ALASKA DRIFTING HELPLESSLY IN SEA OF ICE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TREASURE SHIP FROM ALASKA DRIFTING HELPLESSLY IN SEA OF ICE.

The old treasure ship Portland of the Alaska run, which brought to Seattle nine tons of gold in 1897 and set the whole world of argonauts frantic, has receiitly been fast in ice in Behring Sen, drifting toward the mysterious and unknown waste of iee and water about the north pole, carrying with her 100 passengers, a crew of ninety men and 1,100 tons of freight, bound for Nome. Captain Daniels of the Nome City brought down the report, and stated that the last seen of the Portland she was enveloped in the iee pack, drifting past the Diomede Islands in Behring straits to the Arctic ocean. Two other vessels went through the hazardous experiences of the Portland, the Nome City and the old Jeannette, the whaler upon which Admiral Schley went to the relief of the Greely expedition. The JeaTufette is a wooden schooner, built whaler fashion, with all her surfaces sloping to the keel, so that if caught in the ice she would be lifted upon it, and thus be saved from the inevitable crushing between masses of bergs and float. The Nome City is a new wooden steam vessel, schooner built, all her timbers beiug of quarter-sawed oak; she has a bow built up solid for fourteen feet, of solid oak, and over all carries a sheathing of Australian irOuwood, ten inches thick. Her rudder and wheel have been inclosed to port and starboard, so that the ice will not carry thern away. These two vessels made the early fleet last year. The two vessels of the first fleet got through so happily last year that the Portland, now owned by the Northern Commercial Company, was sent with them this year. It was on the return of the Nome City, after this first voyage, that the misfortune of the Portland was reported. When the Nome City left Nome, according to Captain Daniels’ report, the Thetis, a revenue cutter, had gone to attempt a rescue of the passengers and crew before the vessel should b crushed in the iee. If any human ugeney can effect n rescue of that imperiled lot of humanity the Thetis can do it. and it is an even chance that she will be

able to bald alongside the pack, perhaps at a distance of ten or fifteen miles from tb.- Portland, and take-off the people, but the chances are against the Portland ever getting out of the ice. Her natural fate will be to drift in the ice until some other huge mass meets the one she is in, and together they will crumble her to splinters. The possibility is that the Japan cbmook, which is now carrying the Si e pack tiV the north, may get up a sea sufficient to break up the pack, leaving her free; even then, it is a long chance that she will have been stove in so that she will go down as soon as the iee i>arts from her.

PORTLAND IN ICE PACK.