Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1877 — Twenty-Eight Lives Lost in Sight of Shore. [ARTICLE]

Twenty-Eight Lives Lost in Sight of Shore.

Nm* Toaa, Dm. M. A special dispatch from Bridgehaaapton, L. 1., say*: “At four o’clock the ship Circassian, ashore on th# bar off Bridgehampton, on the •oath chore of Long Island, Was entirety broken np bv a southeasterly gale and lost, together with twenty-eight live*. The Circassian went ashore in the storm on the night of the Utb Inst. At that time th* crew and officer* were raved. The storm yesterday caught thirty-two men, employe* of th* Coast Wrecking Company, on board, and a short time after midnight the ship went to Siece* with an awful crash.' According to >e account, four surviror* were washed ashor* this morning, more dead than alive, on fragments of the wreck. None of the remaining twenty-eight men have been seen, or heard from, up to the present time, and there is but little doubt that all have perished." Thi* second wreck of the ship Circassian is the most disastrous that has occurred on the Long Island coast since the wreck of the John Milton, fifteen years ago. She ran ashore In a blinding snowstorm, and all on board, thirty persons, were lost The crew of the Milton were frozen stiff in the rigging, their arms standing straight out m front of them. The men on board the Circassian had finished on Friday night a)l necessary preliminaries for attaching a hawser with which she wa* to be drawn off. During the early hours of the night th* wind freshened a little, and the sea began to ran yery high, until at about six o’clock it began to break clear over her. The men, apprehending danger, went into the fore rig* ging, where they were ordered for greater safety. All on board, thirty-two souls, all told, remained thus exposed until early in the morning, when it was deemed advisable to shift quarters, as the falling of the top , hamper caused by the rolling of the Teasel, made it difficult to hold on. The crew was safely transfixed to the mizzen, where signals of distress were shown. All this time the shore was plainly fat sight The moon was shining brightly, and fires built by the crew of the life-saving station showed plainly the figures of the crowd on the beach as they hurried to and fro, in vain endeavors to aid the men in the rigging. It was an awful suspense for the pool fellows lashed to the masts and yards of the ship. They saw att mpt after attempt made to establish communication with them fail, and each failure seemed to measure their purchase upon life. Every effort to get a boat off shore proved futile. As often a* it was attempted the sea drove it high and dry on the beach. Capt Henry Hunting, of Life-Saving Station No. 10, now brought s mortar into service, and several balls with a rope attached were thrown out to the ship. But one of the cords reached the ship; Its hold was not very secure, aad it presently fell off, and the slender thread upon which thirty-two human lives depended wa* snapped forever. The station-men, all the while these endeavors ware being mad*, could see men in the rigging quite plainly, and hear their cries for nelp. Many of the weather-beaten heroes on shore, who have been on wrecking vessel* aad saving Uvea since boyhood, were moved to tears by the piteous importunities of th* wretched men off shore. ■ The violence of their efforts to save mitigated the suspense they would otherwise have felt daring the early hours. But when the last change wa* shot off, and nothing else possible to human effort or bravery remained to be done they became unmanned and many of them wept The nervous excitement and sudden inao tlvity utterly Incapacitated them for any duty. They could not leave the spot, and ft was only left for them to remain inactive and see tbeir fellows perish before their eyes. To leave the beach would only add to the terrors of the death that stared its victims in the face, and to remain inactive would probably give cause for reproach from thejoor helpless waiters on the wreck. Supt. Hunting and bis men remained and tried to answer the c*Re from the wrecK, but nothing that was said on shore was heard on the ship on account of the direction of the wind. In terror and suspense the morning wore on, the wind having veered around in the meantime to west-southwest During the early part of the night before the men went into the rigging the cables were slackened, bnt the ship moved only* short and continued through the bight to strike the bottom. Every time she struck the men thought she would lose her meets, to which they hedlsshedtitemselves. While conscious of the great danger and the utter impossibility of saving themselves If the mast should go by the board, it being of Iron, they were unable to slacken the lashing. Some of them, with more self-poeseMion than others, had taken this contingency into their calculation*and had notsecurdy lashed themselves, and among those were the only four saved from the wreck At half-paA four a. m. the long-dreaded crisis came, and the mizzenmast went by the board with a erash, carrying the nuinmast with ft. A tremendous swell had struck the Circassian aft and raised her very high. When It receded she thumped heavily, and the terrific jar threw the mast over her side. The masts, being iron, went to the bottom immediately, carrytag with them twenty-eight souls. The Custom-House officer, detaDed to superintend the lending of her cargo, in bls description of the terrible scene says: “ The ship was lying about 600 feet off the ebore. Amid the bowling of the tempest and th* roar of the waves there was bome to ear ear* the voices of the poor fellow* la the rigging, ringing h.vmn* and praying tn chorus to God. There wa* hardly a dry eye on shore among u* as we heard these thrilling and supreme appeals made to God. Among those on the wreck were ten shinneoock Indians, who as a rule are very good men. During this agonising scene, which lasted for hours, we heard these men praying. Th* beach waa lined with hundred* of people, many of them women, sobbing piteously. Some of them were wives of the doomed men. The wind on shore raged with terrible violence, driving people hither and thither. The life-saving crews of Southampton, distant live and a naif mile*, and East Hampton, about the same distance, bringing their mortar* with them, but did not attempt to use their life-line when fl>tng, as nothing could be done. They however fired a number es blank shots to reanimate the courage of those on boord.” Onb of the most modern authorities on mental derangement records it as a startling fact, not a mere rumor, that orer 10,000 persons o£ unsound mind are fined in lunatic asylums in the United States, driven mad from over excitement by spiritualism. Insanity from this cause 1* also now vary prevalent in England, and is increasing day by day . The increase of crime in Mamnchnsette, which has been so noticeable since the civil war, is still going on, though, perhaps, not so fast as atone perted, State Prison report, just made public, shows that of 744 convicts at Charteaton on the Ist of October, seventy-five, or more than on* tenth were Hinwrth municants.