FACING DEATH BRAVELY

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 30, 4 February 1905, Page 13

FACING DEATH BRAVELY

WOJTOERFUIi STORIES OP SHIPWB.KCKS. A New York papor gives the details of the wreck of a schooner off Saybrook i Point, Connecticut. Her captain and I cook contrived to get clear of the wreck lon the broken foreboom. They drifted i aboat for twelve hours, in a fearful sea, J Tvita the spray freezing as it broke upon '. them. The captain wild an old man. aged , T2. btrt when rescued ho merely asked for dry clothes ajsd a qnic! of tobacco- Af- ; terwnrda, when warmed, he said teat tee I boom was a damp sort of a freehold any- ! w:y. bet not uncomfortable. Eqnaiiy cool I was another worthy, who was foe-ed by : i Havana bout a-drlft In mid ocean on a ! hencoop. He had bee-n abo:ird a wrecked i Suva Scotiaman. and was tie sole snrvtvj or. He had Seated rather more than a I day. without food or drink, at the time Icf his res».-ue. bet hp vraa not disposed to i b<s effusive merely oa that account. "1 ; rould have kept cp another three days. -, •U« explained. "I seen the whales and tne , shares, and wfacre you can !5?o I can lire, i I says. ,. And. cheered by this reflec- ! tioa, passed tils time on his hencoop not unpleasantly. SURVIVORS WEST MAD. j Perhaps these tyro sailors- ac\? excep-t*on-i aJ. for the eCect of shipwreck is gece-- ,- -: aliy terrible. There is a story of an old I French wocden frisate, 'In eighteen hundred and kit time." that was caught In a oycloae in the West Indies. A eyeloao raises v fearful cross-sea, with gigantic billows which break In all directions. The wooden hnll was aoon waterlogged and dismasted, and tosecd aboat ty th» combers like a chip in a miH-race. The survivofs of her crew, some 50 souls, went mad to a n«a from terror of the awful wavea. After Kodney's victory over Dβ Grasse a Preaeb. prize was lost tn a storm off Dominica. Only one man from her was picked up. and he wss a hopeless lunatic found langhing oa a floating spar, withoct memory of how be got there. He told some shapetese story of having once been with a number of \ oSher men going from the land to a ship, j A-ftsr that he remembered, or seemed to remember, nothing.