A MYSTERY OF THE SEA

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14821, 12 November 1913, Page 4

A MYSTERY OF THE SEA

THE WRECKED MARLBOROUGH. WHAT THE PILOT SAW. IFROM ODR OWN COBRESFONDEK7.) LONDON, October i. According to a cable meesase from New Zealand imblished in a London paper this week, a private letter from London has been received in the Dominion in. which it is stated that ''two survivors of a vessel wracked ott Cape Horn touud tho Glasgow ship Marlborough in • a cove with twenty bkeiutons near by."

i juavo imtue eaquirica in shipping ciicics tv tuo.Cuy, antl navo aaourunueu ttiat tno uiseovery was niauo, oo t txiis year as tne cauic ita-da one to suppose, oud several yuurs oack. The luwjresting tact, nowever, nas ouiy just leaked ouc.

It appears that the captain of a round-i,ue-wori(l tramp was oil the jfucihe coast or Soytn America iv the cany part or tais year, Homeward bound tor London, wnen ho had occasion to utilise tiie services oi a pilot. Tno pilot stated that ho had once seen the wrecked snip Marlborougii. Tho captain, who saw his cany service in the tJnuv, Suvil't and Aiirion Company, was at once interested, because tho disappearance of the Manborough was one or the mysteries of the sea. This sailing ship, in fact, loft Lyttcltou on January 11th, 1890, for London, and was not heard of again, the general supposition hJwig that she sank in a collision wjth""an iceberg.

Tho captain consequently asked the pilot for particulars, and tho latter explained that it happened when he was n boy. Ho and a seaman were the only survivors of a vessel wrecked off Cape Horn. They reached -laud safely in a boat and nut into a cove, where they saw tho remains of a ship, portpainted in tho old frigato styie, with the name Marlborough. On the shoro were a heap of shells and the skeletons of twenty persons. Presumably, the sailors had had to subsist on and were finally ovorcomo hj starvation.

Tho captain asked the pilot why he had never told anyone of this before, and the nilot said that tho other teaman died, and he, now tTie sc]o survivor, settled on the West Pacific coast, where the matter was not tcgarded as of any great interest. The pilot, by virtue of his position, must now have reached a fairly mature ape, snd if the inridpnt happened when lie was a boy, it is evident that, ho is relating events of several rears ago. There seems no reason to disbelieve the accuracy of the narrative.