HARROWING TALE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1717, 6 April 1906, Page 3

HARROWING TALE.

A passenger by the ill-fated steamer Valencia —F. F. Bunker, School Superintendent of Seattle—who was one of the nine men who escaped from the wreck at Vancouver Island, and landed on the beach near Darling Eiver, tells a harrowing tale (says a Sydney paper). He said there was an evident lack of discipline among the officers of the illwfated ship,-and this statement has been corroborated by other passengers. Bunker, whose wife and two children are among those drowned, is outspoken in his denunciation of the Valencia’s crew and the

life-saving apparatus on the vessel. Bunker said boat No. 2 was sent through the surf with more than 20 passengers in it, and only seven got ashore after it capsized. He got in the next boat lowered, with his wife and two children, a boy and a girl. This boat was sent out without officers or seamen. The boat capsized, and he tried to crawl back. As he did so, the boat righted and nearly filled. He got in, and his wife was clinging to .the side of the boat. The girl was gone

one, and the boy was limp. He tried ,o restore the boy to life, and the little fellow recovered consciousness and began to cry and call “ Papa.” His wife said she could not hold on longer. He. kissed her good-bye. Just then the boat again capsized. He told his w

ife to hold on, and took her -with one arm and the child with the other, but something struck him on the head and he lost them. He was swept in and out three times by the breakers, but finally managed to clutch the rocks and hold fast. He waited on the rocks after clambering out of the reach of the water until the morning, and then climbed up the bluff, and found a trail to a hut, which he reached after great hardship, having to swim a river. In the hut he found some mouldy beans. During the next two days the suffering of himself and other survivors who had joined him was terrible, but help arriyed from the cable station at Bamfield,