SEVEN MONTHS IN THE ICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume IV, Issue 1126, 24 June 1867, Page 5

SEVEN MONTHS IN THE ICE.

A ghostly ship, which might well have been that of tlie " Ancient Mariner" of Coleridge, sailed into Eona's Voe, Shetland, on the 2nd April. Battered and crushed, sails and coidago blown away, spars and planking destroyed, gaunt, scurvy stricken human beings looking over the remnants of her bulwarks, dead men on her deck, and dying men below —such was tlie spectacle upon which the people who had put off from the sliore gazed with amazement and horror. The vessel was the whale ship Diana, of Hull; which, says the Scotsman, sailed in the month of May last year from Lerwick with a crew of fifty-four men all told, of whom about thirty were Shetlanders and the rest English, and was last heard of beset in the ice in the month of September. As the tidings of the ship's-arrival went through Shetland, the relatives of her crew journeyed to her to meet tlieir living and to claim their dead. No one was missing. Her captain, with nine of his men dead by his side, lay on the bridge. Five men were fit for duty ; and of these two were able to crawl aloft, and the remainder were lying below sick or dying. As the ship came into the port another man died. Most pitiable sights of all were the ship's boys, with their young faces wearing a strange aged look not easily to be described. The name of the brave surgeon of the ship, who, by his unceasing exertions aud admirable example, did so much to save those of his shipmates who have returned, is Charles Edward Smith, of London, once a student in Edinburgh University. Subjoined is a summary of a statement made by one of the survivors:— " The vessel was suddenly and unexpectedly shut up in the ice to the south of Coutts Inlet on the 23rd September, and the crew had at once to be put upon short allowance. Enduring great privations from the cold and the want of sufficient food, they gradually drifted southwards, until towards the end of .December, the vessel got into Forbisher's Straits, where she received such, nips in the iec as to induce the men to leave tue vessel and eneamp on the ice in a tent. They could not however stand this, aud had to return to the ship where the captain died. His body wrapped in canvas was laid 011 the bridge. In the course of the following weeks every available part of the vessel was used for fuel, as well as the boats., oil, &c. By the end of February all the meat, coffee, sugar, tea, and tobacco had been consumed, scurvy broke out, and the men began to die fast. After enduring considerable sufferings aud miseries, the ice gave way on fhe 17th March, and the battered vessel, with her dead and living crew, got into the open sea, making llona's Yoe on April 2nd, as nbovemeutioned. 1 Had we been out another night,' said the narrator, ' none of us would have stood it. The night before, three of my watch dropped down at the pumps, and only four of us were able for duty, and they not much to speak of. We came into port with nine corpses lying, on the bridge ; and after we had anchored one of the siek hands called out from his berth—" Take away this dead man from me!" and then we found that he had died for some timG ; so that was the tenth, and we laid him on the bridge, too. The people in the neighbourhood were very kind ; I never met with so much attention in all my life. After I left the ship another man died, and there are two or three more who won't live, I doubt; but the boys, although they are pretty bad, will get over it. I feel myself a good deal better than I did when I landed.' " A correspondent of the Scotsman adds the following :— " On sighting the land it was resolved to run the ship ashore in the first convenient place they came to. On entering Eona's Yoe a boat came off to them from the shore. The man at the wheel was so excited when lie saw the boat that he fainted. "With the aid of the man from the shore the ship was brought to an anchor, and a messenger dispatched to the agent, who sent a vessel with coal, &c., and 12 men to bring the ship to Lerwick. About 20 of the crew are in a fearful state with scurvy, some not expected to live, and the rest quite unfit for work. Every possible attention has been paid to the men since their arrival. The ship sprung a leak in December, and has only been kept afloat by incessantly working the pumps. The surgeon, Mr. Charles E. Smith, deserves great credit, not only in his own profession, but also in assisting to work the ship. Had it not been for his attention to the men,it is doubtful whether any of them would have survived. The captain called the crew together shortly before his death, and told them how he felt under the responsibility of having the charge of 53 souls, reminded them of what he had done for their rescue, and then prayed with them. The occasion was felt by all to be a very solemn one. Captain Gravill was a very pious man."