THE GREAT SNOWSTORM IN ENGLAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8556, 2 May 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GREAT SNOWSTORM IN ENGLAND.

The winter of 1890-91 (says an English contemporary) will long bo remembered as one of the most severe ever experienced. First there came the memorable seven weeks' frost., which meant, in London, seven weeks' darkness, and a general suspension of functions on the part of the social organism. Then followed one of the driest Februaries on record. Ten days ago a v.arm spell supervened; spring was in the air, the buds began shyly to appear, and the crocuses to peep through the ground. March V and 8 gave us muchneeded rain. Then, all of a sudden, the temperature fell, the wind rose, and by four o'clock on tho evening of March 9 there was blowing from tho eastward a gale, with sleet and snow, of the true blizzard typo. In London they had all tho pleasant concomitants of a snowstorm-—ho cabs or omnibuses at work for many hours, the stroots first deep in muddy snow and then a pool of slush, which no man seemed even to wish to remove.

TRAINS SNOWKD UP. Outside, in tho country to the South-east and south west, the difficulties were more formidable. At every point, reaching from Dover to Devon, trains were snowed up ; passengers nearly frozen and starved to death during a captivity of many hours; and,in the open country, there have boon accidents to mail-carts, and a sudden hapless ond to many a lonely pedestrian. The miserable incidents of the blocking of trains in snowdrifts, such as have hardly happened in this country since the great storm of January, 1881, or at least since the almost equally fierce storm of four or five years later, were repeated in many directions. At Folkestone, at Faversham, at Teynham, and many other places, and even in the generally warm counties of Devon and Somerset, these things occurred, the snow having fallen and drifted with a suddenness that took everyone by surprise. It need hardly bo said that the telegraph and telephone wires suffered considerably, though not so generally as might have been expected.

AT SKA. Sufferings by land have beon small, however, in comparison with those that wore experienced at. sea. There have been wrecks on the Goodwins ; and few stories of the sea could be, on a limited scalo, more shocking than that which is told of the seaman who drifted ashore in an open boat, at Clacton-on-Soa, and of his companions on the wrecked schooner. The lifeboat went swiftly and bravely to the rescue, and two men were saved ; but when a rescuer climbed the mast to cut looso a sailor who was lashed to it he found him frozen to death. Such is a sample of the tragedies that are for ever happening in the obscure lives of the " toilers of the sea."

A story which will appeal to a more general experience is that of the two powerful mail boats which achieved, in the face, of enormous difficulties, the voyage between Calais and Dover. In the same neighbourhood, where the easterly gale blew its fiercest, the Monarch had to abandon tho task of laying the telepnone cable from the French to the English coast which her captain, somewhat rashly, attempted on the previous afternoon. • Substituted at the lost moment for the small Petrel, at the request of the Duchess of Edinburgh, the Victoria was with great difficulty brought to the Dover pier, and some score of club train passengers embarked in her. Fortunately for Her Royal Highness, she herself and the majority of the passengers, seeing that the gale was increasing to a hurricane, gave up their journey and went to the hotel. The boat started at about eight o'clock in the evening. The sea was awful ; the snow was blinding; and the waves swept the decks at every moment. By half-past ten the neighbourhood of Cape Urisnez appeared to have been reached ; but for many hours later, in fact till daybreak, it was impossible for the captain to make for the harbour, or in fact to do anything but anchor, and to let the waves do their worst. The night of misery may be imagined. It did not end till nine o'clock, when tho Victoria entered Calais Harbour.