AN EXTRAORDINARY SHIPWRECK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1315, 13 May 1897, Page 12

AN EXTRAORDINARY SHIPWRECK.

The Standard's New York correspondent telegraphed on March 22: —The clipper ship Oakes, of this port, has arrived here, after she has long been given up as lost. She left Hong Kong on July 4, 1896, and was towed into this port by the English tank steamer Kasbek, of London, which encountered her, on March 11, about 200 miles from Philadelphia. When the Kasbek hailed her, the second and third mates were the only men on board fit for duty, and Captain Reed’s wife was the only able "seaman.” Consequently the Oakes was unable even to heave-to to take the rescuers on board. A boat from che Kasbek hitched to. the Oakes a line trailing _a hawser, which fouled the Kasbek’s tailshaft. The propeller being thus immovable, and the Oakes under sail, a collision was escaped only by a boat’s length. Finally, the Kasbek’s engineer, Stevens, cleared the propeller by lengthening the shaft with. a wooden splice. Soon after leaving Hong Kong, the Oakes met a succession of typhoons, which finally drove her into the North Pacific, so far out of the usual course that but one vessel sighted her in several weeks. Captain Reed was compelled by the storms to round Cape Horn instead of Good Hope, as was originally intended _ This delay in the voyage resulted in an outbreak of scurvy, from which six men died, and the rest were disabled. A dozen wore taken to the hospital on arriving here. One of the dead had left a written memorandum which charges Captain Reed with malevolence, for which there is no apparent basis beyond the fatal homicidal economy practised in the neglect to supply a proper quantity of lime juice, and the Irefusal to alter the ship’s course with a view to procure fresh provisions. Once, doubtless, the Oakes would have foundered had not the captain’s wife kept the ship scudding before the gale for eight hours without any relief, there being no one able even to bring her a drink of water.