LIFE ON THE ISLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 2076, 7 December 1893, Page 35

LIFE ON THE ISLAND.

Several of the survivors from the Spirit of the Dawn gave a member of our staff come information, which may be of interest, respecting their mode of life on the island on which they were oast. Mr Morrissey, the second officer, who acted as spokesman for the most part, gave the following account : —

" After we got all the things out of the boat, we found a lob of limpets on the beach and some of our men knew them and took them and ate them ; and finally we all had a pretty good feed of them. After we thought we had quite sufficient — we were afraid to eat too many, lest they should be poiaonous, though we were very hungry and tired — we came to the conclusion that we had better go further up to look for a place of rest. We scrambled over rocks and tussocks and one thing and another till we came to a little overhanging bluff, where we decided to camp for the night, intending to look about next day for a better place, but it seemed to us at the time that the place we had struck was as good a place as we could find ; so we turned to and cut hay and straw from the tussocks and cleared a space big enough to hold the 11 of us. We spread the straw on the ground, and lay down there with a sail over us. Some of the men were very wet. We went at daybreak in the morning down to the beach for more limpets, and we found that our boat was gone. There was nothing but rocks at the beach, and we were unable to draw the boat vp — it was too steep — so we made it fast to a rock by the painter. We went ashore at low tide, and the rising tide must have carried away the boat. We came to the conclusion

We were Fixed There till a vessel came. We made a tour then to the place where the ship went ashore, thinking that something might have been washed ashore from the vessel, bub there was nothing to be seen. By the time wo had got there we were tired, as there was such a nasty road to travel — over rocks and tussocks — and we had a further feed of limpets. We also killed a penguin, the only one there was to be seen. Nobody cared about eating it raw — for we had no matches and no means of lighting a fire or of cooking the bird — but I ate the heart. I tasted it and nibbled at it like a fish at bait, and found it did not taste very bad. We then went back to the camp and held a consultation, at which it was agreed that we should walk round and see if there was nothing to be seen. So the mate and I started with two seamen to walk round the island. We staited on the Sunday morning, and we walked about half the distance round the island by that evening. We killed an albatross there, and skinned and ate part of it. We did nob eat it all — we could not quite stomach that at the time. We cut some straw, and the mate and I lay down together. The other two men slept below us in a place where they escaped wetting from rain which fell that night. When we got up in the morning — it was very foggy — we had another little bit of a

Feed from the Albatross, which we had stowed away in the tussocks. From the height that we were on, we looked round bub could see nothing, and the mate said, " I do not think there is anything to be seen on the island ; we had batter go back." I said, " Why not keep it up and go round the island, and then we'll be satisfied whether there is nothing on it?" He replied that as it was coming on to rain it would be better to return to the others, and accordingly the four of us started back again. We did not go back by the way we had come, but we cut right across the hills in as straight a line as we could, and slid down the rocks to the camp at dusk on the Sunday night — wet, hungry, weary. We told the rest of the fellows that we could see nothing and that we had come to the conclusion that there was nothiug on the island, barring birds and so forth. Then we started to kill " nellies " — big black birds that are found on the coast of New Zealand. They were sitting at the time and were easily caught. We killed them and skinned and ate the legs — we could eat nothing elee of them. Then the penguins began to come to the island in great quantities and we thought that probably they would eat pretty welJ, so we tried a penguin for a second time. There was any amount of fat on them and we got it scraped oft' their skins, and then we used to put it in le;;ve3 to keep. There was a root we found on the island — I do not know its name — and we used to cub it in two pieces and pub the penguin fat between, and in that way we

Made a llj^iulau Sandwich. On the 2nd of October wo found penguin eggs, but previous to that wo aaw as we killed the penguins that the eggs wore getting bigger

inside them, and we knew from that there were eggs to be had sometime. One of the fellows killed a penguin one morning and found a fullgrown egg, covered with a shell, inside the bird. Oh ! we were overjoyed then, as we knew there were eggs to be had pretty soon. On the next morning two of the men went to kill a penguin and they found eggs. They shout and hollooed to us, and we could not make out what was the matter, but presently they came back with their hats and caps full of eggs, and said there were plenty more. The mate and I started over, but there were a great many penguins, and they were so

Vicious and Savage that we only gathered aboub 36 eggs. I said to the mate, "I'll nob have any more eggs; they'll eat me up," and he said he was of my opinion. We walked to the place where the ship went ashore, and there we found more penguins, which were far quieter than the others. We gathered eight or nine dozen eggs between us, and we sat on the beach and had eggs in great quantity. We packed the rest in oilskin leggings and brought them to the camp, and terribly proud we were about them. Anyhow, we got plenty of eggs after that for, I e'hould say, 14- day?, but then they began to get addled. Still, we had gathered in a great quantity. The mate and one of the apprenticrs and I together hid away, I suppose, over 100 dozen in holes for a rainy day. A month after that a smaller race of penguins came to the island and started to lay eggs. We thought that they would surely not keep coming, or elsa we would be able to live like kings. If we had only had a fire and a frying-pan we might have had omelets and scrambled eggs and so on, but as we had no fire we had to

Drink the Eggs Raw. Between the eggs and the penguins we fared pretty well. We used to skin the penguins and then take them to the beach' and keep them in salt water for some time, and afterwards put them in the sun to dry ; on the next day we would dislocate the birds and cut them in slices so that the sun might have more effect. That is the way we used to dry our meat, and finally we got to be as good as French cooks in regard to the penguin. The worst of our trouble was in mending the scanty clothes we were able to escape from the ship in. We had no clothes worth speaking of, but when we shifted— about three weeks before we were found — to a place beneath an overhanging bluff, and we built a wall in front of ib so that we had a sort of cave to live in, we had the boat's 6ail to epare, which we had previously used for a covering. We "whacked" the canvas out between us so that we might mend our clothes, but we had no needles and no thread. I had a pair of mittens, and I unravelled the wool to uee as thread, and we made needles out of albatross bones. In that way

We Mad a a Flag

out of a piece of canvas, a red singlet that was washed ashore, and a piece of an old flag. Besides that singlet, there were a few empty gunny bags and a few small pieces of wood washed ashore from the wreck, but nothing of any consequence. On the seventeenth day after our landing on the island we saw a barque, and on the eighteenth we saw a full- rigged ship, and if we had had our boat we should certainly have been able to pull out and cut the ship off. Both of them passed not over three miles from the shore, and the barque was closer in than the ship. We started and hallooed enough to raise the dead when we saw these vessels. I was hoarse for nearly two weeks afterwards. Eggs would not cure it !

Thank God, it is Over

now anyhow. We can make fun of ib now, bub we didn't then. We had only a piece of canvas then for a flag, and ib was down on the low part, close to the beach, and there was a background to it, so that I do nob suppose the flag could be seen, but when we got the red singlet we shifted the flagpole to a high hill, so that any vessel coming within three or four miles of tho island could not help seeing the flag on a clear day, and as it happened ib was a nice, clear day when the Hinemoa came. They saw the flagpole before the flag was hoisted, and the moment the flag was hoisted the Hinemoa showed her ensign. We did nob know whab island we were on ab bhe time, though so far as latitude and longitude are concerned we were pretty well correct. The island is aboub 12 miles round, but it is so mountainous that you cannot expect a man to climb the hills on nothing. You walk about two yards and then you fall down between a couple of tussocks, and are out of sight. The

Tussocks Grow Higher than I am, and lam sft lOin. They grow 6ft or 7fb high, and you have to tread from one to another ; and just as you get up you fall down again. A fellow living on raw penguin, and with no clothing to shift with, does nob like doing that, besides which, if he got wet and got rheumatism there was no medicine as well as no clothing. Our health was good, excepting that of a halfcaste Indian boy. When he first came aboard the ship he was laid up with a bad finger ; and when we got clear of the wreck he had no shoes on, and his feet were in water all the time. He could nob stand the cold the same as we could, who were used to ib, and his feet got frost bitten, ana became very bad. We did all we could for him, but he lost four toes, off one foot and two and a-half off the other. They mortified that much that we cut them off with limpet shells. We had fine weather for the firct month — as nice as we could wish to have at the time of year — and ib was pretby fair all along till a couple of weeks before we were tiken off. It rained now and again, bat so long as we were uuder the rock we never gob wet, excepbing the man on the look-out at the flagstaff, who had nothing to protect him but the tussocks. The only trouble we had when it was raining was that we could not dry our meat. It was never particularly warm, but we had been so long in cold weather running our easterlies down that we were pretty well used to it. We felb pretty cold now and again, especially if we got wet, as we had no dry clothing to shift with. At night we closed the opening of our cave up with tussocks, and when the hole was shut it was as dark as a dungeon, but we were all right inside our castle, and we used to lie as close together as we could in order to keep warm."

" I wish," Mr Morrissey added, " that you would pub in (something very good about Captain Fairchild, his officers, his crew, and his passengers. They treated us more like brothers and relatives than like strangers. They received us with the greatest kindness. Nothing was too good for vs — in fact, we got too much." "He ie a thorough gentleman," chimed in Mr Davies, the third officer, alluding to Captain Fail child ; " theie was never a man treattd better than we were on board fchab ship." " I cannot express how I feel," continued Mr Morrissey, "towards the captain and everybody on board the Hinbinoa. The mate and I were pub in the c^biu ; and there was the Premier's daughter on board, and she treated us as an equal. 1 hey don't do that in England. They do it in America, for one man is equal to another there. So I like this country, and \ intend to say so when I get home."

AN APPEAL. While the officers and crew of the Hinemoa generously came to the aid of the survivors of the Spirit of the Dawn and supplied them with what was their most pressing want — decent clothing — there is much that may yet be done for them and which, indeed, must be done for them. They have landed here friendless and penniless. The government have undertaken, we believe, to pay for their board and lodging in Dunedin, were they intend to remain until bhe firsb direcb sbeamer leaves for Eogland, bub in the meantime ib should be remembered that their loss has been severe. Their personal belongings — including, in the case ot the officers, their instruments — were lost with their \ essel, and cannot readily be replaced. On their behalf we appeal to the citizens of Dunedin for such assistance as will, at anyrate, tide them temporarily over their difficulties, and we shall be pleased to receive and acknowledge any subscriptions which miy be sent to our office with' this object.

The late Captain Millington leaves a widow and two children, who are resident in Liverpool. The survivors speak in affectionate and enthusiastic terms of his qualities as a man and as a captain. " A better sailor never trod a vessel's deck," was bhe expression of one of the crew. " He was a gentleman, a navigator, and a seaman," said another. " I have been 37 years at sea, and I never served under a better master," was the tribute of a third ; and others expressed themselves in similarly glowing terms. While the Hinemoa was at Port Chalmers on Monday on her way up to Dunedin, she was boarded by two mariners, one of whom — the captain of the Star of the East— unostentatiously performed a generous act which perhaps deserves recognition. Learning that ono of the destitute castaways on board was a countryman of his, he quietly slipped a sovereign inbo the man's hand as he lefb the vessel.