TOLL OF THE ICE

Southland Times, Issue 17347, 19 May 1913, Page 5

TOLL OF THE ICE

NORWEGIANS’ FATE. . FOUR DEATHS REPORTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) CHRISTIANIA, May 16. A despatch received from Strakrud. loader of the Norwegian relief expedition, from Wijde Bay, states that Lieutenant Schroeder - Stranz, is still missing. Dettmers and Moesor had been drowned, Eberhard had been frozen to death, and Stave had succumbed after illness. It is stated in Berlin that there are differences between Strakrud’s party and the German larger relief party. In January last the German press published wireless messages received at Christiania from the Norwegian station on Spitzbergen, which gave a graphic account of the plight of the German explorers who started for Spitzbergen last August. 'The expedition was organised in preparation for the great expedition which was to endeavour to make the North-east Passage under the leadership of Lieutenant Schroeder-Stranz in June of this year. The explorers went north in the ship Herzog Ernst, a twomaster of 61 tons, under the command of Captain Ritschel. The story told to two men at Advent Bay, a point on the eastern shore of the ice fjord in West Spitzbergen by Captain Ritschel, who got there on December 27, after suffering great hardships and being separated from his companions, was that the expedition only had provisions for one month at the most, and that most of the party were, lie feared, in the last stages of scurvy. Lieutenant Schroeder - Stranz left the ship in August last on a sledge expedition, but did not return. The expedition had split up into several detachments, and his own companions he had been compelled to leave behind, exhausted with cold and hunger, on Wijde Bay, where they were probably now quite without provisions. He Viad eaten his last tallow candle at Cape Thordsen, and, pressing on across the ice fjord, he had twice fallen through the ice, to be rescued only by his dog, and had had to leave his snowshoes and revolver behind. When Captain Ritschel arrived at Advent Bay his clothes had to be cut off bis body and till his toes had to be amputated. A relief expedition was sent from Norway in February last.