LOST AMID THE ICE

Southland Times, Issue 19223, 19 April 1924, Page 9

LOST AMID THE ICE

TERRIBLE TALE OF SEA. CREW OF THIRTEEN DEAD. A terrible story of the sea is told in a message from Amrum, one of the North Frisian Islands. Early in December the motor schooner Sonderburg, of Hamburg, was reported missing, fehe was on her way from the North Frisian Islands back to Hamburg, and it was thought she had foundered in the terrible and prolonged storms which raged in the Bight of Heligoland during December. It is -now known that the ship was driven on to sandbanks and ice off the southern point of the Isle of Sylt (north of Amrum ). There she remained, amid rugged mountains of ice, amid driving snowstorms and tempestuous winds. It was impossible for the crew—l 3 men —to leave the ship, and even when her whereacouis became known ashore it was impossible for help to be sent to her, owing to the rough nature of the ice in which she was embedded. Later the ice broke up, and in the tremendous gale the Sonderburg was driven out to sea. One man was washed overboard. H’s body has since been cast up on the island of Sylt. For several days the schooner was at the mercy of th- winds, till, battered and waterlogged, she went ashore on Amrum. Again she was frozen in among such cliffs of ice that she was lost to the ken of those who had been sent to render her assistance. Whether the 12 men aboard her were dead when she was locked in the ice for the second time cannot, be known.

She lies on her side, smashed and still icebound, with her frozen crew.