HELPLESSLY DRIFTING FOR HALF-A-YEAR.

West Coast Times, Issue 3889, 24 September 1881, Page 2

HELPLESSLY DRIFTING FOR HALF-A-YEAR.

The steamship City of Pekin, from Yokohama, arrived in San Francisco on 12th June. The following particulars of the fortuna'e rescue of a party of sailors, •who were lost on the ocean, are related by one of the passengers : — The second day out from Yokohama it was our good fortune to rescue nine men from a dis-

masted helpless Japanese vessel, which I had been blown off the coast of Japan from the entrance to the Bay of Yeddo during a typhoon. Their account of the disaster is that the stoim occurred on the 9th December last. They lost th irmasts and rudder and had been drifting to tbe mercy of the winds, they knew not where. After their provisions were exhausted they subsisted on their cargo, mo^ly beans and dried fish, and such rainwater as they could catch duriDg the six months which had elapsed since the typhoon occurred. They had burned most of the small wood-work, doors, berths, windows, &c, of their vessel for fuel, and were on short food rations, 46 beans per day for each man being the allowance. Ther lire, when put out from time to time, they had rekindled by rubbing two pieces of wood togeiher. They had given up all hopes of ever seeing land or anything human again, when on Saturday the 28th of May, in latitude 36deg. 37min. north longtitude 143deg. 54mi • east, about 300 miles from the Bay of Yeddo and Yokohama, they sighted the Pekn on 'he wide waste of water. Cap •am Berry, in answer to their signals of distress bore down and sent one of the boa's off with an officer and the doctor to examine into their suniiary condition, snd the poor souls were soon landed on cur deck. One of their number had died the day previous from exposure, hunger, and anxiety. The passengers, aided by ( aptain Berry, gave a concert on board for the benefit of the destitute ones, which netted a purse of 143d015.