The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1867-04-16 00:00:00

SEVIEN MONTHS IN THE ICE.

A ghostly ship, whieb might well have been that of
the Ancient Mariner' of Ooleridge, sailed into Rona's
Voe, Shetland, no the 2nd of this month. Battered
and crushed, sails and cordage blown sway, rpm and
planking destroyed. mutt mrry stricken human
beings looking over the remnants of her bulwarks, dead
men on her deck and dying men below—such was the
spectacle upon which the people who had put off from
t 6 shore gaud with amazement and honor. The
vessel was the whale ship Diana, of Hull, which (say,
the Scotsman) sailed in the month of May Isat year
from Lerwick with a crew 01 50 men all told, of whom
about 30 were Sbetlanders, and the rest English, and
was last beard of beset in the ice in the month of Sept.
As the tidings of the ship's arrival went through
Shetland, the relatives of her crew journeyed to her to
meet their living and to claim their dead. No one was
missing. Her eaptain with nine of his man dead by
his side, lay on the brlâgs. Five Me were fit for duty;
and of these two were able to crawl aloft, and the
remainder were lyieg below sick or dying. As the ship
came into the port another man died. Most pitiable
sights of all were the ship's boys, with their young '
faces wearing a strange aged look not *sail, to be
desieribel. The name of the brave surgeon of the ship,
who, by his unceasing exertions and admirable example
did so much to save those of his shipmates who have
returned, is Charles Edward Smith, ad London, ones •
student in Edinburgh University. One of the survivors
made • statement of their suffering., from which it
appeared that the vessel was suddenly and unexpectedly
shut up in the ice to the South of °Putts Inlet, on the
23rd of September, and the new had at ones to be put
upon short allowance. Enduring great privatioos from
the cold and the want of stteledent food, they gradually
drifted southwards, until, towards the end of Demobs:,
the vessel got into Frobisher's Straits,where she remind
such nips in the ice u to induce the mon to lean the
vessel and encamp on the ice in • taut. They Gould
not, however, stand this, and had to return to the ship,
where the captain died. His body, wrapped up
caeress, was laid on the bridge. In the coarse of the
following weeks every availaMe part of the meal was
used for fuel, ae well as tbs hosts, oil. lut 11_3/theesd
of February all the most, coffee, sugar. 210 •uu tobscso
had been consumed, scurvy broke out sad the men
began to die fast. After enduring 00n,%4515b15 suffer-
inp and mimic*, the ice pre way on the 17th of last
month, gad the reseal with her dea and living crew got
into the open Na, tasking Rona's Voe on the 2nd inst.
stoodunighabt,!:esalt aThetht7Lei6ntabarraoretOrßad,.
thunienweoned
mbeoleynas.gahownotulandothahreer
down at the pumps, and four of us were able fotultrt.yd,
and they not much to sera of. We tame into that
port with nine corpses laying on the bridge; aed after
we bad anchored, one of the sink hands called out from
' his berth— 'Take away this deed man from me;' and
then we found that he had been dead for some time , no
that was the tenth. sad welaid him on the bridge, top.
The people in the neighbourhood were uncommonly
kind—l never met el% so mush Mention in all my
life. After I het the ship another man died, sod thine
are two or three more who wen% live I doubt ; but the
boys, although they or. pretty bed, will get over it. I
reel myself a Mel bettor than I did whom I liadid."