Knoxville journal. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1874-1986, 1875-04-22
Adventures ON the Ice-Terrible Suf-
ferings.

THE steamship Nurnberg, Capt Jaeger,
which arrived at Baltimore on the 18th
ult., from Bremen and Southampton,
brought ten men who had been rescued
from the jaws of death. The Baltimore
papers give the following particulars:
OF thirty-four men belonging to the
fishing village of St. Mary's, coast of
Newfoundland, who engaged in an ad-
venture to rescue an abandoned vessel
in the ice, thirteen were frozen to death,
ten reached Baltimore, three are on a
schooner bound to Bermuda, and the
other eight were taken on a vessel bound
to Newfoundland.
Andrew Mooney, a man OF thirty-six
wears, with an intelligent, honest coun-
tenance, who is among those on the
Nurnberg, said yesterday that all were
neighbors TO each other and nearly all
were born in st. Mary's. He and num-
Der of others have large families, which
they supported by fishing in the summer
The ice had been firm all winter and
some of the villagers had gone out upon
shown NO signs of moving before that
fatal day. Reports had been received
for q week from the headlands that q
the I'd of March the brig was discovered
fast in the ice. The party of thirty-four
(all men but James Grace was quickly
gathered, and they started out on the ice
to her and spent the day on board.
Toward evening they started home
ward, but had not proceeded far when
the terrible fact was presented to them
4 1o< fho loo had hath .
and the shore and the opening was in
creasing every moment. CONSERVATION
seized upon them as they fastened for
ward, and each threw away his heavy
outer clothing as he ran, to be encum-
bered as little as possible. When the
brink of the ice was reached the space
of water between them and the shore
was half mile wide, the ice having
broken one mile out from the land and
the immense field upon which they
stood floating steadily further out to sea-
1t was now quite dark, the party were
exhausted and but half clad, and they
prepared for the terrible cold which
soon set in. At first it rained until they
were all wet to the skin. The rain then
turned to sleet and snow, the wind
veered to the northward and the cold be-
came intense, the fierce blasts of wind
cutting them to the bone. Then began
the effort for life, the men stamping
their feet, running madly about, and the
more sturdy encouraging the weak and
faltering. The cold still increased until,
as Mooney says, it had reached degree
of intensity not equaled before in that
latitude during the winter.
At midnight the cold and exhaustion
began to tell upon the doomed ones in
the little party First one and then
another of them would lie down saying
that he could go no further The others
would pick them up and try to keep
them on their feet, but after Keeling for
a short distance like drunken men they
would fall senseless upon the ice and
die without struggle. Those able to
keep their feet had enough to do to
keep themselves from falling into the
fatal lethargy, and with sad hearts each
victim was left to his fate. Father or
son or brother saw each other fall and
were powerless to help. When morning
dawned seven corpses were counted at
intervals upon the ice, and of the re-
mainder none could tell who was to be the
next victim.
A field of ice twenty feet square
floated near the brink of the ice in the
open water, upon which nine of them
got, hoping that it would float toward
the shore ice and they could thus save
themselves. When it had f1oated 300
wards from the ice upon which their
comrades stood it grounded, and the I'M
fortunates remained upon it for three
days and nights, during which time six
of them died, the other three being those
picked up by the schooner George
s. Fogg ON the 9th of March.
When it is remembered that seven
persisted the first night, it is wonderful
that even three of the nine on the small
ice-field escaped alive, they having en-
dured hunger as well as the cold. All
the food they had in all that time was
small whitefsh, which was frozen in the
ice. This they divided between them.
OF the three men two are on the Nurn-
berg, viz John Fuer, in the ships hos
pital, badly frozen, and James Peddle.
The eighteen men remaining after the
nine fioated off on the small ice-held
made their way back to the abandoned
brig, which was tightly Jammed IN the
ice and was carried with it. All expect
ed to die in her, and some OF them had
lost their senses before reaching her the
80
the brig, and they subsisted Oh molasses,
a few oranges and edible scraps that could
be found. The fishermen, who admit
they are unlettered, could not read her
name, but knew she was not English.
The crew had left On the ice for Hollow
road, village near st. Mary's, March l.
The brig moved with the ice for week
in sight of the land, and the fishermen
were on her ten days.
At length one evening at sunset
schooner was seen four miles away,
which had been caught in the same neid
that imprisoned the brig. That night
the half men held council,
and determined to reach the schooner
next day or die in the effort Next morn
ing at daylight they embarked In the
briggs small boat, which could scarcely
hold them all, and after struggling
through the ice nearly all day reached
the schooner George s. Fogg and were
saved. There they met the three suIVlV-
ors of their nine comrades who left them
nearly two weeks before; the three, sln-