The Albany register. [volume] (Albany, Or.) 1868-18??, 1875-04-16
TERRIBLE SEA DISASTERS.
Five COrpses Found Frozen to the Deck Of
a Seh0oner

Five corpses Found Frozen to the Deck OF
q Schooner.
Ist. Pierre tNewfoundland, Cor Brooklyn Union.1
During the terrible weather which
prevailed on this coast since the new
year set in great damage has been done
to shipping in the adjacent harbors, and
several wharves and moorings have been
SO badly wrecked as to cause the owners
1nsutferable expense. But of all the ac-
cldents none are worthy of notice in view
of the appalling catastrophe which was
revealed here at the dawn of this morn
ing. Guillaume Perot, keeper of the st.
Pierre Light-H House, was aroused by his
wife at half-past a. m. to-day, she ex-
pressing fear that she had heard the
crashing of timber below where their
quarters in the lighthouse are. As the
sea or the wind was not running very
high at the time Perot himself could dis
tlnctly hear at intervals the heavy bump
ing of what he knew to be vessel upon
the rocks. He dressed himself hurried
~ and ran TO the house of French fish
erman named Folquet, who, with his
three sons and the lighthouse keeper,
went to the moorings of their boats on
the beach. There they found q schooner
on her beam exds, and she was being
badly shattered by successive collisions
with the heavy boulders that prop out
from the headland. The fishermen
launched a boat, but before they were
ready to put out for the wreck she veered
about and was fast drifting on the beach.
In less than fifteen minutes the rudder-
less craft was stranded and they could
board her with the aid of planks laid
upon the lopsided hull, which was liter
ally cased with ice, as were the decks,
the rigging, and the stumps of her dis
mantled spars. Out of the galley two
investigation, the fishermen found that
they belonged to the corpse of
a colored man, whose face was frozen to
the deck and whose body was stiff and
hard as the ice that surrounded it. The
steering gear had all been swept away
with the rudder, and the vessel must |
have been for weeks at the mercy of the |
elements. In the forecastle three bodies |
were found which had been either frozen
or starved to death, for no provisions
could be found on board. A corpse was |
found on its face beside a coil of rope |
near the galley, and, like the rest, it was |
as hard as stone imbedded in surface !
of ice. The cabin windows had been |
broken IN by heavy seas, and the Cap |
tain's stateroom and mates hunks were |
Of matches and some kindling-wood |
frozen in the ice near where the stove or |
" bogy had stood before the severe |
lurching of the vessel or the force of the |
seas threw it down. A corpse was found |
at the downward end of the cabin with |
the stove shading the face. It wore
heavy reefng jacket, muffier, sea-boots |
and ''sou' 'wester" hat The fishermen |
think that this was the Captain. The |
two mates, they say, must have been
drowned, as no trace of them except their |
trunks and clothing could be found. The |
rigid, CHASTITY aspects of the corpses |
struck terror into the very souls of the |
hardy fishers, who had Witnessed many |
horrible scene of death on that stormy |
coast. They had to use axes to literally /
cut the bodies out of the ice, and by di- |
rection of the Prefect of the Police, they |
We're laid in a heated apartment of the |
Jail to be thawed out. The varied bluish |
and snow-white spots ON the limbs, ears, |
noses and fingers of the dead men re- |
vealed the fact that they had been badly |
frostbitten before death, and in that |
way, perhaps, disabled from doing ship |
duty