Morning journal and courier., 1881-06-28
\ Vessels Fight with the Ice.

The wreck of the Danish mail steamer Phoenix, which took place off the west coast of Iceland, was attended by very peculiar cir cumstances, which are thus described by J. A. Allen in Nature.
 s'The vessel (about 450 tons burthsn) sail ed with cargo and mails from Copenhagen for Leith, the Farce Islands and Iceland about tine middle of January. Nothing par ticular occurred until after leaving the Fla roes when she ran into a severe gale which rapidly increased to a perfect hurricane. while at the same time the temperature fell to about 50' F. of frost (1S0 F. Such cold is not extraordinary in these attitudes in win ter, but fortunately it is seldom associated with very high winds. Under the circumstan- ces in which the Phoenix was placed every sea that she shipped froze, and the deck soon became covered with foot or two of solid ice. AS time passed on the continued action of the sea raised perfect iceberg on the for ward part of the vessel while the showers of spray carried along by the steadily increasing gale covered the masts, yards and rigging with an ever thickening coat of ice. Two or three days passed without the least abatement of the storm, and then the half smothered steamer went over on her beam-ends. The crew succeeded in cutting away the masts, and she once more righted.
 "It however was clear, the gale showing no signs of breaking. that the relief was only temporary. The ice continued to form on the vessel, particularly about the forecastle, where piled high above the bulwarks, and overhanging the sides, it threatened, by al- tering her trim, to raise the propeller out of the water. Under these circumstances, on the morning of January %, Captain Kihl de- cided to run the steamer ashore while day light lasted. At some distance from the land she struck on a sunken rock and the crew, taking to the boats only succeeded with the greatest difficulty in reaching the shore, saw ing nothing but their lives, the English mail,
 II /--.I ried ashore) were found to be useless-froZen into a solid lump. Their situation in deep snow on the desolate coast of Iceland, about one hundred miles to the northwest of Reyk- javik, was very critcial, and party of two or three of the stronger sailors under the com- mand of M. Jaspersin, the first officer, pro- ceeded in search of assistance. It was not, however, until about three in the morning of the 3Oth, after suffering great hardships, that the sound of pony kicking in shed guided them to a house The farmers immediately turned out, and eventually the scattered crew, twenty-five or twenty three in number, were picked up, some of the clever little Icelandic dogs proving themselves most valuable auxil- iaries in the search Many of the men, how ever, were all but frozen to death in the snow. From this time all possible attention was given to them but one, having both legs and arms frostbitten, died another afterward had both legs amputated below the knees and the steward lost three fingers of each hand. Hardly one escaped more or less injury from the effects of the extreme cold to which they had been so long exposed. Captain Kihl and the bulk of his crew soon after succeeded in getting to Reykjavik, and on April 13 they sailed in the sister steamer, the Arcturus, for Copenhagen. The officers and men of the wrecked vessel are of opinion that had Cap tain Kihl not decided on the 29th to run the Phoenix ashore in daylight not soul would have been saved as the gale did not moder- ate for several days after and the steamer, buried as it was under an enormous mass of ice, must have foundered in the night"