The Portland daily press., 1883-02-10
A PERILoUs PASSAGE.
THE ROUGH EXPERIENCE OF THE
FLORENCE.
She Loses Boats and Steering Gear and
One Officer is Injured.

The steamship Florence, Capt. Crate, ar
rived at this port from Cardiff, Wales, yester-
day noon, with 1000 tons of coal to the Allan
Steamship Company, and anchored off the
coal wharves. AS she came up the harbor she
looked like an iee-ship, for hull, masts and
rigging were bed of ice, and she glistened
like ship of glass in the sunshine. Her ex-
perlence had been a fearful one, and reporter
for the PRESS visited the vessel and gathered
the following particulars from the officers:
The Florence. which is long iron, brigan-
tine rigged, propeller steamship of about
5000 tons burden, left Cardiff January 10th,
or twenty-five days ago. From the hour she
left the harbor the ship encountered series of
gales, accompanied by rain or snow, that last
ed the entire passage without an hours SUM-
shine intervening at any one time. After
passing Cape Clear the westerly gales rose to
the dignity of hurricanes, and the seas were
tremendous. In fact all the officers concur
that in all their experience they never knew
such passage.
On January 21st, after five days of arduous
labor, with decks continually swept by the
surges, the fierce gale which had risen the
day previous assumed the dignity of a hurri-
cane. 1t was almost impossible to stay on
deck. The seas smashed all the steam pipes to
pieces, tore away one of the boats, and blew
the new stay sail and foretrysail clear out of the
ropes. The gale then abated little only to
gather reserved strength. On the 24Jh, the
second officer, Mr.. Charles Hanson, while en-
deavdring to secure an anchor on the fore
castle, had his leg broken against the rail.
The same storm smashed the life-boat and tore
away portion of the bulwarks and some of
the standing rigging To add to their peril
the whole after steering gear was carried away
or smashed, and other means to manage the
ship had to be resorted to.
When the Banks were reached the cold was
intense, and the captain states that his spirit
compass froze, thing new to his experience.
From that time to port the course had to be
gathered at night from the position of the
north star. The first land sighted was Sable
Island, and from that point for the next
three days, until this port was reached it was
gale and heavy seas as before. 1t must be ad-
mitted that the captains cabin looked rather
cherries notwithstanding the bright coal fire
in the crate. There was dampness that told
of the heavy seas that had been shipped, and
the suffering mate was lying in one corner,
reading, with the consciousness that surgeon
had got to attend TO his broken limb which
had been SO long unattended. Many of the
crew were more or less injured by the suffer-
ings and cold they had experienced, and
long, narrow wooden bridge running fore and
aft, guarded by light iron chains showed the
shifts to which the crew had been put by rea.
son of the tremendous seas, to get from one
part of the steamer to the other. The first Of
ficer, Mr.. Ward, had on slippers for the first
time yesterday in the twenty-four days since
leaving port. All the passage two men had to
be constantly at the helm.