The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1891-02-13
ROBBED BY THE WAVES.
HUSBAND KILLED AND BOY DROWNED
WAS THIS WoMAN's LOT.

band Wa the Captain of an Ill Eated
in Il Series of Typhoons.
The steamship City of Rio de Janeiro
numbered among her passengers a lady
whose experiences involve a tale OF dire
shipwreek and sad bereavement. Mrs.
B. G.. Fownes is q tall, rather slightly
built woman, whose pale face still bears
only too plainly the marks OF the terrible
sufferings she has had to endure, and yet
tells a tale of no common courage and of
rare fertitude. She was called upon at
the residence of her sister, Mrs. b. H..
Keith, LBS Twenty-frst street, and the
following is the substance OF Ter sad
story;
The ship Lizzie Troup, bailing from st.
John, n. B., sailed on Sept. IS, 1890, from
Nagasaki with ballast bound for Puget
sound. For the first t~wenty-four hours
all went well, but on the nishtof the 10Th,
when she was out about 100 miles, it be-
gan to blow q hurricane, which quickly
changed to the revolving winds of the ty-
phoon. There had been time, however,
to shorten sail, and only the lower top
sail was then carried away. This wind
storm lasted thirty-six hours, and in it
the Irgotul and many other vessels were
lost, while the Lizzie Troup was re-
prieved.
On Saturday, Sept. 81, until noon the
winds had abated considerably, and all
sail was set to keep the vessel well off the
japanese shores. Suddenly, almost with
out a moments notice, a second typhoon
came upon the vessel. The wind blew
first fromthe northeast, then veered rap
idly round to east, southeast, south-south-
east and south, Ticking everyinch of can
vas from the masts, smashing the spars,
and hurting them away in sphnters,
and breaking the mainmast and foremost,
and even tearing the copper sheathin9
from the vessels sides.
A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.
All possible means of guidance gone,
the storm tossed waters speedily hurried
the doomed craft TO the coral bound coast
of the island of Okin, III the Loochoo
group, which she had for SO many noGrS
fought to free herself from. The first
blow on the reef carried away the bows,
a second knocked the bottom clean out,
carrying away the keel entirely, and let
ting all the ballast fail out, while the re-
mainder of the hull was tossed like a
broken egg shell high on a reef not 100
yards from land.
Capt. Fownes, the husband of the lady
who told the story, did all that a man
could, and acted as a brave man should.
He stood by his vessel, encouraged his
crew, and then, when they had been told
to save themselves as best they might, he
looked to his wife and 2-year-old son.
1T won't last long" he said; ''our
time has come. Let Us meet the end
courageously."
He took the child in his arms and
steadied himself and wife against the
deck house. Hardly had he done so
when a huge wave came crashing in on
top Of them, smashed in the decks and
carried all who clung TO the planks into
the vessels bottomless hold. Mrs.
Fownes' own words best describe the
scene:
" had all been at the stern Of the
vessel, and when the decks were broken
in / felt myself carried forward, and was
thrust up by the force Of the waters
through an opening in the fore part Of
the ship. There l was held fast, a wire
cable around my ankle and my body
damned in between the broken beams.
From this place l could see my husband
had clambered onto a portion of the
deck house which remained. but the
child, my boy, was gone! Hardly know
ing what l was doing I managed to free
my foot, and by tearing my clothes off
from the waist down was able to Iberate
my body. In he meantime my husband
signed to me to try to crawl over the
rocks to the shore. One of the sailors
had succeeded in landing, and, bringing
natives with him, managed to drag sew
eral ashore, and a rope was passed TO
me and they laid me on the beach.
CAST ON y FOREIGN SHORE.
Capt. Fownes himself was rescued.
but only to die. There was no doctor at
hand when he landed, and in two hours
he succumbed. He was very badly in
jured internally and hisribs Were broken
in. An aged carpenter named George
Kobe, of Hamburg, Germany, was also
brought ashore, but died five days after
ward from exhaustion. Of those that
tried to save themselves the second mate
and eight sailors were carried off into
the surf and were never seen again.
One fearfully mangled body was all
the sea gave up. The people saved num-
bered ten, including the first mate. The
entire number Of persons on board was
twenty-five. Nine men and the baby
boy were drowned, the captain and car
penter died after being rescued, and
nine men and Mrs. Fownes survived.
The natives of the little island had
never before had white people among
them, though they are we'll acquainted
with the customs of Americans, and their
laws are similar. An inquest was held
by the natives, and the bodies were re-
gpectfully buried, and q stone monu-
ment. properly inscribed, shows where
Capt. Fownes rests. He never rallied
after being brought ashore, and his wife
never knew how the child was torn from
his I'm
The rest of her story is very simple.
No steamers ever calling in at the closed
port, she was taken in a junk to Dukin,
thence to Kagoshima, Kobe, and finally
to Yokohama, where she remained for
seventeen days. At each stopping place
the japanese held an official inquiry into
the cause of the wreck, and furnished
Mrs. Fownes with the reports of the in
quiry in the japanese language.-San