The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-01-11
STARVATION DIETS.
Boiled Rope, Seaweed, Raw Boots
and Barnacles Have Saved Lives.
From

Boiled Rope, Seaweed, Raw Boots
and Barnacles Have Saved Lives.
From Answers.
The hardest fare that six strong
men and a boy of fifteen ever kept
alive on was the daily menu of the
Windover's survivors, who were cast
up on the Irish coast near Kilsegg a
few weeks ago. They lived for sixteen
days on stewed ropeyarn, without a
crumb of anything else to help digest
it, except water; and, though it made
them ill, they kept alive on it and did
not waste away very much.
The Windover was a bark carrying
salt between Spain and the States,
with an English crew, and she was
dismasted and abandoned about a
thousand miles out on the Atlantic.
Three of the crew were killed by fall
ing masts, and two others were
washed overboard; but the other seven
took TO the whaleboat and set out for
Britain }eing in too much of hurry,
they l. too little food, but three
large butts of water, besides the tank
the boat already held. The result was
they ate up the provisions in four days,
but had water enough for a month,
and, after starving two days more,
they tried boiling lengths of tarred
hemp rope into a pulp and swallow
ing it. They had a keg of parafflne
wax, and thought 1t made them very
ill at first, they eventually contrived
to live on the boiled hemp, the tar,
boiled to a jelly, adding to the nour-
ishment of the rope. They landed in
comparatively good health.
20 oil fcIo ri
off the Irish coast a little while ago
kept themselves going for ten days
on a diet almost worse. They landed
in a boat, which was smashed by a
wave on their trying to relaunch her,
and they were left on the bare, rocky
island, which has only slight scalp of
coarse turf, without food. Fortunate
ly, there is a spring on the island. but
nothing in the way of food but gulls,
which they could not catch, and moth
ing to make fire with as a distress
signal. There are not even any she'll
fish, as there is no beach, and the pair
had to subSiSt for the ten days on cold,
raw seaweed washed up by the tide.
For two days they starved, but after
that they tackled the seaweed, making
three meals a day off 1t until rescued
When taken off they were a good deal
emaciated, but no i'll effects resulted.
Inc same iIlilb IdppSucu OIL the Same
coast five years ago, when four fisher
women were imprisoned on an inlet
by the loss of their boat. They lived
on "kelpie" grass for six days.
A diet of boots is one of the COM
monest of last resource foods, and,
though it is hard for a we'll fed person
to imagine that any one could masti-
cate and digest shoe leather, a pair
of long seaboots will keep a man alive
r 1. Ia
Capt. Maboly, of the foundered
steamer Gwalior, and his second Of
ficer created record last year by
living for seventeen days on boot
leather and pint of water a day each.
OF course, no teeth can tear cow
hide boots; they have to be cut up and
shredded with a knife, and the shreds
chewed and swallowed. Boiling, even
when possible, does no good at all, but
takes from the boots what nourishment
they contain. A few ounces of leath er,
being so hard to digest, stays the