Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-06-11
STARVATION DIETS.
Boiled Rope, Raw Seaweed, Boots and
 RarnacIes Have Saved Lives.


 ! Barnacles Have Saved Lives. I The hardest fare that six strong men l and a boy of 15 ever kept alive on was the daily menu of the Windover's sur | vivors, who were cast up on the Irish coast near Kilsegg a few weeks ago. They lived for sixteen days on steWed rope yarn, without anything else to help digest it except water, and though it made them i'll, they kept alive on IL and did not waste away very much
 The Windover was a bark carrying salt between Spain and the Unlted States, with an English crew, and she was dismasted and abandoned about thousand miles out on the Atlantic Three of the crew were killed by the falling masts and two others were washed overheard, but the other seven took to the sailboat and set out TOT Britain. Being in too much of hurry they took too little food, but three large butts of water, besides the tank the boat already had. The result was that they ate up the provisions in four da!s but had water enough for a monrn' and, after starving for two days more, they tried bailing lengths of tarreo hemp rope into pulp and swallowing it. They had a keg of parafnne wax, and. though 1t made them very Ill at first they eventually contr1ved to nVe on the boiled hemp, the tar rope bolleu to a jelly adding to the nourlsnmen' of the rope. They landed In coIlpdla- lively good health.
 Two men who went to small island off The Irish coast a little while ago kept themselves going for ten days on a diet almost worse. They landed in boat, which was smashed by a wave on their trying to relaunch her, ana they were left on the bare, rocky island, which was only slight scalp of coarse turf, without food Fortu- nate1y there is a spring on the island, but nothing in the way of food but gulls. which they could not catch and nothing to make a fire with as a dis tress signal There are not any shell fish as there is no beach, and the pair had to subsist for 10 days E-c01u, 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 it until they, were res cued. When taken off they were good deal emaciated, but no i'll effects resulted The same thing happened off the same coast five years ago, when four fisherwomen 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 honest of the last resource foods, and, though it is hard for 8 we'll fed person to imagine that anyone could masticafe and digest shoe leather, a pair of long sea boots will keep man alive for a fortnight if he has little water Captain Maboly of the foun- dered steamer Gwailor and his sec ond officer created a record last year by living for seventeen days on boot leather and a pint of water day each.
 Of course no teeth can tear coWhide boots; they must 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 in the stomach for fifteen or twenty hours.
 The best known and most useful of starvation diets for wrecked or casta- way people however. Is that of bar nacles; and if anything of the kind happens to you they will probably be
 
 tough half shellfish, half vegetable creatures, that grow on the under sides of vessels. Three Englishmen and a crew of Lascars, who had been forced 10 abandon the sailing vessel. North Star a few months ago, kept themselves going for over a week on barnacles and only one of the crew died. The worst of them is that they give one internal cramps and cause insufferab1e thirst, but they do nour ish the frame You have to reach un- der the vessels side and pull them off, taking care not to leave the best half of them sticking to the blanks. Only a starving person could possibly feat them. Many a castaway crew, however, has found them better than nothing
 If you needed thing yesterday you should not wait until tomorrow to ad- xyorstie,a for if rNy~r orr xxranf column