The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-10-12
KILLED ON LINER IN THE GALE.
ONE DEAD PASSENGER BROUGHT
IN BY DELAYED JEFFERSON.
Lookout Crippled by q Seats Hours
Getting Here From Norfolk Through
the Tremendous Cross Seas on the
Western Edge Of the Whirliny storm.

Capt. Dole of the Old Dominion liner
jefferson, which got in yesterday from
Norfolk more than a day late, having little
faith in the infalibility Of the Weather
Bureau, decided not to heed It's warning
that it was dangerous for vessels TO leave
Norfolk on Friday for ports north or sout h,
The Jefferson is u high sided, stanch storm
defer, and her skipper took her out of port
at us o'clock on Friday night. The wind
was westerly then.
Outside the Virginia Capes there was
bowling mort heaster. and most of the ship =
twenty-five cabin passengers wished they
had stayed ashore, like large number who
had engaged passage but cancelled it,
fearing that the Weather Bureau was guess-
ing right
The Jefferson in pleasant weather makes
the trip from Norfolk in about nineteen
hours. She was forty-fve hours on the
lumpy way this time. Sometimes she
could hardly make steerage way in the
towering cross seas She caught the worst
Of the gale and sea between Chinco league
Island and the Delaware Capes, between
midnight on Friday and dawn on Saturday
morning
A mighty sea came aboard forward at
o'clock on Saturday morning. completely
smothering the forecastle head and the
bow lookout, Able Seaman Dick Mclean,
stationed there. Second Officer Charles
Seward had the bridge. When the big
comber hit the ship she apparently God still
and shivered bit He heard an inartlcu-
late cry forward and thought the lookout
was trying to warn him Of some ship ahead.
He tried to peer through the blackness
and spindrift with his glasses. Then he
heard the cry again. Leaving the bridge
in charge of another officer, he went forward
and found the lookout lying on his back
grooming. The right side Of his face was
gashed and his hip was broken. The in
vading comber had swept him against a
deck fixture. He was taken to the ship .
hospital
The ship pitched and rolled nightly.
Cabin and steerage passengers were in
their berths, and most of them were sea-
sick. 4. B. Hawley, an aged ltlnerant
y, c.. who was in the steerage was thrown
athwart ships. His head struck wooden
partition and he died before the Jefferson
got to port.
Indescribing the storm Second Officer Sea-
ward said: we estimated that the wind was
blowing ninety or nlnety-nVe Hllies an nouT
between midnight on triday and O'Clock
Oh Saturday morning. l never saw such
mountainous cross seas. We have about
twenty-five feet freeboard forward, and
the seas came over the bow constantly.
We passed one tramp steamship bound
south and our sister ship, the Hamilton,
and both were making very heavy, weather
of it. We seemed to be for whole day
the only ship on the ocean,
While an ambulance was waiting at the
Old Dominion pier to take the injured
lookout to hospital, Mrs, Charles l. Bur
dette, the young bride of the ships purser,
came down to greet him. That the ship
was a day late had disturbed her some
what, and the sight OF the ambulance added
70 her perturbation. Her husband was
aboard the ship talking to Coroner Scholer
about he death of Mr.. Hawley. As she
boarded the ship she asked an officer where
her husband was and he answered: He's
with the Coroner Thereupon Mrs. Bur-
dette tainted. When she came to she
found her husband beside her.