Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Benton County, Or.) 1900-1909, 1903-01-20
STARVATION DIETS.
Boiled Rope, Seaweed, Raw Boots and
BarnacIes Have Saved Lives.

Boiled Rope, Seaweed, Raw Boots and |
BarnacIes Have Saved Lives.
The hardest fare that six strong men
and boy Of Is ever kept alive on was
the daily menu of the Windover's sur
vivors, who were cast upon the Irish
coast near Kilsegg few weeks ago.
They lived for sixteen days on steweo
rope-yarn, without crum Of anything
else to help digest it, except water;
and, though it made them i'll, 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
thousand miles out on the Atlantic
Three Of the crew were killed by rail-
ing masts, and two others were wash
ed overheard; but the other seven took
to the whaleboat and set out for Brit
ain. Being in too much of hurry
they took 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 month,
and, after starving two days more,
they tried boiling lengths of tarred
hemp rope into pulp and swallowing
it. They had keg Of paraffine wax,
and, though it made them very Ill at
first, they eventually contrived to live
on the boiled hemp, the tar, boiled to
jelly, adding to the nourishment of the
rope. They landed in comparatively
good health.
Two men who went to small island
off the Irish coast little while ago
kept themselves going for ten days on
q diet almost worse. They landed in
a boat, which was smashed by wave
on their trying to relaunch her, and
they were left on the bare, rocky ISL
and, which has only a slight scalp or
coarse turf, without food. Fortunately
there is spring on the island, but
nothing in the way of food but gulls,
which they could not catch, and moth
I ing to make a fire with as distress
signal. There are not even any she'll
fish, as there Is no beach, and the paar
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 day off it, until rescued. When
taken off they were good deal ema-
ciated, but no Ill effects resulted. The
same thing happened off the same
coast five years ago, when four fisher
women were imprisoned on an inlet by
- 1ivod
| "kelpie' grass for six days.
| A diet of boots is one of the common
| est of last-resource foods; and, though
! it is hard for a well-fed person to
| imagine that any one could masticate
and digest shoe leather, pair of long
seaboots will keep a man alive for a
fortnight, If he has little water. Cap
tain Maboly, of the foundered steamer
Gwalior, and his second officer created
a record last year by living for seven
teen days on boot leather and pint Of
water per day each.
| OF course, no teeth can tear cowhide
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 leather,
being so hard to digest, stays the stom-
ach for fifteen or twenty hours.
The best known and most useful Of
starvation diets for wrecked or cast
away people, however, is that of bar
nacles, and If anything of the kind
happens to you they will probably be
your staple food. Barnacles are long,
tough, half shellfsh, half vegetable
creatures, that grow on the undersides
Of vessels. Three Englishmen and a
crew of Lascars who had been forced
to abandon the sailing vessel North
Star a few. months ago kept them
selves going for over a week on bar
nacles and only two Of the crew died.
The worst of them is that they give
one internal cramps and cause an in
sufferable thirst; but they do nourish
the frame. You have to reach under
the vessels side and pull them off,
taking care not to leave the best half
Of them sticking to the planks. Only
a starving person could possibly eat
them Many a castaway crew, how
ever, has found them better than moth
ing.-Answers.