The sun., 1904-07-18
SIX DAYS IN NoRGE'S BOAT,
WITH NOTHING TO EAT FOR FOUR
-THREE or THE SAVED GET HERE

THREE OF THE SAVED GET HERE
Third Mate Basse Meant TO Get Home Ia
His wife and son and He DID. and
Everybody In tho Boat Got 10 Land.
Too, Some with Their Heads Punched.
The White Star liner Cedric, which made
port Saturday night, brought three sur
vivors Of the Scandinavian Line steamer
Norge. which struck on Rockall Reef on June
20, last, and went down with more than
900 Of her passengers and crew. The three
men, August Tornberg. Carl Johansen
and Wilhelm Poulsen, had nothing but the
Cedric at Liverpool, but many hours had not
passed before purse was made up by their
fellow voyagers.
Tornberg and Poulsen are married and
left large families In Sweden. Johansen,
Lad Of nineteen, is Dane who left home to
join his elder sister in Chicago. Poulsen
was permitted to Land yesterday and went
to relative in Perth Amboy. The other
two men will be cared for at the Swedish
Home, near the Battery. until they secure
transportation to the West.
The three men were the centre Of blue
eyed tow headed crowd OF Scandinayians
when THE Sun reporter reached Ellis Island
yesterday. They were telling again the
story Of the wreck.
Tornberg was on the lower deck OF the
Norge talking TO sailor when the ship
rasped lightly against the reef. heavy
mist hung over the sea. But few hundred
feet ahead, rising high above the water,
could be seen tho great lonely shaft OF
Rookall. In another moment there was a
terrific crash and Tornberg fell on deck
half stunned. He could hear the sound Of
water rushing INTO the gaping hole in the
bow, and then came the cry: Man the
boats. The ship Is sinking"
Immediately the steerage was in panic.
Tornberg regained his feet as the first boat
the one that was dashed against the side by
a giant wave-was being lowered. He
lifted a little girl into this boat only to see
her swallowed up by a wave a second later.
He turned to assist In the lowering Of
second boat when sea broke over the deck
and he was washed of with a hundred Others
Tornberg, although a strong swimmer,
was nearly exhausted when Third Mate
Basse and another Of the crew pulled him
into lifeboat. Tornberg jumped over
board again a moment later and helped
rescue Poulsen and Johansen, who were
clinging to a piece Of timber. In the course
Of fifteen minutes three sailors and seven
passengers, all men. were hauled out OF the
water. making seventeen in the boat. The
last man rescued was 90 weighted down
by the gold sewed In his money belt that he
could not swim more than just enough to
keep his head above the surface.
l.ol III st i k<.I< i n.-
ordered those who were strong. enough to
lend hand and row out of the zone of
danger. They had not made hundred
yards when the Norge pitched forward and
disappeared. boat and hundreds OF
living and dead who were near the wreck
vanished In the vortex
Basse's boat had aboard a keg of water
and bag Of ships biscuit. II had not
gone far when a second boat with twenty
eight men, four women and two children
aboard came along with absolutely no
provisions. Basse, confident that he would
eight hours at the latest, gave them two
two boats and a third that joined them on
the first night were In company. The men
rowed in relays two hours at time. About
midnight on June 80 the wind rose to
gale and the boats drifted apart.
BY this time all OF the water and all Of
the biscuits in the boat Basse commanded
was gone and the men were tired and sick.
Their hands were covered with blisters
and Basse and his four sailors had no little
difficulty in keeping them at the oars.
The man with the gold they could do nothing
with He was sick and lay. in the bottom
Of the boat alternately praying and Offering
the gold for piece OF bread.
After about ten hours the gale gave way
to a cold rain. They caught some water in
the bottom Of the boat and got a little
relief, but salt water soon spoiled the fresh.
On the fourth day the men could not
work more than an hour at a time at the
oars, and on the fifth day not moro than
half an hour.
They had now been three full days with
out food or drink and most Of them suffered
go that they cared little whether they reached
land or not. But Basse had left a blue
eyed wife and two-year-old son In Dem
mark and meant to see them again: When
q man threw down his oar and said he could
work no longer Basse would ask him II
he had family. II he had he generally
went to work again. If he hadn't Basse
boy: or, il necessary. punched his head.
On the morning OF the sixth day. Basse
tore up a number Of life preservers and
contrived a crazy sail by piecing the cover
ings together. Late that afternoon this
clumsy sail was sighted by one Of the crew
Of the Scotch fishing smack Rattray Bay and
In another hour theseventeen men had been
taken aboard the smack
The rescued could not make the rescuers
understand much about what had happened.
The smack got to Aberdeen on July g. The
boat with which Basse shared his pro-
visions was picked up by the British steamer
Cervona, and all her people were saved.
OF the third boat nothing has been heard.
Basse went to Copenhagen; The man with
-. II