The Point Pleasant register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, W. Va.) 1909-1939, 1910-01-05
q scANT pLET.
shipwrseksd Grew Lived on stowsS
Rope For Sixteen Days.

The menus upon which wrecked
or castaway people have sustained
ife for considerable time are cx-
,raordinary. With small quantity
Of water and nothing more nourish-
ing than boots, tarred rope or sea-
weed men have been known to sus-
tain life for weeks without losing
any great amount Of flesh.
Perhaps the scantest diet upon
which human beings ever kept alive
was the daily menu of Windover's
survivors, who we're cast upon the
Irish coast near Kilsegg.
They lived for sixteen days on
stewed rope yarn, without a crumb-
of anything to help digest it except
water, and, though it made them IL.
they kept alive on it and did not
waste away very much.
This vessel was a bark carrying
salt from Spain to the United
States, with an English crew, and
she was dismasted and abandoned
about 1000 miles out on the Allan
tic. Three Of the crew were killed
by falling masts, and two others
we're washed overheard. But the
other seven took the whaleboat and
set out for the shore.
They took too little food, but
three large butts of water, besides
the tank the boat already held. The
result was they ate up their pro
visions 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 pulp and swallowing it.
They had a key of parffin wax.
and, though it made them Ill at
first, they eventually contrived to
live on the boiled hemp, the tar,
boiled to a jelly, adding to the nour-
lSnmenI OF the rope.
There is another instance Of sus-
tanning life on next to nothing
which happened on a small island
off the Irish coast. Two men land
ed there in a small boat, which was
dashed to bits on the rocks when
they made an effort to relaunch her
for the return trip. They were en-
tirely without food, and the island
was bare and rocky, with the thin
nest possible layer of soil.
Fortunately there was 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 distress signal.
There are not even any shellfsh.
as there is no beach, and the pair
had to subsist for the ten days on
the cold, raw seaweed washed up BY
the tide. For two days they starved.
but after that they tackled the sea-
weed, making three meals day of
it until rescued.
The favorite of all starvation del
icacies, if we are to judge from the
frequency of its appearance on star
vation bills Of fare, is a pair Of sea
boots, but, though it is hard for a
well fed person to imagine how life
can be sustained on such fare, there
are many instances where they, with
a little water, have kept man alive
for a fortnight. OF course no teeth
can tear cowhide boots-they have
to be cut up and shredded with Il
knife and the shreds chewed and
swallowed.
A few ounces of leather, being SO
hard to digest, stays the stomach
for fifteen or twenty hours.
Barnacles as a diet is the best
known and most useful to unfortu-
nate castaways. Three Engishmen
and crew of Lascars, who had
been forced to abandon the sailing
vessel North Star, kept themselves
going for over week on barnacls,
and only two Of the crew died.
The worst of them is that they
give one-internal cramps and cause
an insuferable thirst, but they do
nourish the frame.-Stray Stories