The Washington times., 1923-04-19
PLANE RUSHING
To 1OSTARV|NG
ON ISLAND
Nine Men and One Woman in
Party Marooned in Lake
Michigan.
NORTHPoRT. Mich, April 10

NORTHPORT, Mich, April 10.
AN airplane from Selfridge
Field, Michigan, is expected to
wing its way toward this city
today, bent on an errand of
mercy. 1t win strive to reach
Fox Island, twenty miles off
shore, where nine men and a
woman are said to be slowly
starving. The plane, piloted by
e. c. Whitehead, will pick up
provisions at Northp0rt and then
proceed to the island.
Car Ferry Battles lee.
Meanwhile, in the ley waters of
Lake Michigan huge car ferry is
striving to reach the island.
Word of the plight of the ten
was brought here by three men,
ago, struggling through the lee
fields and finally reaching shore
late yesterday.
The men, Edward Horne, twenty
three; Carl Cooper, thirty-six, and
Ellis Sayres, thirty-five, encoun-
tered terrible hardships on the trip
from the island to the mainland, a
distance of eighteen miles Their
leaky fifteen-foet skiff was smashed,
forcing them to complete the jour-
ney on q cake OF ice which they
hacked from a large foe. Horne's
feet were frozen,
They said the island colony of
loggers exhausted their provisions
three weeks ago. The party had
been cutting timber on the island
since last November and had taken
provisions supposedly sufficient to
last through the winter. Weather
of unrecedented severity kept up
on the island much longer than
they had anticipated, the sortie
party said.
Doubt was expressed that an ef.
fort by @ ferry Of the Ann Arbof
Railroad Company to reach the
island would meet with success.
No vessel except a large steel
proved craft could penetrate the
Ice congestion of northern Lake
Michigan, said to be the worst In
forty years.
-Four of US tried to reach the
mainland three weeks ago, after
our stores became exhausted" said
Horne today. 1--WE started out
ing that the ice extended to the
Michigan shore. We had gone only
about two miles when we found
that the ice was breaking up. Two
of us slipped into the water and
almost drowned before we could get
back to the island. The island
looked a lot better to us after that
experience.
But even the frozen potatoes be-
gan to run low, so a few days after
that can't remember exactly how
long because everything seems kind
of haZy-we started out again on
foot. That time we were caught in
a binding snowstorm. We wan
dered for nearly a day and were
lost part of the time, but finally we
got back.
''Then at a. m. Monday, Cooper,
Sayres and myself, the three strong.
est Of the party, took an old eight
een-foot skiff. The ice seemed to
have gone out. The rest waved
their hands as we left.
Forced to Abandon Boat.
1--WE had only one pair of oars, a
pole and an axe and no food. After
five miles we struck slush, ice. We
were tired and couldn't lift the boat
over the ice, which broke through
when we tried to walk on it. The
wind changed to the north and we
couldn't retreat. We worked all
Monday night, rowed in open water
for two hours Tuesday morning,
abandoned the boat at solid ice and
started to walk, but found open
water.
The skiff had disappeared, so we
chopped q cake of ice loose and
padded it as a boat. Eventually
we reached broken ice three miles
off shore. We slept on an ice cake,
and on Wednesday ran the rest of
the way, Ieaping from one cake to
the next. Cooper fell in twice
Then We walked four bad miles
| down the beach to Northnort. ,,