Seward daily gateway., 1928-10-30
1A[E: SUFFERING
 O|I BER||VG SHORES
 RET0LD IN SEWARD
NARROW ESCAPE FROM DEATH RECALLED AS PARTICIPANTS
 MEET HERE AGAIN

AAAN@iAiS Ill CllC ollOlJ UuU I1eiEf
 annals of the fishermen of the Si.
 perian Sea has come to light in the
 meeting here Saturday of three
 men, two of whom nearly lost tn, il
 lives on the bleak coast of the A.
 aska peninsula and the third wnc
 was instrumental in effecting their
 rescue. They are Olaf Johansen
 and Neil "Scotty" Mckay, who
 were the two men who wandered
 along the forbidding shores facing
 the Bering Sea for 27 days, abso- Ilutely destitute except for t.le
 clothes on their backs, grubbing
 for clans and crabs, and who final ly staggered around the point at
 Jzenback Bay to find a disabled
 ship, and food and warmth and
 comfort. It was Nick Johnson If
 t7nga with the Edna Watts who was
 learned that JohanSen had met
 laid up there without a propeller.
 It seems that the Waweema,
 learned that Johansen had met Scotty Mckay here on his way cut
 to the South on the s. s. Starr. It happened also that Johansen met Johnson and the story was lived over again.
 It appears that the Waweema, which left Seattle last spring in charge of Capt. Bob Firth with an ever sized crew, and which was wrecked several weeks ago on St. George Island, put in at Black Hills lCn the north side of the peninsula 0bout 40 miles east of Snapper Is land to get fresh water The boat mad come up codfishing but she had too many men aboard and jo- hansen and Mckay decided to quit the vessel and mush over the hills to Cold Bay.
 JohanSen is somewhat reticcnt as to just why they took this chance, but they departed along the beach without equipment of any kind and started out on what almost proved to be their last journey.
 The first food they ran across was some flour in trapper's cab in and they made flapjacks of flour and water and cooked them on a shovel over an open fire, the food proving so indigestible that 1t made both men sick.
 After that they lived on clans for the most part becoming weaker each day as they headed west, only 10 be completely baffled when they came to a precipitous cove that they could not cross, neither could they go around.
 They retraced their steps and finally found a water-logged dcry that had been washed ashore and in which they managed to make a crossing while one man roWed and the other bailed They had left the WaWeema about the first of June, but it was not until July End that they staggered along the beach at Izenback Bay where John son and his crew of five men were laying helpless with the Edna Watts.
 ''The boys wouldn't tell us much about what they had been up against MT. Johnson said, but 1t was easy enough to see that they had had a terrible experience be- cause both of them were worn to a shadow" It happened that a power boat put in at Izenback Bay and Johnson took the two men to False Pass where they were restor- ed to health. It was some weeks after this rescue that the Waweema went ashore on St. George Island in a fog, heavily laden with cod, when her crew of 30 escaped n their underwear and suffered greet hardship until picked up by pass ing steamer. They related the tale of that adventure when they went 1 thru here on the Admiral Watson several weeks ago.