Eighteen Men Frozen to Death.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 210, 18 November 1873, Page 7

Eighteen Men Frozen to Death.

The Norwegian papers give an interesting relation by Captain Mack, who was sent in search of some sailors surprised by the ice to the north of Spitzbergen, in September, 1872, and forced to winter in magazines at Mitterbuk. He could not succeed in reaching the exact point where the prisoners were supposed to have remained, but a search party, under the command of a harpooner was sent out, and discovered that all were dead. To the body of one of them was pinned a letter, stating that Captain Tellefsen, of Bergen, had recently passed the point and taken possession of all the papers to be found. The next day Captain Tellefsen returned with his vessel, and he and Captain Mack went on shore together. On reaching

tho huts where the crew had stayed, they at first came across five dead bodies laid out on a bench under a cloth. In a chamber to the right of the entrance were six. corpses horribly disfigured. In another, to the left, were three more in beds, and a fourth on a chest. The last wore a fur hat and vest and woollen gloves. The three others presented a terrible sight. By their side were the remains of their last food-—three biscuits, four or five tablets of sugar, and a parcel of dried vegetables. The bodies were all buried in one grave. After a vain search for the remains of the two other sailors who had been detained, which were probably hidden under the snow, the last of the eighteen who had to be accounted for was found to have died before the arrival of his comrades at the huts. The exceptional fatality in this business is supposed to be owing to the inaction and want of hygienic precautions of the victims, who ate salt meat and lard almost to the last. They had exceptionally copious resources in the storerooms of the Mitterbuk. The story is taken from a diary which was kept by the sufferers, probably till the time of the last of them who could write. It states that in October they killed two bears, two foxes, and some reindeer, but gave over hunting from the 7th November in consequence of the darkness. All went well until the beginning of December, when the first man fell ill; on the 19th a second was attacked, and on the 21st nearly all. The weaker invalids were attended by their stronger fellow sufferers, two of whom watched night and day. The cold gradually increased, and with it the malady. On the 10th January the first two died ; on the 21st February the third ; and on the 23rd the writing in the diary changed, and the new recorder says, “There is now only one sound man to keep us all. May the Lord have pity on us.” On the 28th February the cold reached its maximum, 30 degrees Reaumur below zero. Up to the 10th April ten fresh deaths were successively recorded, and on the 19th the last was registered by a new hand. It is supposed to°be that of the man found dead on the chest.