EXTRAORDINARY ESCAPE FROM A WRECK.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1224, 14 August 1885, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY ESCAPE FROM A WRECK.

One of the most extraordinary escapes after shipwreck has been reported at Hull. A keel hound from Grimsby ■ to Leeds was driven against a sand-* I bank and capsized, and it was supposed that all on board—the master, his wife and throe children—had perished.

Next morning the captain of a steam tug was passing the spot where the accident happened, and saw the keel fl wting bottom upwards, on the edge of the sandbank. He got as near to it as he could, and presently heard Bounds of knocking coming fr >m the cabin end. The crew concluded that someone was on board, and energetic steps were taken to get the keel in such a position as to effect a rescue. After several hours’ labor this was accomplished, and a hole having been cut through the bottom of a vessel, the captain’s wife, Mrs Snowden, and one of her children were rescued alive, after an agoni ing suspense of nearly seventeen hours. The water had nearly tided the cabin where the woman and her three children were sleeping; but there was just space left for her to keep her head and those of her little ones above the water, which ultimately reached up to the mother’s throat When they were aroused by the sink ing of the keel and the inrush of the water, she contrived to get hold oi the children, who all held on by t*>e hair of her head, and in that way for some time all the little ones were kept alive, but during the day two of them died. Just as the man who rescued them got into tho cabin, the water flowed in, and reached to the woman’s mouth. All the children were still clinging to the woman’s hair, and she and the live child were in a terribly exhausted condition. The mother’s hands were raw with knocking at the side of the keel. The survivors were taken on board the tug, and carefully tended. At the moment of the keel capsizing, what is known as the horseline twisted round the captain and carried him down amongst the rigging, which appeared to have remained under the water even when the keel was being rolled over by the force of the tide,” —Shipping Gazette, 22nd May.