A FROZEN BOATS CREW IN MID. OCEAN.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1216, 21 June 1872, Page 2

A FROZEN BOATS CREW IN MID. OCEAN.

[XEW YORK HERALD.] The recent gales have caused a number of serious disasters along tho coast, and much suffering has been experienced by the sad catastrophe which befel the schooner Henry Conrad. The sufferings of her shipwrecked crew are harrowing in the extreme, and had it not been for the humane and manly action of Captain G M Walker, corn* mander of the steamship Albermarle, of the old Dominion line, they mu*t have been lost. The Albermarle left Norfolk on Monday evening, at 4 p.m. Four hours later it commenced to blow a pile from the north-west, and continued in violence until the following evening. About 1 p.m on Tuesday. Captain Walker, when off Cape May, sighted a threemasted schooner sunk. Tho captain at once ran down towards the schooner, and to his surprise found a small boat made fast to one of the masts, containing six men and one woman., all of whom were stark and stiff, while the little boat was constantly shipping water, and tossing about at tho mercy of the waves. The occupants of the boat were rapidly nuking into a state of unconsciousness, and it was evident that, if not already gono to their last home, their hours were numbered. It was perceived that every person in the boat had a coating of ice on over half a foot thick, and, benumbed and frostbitten, they were for a time deaf to all interrogatories. At length Captain Walker came up quite close to the sunken schoonsr, Mjid, with stentorian voice, hailed them to cut adrift As if roused from deep slumber, a simultaneous effort was made to obey the kind command. But their powers were gone, and in the effort to relievo themselves, they fell back in the boat in a senseless condition. One man, however, roused to a last desperate attempt, seized an axe with his frostbitten hands, and, by one vigorous stroke, cut the rope that so long had enchained them to death. Thus freed, the little boat, with its perishing occupants, dropped alongside the Albemarle, and they were taken through the port on the lee side. They presented a mesi nelpiesa and forlorn spectacle, and it was thought that very few of them would survive the terrible ordeal through which they had passed. But the usual- remedies were quickly applied, and with the great and unremitting attention bestowed upon them by Captain Walker and the- purser of the Albemarle, the poor patients gradually returned to consciousness.