Natives' Long Drift

Horowhenua Chronicle, 14 October 1916, Page 2

Natives' Long Drift

TWENTY-ONE DAYS FOODLESS IN OPEN BOAT. Auckland Oct. 11. After a five months' cruise the Melanesian 'Mission steamer Southern Cross returned from Norfolk Island today. Bishop Wood was on board throughout the voyage, andt reported a satisfactory state of affairs in connection with the mission. About a month a.go the Southern CVosis was in the Reef Islands, and among the few natives there they found two women and two men who had been washed ashore. They had left Foutowa, near Fiji. in a whale-boat about three weeks before. There were five natives in the boat, and when a short distance from shore a gale sprang up, and the small craft was washed out to sea, with its burden of terrified natives. They had no food with them, and when the gale subsided they could only drift where the wind and tides took them. For days they were tossed about hungry and poorly clad. The days lengthened into weeks, and it Koems hardlv credible that human being could exist so long without food. After about twenty-one days .in this deplorable condition, the whaleiboat was washed ashore on one of the small coral islands of the Reef Group. One of the five persons who at first set 6ail had died of starvation, and the others were first seen in the battered craft with hungry and drawn faces, senu-conscious, and waiting for death. They were taken ashore and treated with extreme kindness by the natives. It is evidlent that they drifted for about 960 mdles-by the chart in the twenty-one days they were at sea. The Southern Cross took the four castaways abroad and carriedi them to Foutona. MIMsnaHMH