THE LATE DR. SMITH.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1129, 1 December 1879, Page 2

THE LATE DR. SMITH.

i _ - - Exteaoedinary ; ; Expeeiencies _ : mr. THE I V i : ArCIIG. REGIONS, ; jWe publish the following account of the exciting and painful adventures of the late Dr. ■" Smith,' given in an Essex pjjper, iii the belief that it will be read, with interest by our readers, especially by those of 'them who were acqiiainteid with ,'the deceased gentleman : FUNERAL OP AN ESSEX HEEO. jOn Thursday, last week, the remains of Dr. Charles Edward Smith'were interred in! the Friends' burial ground at Coggeshall, his native place. Born there on the 24th October, 1837, he had crowded into his forty-Oiie years of life an amoDnt of suffering, of adventure, and • of heroism not easily paralleled, and; had: gained a host of friends. Of -the many who followed his remains to: the grave several were old friends and neighbors who - had not seen him for years, but whose affection foir a very loveable man remained as wjirm'-as of old. He was a, precocious child, evincing very early a love of natural history, more especially as it related to birds, and .writing poetry before he was six years-old. • He was educated at the Friends'.School, Ackworth, where he was afterwards apprenticed as :a teacher. His taste for ornithology deepened, and hjs acquirements gained him the privilege of admission into the famous museum of the naturalist. Water ton —the first admission granted for a number of years, owing to a theft, of the private catalogue by some visitors. Teaching was not to Mr. Smith's leaving Ackworth, he became a' medical student-at Edinburgh University. But-hers-Jhe? ;pro£imi,ty qf> the Highlands offerecTtoo great temptations .to "so ardent a iover. ; of. nature,; and his excursions to tliem frequently broke in upon his application to his studies. With a view to ob-

taining a time of quietness, in which he could work steadily as a student, he accepted the post offered him as surgeon of the whaling steamer Diana, of Hull, Captain John Gravill. He thus entered upon one of the most eventful and most painfully interesting of Arctic voyages. The Diana left Lerwick on May 9, 1566, with a crew of fifty-one men, of whom about thirty were Shetlanders and the rest English. They got two jjiales Airt : Lancaster Sound, and in July had reached Pond's Bay, the chief fishing grdniid. At the end of August and beginfaing September they were beset,in the ice, butgot clear and ran southward with s every, prospect of getting away, but just to the south of Coutt's Inlet the iceclosed in and the ship was fast. The captain mustered them all aft, and they agreed to go .011" half allowance from that time, and thenceforth the history of the voyage is one of distress and suffering, "accompanied by fortitude and the most heroic endurance. Their coals were all burned, and the carpenter sawed up the spare spars for fuelj which had to be-used most sparingly now that it was certain they were shut' up- to undergo all the rigors of an Arctic winter, hard beyond the usual severity even in those urhospitable' regions which have exacted the lives of so many of England's hardiest sons. While they were in this position-a dead whale was seen upon the ice by the second mate, with a number of bears feeding upon it. A party of nineteen men, armed with flenching knives to secure the crang or flesh, which would have been so valuable to them who were short of provisions, and with rifles, was depatched. But they could reach the whale, ■■which was much farther off than had seemed to be the case, the ship signalled to them to return instantly, the ice having begun to open. The party found themselves.cut off by a lane of water, and got upon a small piece of floating ice to serve as a raft. This began to sink under their weight, and those who could swim sprang into the icy water, when the iceraft sufficed to bear the others over in safety. Mr. Smith and the mate were two of the first who performed this act of the greatest hardihood. The party then reached the ship terribly fatigued and exhausted. On the 22nd October they were, off Exeter Sound in a raging storm, and on the Bth of the following month they were " driving directly upon the rocks of Cape Yictoria, over which the ice was piling on the shore." On the evening of the 10th they were only half a mile from the Cape, when the wind happily changed,,and they were driven round the rocks into the open of Forbisher Straits. On the Ist December; the ship got a severe "nip." "During that night and throughout the next day," wrote Mr. Smith, " we were in momentary expectation of losing the ship, and at midnight all hakds took to the ice with the boats and prbvisions, supposing the ship to be stove in:" A tent was rigged up on the ice, but it was too cold to be used much. The captain slept.in it one night, and returned to the vessel, saying that he was "chilled through and through," He gradually got worse, in spite of the unremitting attention given to him by Mr. Smith. On Christmas Day, 18CG, the ship narrowly escaped destruction three several times, twice by being driven upon a grounded iceberg, and once she was half lifted on her side, and even the cabin deck bent under their feet. On the following day the captain died, a man of great worth and fervent piety, to whose memory Mr. Smith afterwards paid a high tribute. All January, 18G7, the ship gradually drove southward, till 011 the lGtli it was off Cape Labrador. The allowance was now again reduced. The want of fuel now pressed hardly upon them. They had burnt all their whale boats but one, and they now made one oil-cask last two days for the cooking, the fire being put out each day at dinner time. Their sleeping berths were coated two or three inches thick, such was the cold, with the ice from their breath, and,they had a day every week to break it off and scrape it down with the ship's scrapers. No wonder the men " began to getdisheartened," asoneof them said.' And no\V the'true value of Mr. Smith began to be seen. Scurvy attacked the crew; and Mr. Smith had to combat disease and depression at once, added to which he took his watch regularly and worked as hard as any one of them. By the middle of (March they had drifted down to the entrance of Hudson's Strait, and on the 18th they broke out of the ice into the broad Atlantic, with rudder damaged and the ship leaking. The change from the ice to the fogs increased, the violence of the scurvy, and .the deaths from it were sometimes fearfully sudden.. Death supervened on the slightest exertion before the doctor could reach the patient. For now the rolling of: the ship had increased the leak so that the pumps had to be kept constantly going, a,ud as very few of the crew could do any work at all, Dr. Smith worked constantly at. the pumps, cheered the .others on to their work, tended the sick, and was. the animating and crontrolling spirit. '- He was one of a thousand," said one of the men ; "and we should have perished without him." It was indeed fortunate for them that they had fair winds in their race with death," as the voyage has since been termed by Captain Allen young, of Pandora celebrity. .They made land on the 31st March,.and"early on the 2nd April, ISG7, they ran into the' harbor , of Ronas Vole, - in the Shetland Isles, nine corpses lying on the deck, and another man dying, as they entered the harbor. Of the whole fifty-one men, onlyfour could stand. -Four other men died there, and - the whole-of them, with the exception : of the captain, were buried at' Lerwick. ' A fresh crew, sent from Hull took the Diana round' there, her arrival .being witnessed of people, who,.were deeply affected.. by the painful, evidences, of the sufferings which had been endured. , Dr. Smith refused, in consonance with his conduct , throughout the voyage, to leave the ship as long as. there was a sick man • on board, -at a place where- proper medical assistance rand the necessary comforts were difficult to| obtain; ■' As . ■ soon, , , ,lio.wever, as hia services were no longer required, he lefjt for Hull. At Hull, Dr. Smith's reception was most enthusiastic,. and,, ,indepd, the whole country was. most enthusiastic in its appreciation of, his noble courage. The doctors of the : town gave hitn. a public dinner, and presented him with a silver cup in recognition of his services to their fellow townsmen, under circumstances of extreme peril, privation, and difficulty. The Board of Trade presented him with a, oase of surgical instruments of the value of LSO, and a testimonial signed by the Duke of Richmond, declaring that his services to the crew of the vessel had been " generous, humane, and unwearied." Officialism is not often cojnpelled to use such language. The townspeople of Hull and the underwriters at i Lloyd's presented hi'm - with a testi-monial-and the.sum of 108 guineas. Long months of illness and exhaustion followed upon the excitement and the" wearing anxiety of the voyage, but some 'time afterwards the doctor agreed, upon the strong representation ' of Sir Roderick Murchison, to accompany Mr. Lamont on a polar expedition in a second " Diana," whose voyage was much less adventurous than that of the first " Diana," concerning which it was said by a Hull journal—- " There is no parallel to it in the records of suffering and misfortune at the Greenland Fishery, at least so far as Hull is concerned." On "his return he was appointed surgeon to a large party of navvies engaged in the construction of the.Silloth railway, near Carlisle, but threw up hij; appointmentj because he could not get pr.oper from the contractor; at a time when thq nien. were agued. About this time he was appointed House Physician to the Royal' Infirmary at Glasgow, and on leaving was presented |

with a testimonial by the nurses and attendants at the Hospital, whoso high esteem he succeeded in winning. He then bought a practice at Esk, in Durham, but soon became disgusted with collier life. .He then .sailed. as. tho surgeon of the emigrant Dunedin, conveying five hundred emigrants to New Zealand. The: commander of .this vessel, Captain Whitston, was subsequently his warm personal friend. ; I)r. Smith bought a practice at Otepopo, in New Zealand, and had an extensive district relying upon him to supply its imedic&l /wants, so extensive that'he had to .ride forty or fifty miles a day. in all weathers, and then to perform delicate surgical operations single-handed, -ire gained a reputation as a successful doctor, and was loved for his warm heart. Owing to ill health 110 was obliged to return to England. After a tedious and painful voyage, 110 arrived in England in June last, towards tho end of the month, and stayed for a few days with his brother,. Mr. Frederic Smith, at Stratford, during' which time' he Was under the care of Dr. Buchan. He then entered St. Thomas' Hospital, where he was treated by Dr. Ord and his old fellowstudent, Dr. Fothergill, whose skill, however, was unavailing:' Dr. Smith-then went " home" to his father at Kelvedon„ where, peacefully resigned, he died, notwithstanding that 'Dr. -Galpin, of Kelvedoii, and his old friend, Dr; T. Simpson, of Coggeshall, exhausted their skill in the endeavor to restore his health. This shd event occurred on the 6th - inst., on which day Essex lost a son of whom she may. well be proud. She is about to honor the courage and the capacity of one of her sons in war ; she will honor with edjual sincerity the courage and £ho capacity exhibited by Mr. Smith in a different strifb : —courage not the less because he wore no military coat, but belonged to "the--people called Quakers."