STRANGE SEA STORY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 27, 2 October 1913, Page 6

STRANGE SEA STORY.

TIDINGS OF A MISSING SHIP.

TWENTY SKELETONS DISCOVERED AT CAPE HORN.

The Dunedin Star has been permitted to make tiie following extract from a letter just received by a wellknown Dunedin shipping man from the captain of one of the Shaw, Savill and Albion liners. It is dated London, August 22nd: —

“Just a hurried line to tell you something in which New Zealand people may take an interest. A month ago Captain McArthur, in command of one of Alfred Holt’s Blue Funnel steamers, trading to Seattle via China and Japan, came into the London office and stated that he had met in Seattle a pilot who told him that he was once wrecked, off Cape Horn, that most of the crew got ashore, and that all decided to part company and to go two by two in different directions and look for a mission station. He and his companions, who, he believes, were the only survivors, in their search for a station, which they eventually reached, came upon a large painted ship wrecked in a cove, and he distinctly saw the name ‘Marlborough.’

“There were,” continues the letter, “three large tents erected, and big heaps ofshellfish which had been consumed by the survivors, hut they were all dead, and there were twenty skeletons. Young Hird, son of the captain, is in the office of Law, Leslie and Co., Leadonhall Street, and is in communication with this pilot, who has the exact latitude and longitude. Is it not a strange of the sea?” The Marlborough and the Dunedin both left New Zealand about the year 1884, with cargoes of frozen meat, and no tidings of either of them have been received. It was generally sur-. raised that they had been lost in the ice.