SEVEN CROWS ON A DOOMED BARQUE. Scare of the Crew of the Vessel.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 242, 18 February 1888, Page 7 (Supplement)

SEVEN CROWS ON A DOOMED BARQUE. Scare of the Crew of the Vessel.

Sea Girt (N. J.). December 18.— The French barque Scotland, Captain Munro, from Liverpool to New York, stranded here at 10 o'clock last evening, after a vety singular encounter far out at sea with a flock of crows, which caused quite a commotion among the superstitious sailors. When about fifteen days out ancl about 800 miles from Sea Girt the crew of twenty men were at dinner, when a flock of seven crows flew in through an open window and surrounded the table. The birds appeared to be famished, for they immediately began to devour the food. Although the men had eaten hardly a mouthful, they left the room, and not one of them would touch the birds, which, with one exception, left after appeasing their hunger. The men were sullen thereafter, and said the visit of the crows portended disaster to the ship. After that when they sat down to their meals, they made sure to close the windows. Mary Seymour, a girl of Whitestone, L. 1., was on board, and she kept the one bird which remained, although the crew begged! her to let it go. Last night a t-enible &torm came up and the ship struck a bar far out from shore. The crew at the station-house were notified and had bonfires built on the shore near the wreck, for the night was bitter cold. Apparatus from the station was immediately hauled to the scene of the disaster, and a shot was fired that carried' the line over the ship. The shipwrecked mariners wero in no danger, however, and it was not until daylight that the breeches buoy was put in operation. The mate of the ship and a sailor were then hauled ashore. The remainder of the crew, twenty in all, remained on the vessel. Miss Barbara Monroe, daughter of Captain Monroe, master of the vessel, and Miss Mary Seymour, a Mend of Miss Barbara, were taken off the stranded vessel this afternoon and proceeded to New York.