SOLE SURVIVORS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 377, 30 April 1910, Page 9

SOLE SURVIVORS.

MIRACULOUS ESCAPES FROM GREAT DISASTERS. One hundred and fifty-eight dead, one saved. That is, in brief, the tale of the wreck of the mail steamer, General Chanzy, which struck, in the terrible storm of February 10th last, on the rocks of North-West Minorca. Marcel Badez, the solitary survivor from the wreck of the Chanzy, owed his preservation entirely to the fact that me is a strong and fearless swimmer. ;, Three years ago, the timber vessels Anna Rebekka, one day out from Mo-"* me], was caught nj a squall and capsizes. Most of her crew were ,swept away and drowned, but three—the skipper, a sailor and the ship's boy—clambered on to the keel, wheTe they drifted without food or drink. On the third day the sailor was washed off, but the skipper saved him. Then the boy went mad and died. On the fifth day the sailor was washed off again, and this time the captain had no strength to help him. On the seventh day the capsized vessel drifted in sight of land. A lifeboat was put out, and found the captain still alire.

The Manacles have seen many sights of horror, but none to excel that January night, many years ago, when two troopships—the despatch and the Primrose—both went ashore on these ter•rible rocks within a few hours of one another. Seven soldiers struggled ashore from the Despatch, through the crushing breakers, and roused the village of St. Neverne. When the fishermen gained the beach the Despatch had vanished. But there was the second ship—the Primrose—on the rocks. They pushed out, but the doomed vessel was shattered to fragments before they could reach her, and all that the boat brought back was a fifteen-year-old ship's boy, whom they had picked up, swimming desperately in the trough of the icy waves. Perhaps the most terrible disaster in modern British history was the retreat from Cabul in the winter of 1842. An army of 3489 soiuiers, with over 12,000 camp followers, started southwards from the Afghan capital under promise of safe conduct. On the following January 13th, a solitary figure, filthy, unshaven, unkempt, his mind almost destroyed with the horrors through which he had passed, rode out of the mouth of the Khyber Pass. He was Dr. Brydone, the only survivor from all that mighty host. The bodies of the rest, slain by the treacherous Ghilzais, lay scattered for miles along the snow-clad floor of the defile.

At the end of April, 1902, Mont Pelee, the blunt-headed volcano behind St. Pierre, began to show signs of activity. These increased until, on May sth, a little before eight in the morning, there was a terrible roar, and a huge column of white-hot sand, burning cinders, and poisonous gases came rolling down the mountain side. Whatever that cloud consisted of, it destroyed St. Pierre completely. The very stones were cracked with the awful heat, and within a. few seconds 40,000 human beings perished. Yet, days afterwards, when the ruins were cool enough to explore, a man was found alive. He was a negro prisoner, who had been confined in an underground cell, and who, though scorched, scarred, and almost suffocated, still survived —the only living thing in fifty square miles.