CASTAWAYS.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4501, 8 June 1883, Page 3

CASTAWAYS.

Few more Extraordinary stories have been published lately than the narrative of the loss of an American whaling Bchooner called the Pilot's Bride. This craft, it seems, so long ago as October, 1881, "while hnntinn sea-lions, was wrecked on Desolation Island, usually charted under the name of Eerguelen, of the Southern Ocean, some degrees to the southward of St. Paul's, the scene of the losa of the Megsera. There were eighty»one men on board of her, and it would seem that all managed to get ashore. Some provisions were washed on to the beach, but aot by any means in sufficient abundance to render the look-out tolerable for these 81 men, who would form a company large enough to tax severely the hospitality of a small island. Fortunately rabbits were plentiful, and there was also discovered a large growth of cabbages, but good as a dish of rabbit and wild cabbage may prove, when served say once a week, it must grow a Very tiresome diet when there is nothing else to be had for 1-1 months, and for all that time those eightyone unfortunate men were forced to live upon this ycry singular island fare. The sole variation of their tedious and apparently almost hopeless imprisonment was the departure of a crew of them in their boat to deposit a letter, stating that they had been wrecked and where they were, at Three Island Harbor, i.place of call for whalers, situated about 150 milea distant from Kerguelen Island. Having, so to speak, posted their letter in this extraordinary ocean-box, the men returned to their boat and remained on their island until September in last year, on the 4th day of which they were taken off by the schooner Francis lilyn and subsequently landed at Cape Town.