LOCKED IN THE ICE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7932, 4 January 1906, Page 5

LOCKED IN THE ICE.

THRILLING EXPERIENCES OF A YOUNG NEW ZEALANDER. Young Bertram Williams, son of the Rev. H. J. Williams, of Nelson, has a taste for the sea, and lately he has been having a full share of adventure. The story o£ his latest cruise (writes a London correspondent) surpasses in interest and excitement v many a tale of wild adventure that one used to lead with thrills iu boyhood's day. Thiß New Zealand lad was a forecastle hand in the barque Stork, which got back to London last pionth afier a voyage lasting 15>£ months, during the greater cart of which abe was locked in the ice in the wilds of Hudson's Bay. The most exciting day in the who2e cruise was when the ship was entering the bay, when every moment they expected her to be crushed in the ice. Had she gone ashore there they must all have perished. However, they got through safely, and bailed up the bay to Chalton Island, where the vessel was beached for the winter. It was the most desolate-looking place he had ever seen in his life—a vast wilderness of snow and ice. The cold was intense, the temperature sinking sometimes to 40 degrees below zero. The crew of the Stork were in very different case from the members of a properly-equipped Polar expedition. They bud no steam pipes for heating the vessel, no eiectrio light, do stores or supplies of tobacco, no specially-made rugs or sleeping-bags, no library, and no musical instruments save a humble mouth-organ! Nevertheless, they • managed to get through the long n hard winter tolerably well, although it' was a rough experience. A half - brped and his wife were living on the island, and fiom them and various bands of Esquimaux they received much kindness and assistance. They spent much of their time shooting rabbits for food, about 2000 being shot in the course of the winter, and some Norwegians amongst the crew manufactured "ski"—-the long snow shoes of Norway—and taught theirmales how to use them. The New Zealander chummed up with a Red Indian, who took him out trapping and taught him to set traps for the beavers. During the winter they reoeived ouo mail from home, the letters coming up by Indian packet from the nearest point of civilisation. Mr Williams tells me that the stories told iu the London papers of the crew having seen 400 Polar bears was iiighly imaginative, the sailors having invented them to amuse themselves at the reporters' expense. .They saw only two white bears during their stay in Hudson's Bay. On their way out of the bay, after the ice had liberated the vessel, they met the exploring ship Discovery, of Antarctic famej and on sending a boat aoross were given a liberal supply of stores, while the crew of the Discovery generously gave them a fresh lot of clay pipes to replace their old ones, which were pretty well unsmokeable by that time. For tobacco they had used the kind smoked by the Indians, and it has to be a very rank tobacco that a sailor will not smoke, especially if there is nothing else. The New Zealand lad has now joined the barque Lutterworth, and will sail for Nelson, New Zealand, at the end of this month.