A FROZEN BOAT'S CREW IN MID-OCEAN.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 985, 9 July 1872, Page 3

A FROZEN BOAT'S CREW IN MID-OCEAN.

The recent .gales have caused a number of serious accidents alongthe coasts, and much has been experienced by seamen. A case in point is furnished by the sad catastrophe which befel the schooner Harry Conrad. The sufferings of her shipwrecked crew were harrowing in the extreme, and had it not been for the humane and manly action of Captain G. M. Walker, commander of the steamship Albemarle, of the old Dominion line, they must have been lost. The Albemarle left Norfolk on Monday evening at 4 p.m. Four hours later it commenced to blow a gale from the north-west, and continued in violence until the following evening. About 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Captain Walker, when off Cape May, sighted a three-masted schooner sunk. The captain at once ran down towards the schooner, and, to his surprise, found a small boat made fast to one of the masts, containing six men and one woman, all of whom were stark stiff, while the little beat was constantly shipping water and tossing about at the meacy of the waves. The occupants of the boat were rapidly sinking into a state of unconsciousness, and it was evident that, if not already gone to their last home, their hours were numbered. It was perceived that every person in the boat had a coating of ice on, over half a foot thick, and benumbed and frostbitten, they were, for a time, deaf to all interrogatories. At length Captain Walker came up quite close to the sunken schooner, and, with stentorian voice, hailed them to cut adrift. As if roused, from deep .-slumber, a simultaneous effort was made to obey the kind command. But their powers, were gone, and in the effort to relieve themselves, they fell back in the boat in a senseless condition. One man however, roused to a last desperate attempt, seized an axe with his frostbitten hands, and, by one vigorous stroke, cut the rope that so long had enchained them to death. Thus freed, the little boat, with its perishing occupants, dropping alongside the Albemarle, and they were taken through the port on the lee side. They presented a most helpless and forlorn spectacle, and it was thought that very few of them would survive the terrible ordeal through which they had passed. But the usual remedies were quickly applied, and with the great and unremitting attention bestowed upon them by Captain Walker and the purser of the Albemarle, the poor patients gradually returned to consciousnsss.