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Show TWENTY TWO HENARELOST Steamer Loses Her Bearings Bear-ings in Dense Fog and Is Driven Ashore. I St. Johns. N. F., Dec. 23. Twenty-two Twenty-two mon out of a crew of twenty-seven of the freighter Florence of the Furness line went down to death when the steamer, which had lost Its bearings In a dense fog, was driven ashore off St. Shotts Friday night. Five of the crew, Second Mate lledley and four seamen, who took the daring risk of finding a shore landing, for the others, escaped death. These fivo, three of thein carrying the other two, dragged themselves Into Trepassy from the deserted fishing huts of St. Shotts yesterday and then came to tins city, where the disaster was first tc ported. Captain Barr, the British skipper of the Florence, stood by his ship with tho remainder of the crow and took his chances on the crumbling esi)el, only to lose. I Captain Barr ordered the mate and ' the four men to sea at 2 o'clock in the morning, but by that time the tide I had swung from ebb lo flow and the gale which had increased during the night, had literally ground tho vessel to pieces. When the men finally found a landing place and had climbed to the top of a steep cliff, they saw no thin,; but a mass of wrcckago whero the boat had gone ashore Tho Florence left Halifax several i days ago and was proceeding to St. Johns with a general cargo. The weather had been foggy for two days I and this had prevented the taking ol I any observances and the master of I the Florence was also faded by heavy I seas I The master of tho Florence was pro-I pro-I feeding cautiously in tho fog, but he had completely lost his bearings, and the heavy 6eas slowly but surely sent the boat on the rocks. She filled rapidly rap-idly and soon settled. The second mate, with four sailors, managed to I get their boat clear of the big ship j and got away, but the captain and the remainder of the crew went down i with the ship. I There had bDen no time to provision the boat and the craft which the second sec-ond mate and his men used in escap-lug escap-lug was without food or water. Drenched by the flying spray, which chilled them to tho bone, the five men toiled desperately to keep from freezing freez-ing to death and to sight, if possible, a passing boat. They stood out to sea, fearing to approach the shore, where the pounding of the sea warned them that an attempt to land might prove fatal. The mate took his turn at the oars with the sailors and when so engaged, busied himself by slapping and pounding pound-ing the oarsmen to keep them awake, knowing that If they fell asleep they would never awaken. In the dense fog the men several times heard the sounding of fog whistles whis-tles on passing steamers and once were near enough to hear the swish of the boats as they swept by, but the wrecked mariners had no meaus of signaling for help. The Florence was a British steamship steam-ship She was of steel construction and was built in 1SS9 at Sunderland. , She was 293 feet long. 10 Teet beam with a depth of 26 feet. She was 'equipped with triple expansion engines en-gines of the latest typo and was of 1'GOO burden. The wind was blowing a gale from the southeast at tho time the vessel struck and the heavy seas made a i complete wreck of the hull. It is i learned that there will be no salvage of the cargo. The cargo and ship were covered by Lusuranco to the extent of half a 1 million dollars. i |
