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Show SEAL HUNTERS ARE VICTIM GALE STORM COMES UP SUDDENLY WHEN MEN ARE FAR FROM THEIR SHIP. Sealing Steamer Newfoundland Loses Sixty-four of Her Crew and Many More May Succumb as Result of Terrifying Experience. St. Johns, N. F. News was receivsd here on Thursday that during a severe storm on Tuesday, which overtook the sealing fleets off the Straits of -Belle Isle, sixty-four members of the crew of the Newfoundland perished, while it is possible that many other lives were lost and a number of the men rescued will probably die. Great alarm is also felt for the steamer Southern Cross, with a crew of 370 men, which had not been reported re-ported since she passed Cape Pino, inbound, Tuesday morning. The men lost were far from their ships killing seals when the storm, with blinding snow, swooped down upon them. They were exposed for forty-eight hours before assistance arrived ar-rived and many had succumbed. The Newfoundland was one of a fleet of fifteen ships, carrying more than 1,000 men. scattered among the Ice floes near Belle Isle strait. The crews were on the fioes hunting seals, which have their homes on these crystal crys-tal planes, and the hunt had taken them from four to six miles from their ships. ' When the blizzard swept on them, the crews of the other steamers managed man-aged to regain their vessels, but the floes on which the Newfoundlands men were hunting drifted away from the main body of ice. The Grenfell seamen's institute has been converted into an emergency hospital. The whole contingent of naval reservists pn the British drill ship Calypso has been ordered out for ambulance duty. |