Toss on Raft Four Days at Sea.
Twelve of them, ten men and two women, were out there on the Atlantic for four days, tossing on a sea-made raft, and no one in New York knew of it until Charles Olsen, the mate, a six-foot, fair-haired Swede, came in on the ward liner Monterey and told the story.
It was some story, too, this simple chronological narrative of the breaking up of the American barkentine Ethel V. Boynton some sixty miles east of Wilmington, N. C. Olsen said it was God alone who saved him and his mates. None of them ever expected to see land again.
“I won’t tell all we went through,” he said, half smiling, “because, in the first place, it would take too long, and then, when I get through, you’d think I was thinking things, especially when I told you how the sharks swam round waiting for us and we beat them off, hitting them on their heads with our paddles.
“Maybe I’d better begin at the beginning like I was reading from the log. So I don’t forget it, take it down right here now that the twelve of us lived for six days on a two-pound can of tripe and three cans of blueberries.”
The barkentine left Mobile December 26th, with lumber for Genoa, Italy, in command of Captain G. W. Waldemar and a crew of nine men. On board was Mrs. Waldemar and her young niece, Miss Gladys Larrock.
“Just at sunrise,” said Olsen, “we ran into a hurricane that came up from the south. It got so bad that we hove to at eight a. m. until midnight. It eased up a little, but came up again strong by seven o’clock next morning. We fired the deck load overboard—had to do it, and do it quick; she was leaking pretty badly.
“About ten-fifteen a. m. up came one of those racers—you know what I mean, three waves chasing one right behind another. It came full at us and swept clean over. It seemed to curl up about forty feet above the deck.
“That wave tore out about thirty feet of our quarterdeck and carried it over. At midnight we were completely water-logged. Next morning, at two-thirty, we shipped another of those racers, and it carried off the forrid house and the fo’c’s’le deck.
“We got kind of uneasy about the two women. They never said a word. If they were scared, they didn’t let anybody know it, and we didn’t let them know we were worried about ’em. At six a. m. we cut away the main and mizzen sticks, and thought for a while we were going to stay above water, but at nine a. m. we knew it was all off.
“About nine-fifteen a. m. we launched the yawl. But what was the use? We just did it on a chance, anyway. That yawl had hardly hit the water when she was smashed to pieces against the side.
“Big sticks of lumber from our jettisoned cargo now slammed the barkentine hard. At ten a. m. the starboard side opened up. That was some day. At eight-thirty p. m. the foremast jammed itself through the bottom; a big part of the foredeck drifted away with it. We were just simply going to pieces. We didn’t know where to lash the women, because we couldn’t say what part would go away next.
“The lumber in the hold was just raising hell. The morning of the next day, at three-thirty o’clock, the stern broke off entirely. At five-thirty a. m. the main deck splintered and so did the after house. A half hour later we made a raft out of the roof of it. We all got onto it, lashing the women. They lay flat and had a hard job to keep from choking, because the waves were hitting us hard.
“At seven-thirty a. m. we sighted the main deck, and started out for it. It took us two hours to paddle. We used pieces of the lumber that drifted to us. When we all climbed on board, we made fast the raft to it. That was the last thing we did, because at eleven p. m., after three days and nights on the drifting main deck, the thing bu’sted to pieces.
“That was the only time the women showed excitement. They didn’t want to get back on that raft. The little gal, Miss Larrock, she lives in Boston, like I do. She said to me: ‘Mate, we will never see Boston again.’ I said: ‘Oh, yes. Don’t you give up, little gal, not much.’ She laughed—it sounded like she was laughing—and she said something she read some time out of a book. ‘Well, mate, we will die with good and true hearts.’
“Well, we didn’t die. The Ward steamer Manzanillo came along at ten-thirty o’clock the morning after the main deck bu’sted to pieces, and we can thank Warner, the cook, that she saw us. He grabbed the code flag R when we left the vessel, and we stuck it up on a piece of lumber on the raft. It is a red flag, with a yellow cross, and they could see it better than most any flag.”
Olsen turned to the cook and slapped him hard between the shoulders. “Freddy, old boy, we never missed a meal, did we?”
Warner winced and acquiesced.
“Yes, sir,” continued the mate, “the twelve of us lived for six days on that measly two-pound can of tripe and three tins of blueberries. Freddie, here, opened the can of tripe with his teeth and an old fork. Then he speared a piece at a time on a wire and handed it around three times a day.
“And, by gosh, the skipper looked at every piece that was swallowed. He said: ‘I caution you fellas to go light on that tripe, because we might be a long time here. One of the three cans of berries was given to four of us. We had a three-gallon keg of dirty fresh water with us on the raft, and it tasted fine.”
The Manzanillo landed the Boynton’s crew at Santiago, Cuba, where they were cared for in a hospital. The skipper and his wife and niece later went by steamer to Mobile.