When the English steamer Stella was wrecked on the Casquet rocks twelve women were put into a boat which the waves whirled away, leaving them helpless without even an oar. They passed a terrific night not knowing what awaited them. Wet and cold they would have perished but for the courage of one of them, Miss Marguerite Williams, who was a contralto singer.
There was no thought of ruining her voice at such a crisis, and through the night she sang parts from “The Messiah” and “Elijah” and also hymns. This cheered the desolate women. About four o’clock in the morning a lifeboat which was sent out to save any surviving victims came to a pause in the waters as the men heard a woman’s voice singing in the distance. The words, “Oh! rest in the Lord,” were carried to them by the wind and they promptly steered in their direction. Before long they sighted the boat with the twelve women who were taken aboard the steam launch.
The singing of Miss Williams not only braced up her companions and herself but led to their rescue.
Dr. W. T. Grenfell recounts a rescue under similar circumstances in his book[4] entitled
“Adrift on an Ice-Pan”
He had returned home on Easter Sunday after the service when he received an urgent call to go sixty miles to help a young man on whom he had previously operated. Crossing the ice the next day, as it was breaking up, he found that he was on a piece which was drifting into the open Atlantic. Three of his dogs were killed, and from their bones he made a flagpole; while their coats were used to keep him warm during the night.
All night long he drifted, but was rescued in the morning, although there seemed little probability that he would be. Through the night, expecting death at any moment, there ran through his mind the words of an old hymn which came back to him from his boyhood days:
“My God, my Father, while I stray
Far from my home, on life’s rough way,
O teach me from my heart to say,