Eleven Sailors Rescued — Six Perished in the Rigging

New York, 1895

It was an awful storm out at sea. Ocean steamships were delayed three to four days. When they arrived they were coated with ice from one to three feet thick. The crew of the four-masted schooner John B. Manning were rescued from their sinking craft Friday morning by the life saving crew of the Lone Hill station off Eastport. The Manning had driven ashore and was pounding to pieces on the beach. Two hours after they reached the shore in safety the men of the Manning were helping the life savers in an attempt to rescue the crew of another schooner.

Two sailors, speechless from exhaustion, stiffened with cold, and all but dead with the suffering of a forty hour fight for life in the rigging of the schooner Louis V. Place, which wont ashore near Patchogue in the gale on Friday morning, were rescued at midnight on Saturday by the life saving crew of the Lone Hill station. Six of their shipmates died one by one under their eyes, either dropping into the ice-filled surf or freezing to death lashed to the rigging. The survivors are William Stevens and S. J. Nelson. Their rescue puts eleven lives saved from the storm to the credit of the Lone Hill crew.

For a long time after the rescue the two sailors were unable to speak even enough to tell the name of their ill-fated craft. Stevens was the first to revive, and his story of the wreck and of the cruel struggle against cold and exhaustion, during those long hours, with life and safety literally Within their grasp, though they had not the strength to avail themselves of it; with their comrades dying one by one beside them, and finally of the horror of the two dead bodies swinging from the lashings which had been life hope of the living men, and threatening to knock the wretched survivors into the sea, is such a record as is seldom found in the annals of the sea.

The wrecked vessel was the three-masted schooner Louis V. Place, from Baltimore to New York, laden with coal, with a captain and crew of seven men. Of these the following are dead:

Squires, William H., Captain, Bridgehampton, L. I., 55 years old, married; leaves a wife and two children.

Jaiby, ——, mate, Norway, 44 years old, unmarried.

Allen, Charles, engineer, Providence, 28 years old, unmarried.

Morrison, Charles, cook.

Oelson, Gus, seaman, Sweden, 28 years old.

Ward, Fritz Oscar, seaman, Norway, 21 years old, unmarried.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, Feb. 15, 1895, p. 1.

Note: Jaiby just had those dashes in the article, indicating they didn't have a first name for him.