Forgotten News

by Jack Finney

  "… Speedily [the survivors] began to separate, and the last farewells were taken. One man called to another in [John] George's hearing, 'If you are saved, Frank, send my love to my dear wife,' but the friend appealed to answered only with a gurgle of the throat. He was washed off his plank, and perished as his companion spoke. Many were desirous of separating themselves as far as possible from the rest, being fearful lest some desperate struggler might seize hold of them, and draw them under. Others, afraid of their loneliness, called to their neighbors to keep together. Generally, they strove to cheer each other as long as they remained within hearing, and when the roar of the waves drowned all but the loudest shouting, the call of friendship or the cry of despair was heard in the distance…."

  "… the full horror of [their] position," said the Times, is "not unparalleled indeed in the desolate annals of the ocean, but … no story so clear and so appalling has ever before been brought to the firesides of the land."

  Gradually scattering across the nighttime sea, the survivors separated—Second Mate James Frazer by choice: "I hove off my overcoat and boots, and swam out from the crowd." Engineer John Tice, hanging on to his ten-foot plank, presently floated alone, and the man afloat on his door drifted so far that, looking back toward the place where he thought the ship had gone down, he could see no one else, and concluded that everyone but himself had drowned.

  When John George, the Englishman, "had drifted so far from the companionship of any of his fellows in misfortune," he "began to realize his situation. Like many of the rest [he] was seized with the fear of sharks. The night was quite dark. Occasionally, as the driving clouds parted and gave a glimpse of the sky, a star or two would be visible, but this was very seldom and offered but the faintest gleam of hope…." Another man, "floating in solitude, and terrified at his loneliness, after shouting himself hoarse to find a companion, saw at length a man with two life-preservers fastened about his body drifting toward him. His heart leaped with joy at the welcome sight, for the feeling of desolation which had overcome him was terrible to endure. He called to the other to join him if possible, and made every exertion to meet him halfway. There was no reply, but the other drifted nearer and nearer. A wave threw them together. They touched. The living man shrieked in the face of a corpse…."

  "I guess I had been about four hours in the water, and had floated away from the rest," one man said, "when the waves ceased to make any noise, and I heard my mother say, 'Johnny, did you eat your sister's grapes?' I hadn't thought of it in twenty years at least. It had gone clean out of my mind. I had a sister that died of consumption more than thirty years ago, and when she was sick—I was a boy of eleven or so—a neighbor had sent her some early hot-house grapes. Well, those grapes were left in a room where I was, and—I ought to have been skinned alive for it … —I devoured them all. Mother came to me after I had gone to bed, when she couldn't find the fruit for sister to moisten her mouth with in the night, and said, 'Johnny, did you eat your sister's grapes?' I did not add to the meanness of my conduct by telling a lie. I owned up, and my mother went away in tears, but without flogging me. It occasioned me a qualm of conscience for many years after," but in time he no longer thought of it "till when I was floating about benumbed with cold I heard as plain as ever I heard her voice in my life, I heard my mother say, 'Johnny, did you eat your sister's grapes?' I don't know how to account for it. It did not scare me though. I thought it was a presage of death."

  Henry O'Conner drifted alone … so did the man and the friend who'd given him a life preserver. Briefly they'd drifted with others, "but soon the waves separated us, and at each successive flash of lightning we discovered that we were being scattered over a wide area, and soon found ourselves apparently alone on the boundless ocean."

  The man on the door drifted "for about two hours." Then "I was drifted near a larger raft, on which were five men. I then left my [door] and swam to them. The darkness was so great that I could not recognize any of them. We were frequently washed off by the force of the waves, and had to swim to reach the raft again. Soon I found one of our number was missing. The rest of us—there were now five—clung to the raft as best we could, at times being washed off, and then regaining the raft by swimming to it…."

  The men on the floating hatch window with the injured Billy Birch of the San Francisco Minstrels, "were all despondent at … the awful forebodings still overhanging their future. Birch, nevertheless, was as cool as a cucumber. To keep up their spirits he mimicked the sea monsters, told humorous stories, in his own peculiar way, and on that frail bark, stretched on his back, bleeding from wounds, at midnight, tossed to and fro upon the angry waves of mid-ocean, he not only showed himself a true philosopher, but inspired courage in others, nor did he cease his vivifying harangue until an overwhelming billow checked his utterance."

  Aboard the Marine, Billy Birch's wife remembered the canary she'd tucked into the bosom of her dress. She looked to see if it was still alive there, and it was. She lifted it out, it was unhurt, and when she set it down, she said, it began to sing.

  At ten that night John Black and his men reached the Marine. Exhausted, I would suppose, after the many trips they had made, and possibly depressed and discouraged, Black didn't even bother tying up their boat. He and the crewmen stepped out of it onto the Marine, and let it drift off into the darkness.

  There was no hope for any of these hundred-odd men adrift on the ocean except rescue by ship; they were too far from land to make it by swimming. And ships were moving through this part of the ocean, but of course it was dark: engineer John Tice saw the distant lights of one of them, and "made many efforts to reach it, but between nine and ten o'clock it disappeared below the horizon…."

  And William Osbourn, adrift on a hatch cover, also saw lights. He'd found and picked up a floating bunk slat, and now he used it to paddle toward the far-off light. Presently, in the darkness, he made out another man afloat on something, and the man hailed him: Did he want company? Osbourn called that he did, and the man paddled over. Now Osbourn could make out that the man was on a hatch cover, but it was too dark to see his face. Nevertheless they introduced themselves to each other; the other man was Julius Stetson. For an hour they drifted together, then Stetson spotted a light, and the two men began paddling toward it. Gradually their hatch covers moved apart, and presently Osbourn lost Stetson. For four hours he continued paddling toward the light, then it was gone.

  Second Mate James Frazer, alone for a while, came upon two swimming men, and joined them. After a time "I discovered a light to the eastward," he said. (Even now Frazer noted that: "The wind was then about southwest.") With the other two men he "swam toward the light, but I found if I stopped with my companions I must sink, so I left them. I then came up with Dr. Harvey who was bound toward the same light I saw…."

  There were lights, there were ships, and men struggling toward them, but no one to see them or even guess they were out there. But one of these ships was the bark Ellen of Arusdah, Norway, en route from Belize, Honduras, almost empty of cargo, and taking the Gulf Stream to England. Johnson, her captain, had fought her through the storm, losing his foremast. His crew was exhausted, and now, something past midnight in the early morning of Sunday, September 13, he temporarily abandoned trying to hold his course. The wind was still powerful, and I suppose he was giving his worn-out men a rest from struggling against it. But as he allowed his ship to fall off, altering his course, a "bird flew across the ship once or twice, then darted in his face. At first he took no notice of this circumstance, when the same thing occurred again, which caused him to regard the circumstance as something extraordinary, and while thinking in this way, the mysterious bird for the third time appeared, and went through the same extraordinary maneuvers. Upon this, said the captain, 'I was induced to alter my course into the original one which I had been steering….' "

  This was "a superstition as old as the days of the Vikinger …," said the Times, and because of it Captain Johnson now resumed
his original course, and "a short time afterward, I heard strange noises…."

  Apparently not all the survivors of the wrecked ship had drifted apart; or each down among the huge waves thought himself more alone than he really was. For "on trying to discover from whence [the noises] proceeded," Johnson continued, "I found that I was in the midst of people who had been shipwrecked."

  This was about one in the morning, and: "When, rising and falling with the swell of the waves, the lights of the Ellen were first discovered by the survivors in the water, the thrill of hope that at once filled every breast amounted, it may well be believed, to a perfect ecstasy….

  "The night was unusually dark, though the horizon was occasionally lit up with flashes of lightning, which served to discover fragments of a wreck floating about, to which human beings were discovered clinging. Captain Johnson immediately ordered his vessel hove to, and one of the four boats on board lowered to rescue the unfortunate seen and heard in every direction. But scarcely had the boat touched the water when some six of the unfortunate men seized hold of the gunwale and capsized her…." It "was soon righted, and the men were taken on board. The work of rescuing the drowning men then proceeded with all possible dispatch; buoys were thrown overboard, ropes suspended from the sides of the ship, and lights hung out." The Ellen's other boats "were not launched, partly on account of the darkness and the heavy sea, and partly because the crew of the Ellen were too much worn out to be able to manage them. A number of those floating on the water were picked up by Captain Johnson's men in the course of an hour or two, but the first ten or twelve were so exhausted as to be unable to give any account of themselves, or to state from what vessel they had been lost…."

  James Frazer was one. He and Dr. Harvey, swimming toward a distant light, presently "saw a bark hove to, and hailed her … ," Frazer said. It was the Ellen, who heard them, and when he was taken aboard, Frazer said the strength which had kept him going left him instantly. "I was perfectly unconscious, and I recollected nothing that transpired from that time until the morning after."

  They picked up John Taylor, who "was quite exhausted when I was taken on board…. I could never have endured had not the sea become quieter…." But now he knew he still had a life to live, and his hand went to the pocket where he'd put his $300 in gold: it was gone. "I had not secured it with a string as I ought, and the violence of the waves had reversed my pockets so I lost it all."

  The Ellen continued picking up men, steering "in the direction whence the shouts for help came, but was too unmanageable to afford speedy assistance….

  "Two life-buoys on the Ellen were put to excellent use in cases where those saved were too weak to fasten about their bodies the ropes thrown to them. Occasionally a man would come floating across the bows of the bark, and the life-buoy having been cast into the water as near to him as possible, he would swim to it, and, clinging fast, would thus be drawn up in safety. Such as passed to the leeward were pulled up over the stern or side by ropes previously thrown within their reach."

  "I never felt so thankful in my life," said the Englishman John George, when he saw the Ellen's lights. "I never knew what gratitude was before. I do not know whether I cried or not, but I know that I was astonished to hear my own laughter ringing in my ears. I do not know why I laughed. That verse, 'God moves in a mysterious way' kept passing in and out of me—through me, rather, as if I had been the pipe of an organ. It did not come to me by my own volition, but somehow made me remember it. When the lights approached nearer a score of voices sprang up around me, crying, 'Ship ahoy!' 'Boat ahoy!' and then I began to shout too. And I never had any doubt that I should be saved…." But he "saw the lights go by, about a half a mile from where I was, and recede in the distance…." And so it was for others, some of whom undoubtedly never saw them again.

  Blind luck: a man floating on a spar lost it to another man who grabbed it, and he had to swim for two or three hours. But "during all that time I felt little or no fatigue. My strength was preserved to me in a wonderful manner." Then he "came up with a Cuban, who gave me a share of a long board he had…." Presently "we fell in with … the bark Ellen, who threw us a rope…." The Ellen's crew dragged them out, and "as soon as I was rescued, I dropped away and was too weak almost to move."

  Another hail, the man seen, a rope thrown, the man lifted to the deck: one of the identical-twin Casey brothers. But the other was not aboard.

  Two men hanging to a pair of lashed-together doors hailed the Ellen, were seen, but they lay in the wrong direction. The damaged Ellen could not maneuver into the wind to reach them, and the two helplessly drifted away. Another group, afloat on a window sash, also hailed the Ellen, but they were downwind, so the ship could easily reach them. They were lifted out of the sea, the injured Billy Birch among them.

  Eighteen-year-old Henry O'Conner kept afloat, with his tin life preserver and two hatch covers, for seven hours. "Finally he happened to float… near the bark Ellen, when one of the sailors on board threw him a rope, but he was much too exhausted to hold on with sufficient force to be raised out of the water. While attempting to do so, two men caught hold of the rope, when he requested them to let go, and they did so. (Was politeness ever carried"—Leslie's asked in parentheses—"to a more exquisite point?) O'Conner, having the rope to himself, managed to twist it round his body, and by this means was hauled into the ship. When once on board, some sailors helped him into the cabin, when he from exhaustion fell instantly asleep."

  Exhausted men, unable to talk: Captain Johnson didn't even know from what ship they had come. But presently he found out, and if you think about it for a moment you'll know how. "At length one of the survivors, who proved to be Captain Badger, hailed the bark at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards, and informed them what all this wreck and ruin meant, stating the name and fate of the steamer lost, and"—taking charge, out there in the darkness—"urging the captain to hasten to the rescue of the scores of living beings, on the point of being swallowed by the angry waves." He was "a stout swimmer, and when taken on board was found much less exhausted than any of the others of those rescued."

  The Ellen kept at it for hours. "Toward morning," said a man adrift on a raft with four others, "a sea washed off all but one of us, and only two of the four succeeded in recovering the raft—[the others] had become so chilled and exhausted that they had no strength to reach it, and were lost." They "perished within a few yards of us, crying for help—which, alas! was far beyond their reach. This left only three of us on the raft out of the six that were on it…." We "saw the bark Ellen about five o'clock in the morning, but were so exhausted that we could make no signals of distress as it required all our efforts to maintain our hold." No one on the Ellen saw them, but: "In about two hours we had drifted sufficiently near to be observed [and] we were picked up…." They were rescued by one of the Ellen's boats, which the crew had finally been able to launch in the quieting sea, "and taken on board. I do not know the names of the other two saved with me…."

  William Osbourn, who had paddled his hatch cover toward a distant light for four hours before losing it, saw it again and paddled for two more hours. This time he reached the Ellen, and they lifted him aboard, having already rescued some thirty-five others. "After getting on board, some one asked him if he had seen any one else down that way, when he told them yes, he had seen a very pleasant fellow down to leeward, too, and would like to save him also, as they had floated together some time. 'What's your name?' says Osbourn. 'Stetson,' said he. 'Well, I am Osbourn,' said the other…."

  Like Osbourn, John Tice saw the Ellen's lights once again, "this time much nearer him. In a few moments he was able to distinguish the hull of a vessel bearing directly toward him. His hopes were raised, and he was confident that he would soon be discovered and rescued. But when only a quarter mile distant from him, the vessel—the Norwegian bark Ellen— altered her course, and kept off, and subsequently her hull and lights disappeared…."

  The Marine was able to work do
wn toward the place of the wreck that night, Engineer George Ashby said, "but saw no persons in the water, and nothing whatever, except the light of a schooner several miles distant…." And the El Dorado, once so close to the Central America that ropes could have been thrown from one to the other, searched the ocean until 9:30 Sunday morning, finding not a soul.

  But the Ellen continued to come upon survivors. John George, who had also watched the Ellen's lights disappear, had finally given himself up for lost. But about five Sunday morning he saw her lights again, and "I slowly drifted toward her … till I could make out her hull and one of her masts, and presently I floated close to her, and shouted and was taken up. When I got on the deck I could not stand. I did not know till then how exhausted I was."

  Of the two bridegrooms, Easton and McNeil, they found Easton. They rescued Johnny, who ate his sister's grapes. Around seven in the morning they picked up three men afloat on a hatch cover; there had been six, but the others had become exhausted, and slipped off. One of the rescued was the second Casey brother, and the identical twins were reunited. To the south, aboard the Marine, the wives and children of some of these rescued men actually saw the distant Ellen that morning, not knowing she carried some of their men.