ADRIFT WITH MADMEN
The Burning of the “Columbian,” and the Sequel
ON May 3, 1914, there flashed across the ether a wireless message, picked up at Sable Island, as brief as it was dramatic: “Hurry up! We are on fire!” No ship’s name was given, nor indication as to position, and the world held its breath and wondered.
Then, two days later, the Cunard liner Franconia picked up a boat containing thirteen survivors from the steamer Columbian; and as they had been adrift since the 3rd, a connection was at once seen between the faint, incoherent wireless message and the Columbian. A little later the Manhattan rescued fourteen more Columbian survivors, including Captain McDonald, from whom it was found that yet a third boat, with sixteen men, was missing. Immediately all the ships round about were notified, and a search was prosecuted; but it was not until thirteen days after the disaster that the boat was found, and in her were only five men. The rest had died.
Behind this epitome there is one of the great tragic stories of the sea.
It was during the night that, with startling suddenness, there was a terrific explosion which shook the ship from stem to stern. First Officer Tiere, whose watch it was, instantly gave the fire call, and the crew—some of whom were asleep, others at their posts of duty—rushed up on deck. Smoke issued from below, and told them what had happened. Then there was another mighty explosion, in the coal bunkers this time, and the whole deck was ripped up as though it had been made of tin-foil. There followed clap after clap, as hatches were burst open by other explosions, and in an incredibly short time the whole ship was one blazing mass. So instantaneously had the calamity fallen upon them that there was no time to lose, no time even to dress or to put sufficient provisions into the boats, which were immediately lowered. Men, scantily attired, some only in vests and pants, tumbled into them, and strong backs bent to the oars, seeking to pull away from the terrific heat and to get out of the range of danger from the ship, which seemed as though she must soon go down.
What followed was a nightmare—especially for those in First Officer Tiere’s boat, the story of which is to be told here. She carried sixteen souls, with only a twenty-gallon cask of water and a tank of biscuits to last them till—till they were picked up. In these days, when the seas are ploughed by thousands of ships, it seems incredible that a boat should be at the mercy of wind and wave for many days before being picked up; but it is always the unlikely thing that happens, and these castaways little realised how long it was to be before they were rescued. Soon it seemed to them as though rescue would never come. But that is anticipating.
When the boat pushed off from the flaming Columbian there was a strong southerly wind blowing, which carried them to the northward. They had no navigating instruments on board, and the weather was misty; they were thus helpless in their endeavours to keep in the track of shipping, on which their sole chance of rescue depended.
Anxious eyes peered through the darkness to catch glimpses of passing lights; at any moment they knew that some mighty leviathan might push out of the blackness, and smash into their frail craft before they could cry aloud, even if their voices would be heard above the noise. Fortunately this did not happen, and towards morning their eyes were gladdened by the gleam of lights in the distance, coming nearer and nearer. Salvation was at hand, they told themselves, and hunted about, seeking matches, so that they might give a feeble light to the racing greyhound. But not a dry match could they find; a great sea had been shipped as the boat was lowered, and every match was useless.
Torn with agony, those sixteen men stood up in their boat and screamed themselves hoarse, hoping against hope that the sound would carry to the big ship, which, because of her size, they believed was the liner Olympic. But, though they yelled till their voices cracked and they were exhausted, no sign came that they had been heard, and the Olympic, a floating, gleaming palace, passed them by.
Despair now seized them; but, as the grey fingers of the dawn crept up, they took heart again, believing that they could not be passed by in daylight as they had been in the darkness. They were to be disillusioned once more, for presently they saw, about six or seven miles away, a large tramp steamer, to which they signalled frantically, using Tiere’s raincoat on an oar to wave with. They waved till their arms ached, taking it in turn; but the tramp passed on, and left them despondent, crazed.
During the afternoon hope was born afresh; away—far away—they saw a big liner heave in sight, and then come to a standstill. Eyes strained across the water, and presently the castaways realised that the new-comer was taking a boat on board; and they came to the only conclusion possible, that one of the other lifeboats, more fortunate than they, had been noticed. Strange as it may seem in the reading, and tragic in the event to those who watched, the rescue ship saw them not, although she steamed away in a circle, as though looking out for any other waifs. She was the Franconia, and her human salvage was thirteen souls, while within a few miles of her there tossed a boat with sixteen men on board, who cried in their anguish as they saw her steam off, their hopes dashed for the third time.
First Officer Tiere now found plenty of work to do. The sea was very rough, and the lifeboat pitched and rolled dangerously. There was no fear of her sinking, because she was fitted with air-tanks, but the ever-present danger was that she would be overturned as the great seas played shuttlecock with her. The men worked hard at baling her out; and then, to give her some sort of steadiness, rigged up a sea anchor out of oars and old canvas, and so held her head to the seas. All the time a sharp look-out was kept for signs of vessels, but none was seen, and Tiere, realising how serious things were getting, apportioned the rations. The water was allotted out—a pint a day per man, with a biscuit per meal; and for a week they subsisted on this fare, thinking themselves fortunate. Then the water began to give out, and the portion was reduced. But economy in this direction meant suffering; the men, weak and faint from want of food, parched with thirst, became delirious; and although there was some rain on Thursday, the 7th, and some more on the following Monday, it did not increase their water-supply sufficiently to make any difference.
And some of the men, maddened with thirst, took to drinking sea-water. It was the beginning of the end. One man died, mad, on the 11th, and they dropped him overboard, Tiere saying what part of the burial service he could remember. Next day another man died, and two more on the following morning—all of them victims to their insatiable thirst, which grew more maddening as, against all advice, they swallowed great gulps of sea-water.
Tiere, fighting for their lives, when they would not fight themselves, commandeered the sole dipper they had in the boat, so that they could not drink so much; then, when, exhausted, he would lie down to snatch a few hours’ sleep, they would creep round him and steal the dipper, and drink the water that meant death until he awoke and fought for the cup. Whereupon, with the pangs of thirst eating into their very vitals, the raving men, shouting curses at him for his interference, and defying him to stop them, would lean over the gunwales and lap up the water like dogs.
Then came delirium; raving, cursing, struggling mad they went. And then into the Great Unknown, singing in their madness.
Even the men who contented themselves with the small portion of fresh water which Tiere had allotted to them, even these knew the agonies of that dreadful voyage, which was leading nowhere; mists and fogs hung around them all day; the cold winds of night blew upon them and, in their weakened strength, sapped at the very roots of their life.
Thus the nightmare held on, with death and awful suffering to make these unfortunate men sure that it was real. They were almost foodless now, as well as waterless.
On the Friday there came the most tragic incident of all: Jakob, a big Russian, an oiler of the Columbian, thrown off his balance by thirst, had imbibed great quantities of salt water. The effects soon began to show themselves, and Jakob, a raving maniac, sat in the bow of the boat with an axe in his hand, vowing he would kill the whole crew.
“I’m going to shore—getta drink,” he cried, and the fear-stricken men expected every moment to see him hurl himself overboard. Instead, he sat muttering foolishly, toying with the axe they dreaded, leering viciously at them, gesticulating savagely. Tiere, weakened, emaciated, staggered along towards the six-foot Russian; he must get that axe away. There was a mist before his eyes, a vagueness in his mind, and a half-formed thought that somehow the Russian would bring the end sooner were he not disarmed. He talked to him, hardly knowing what he said, bullied him, coaxed him, humoured him, while the crew looked on in anxiety; and the madman at last gave up the axe. Then Tiere made him lie down, settled him as comfortably as possible, and himself went to snatch a little sleep, of which he was sorely in need.
For a while all was still; darkness was now upon them; only the howl of the wind and the lap, lap of the water against the sides broke the silence. Then slowly along the boat there crept a dark form, with madness in its eyes; it was Jakob, and in his hands he carried the boat stretcher. He was making aft to where the other men were, intent on killing them all. Fortunately someone saw him coming, and instantly all were alert, ready for him.
Cursing in Russian and broken English, Jakob hurled himself upon them, vowing to murder them all. He wanted the water that was left, and he would have it. Aye, he would have it! The wretched men, gathering up the remnants of their once full-blooded strength, tackled him bravely, wrenching the stretcher away and seeking to tie him up. How they fought, to the danger of being pitched overboard to death, and with the prospect of being kicked to pulp by the Russian’s heavy boots! It was like a scene from some book of wild adventure, that fight in so strange a setting; yet to these men it was real, and life and death hung upon its issue. There was no light by which to see whether one struck friend or foe, only the curses of the Russian to show when a blow landed upon him; and the night was made hideous by yells as the frenzied men struggled madly for control. At last it was over: the giant lay inert in the bottom of the boat, tied securely and lashed to a thwart, where for five or six hours he lay screaming, cursing, struggling to release himself, and then died.
Despair—it is a feeble word to describe their feelings—was now upon the remaining men, who for another week were tossed about, hither and thither, until they had lost all count of their bearings. The sun kept behind the clouds, and fogs and mists enwrapped them in their wet, cold folds. In one sense this was a blessing in disguise; it kept the pangs of thirst under somewhat. But as they shivered in the bottom of the boat, huddling together to keep each other warm, they were in no mood to thank Heaven for fogs which they knew hid them from passing vessels. By Saturday morning eleven men had died and been thrown overboard, and the five survivors looked dumbly at each other, reading in bleared eyes the question, “Whose turn next?”
It was the turn of Peter Preive, the mess-room steward, of whom a strange story is told. Before he left Antwerp on the Columbian he had dreamed a dream—that he would be a fortnight adrift in an open boat before he died. On the morning of the thirteenth day Preive lay at the point of death, for the hundredth time telling his comrades his dream and assuring them they would be picked up on the morrow.
It sounds like fiction, but it is solid fact, and those mariners took heart of courage: if some parts of the dream had come true, why not another? And so they lived on, as they had for some days past, with Preive’s dream as encouragement, though they could not altogether look with equanimity upon the prospect before them; ere the fourteenth day dawned some of those five that remained might have gone to join their comrades!
They had been reduced now to trying to make a paste out of the boot leather and the remains of the biscuits—anything to stave off hunger. But even their craving stomachs could not take kindly to the mixture, and the men knew that they were now face to face with death at last. They looked in the biscuit tank again, and found there—crumbs, simply a few crumbs, which they scooped up in order to mix some more of the unpalatable paste. And then, like a messenger of hope, they saw a smudge on the horizon, watched it grow larger and denser, saw the hull of a ship grow out of the mist. Four of them yelled themselves hoarse again, waved their signal, took out their oars and tugged away at them like mad. They bent their backs to the work, they pulled till their arms ached, and got hardly any way on her; they were too weak to pull against the sea effectively. Then the big ship stopped, and they saw her taking some soundings. She got up steam again and moved forward; and the castaways knew that they had been seen.
The reaction set in; the men who had borne up for thirteen days against hunger, thirst, who had fought against madness and death, crumpled up and fell in the bottom of their boat. They were done.
Meanwhile the big ship was punching her way towards them. She was the Seneca (Captain Johnson), who had been searching for the missing lifeboat for many days, having crossed from the spot where the Columbian burnt out to Nova Scotia and back time after time without sighting the unfortunate men. The captain had, indeed, given up hope of ever finding them; and when the look-out sighted the boat, and the Seneca plunged towards her at full steam, Captain Johnson scarcely believed it possible that anyone could be alive in her.
When they came up with her they saw the five men lying in the bottom of the boat, helpless, emaciated, eyes sunken, bodies trembling. Preive, alive when the Seneca came up, died from the shock of the sight of her; Tiere, who had commanded all through, and had done much to encourage the others, tried to lift himself up, but fell back exhausted, and the other four living men had to be helped out of their boat.
Their cruise was at an end. They were saved; but the terror of it will never leave them.