Castaways Stranded on Tracy Island
ADVENTURE OF DR. PHILIPS
SAILED UP ALASKAN COAST IN A CATAMARAN
Encounters a Storm, Escapes to Short and Is Saved From Starvation by Indian Hunters.
SEATTLE, Jan. 9, 1899 — Dr. S. D. Phillips, a young dentist from Buffalo, New York., has just reached this city from Fort Simpson, B. C, with the story of a most startling experience as a castaway upon Tracy Island, in Dixon’s Entrance. After having been shipwrecked in a fearful storm he and two companions subsisted on mussels for seven days, when they finally became delirious.
Dr. Phillips was the man who created considerable comment here last spring by his daring project to sail up the Alaskan coast in a catamaran. Few people believed that he would make the trip safely and many considered him foolhardy to the point of absurdity. But he and one companion, William Bridges, did make the trip safely during the spring and summer. They weathered some of the fiercest gales that have been known to the Klondike travelers.
They went to Fort Simpson and there secured a small schooner, intending to go north. On the night of November 23 a storm arose and the schooner was carried from her place of anchorage to the open sea, with Phillips and two companions aboard. The wind blew the schooner on the shore of Tracy Island and as she struck the rocks tho men dived into the surf and managed to get ashore. Through the remainder of the night with the fierce wind blowing and the cold rain and snow falling, the three, men shivered among the rocks on the shore of Tracy Island. When daylight came they were cold and hungry. For seven days, with only mussels to eat, they waited to be rescued. Then the three became delirious and knew nothing until they became conscious in an Indian tent on the mainland, having been rescued by Indian hunters who chanced to pass in canoes. Phillips tells this story of the rescue:
“I think it was on the morning of the seventh day that both Bridges and myself had become delirious. We had kept up the fires until that time. It was two days afterward we came to our senses. Then we were in an Indian camp on the mainland, where we were being kindly cared for. We learned that an Indian, Joshua Wells, and his two sons were passing Tracy Island, going on a hunting trip. They saw the smoke from our fires, and, believing that Indians were on the island hunting they stopped, when they saw us. “They took us over in their canoes to their camp. Wells said that on the way we cried so for food that he gave us some dry Indian bannock, made of flour, water and grease, which we ate fiercely. At their camp they gave us rice soup until we showed signs of sanity. In two days we had regained our reason and the three of us went back to Fort Simpson, which was fourteen miles away.”
* Noteworthy
1863 – London’s Metropolitan, the world’s first underground passenger railway, opened to the public.
1870 – John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) and his brother William incorporated the Standard Oil Company of Ohio.
1912 – The World’s first flying-boat airplane, designed by Glenn Curtiss (1878-1930), made its maiden flight at San Diego, Ca
1920 – The Treaty of Versailles takes effect, officially ending World War I.
1984 – Holy See–United States relations: The United States and Holy See (Vatican City) re-establish full diplomatic relations after almost 117 years, overturning the United States Congress’s 1867 ban on public funding for such a diplomatic envoy.