Survival
The passengers and crew took off from the disaster site in lifeboats, but not without difficulty. All on board, thirty-eight men, eventually evacuated to the shore of Iliamna Bay, however the extremely high surf and frequent ice cakes caused the men to look pessimistically on their docking probabilities. The men would then face the relentless cold, snow, and lack of adequate nutrition for twenty-nine days, before being rescued by the S.S Victoria. They lived off the few provisions that had been saved from the accident, including sails, tarpaulins, passenger baggage and mattresses. They had no artificial source of light, and water had to be acquired by melting snow. The typical meal included raw bacon and frozen bread. Throughout the subsequent days men travelled back to the shipwreck to scavenge for any materials that may prove useful. Consequently several convenience items were haphazardly constructed, including makeshift stoves. As temperatures plummeted to −40 °F (−40 °C), fuel for warmth was generated by driftwood found in the snowy banks of the shore.
Read more about this topic: Farallon Steamship Disaster
Famous quotes containing the word survival:
“We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.”
—Desmond Morris (b. 1928)
“Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on “The Survival of the Fittest.” These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“We hold on to hopes for next year every year in western Dakota: hoping that droughts will end; hoping that our crops won’t be hailed out in the few rainstorms that come; hoping that it won’t be too windy on the day we harvest, blowing away five bushels an acre; hoping ... that if we get a fair crop, we’ll be able to get a fair price for it. Sometimes survival is the only blessing that the terrifying angel of the Plains bestows.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)