The Alma E. A. Holmes was bound from Norfolk to Salem with 1819 tons of coal. She sailed from Norfolk a week ago Wednesday. She was a craft of 1208 tons gross register, 1069 net, 202 feet long, 41 feet beam and 18 feet deep, and was built at Camden, Me., in 1896. Joseph Holmes, Sr., of Toms River, N. J., was the owner.
ATLANTIC CITY, Nov. 20.--As gallant a fight as South Coast mariners have put up in many a day, with life as the stake, was made by the skipper and crew of the Drake, one of the fastest and smartest of the Inlet fishing fleet. Coast guards hardly knew her when she staggered into port this afternoon, battered and torn, a leaking scarecrow of her former trim self.
On board Mark Broome, master, Tomkins, the mate, and the nine members of the crew were in much the same state as their vessel. All hands were half dead from loss of sleep and completely worn out after a 36-hour battle with the gale that swept the Atlantic yesterday.
The Drake was making a full speed ahead plunge for Absecon late Thursday night, when the gale, ripping up the coast, struck her. There was nothing to do but turn and fly before the tempest, with everybody aboard hoping they might escape the treacherous shoals running miles seaward of Brigantine.
Then, to make matters worse, the Drake’s engine jammed and went out of commission and Tomkins, the mate, almost was swept overboard by a boom, while he clung to the bowsprit trying to pour oil on the waves. Broome, the skipper, saw his mate’s peril, and his presence of mind saved Tomkins from going into the sea.
It looked for a time last night, when the Drake sprung a leak, as if the staunch craft never would see harbor again. Everybody took turns at the pumps, except Broome, who stood over his flagging men, keeping them awake when exhaustion gripped them. The Drake was minus half her cargo of fish when she finally came in over the bar today.
ASTORIA, Ore., Sept. 19.--Between seventy and eighty men, women, and children, coastwise passengers and crew, were drowned late yesterday when the three-masted schooner Francis H. Leggett was pounded to pieces in a gale sixty miles from the mouth of the Columbia River.
Two men were rescued by passing steamers and carried to Astoria and Portland. They told how the sea tore the vessel to pieces, and how the passengers were drowned, a boat load at a time, as the lifeboats capsized, or met their fate a little later when the vessel turned over.