Section 235. A CURIOUS STORY. III.
Reading edition
In the meantime, his younger brother, Gustav, who was a sailor and had already made several trips, had joined[1] on the 1st of August, 1870, at Greenock, as an ordinary seaman, the English ship “Beacon Light,” bound for Rangoon. On the way out[2], the cargo, which consisted of coal, caught fire[3] when they were from[4] six to seven hundred miles north-west of Tristan d’Acunha, and for (S. 166, N. 10) three days all hands[5] were doing their utmost to extinguish the fire. On the third day, the hatches, which had been battened down, to exclude the air, blew up[6], the main hatch carrying overboard[7] the second mate who had been standing on it at the time of the explosion. The boats had been provisioned beforehand, ready to leave the ship. Two of the crew were drowned through one of the boats being swamped[8], and the survivors, to the number of sixteen, were stowed in the long-boat. Up to this time the ship had been nearing Tristan with a fair wind at the rate of[9] six knots an hour[10], so that they had now only about three hundred miles to go. They abandoned the ship on Friday; on Saturday afternoon they sighted Tristan, and on the following day a boat came off to their assistance and towed them ashore.
The shipwrecked crew remained for eighteen days at Tristan d’Acunha, during which time they were treated with all kindness and hospitality. They were relieved by the ill-fated “Northfleet,” bound for Aden with coal, and Gustav Stoltenhoff found his way back to Aix-la-Chapelle.