Winferd L. Hathaway, 19, farmhand, saved Albert Reynolds, 61, caretaker; Henry, 56, carpenter, and Leslie C. Mero, 20, laborer, and three others from drowning, Essex, New York, February 12, 1927. While Reynolds and the five others were fishing together through ice on Lake Champlain, the ice broke with unusual suddenness into small cakes and into floes two or three acres in extent. The men were afloat on a floe, 400 feet square, that was surrounded by water and crushed ice at a point about a mile from shore. There was a very strong wind, the ice was constantly heaving and breaking, and the temperature was 10 degrees above zero. Hathaway dragged a light canoe on the ice for a short distance from shore. Then, using an oar, he paddled the canoe as it was being tossed by waves 300 feet across open water to an area of broken ice. By holding to the canoe and by stepping from one cake of ice to another, he scrambled over the ice for 100 feet to another strip of open water. By alternately paddling the canoe with great difficulty and by holding to it as he scrambled over broken ice, Hathaway reached the floe, which was reduced in size to 300 feet in diameter, 45 minutes after he had left shore. Twice he had slipped into the water to his waist while traversing areas of ice, but he had held to the canoe. Ice conditions toward the opposite shore were better, and Hathaway and the others crossed alternate strips of water and broken ice with the canoe to that shore. Hathaway was temporarily exhausted.
28961 – 2403
28961-2403