3-065-624 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Helping strugglers in the ice-holes, [Russia], 1874. Scene giving '...a vivid impression of the peculiar dangers attendant on travelling where the frozen surface of the sea is the great highway,...[and exhibiting] the means provided to rescue the hapless wayfarers who, on the breaking up of the river ice or its partial thaw, would otherwise be likely to perish...The scene represented,…taken from 'authentic photographs...[shows a] perilous situation. Here, from the occurrence of soft places in the ice, where, it may be, some luckless wight has before fallen through, the traveller is suddenly immersed, and, if no help be at hand, may speedily perish. In this way, it not unfrequently happens that horses and vehicles, with the men who accompany them, are swallowed up and drowned...in Russia there is now organised and established an official agency [Society for Aid to the Shipwrecked] for help in these dangers. Boats are at hand, which...can be readily converted into sledges for transport on the ice, their crews being also furnished with life belts...and with lines and planks to enable them to effect their humane object…some lifeboats have been built for Russia by Messrs. Forrestt and Son, of Limehouse, the well-known builders for our institution'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.