Caught on a Mass of Ice

New York, 1895

Seventy-five eelers and oysterman at work on the ice on the Great South Bay off Sayville were cut off Thursday from the mainland by the breaking loose of the ice from the shore. Men on the shore gave warning to the fishermen by running up and down the beach, waving their hats and shouting. The men on the ice dropped everything and started shoreward. They found that the tide had carried the ice floe some distance from the shore. The more hardy of the drifting baymen plunged into the icy waters and swam ashore. Boats put from the shore and took off the rest.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, N.Y., Jan. 18, 1895, p. 1.