A team of researchers believes they have determined how a group of survivors from a shipwreck in Alaska in 1813 lasted a month in the winter with nearly no supplies.
According to Live Science, the archaeologists learned the surviving crewmembers of the Russian-American Company frigate Neva used debris from the wreck to fashion tools. They also managed to start fires using gunflints and scraps of steel.
The survivors lasted a month before help arrived, swimming to shore after the wreck occurred near Alaska's Kruzof Island. The ship was carrying 75 people and 28 survived the wreck, yet only two died afterward.
"The items left behind by survivors provide a unique snapshot-in-time for January 1813, and might help us to understand the adaptations that allowed them to await rescue in a frigid, unfamiliar environment for almost a month," Dave McMahan, an archaeologist and member of the Sitka Historical Society, said in a press release from the National Science Foundation, which is funding the research.
The frigate left Russia in Aug. of 1812, Live Science noted, and was carrying all sorts of supplies. The trip before the wreck was anything but harmonious, as crewmembers fell ill and the Neva endured multiple storms.
Central to their revelation was the location of where the survivors camped, which was an area of the island sacred to Alaska's Tlingit people. The researchers found hearths and a number of supplies and tools salvaged from the ship and its debris.
"Collectively, the artifacts reflect improvisation in a survival situation," McMahan said in the release, "and do not include ceramics, glass and other materials that would be associated with a settlement."
