The Remarkable Survival of Edward Oxford

In approximately 2015, a man bought a house in the Canadian province of Quebec. Nothing remarkable about that, I agree. But it was what he discovered in an antique wooden chest, in a sealed up section of the property’s attic, that piqued the gentleman’s interest. Inside were 87 letters written by a man named Edward Allen Oxford to his wife Mildred. It transpired that Edward was a lumberjack who, as a consequence of his profession, often spent extended periods of time away from home. Due to this enforced absence, Edward frequently wrote to Mildred, who fortunately, kept his letters. The letters spanned a period from shortly after the First World War until 1944, after which, it was presumed, he retired. It is understood the couple passed away within a short time of one another in the late 1940s.

As one might expect, the letters were affectionate and contained details about his life in the regional lumber camps in the forests of Canada. However, they also contained recollections of a remarkable occurrence that took place during World War 1. It seemed that, on an unspecified date in 1916, Edward had been a merchant seaman on board an allied ship sailing off the coast of Antarctica, when it was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat. The location of the sinking was somewhere between Elephant Island and Deception Island, in the South Shetland Archipelago. Conditions would have been harsh to put it mildly. Indeed, it was shortly before this occurrence that Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew were forced to take shelter on Elephant Island after their ship The Endurance, sank after having been crushed by pack ice in the Weddell Sea in November 1915. They survived in an upturned life-boat on a diet of penguins and seals.

However, the experience of Edward Oxford appears to have been very different from that of Shackleton and his crew. Edward described being marooned for six weeks on a warm tropical island off the coast of Antarctica, with plentiful vegetation and wildlife for sustenance. Of course, no such island exists, or could have existed, in the frigid environment of the South Atlantic. A fanciful tale, dreamed up to impress the love of his life, you might imagine, except for a couple of things. Firstly, his recollections of the island were frequent and unwavering. His story was never contradictory and details never changed. Secondly, historical records support his unlikely story, sort of.

Imperial records confirm that Edward Allen Oxford had been a British merchant seaman who had been aboard a ship that was torpedoed in 1916, with the presumed loss of all cargo and crew. However, as we know, that is not the end of the story. Edward Oxford was eventually spotted by a passing ship and rescued. This is where things start to get frankly, bizarre. He was spotted in 1918 standing on a tidal island. Yes, that’s right, 1918, a full two years after the sinking, not a mere six weeks as claimed by Oxford. So, what really happened and how had he survived on an island that would have been submerged in freezing water for much of the day?

When questioned, he claimed that he had simply walked to the island where he was spotted at low tide, from the warm and tropical island on which he had been living, since the sinking a mere six weeks ago. The authorities decided that, owing to the impossibility of his story, he must have been suffering from some form of insanity, and accordingly, he was admitted to an appropriate facility in Nova Scotia in order for him to recover. It was there that he met a nurse by the name of Mildred Constance Landsmire. The two fell in love and after his release they married and set up home together. Initially, Edward worked for a cousin on his nearby dairy farm. However, Edward soon decided that he was not suited to a life of agriculture, and so turned his hand to the lumber industry, which is where he remained until retirement.

So, what are we to make of all this flummery? Well, unless we go back some ninety million years, to when Antarctica was a thriving rainforest, it has, ever since been a frigid environment, unsuitable for human survival, without the proper nutrients and equipment. A shipwrecked mariner in 1916 would be most unlikely to have had the requisite provisioning at his disposal. And yet there he stood, alone on an island that emerged from the icy waters for a few hours each day, seemingly in perfect health. His contemporaries could not explain the conundrum, and so put his story down to the ramblings of a madman, leaving the question of what really happened to Edward unanswered.

Could he possibly have survived on a tidal island in freezing conditions, without food or shelter for two years? Of course not. Instead, might a number of the crew of the stricken vessel have escaped on a lifeboat, with enough warm clothing and provisions to sustain them for a period of time? Perhaps. But what then. There would not have been sufficient quantities of food and water to keep them going for two years. Might cannibalism have taken place as crewmembers eventually began to succumb to the harsh conditions? Possibly. If Oxford was the last man left, and spotted a rescue vessel, he may have had enough time to dispose of the evidence and all his life sustaining equipment, whilst simultaneously concocting an elaborate story to cover the truth. However, this would have been very risky indeed. What if the ship failed to spot him and simply sailed away, leaving him to a frigid, watery fate? Overall this scenario seems unlikely.

But what then? The other possibility is that something seemingly paranormal occurred. Quantum physicists study nature at atomic and subatomic levels, and have suggested the existence of multiple dimensions as distinctly possible. Might Edward have transgressed the dimensional veil and entered a parallel universe, where Antarctica has a temperate climate, only slipping back again once rescue was at hand? Physicists also argue that although time appears linear to us, it isn’t. Travelling through time should be as easy as moving through space, even tough we don’t seem to be able to accomplish the feat. Might Edward Oxford have become an inadvertent time-traveller, transitioning back over millions of years, and travelling back to the present in time for his rescue? In either of these scenarios, to have been removed from a perilous environment and returned only once salvation was at hand, suggests his survival may have been at the hands of a higher authority.

Ultimately, a plausible explanation for the survival of Edward Allen Oxford does not readily present itself, and with over a century having passed since the events in question, one can only wonder. What a marvellously strange world we inhabit.

Sources:

medium.com

popularmechanics.com