I saw it. It was thought to be held by the chain-cables and the
anchors. I asked if the bodies which I saw were all that were drowned.
“Not a quarter of them,” said he.
“Where are the rest?”
“Most of them right underneath that piece you see.”
It appeared to us that there was enough rubbish to make the wreck of a
large vessel in this cove alone, and that it would take many days to
cart it off. It was several feet deep, and here and there was a bonnet
or a jacket on it. In the very midst of the crowd about this wreck,
there were men with carts busily collecting the sea-weed which the
storm had cast up, and conveying it beyond the reach of the tide,
though they were often obliged to separate fragments of clothing from
it, and they might at any moment have found a human body under it.
Drown who might, they did not forget that this weed was a valuable
manure. This shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the
fabric of society.
About a mile south we could see, rising above the rocks, the masts of
the British brig which the _St. John_ had endeavored to follow, which
had slipped her cables and, by good luck, run into the mouth of
Cohasset Harbor. A little further along the shore we saw a man’s
clothes on a rock; further, a woman’s scarf, a gown, a straw bonnet,
the brig’s caboose, and one of her masts high and dry, broken into
several pieces. In another rocky cove, several rods from the water, and
behind rocks twenty feet high, lay a part of one side of the vessel,
still hanging together. It was, perhaps, forty feet long, by fourteen
wide. I was even more surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on
this shattered fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller
fragments before. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken
superfluously, and I saw that no material could withstand the power of
the waves; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron
vessel would be cracked up like an egg-shell on the rocks. Some of
these timbers, however, were so rotten that I could almost thrust my
umbrella through them. They told us that some were saved on this piece,
and also showed where the sea had heaved it into this cove, which was
now dry. When I saw where it had come in, and in what condition, I
wondered that any had been saved on it. A little further on a crowd of
men was collected around the mate of the _St. John_, who was telling
his story. He was a slim-looking youth, who spoke of the captain as the
master, and seemed a little excited. He was saying that when they
jumped into the boat, she filled, and, the vessel lurching, the weight
of the water in the boat caused the painter to break, and so they were
separated. Whereat one man came away, saying:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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