The Old Coast Road: From Boston to PlymouthRothery, Agnes
History
The Old Coast Road: From Boston to Plymouth
Rothery, Agnes
Norfolk County (Mass.) -- Description and travel; Plymouth County (Mass.) -- Description and travel; South Shore (Mass. : Coast)
The beauty and the tragedy of Cohasset are caught in large measure upon
these jagged rocks. The splinters and wrecks of two and a half centuries
have strewn the beaches, and many a corpse, far from its native land,
has been found, wrapped in a shroud of seaweed upon the sand, and has
been lowered by alien hands into a forever unmarked grave. Quite
naturally the business of "wrecking"--that is, saving the pieces--came
to be the trade of a number of Cohasset citizens, and so expert did
Cohasset divers and seamen become that they were in demand all over the
world. One of the most interesting salvage enterprises concerned a
Spanish frigate, sunk off the coast of Venezuela. Many thousand dollars
in silver coin were covered by fifty feet of water, and it was Captain
Tower, of Cohasset, with a crew of Cohasset divers and seamen, who set
sail for the spot in a schooner bearing the substantial name of Eliza
Ann. The Spanish Government, having no faith in the enterprise, agreed
to claim only two and one half per cent of what was removed. The first
year the wreckers got fourteen thousand dollars, and the second they had
reached seven thousand, when the Spaniards became so jealous of their
skill that they had to flee for their lives (taking the seven thousand,
however). The clumsy diving-bell method was the only one known at that
time, but when, twenty years later, the Spaniards had to swallow their
chagrin and send again for the same wrecking party to assist them on the
same task, modern diving suits were in use and more money was
recovered--no mean triumph for the crew of the Eliza Ann!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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