Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1883-05-26
DEATH ON THE OCEAN.
Dreadful Pictures Of Human FOrti.
.tude and Anguish.
From the London TELEGRAPH,


.tude and Anguish.
From the London Telegraph.
A terrible memorial of the recent
dreadful loss of the steamship Navarro
was tished up a few days ago bya smack,
whose people found in their trawl the
bodies of man and woman tied to-
gether, with their eyes bandaged.
Probably the mysterious deep never
yielded up a secret more shockingly
suggestive than those corPses. Wheth-
er the man and woman were married
couple, or sweethearts, or brother and
sister. we know not; but their bodies
fastened together in de tn, tell moving
story of devotion, just as their bandaged
eyes convey most pathetic picture of
resolution and angus IN. In the wreck
of the Cimbria it will be remembered
that the survivors spoke of
seeing some of the emf
grants at the last moment cut ting
their threats to shorten the final strug-
gle. Most narratives of disaster at sea
contain passages of this kind, telling
how those who seemed of q shrinking
and timid nature when all was well
stood forth most noble and perfect types
Of heroes when danger was supreme;
how the swaggerer, the bully, the ty-
rant proved an abject cur, casting him.
self down upon the deck in his terror,
alternately praying and shrieking in the
agony of his fear; how some, unable to
await the approach of the last moment,
destroyed themselves, while others,
with folded arms and contracted brows,
stood motionless upon the sinking hull,
going to. their death like men lost in
thought.
One of the most pathetic stories in the
language is the account of the loss OF the
Kent East Indiman by fire i'll 1928,
for the reason that hundred particu-
lars are introduced by the writer re-
lating to the behavior of the people
when all hope was abandoned, and death
seemed inevitable. We read of the lit
tie children who, when the flames had
mastered the ship, and all was uproar
and horror on the deck, continued to
play as usual with their toys in bed, or
to put the most innocent and unseason-
able questions to those around them;"
of q young military officer removing
from his writing desk lock of hair, and
placing it in his bosom, that he might
die with that sweet keepsake upon his
heart; of another writing few lines to
his father and enclosing it in bottle,
Gin the hope that it might eventually
reach Its destination, with the view, as
he stated, of relieving him from long
years of fruitless anxiety and
auspense which our mel
ancholy fate would awaken;" of the
older soldiers and sailors seating them
selves over the fore-hatch under which
was the magazine, so that they might be
instantly destroyed when the power
caught fire; of towards drinking them
selves insensible or writhing in their ter
ror upon the decks; of young girls pray
ing calmly amid kneeling crowd; of
brave men standing collectively with
their eyes on the setting sun, whose
light they never hoped to see again. 1t
is wonderful and thrilling picture, and
how often has it been repeated since in
other ways and amid other seasl
The last is not, indeed, the
worst, but it is among the worst. The
Navarro is but one of scores of ships
which have gone to their doom offering
before they. took the final plunge, the
most dreadful of all pictures of human
anguish; hut the sufferings she embod-
led seem to survive yet, even in her
dead, when we hear of those two corp
ses tied together coming TO the surface,
with their eyes bindfolded, and when
W endeavor TO realize by those devoted
silent witnesses from the bed of the
ocean something of the terror and the
resolution, the fear, the courage, the
wild despair and the passionate suppli-
cation to Heaven which made up the
picture of that as of all other wrec ks of
4 similar nature.