- end_line
- 7984
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.413Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7953
- text
- inscription over a grave. Here, in 1813, fell, in a daybreak duel, a
lieutenant of the U.S. frigate Essex, aged twenty-one: attaining his
majority in death.
It is but fit that, like those old monastic institutions of Europe,
whose inmates go not out of their own walls to be inurned, but are
entombed there where they die, the Encantadas, too, should bury their
own dead, even as the great general monastery of earth does hers.
It is known that burial in the ocean is a pure necessity of sea-faring
life, and that it is only done when land is far astern, and not clearly
visible from the bow. Hence, to vessels cruising in the vicinity of the
Enchanted Isles, they afford a convenient Potter’s Field. The interment
over, some good-natured forecastle poet and artist seizes his
paint-brush, and inscribes a doggerel epitaph. When, after a long lapse
of time, other good-natured seamen chance to come upon the spot, they
usually make a table of the mound, and quaff a friendly can to the poor
soul’s repose.
As a specimen of these epitaphs, take the following, found in a bleak
gorge of Chatham Isle:—
“Oh, Brother Jack, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
Just so game, and just so gay,
But now, alack, they’ve stopped my pay.
No more I peep out of my blinkers,
Here I be—tucked in with clinkers!”
- title
- Chunk 9