Page:Loss of the Comet steam-boat on her passage from Inverness to Glasgow, on Friday the 21st October, 1825.pdf/18

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the stones, she exhibited a very frightning instance of the horrible struggle that had followed the sinking of the ship. In some pockets were found trinkets of no small value. After the investigation on the shore the bodies were carried on barrows to church, where they remained till removed by claimants. The pilot of the Ayr was in attendance. This man was loud in (illegible text) complaints against the public for attributing blame to the boat he steered. He appeared to take some interest in the search, he expressed much displeasure at the interference of the trawling-boat, which, he insisted, would only hurry the bodies in deeper water. He declared the Comet had no light, and that she was not perceived till in actual contact with the Ayr. By his watch the hour was a few minutes before two. It would be difficult to describe the feelings excited by my vicinity to the scene of so great and so recent a calamity. To know that the eye rested on a given spot, of not many yards of circumference within the boundries of which were extended the pale corpses of so many persons, unscathed by disease, and unpolluted by corruption,—to think of the uncalmed distraction of perhaps a thousand relatives, over whose threshold the rumour had already passed, was well calculated to rouse every, mournful and sympathetic feeling.