6.18.2014

drowned in Truro
...Thoreau's Journal: 18-Jun-1857

Small says that the Truro fishermen who were lost in the great shipwreck were on the Nantucket Shoals. Four or five vessels were lost with all aboard. They may have been endeavoring to reach Provincetown Harbor. He spoke to one of his neighbors who was drowned in Truro, and very soon after his bones were found picked clean by the beach-fleas. Thinks you could get off in a boat from the Back Side one day out of three at the right tide. He thinks that what we thought a shark may have been a big bass, since one was taken just alive soon after in that cove.

A youngish man came into Small’s with a thick outside coat, when a girl asked where he got that coat. He answered that it was taken off a man that came ashore dead, and he had worn it a year or more. The girls or young ladies expressed surprise that he should be willing to wear [it] and said, “You’d not dare to go to sea with that coat on.” But he answered that he might just as well embark in that coat, as any other.

1 comment:

michael jameson said...

thank goodness! these are the things that are gradually leaving society. the superstitions that have ruled men since the beginning of man! at one time every move we made was directed by superstition, religion, sacred tradition! we stopped killing people as offerings to the gods and burning witches! and tying things to our houses and necks to ward off evil spirits!,the more civilized we become the less we need these atrocities that will either die out completely and all the brainwashing will end,or little sects will perform their acts in private. michael jameson oldantiqueguy@hotmail.com