. . . were roughly made out of pine boards. When it was proposed to place the bodies in them, a number of the sailors gathered around and most earnestly but respectfully protested:
“I say, Captain,” said one of them evidently speaking for the group “no shipmate of ours goes into such boxes. They are not fit coffins for a sailor. Shiver me if it wouldn’t take part of the pluck out of my heart, if I had to reflect that if I should be killed I should be boxed for the last anchorage in such timber as that. No! no! furnish us the money, and at our own expense we will bury our shipmates decently – bury them not so, Captain, not so at all events.”
The dead were buried in other better coffins. – Cairo Gazette, 13th.
– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, February 21, 1862, p. 2
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