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

 ''the stones, she exhibited a very instance of the horrible struggle that  followed the sinking of the ship. In pockets were found trinkets of no  value. After the investigation on the 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 complaints against the public for attributing blame to the boat he steered. He appeared to take some interest in the search, 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. his watch the hour was a few minutes before two. It would be difficult to describe the feelings excited by my vicinity to 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 the pale corpses of so many persons, unscathed by disease, and unpolluted by corruption,—to think of the uncalmed  of perhaps a thousand relatives,  whose threshold the rumour had already passed, was well calculated to rouse every, mournful and sympathetic feeling.''