By 7 A.M. it became evident that the cabin must soon go to pieces, and indeed it was scarcely tenantable then. The crew were collected in the forecastle, which was stronger and less exposed, the vessel having settled by the stem, and the sailors had been repeatedly ordered to go aft and help the passengers forward, but the peril was so great that none obeyed. At length the second mate, Davis, went himself, and accompanied the Italian girl, Celesta Pardena, safely to the forecastle, though with great difficulty. Madame Ossoli went next, and had a narrow escape from being washed away, but got over. Her child was placed in a bag tied around a sailor's neck, and thus carried safely. Marquis Ossoli and the rest followed, each convoyed by the mate or one of the sailors.
All being collected in the forecastle, it was evident that their position was still most perilous, and that the ship could not much longer hold together. The women were urged to try first the experiment of taking each a plank and committing themselves to the waves. Madame Ossoli refused thus to be separated from her husband and child. She had from the first expressed a willingness to live or die with them, but not to live without them. Mrs. Hasty was the first to try the plank, and, though the struggle was for some time a doubtful one, did finally reach the shore, utterly exhausted. There was a strong current setting to the westward, so that, though the wreck lay but a quarter of a mile from the shore, she landed three fourths of a mile distant. No other woman, and no passenger, survives, though several of the crew came ashore after she did, in a similar manner. The last who came reports that the child had been washed away from the man who held it before the ship broke up, that Ossoli had in like manner been washed from the foremast, to which he was clinging; but, in the horror of the moment, Margaret never learned that those she so clung to had preceded her to the spirit land. Those who remained of the crew had just persuaded her to trust herself to a plank, in the belief that Ossoli and their child had already started for the shore, when just as she was stepping down, a great wave broke over the vessel and swept her into the boiling deep. She never rose again. The ship broke up soon after (about 10 A.M. Mrs. Hasty says, instead of the later hour previously reported); but both mates and most of the crew got on one fragment or another. It was supposed that those of them who were drowned were struck by floating spars or planks, and thus stunned or disabled so as to preclude all chance of their rescue.
We do not know at the time of this writing whether the manuscript of our friend's work on Italy and her late struggles has been saved. We fear it has not been. One of her trunks is known to have been saved; but, though it contained a good many papers, Mrs. Hasty believes that this was not among them. The author had thrown her whole soul into this work, had enjoyed the fullest opportunities for observation, was herself a partaker in the gallant though unsuccessful struggle which has redeemed the name of Rome from the long rust of sloth, servility, and cowardice, was the intimate friend and compatriot of the Republican leaders, and better fitted than any one else to refute the calumnies and falsehoods with which their names have been blackened by the champions of aristocratic "order" throughout the civilized world. We cannot forego the hope that her work on Italy has been saved, or will yet be recovered.
The following is a complete list of the persons lost by the wreck of the ship Elizabeth:—
Giovanni, Marquis Ossoli.
Margaret Fuller Ossoli.
Their child, Eugene Angelo Ossoli.
Celesta Pardena, of Rome.
Horace Sumner, of Boston.