Tho’ Boreas, with his blustering blasts
Has tost me to and fro
Yet by the handiwork of God,
I’m here enclosed below.
And in this silent bay I lie
With many of our fleet,
Until the day that I set sail
My Saviour Christ to meet.
Another, on the south side of Selby churchyard:—
The boisterous main I’ve travers’d o’er,
New seas and lands explored,
But now at last, I’m anchor’d fast,
In peace and silence moor’d.
In the churchyard, Selby, near the north porch, in memory of William Whittaker, mariner, who died 22nd Oct., 1797, we read—
Oft time in danger have I been
Upon the raging main,
But here in harbour safe at rest
Free from all human pain.
South-hill Church, Bedfordshire, contains a plain monument to the memory of Admiral Byng, who was shot at Portsmouth:—
To the perpetual disgrace of public justice,
The Honourable John Byng, Vice Admiral of the Blue,
fell a martyr to political persecution, March 14,
in the year 1757;
when bravery and loyalty were insufficent securities for
the life and honour of a naval officer.
The following epitaph, inscribed on a stone in Putney Churchyard, is nearly obliterated:—
Lieut Alex. Davidson
Royal Navy has Caus’d this Stone
to be Erected to the Memory of
Harriot his dearly beloved Wife
who departed this Life Jan 24 1808
Aged 38 Years.
I have crossed this Earth’s Equator Just sixteen times
And in my Country’s cause have brav’d far distant climes
In Howe’s Trafalgar and several Victories more
Firm and unmov’d I heard the Fatal Cannons roar
Trampling in human blood I felt not any fear
Nor for my Slaughter’d gallant Messmates shed A tear
But of A dear Wife by Death unhappily beguil’d
Even the British Sailor must become A child
Yet when from this Earth God shall my soul unfetter
I hope we’ll meet in Another World and a better.
Some time ago a correspondent to the Spectator stated: “As you are not one to despise ‘unconsidered trifles’ when they have merit, perhaps you will find room for the following epitaph, on a Deal Boatman, which I copied the other day from a tombstone in a churchyard in that town:—