The Daily Dispatch: August 16, 1864., [Electronic resource]

A burial at sea.

‘ A melancholy incident occurred on Friday of last week upon the steamship Fannie, while being chased by a Yankee man-of-war. One of the passengers on board, Captain Frank Du Barry, late Chief of Ordnance on General Beauregard's Staff, Confederate States of America, died that morning. Preparations had to be completed for his burial, which took place amid all the excitement of the chase. A burial at sea is a ceremony at all times full of solemnity, but it is, when coupled with such events as this, that war assumes its most repulsive aspect. In that frail little steamer, quivering with her efforts to escape the relentless fate bearing down on her with frowning guns and the ferocity of the tiger, while every living heart on board was throbbing with anxiety for safety, they were suddenly called upon to render the last and most solemn rites known to our existence. No time then to stop in mid-ocean, while words that consigned "dust to dust," "ashes to ashes," went up in presence of the grim destroyer, but still dashing onwards through the waves — a short and hurried service — a heavy splash — and a body sank to its eternal resting-place in the broad ocean's bosom, while all that was dear to it in life sped from it on its way like the arrow from the bow.

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