ul calamity was known at
Weymouth, the officers of the South Gloucester Militia, with equal
humanity, were devising how they might best succour the survivors, and
perform the last duties to the remains of those who had perished. On
the morning of the 19th of November, one of them, accompanied by Mr.
Bryer of Weymouth, rode to the villages where those who had escaped
from the various wrecks had found a temporary shelter. In a house at
Chickerell, they found Serjeant Richardson and eleven privates of the
63d regiment; two of the latter had fractured limbs, and almost all
the rest either wounds or bruises. In other houses the sufferers had
been received, and were as comfortably accommodated as circumstances
would admit.

The gentlemen then crossed the Fleet water to the beach, and there,
whatever idea was previously formed of it, the horror of the scene
infinitely surpassed expectation; no celebrated field of carnage ever
presented, in proportion to its size, a more awful sight than the
Chisell Bank now exhibited. For about two miles it was strewed with
the dead bodies of men and animals, with pieces of wreck and piles of
plundered goods, which groups of people were carrying away, regardless
of the sight of drowned bodies that filled the new spectators with
sorrow and amazement.

On the mangled remains of the unfortunate victims, death appeared in
all its hideous forms. Either the sea or the people who had first gone
down to the shore, had stripped the bodies of the clothes which the
sufferers had wore at the fatal moment. The remnants of the military
stock; the wristbands, or color of a shirt, or a piece of blue
pantaloons, were all the fragments left behind.

The only means of distinguishing the officers was the different
appearance of their hands from those of men accustomed to hard labor;
but some were known by the description given of them by their friends
or by persons who were in the vessels along with them. The remains of
Captain Barcroft were recognised by the honorable scars he had
received in the service of his country; and the friends and relatives
of him, and several more, had the satisfaction of learning that their
bodies were rescued from the sea, and interred with military honors.

Early in the morning of the 20th of November, a lieutenant of the
militia regiment who had been appointed to superintend the melancholy
office of interment, repaired to the scene of destruction. But from
the necessary prelim