Driftwood 4

From Opel: Immersion Set for Distant Shores
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Go to i. Introducion
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Go to vi. Dry tears
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Although all the other 85 on the Nautilus died, this shipwreck doesn't appear among the best-remembered shipwrecks in history, but the storm that caused it does.

On August 10, 1856, "Louisiana's First Great Storm" destroyed, and for several days entirely submerged, the 25 mile-long Last Island, at that time a popular resort and the site of a stately hotel for rich tourists, as well as for the elite of the Louisiana planters. The storm is also called Last Island hurricane.

Last Island Hotel.jpg

A picture of the stormy sea approaching the (then so depicted) Last Island Hotel, which will be engulfed and completely destroyed.

Today, all that remains of Last Island is a group of five uninhabited islands called Isles Dernières, but the memory of that terrible hurricane is still alive: books recently written about it testify to this.

Each breaker extended to the right and left as far as the eye, straining its vision, could reach … We did not know then as we did afterwards that the voice of those many waters was solemnly saying to us, 'Escape for thy life.'

— Rev. Robert McAllister  
sources →
Trade Wind Hotel. 1919. Williams Research Center, New Orleans. Painting. http://books.google.com/books?id=XIVqgqn_WpgC&printsec=frontcover
McAllister, Robert Samuel. Article from the manuscript "Sea-girt." Southwestern Presbyterian [New Orleans, LA] 9 Apr. 1891. Print. http://lafourche.com/presbyterian/lastisland.htm