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The two recent hurricanes, Harvey – which hit my hometown and state, and Irma – which hit Florida, brought to mind an unusual antique photo that I ran across a couple of years ago.
It depicts what are obviously funerary floral tributes featuring seafaring imagery. I was intrigued enough that I needed to find out more about them — a task that was simplified by the fact that their full names were spelled out in the flowers
Two marines, James Franklin Robinson of Ohio and Bardie Wayne Ray of Mississippi, were washed overboard and drowned when the United States’ battleship New Hampshire, proceeding to the Mexican coast, ran into a hurricane off the Florida coast in August 1915. The accident was thought to have happened somewhere just south of the Florida coast in the gulf.
Robinson’s mother Mrs. W. A. Robinson, who lived at No. 222 West Street in Uhrichsville, Ohio and Ray’s mother, Maude Ray Holcombe,were notified that the bodies were never recovered.
The ship was returning to exercises off the east coast to Vera Cruz.
The floral tributes were displayed onboard during a funeral at sea, held by his shipmates.
The immense hurricane proceeded through the gulf, striking Galveston. It would be the first great test of the island’s new seawall. Thankfully, the test was a success, and damage in no way resembled the horror that Galvestonians experienced 15 years earlier.
