Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/104
other property and the total loss was estimated at about $100,000.
In the work of rescue Captain Reed received great help from W. G. Brown, the steward, and both were greatly exhausted by their labors. They, with others of the crew, reached St. John on the following Saturday, in the schooner Ploughboy from Eastport. Here a fresh shock awaited Captain Reed. In the newspapers of that week was this notice:
Died, on Tuesday morning, after a short illness, William Grant, son of Captain Thomas Reed, in the 18th year of his age. Funeral on Saturday ac a o'clock, from his father's residence, when the friends and acquaintances of the family are requested to attend.
The boy had been in apparent health when the Royal Tar started on the 21st, but had died after an illness of 48 hours, on the very day the steamer was burned. He was buried a few hours after his father's return. His name is found on a stone in the Old Burial Ground.
The friends of Captain Reed in St. John soon after presented him with a purse of $62 1 in recognition of his work in rescuing the passengers and crew, and Steward Brown received $110 as a gift from a number of the young men of the city. Captain Reed became harbormaster of this port in 1841, and died in August, i860.
For a number of years it was the custom of the St. John men who survived the disaster to sup together on the 25th of October in each year. One of the last of these survivors, apart from Mr. Harrison, was Mr. George Eaton, who died on the 20th of October, 1886, five days before the fiftieth anniversary.
Sixty years ago St. John had among its local poets a genius named Arthur Slader, who was the author of a story in verse of the burning of the Royal Tar. There was also a still more remarkable rhyme, composed by somebody else, which was placed on a canvas outside by The Hopley Theatre, at Golden Ball