Cosmo Mariner: Destination Unknown

Have you ever heard of the poet Conrad Aiken? He was a young lad from Savannah, Georgia who semi-witnessed (he heard the yells/gun shots rather then actually viewed the murder-suicide) of his parents when he was just eleven years old. Family moved him up north to raise him and he grew into a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. He later moved back to Savannah as an adult and lived in the house next door to where his parents died until his death.

The story goes that he and his wife would go to the Bonaventure Cemetery to visit his folk's grave and drink martinis while watching boats pass by on the water. One in particular, the Cosmo Mariner, struck a cord with him and as he did a little research on the boat's name, he found it listed as "destination unknown". This now is what reads on his grave stone, a bench that he picked out for visitors, so they could also sit and watch boats pass by while enjoying the surroundings of the cemetery.



The Bonaventure Cemetery history runs deeper then that however. It once was a plantation to the Colonel John Mulryne and his family. One evening as he hosted a dinner party, a servant whispered in his ear that the roof of the house was on fire. John stood up and calmly asked his guests to take their dinner plate and glass and follow him out to the garden. There the servants followed with the table and chairs as the guests ate by the light of the fire rapidly burning down the home. Mr. Mulryne stood up and made a toast to his guests and then threw his glass at an old tree. His guests followed suit and smashed their glasses as well.

It is said that if you sit a the Bonaventure Cemetery at night when it is very quiet you can hear the shattering of the glass and laughter of the guests. All that is left of the home is a corner of the foundation.

Or something like that.