SOURCE: "An Immortalized Shipwreck: One Century Later," in The Hopkins Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 4, January, 1976, pp. 153-61.

In the following essay, Holloway discusses Gerard Manley Hopkins's shipwreck ode "The Wreck of the Deutschland" as a poem concerned with life and resurrection.

In St. Patrick's cemetery in Laytonstone just outside London stands a modest headstone bearing this inscription: "Pray for the Souls of / Barbara Hultenschmidt / Henrica Fassbender (not found) / Norberta Reinkober / Aurea Badziura / Brigitta Damhorst / Franciscan nuns from Germany, / who were drowned near Harwich in the wreck / of the Deutschland, Decr. 7th, 1875 / Four of whom were interred here, Dec. 13th / R.I.P.

To the casual visitor of cemeteries the death by drowning of five Franciscan nuns in a shipwreck one hundred years ago raises perhaps but a few ripples of curiosity. Why should German nuns be buried out here near London? The ship was, after all, wrecked off Harwich...