The Tecumseh's CHENG Sea Story
Despite a sea story that went around in the late 19th and early 20th century about the Tecumseh crew being found dead at their posts by divers a week after the sinking with her Chief Engineer alternatively named as either Faron or Barlow being found reading a letter from his new wife/girlfriend/etc (see Cyrus Townsend Brady's "Under Tops'ls and Tents" for a version of the story and the June 1911 issue of the United States Naval Institute's Proceedings for another), the Tecumseh was never dived to recover material or remains unlike other naval vessels that were sunk in and around Mobile Bay in 1864/65.
In reality despite the various versions of the story, John Faron had been married for 15 years to his wife Sarah and Frederick Barlow was a bachelor. Farragut also admitted in a letter to SECNAV Welles that his men were unable to locate the exact position of the Tecumseh three months after she went down and what divers they had were, in the words of Farragut's apparent favored insult, "worthless". Congress in its joint resolution putting control of the Tecumseh and her dead under the personal protection of SECNAV, also made it quite clear her dead were never removed from the wreck.
