Pember's Memoirs

The Fiji Mermaid was a three foot long sea creature that had been allegedly purchased from Japanese sailors in 1822. In 1872, Pember donned a diving suit and stepped off a boat into the murky depths of New York Bay. He certainly got an eyeful of absolutely nothing. The bay was too polluted to see anything at all. After suffering the losses of several of his children and his wife Alice, Pember eventually left New York for North Dakota where he wrote a book about his time as a journalist back east. Unfortunately, he never finished it.