Tragedy by the Sea

Tragedy by the Sea, also known as Cruel Waves, is a photo showing a young couple, John and Lillian McDonald, standing together beside the Pacific Ocean in Hermosa Beach, California, United States.

[1] A woman named Beverly Murdock ran to a police station to report that she spotted a baby in the ocean, in a seaweed patch.

John McDonald ran back and forth on the beach and Lilian restrained him from dashing into the ocean.

[6] The image, which Gaunt titled Tragedy by the Sea,[7] was printed in the Los Angeles Times on April 3, 1954.

[8] The Los Angeles Mirror reported that John and Lillian kept a vigil on the beach for days.

Her home was more than 1 mi (1.6 km) away from where the boy had gone missing; she pulled the body from the water and called the police.

[14] When the photographer John Gaunt died in 2007, the Los Angeles Times began the obituary by identifying him as the man who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955.