Many a Cape bride followed her husband to sea, undergoing the dangers and inconveniences of that life in preference to the lonely night on the Cape, where she would be forever in fear of the news that she had joined the legion of women whom the sea had made widows. Many bore their children at sea and with a somehow pathetic zeal set about making a home of their husband’s vessels. It was something to be with their men, but with their best efforts at decorating, and making things snug, the rolling vessels were a far cry from the comfortable white cottages to which they hoped some day to retire, always within sight of the sea, but no more to be upon it. Much of Aunt Alice’s strength must have come from her mother who, in 1882, travelled to New York with her ten-year old daughter, Alice, Alice’s sister Helen, and a large assortment of luggage, to board her husband’s three-masted bark, the Obed Baxter, for a trip to the other side of the earth. The vessel was bound for the Orient, carrying kerosene and oil for the lamps of China and, as the vessel pitched in the high seas of a northern February, oil fumes constantly escaped through the hatches. This, combined with the constant lurching and rolling of the vessel, gave all of the women a bad two weeks of seasickness where there was no cure and no hope except to get over it, and gain immunity. They did--and became as seaworthy as any members of the crew. The skipper, Aunt Alice’s father, had done everything possible to recreate a normal existence for his family aboard the vessel. The cabins were fixed up as nearly as possible like a Cape Cod parlor, even to a parlor organ, which doubled for entertainment purposes during the week, and as church organ for the regular Sunday services aboard ship. There were rugs and easy chairs and real beds, and for the children there was a dog and a bowl of goldfish. On a top shelf of the main cabin stood a row of handsome crystal jars from which the children were given a daily ration of multi-colored hard candies. Education was not neglected, and a great store of schoolbooks had been brought aboard from which the children, under the watchful tutelage of their mother and father, completed their daily lessons. Each morning the Captain conducted a short religious service and each evening there were family readings from the Bible by the light of an oil lamp that swayed with the vessel as she drove westward. When schoolwork and household duties were completed, the children would wrap themselves in blankets and watch the cold waters slip by the prow of the ship. Hungrily they would watch for another sail upon the horizon and it would be an exciting moment when other American vessels drew near to signal navigation news and gossip of the home ports and of friends from the Cape.