Boats were filled with men whose only thought was to save their skins 56 The brig, which had made a long tack and was now steering straight toward the raft 64 Governor Glass and his residence 97 Woodard raised his empty hands to ask for peace and mercy 112 Wreck of the _Grosvenor_ on the coast of Caffraria 144 Early American ship of the 18th Century 176 Perilous situation of the ship 224 The _Charlemagne_, a New York packet ship 272 Brig _Topaz_ of Newburyport, built in 1807 305 The brig _Olinda_ of Salem, built in 1825 352 Taking on the pilot in the 18th Century 384 LOST SHIPS AND LONELY SEAS CHAPTER I THE SINGULAR FATE OF THE BRIG _POLLY_ “Oh, night and day the ships come in, The ships both great and small, But never one among them brings A word of him at all. From Port o’ Spain and Trinidad, From Rio or Funchal, And along the coast of Barbary.” Steam has not banished from the deep sea the ships that lift tall spires of canvas to win their way from port to port. The gleam of their topsails recalls the centuries in which men wrought with stubborn courage to fashion fabrics of wood and cordage that should survive the enmity of the implacable ocean and make the winds obedient. Their genius was unsung, their hard toil forgotten, but with each generation the sailing ship became nobler and more enduring, until it was a perfect thing. Its great days live in memory with a peculiar atmosphere of romance. Its humming shrouds were vibrant with the eternal call of the sea, and in a phantom fleet pass the towering East Indiaman, the hard-driven Atlantic packet, and the gracious clipper that fled before the Southern trades. A hundred years ago every bay and inlet of the New England coast was building ships which fared bravely forth to the West Indies, to the roadsteads of Europe, to the mysterious havens of the Far East. They sailed in peril of pirate and privateer, and fought these rascals as sturdily as they battled with wicked weather. Coasts were unlighted, the seas uncharted, and navigation was mostly by guesswork, but these seamen were the flower of an American merchant marine whose deeds are heroic in the nation’s story. Great hearts in little ships, they dared and suffered with simple, uncomplaining fortitude. Shipwreck was an incident, and to be adrift in lonely seas or cast upon a barbarous shore was sadly commonplace. They lived the stuff that made fiction after they were gone.