Until the end of the clipper-ship era, Brewster was famous for its deep-water sailors, and at one time no less than sixty captains hailed its little farms as home. In the later period one of them was to rival the adventures of Robinson Crusoe and also of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine. One suspects, even, that Stockton may have heard the story. His fine clipper ship, the Wild Wave, fifteen hundred tons, with a crew of thirty all told, and ten passengers, San Francisco to Valparaiso, was wrecked on Oeno, a coral island of the Pacific about half a mile in circumference. Passengers and crew, provisions and sails for tents were safely landed. Water they found by digging for it. But Josiah Knowles was not the man to remain inert, and after two weeks he took a ship’s boat, the mate and five men, and his treasure chest of eighteen thousand dollars in gold, and set out for Pitcairn’s Island which he knew to be distant some hundred miles. Safely there, he found to his amazement the island deserted and the inhabitants decamped to Norfolk Island, a notice to that effect, for the benefit of possible callers, posted in several of the houses. They had left behind them much possible provision in the way of sheep, goats, bullocks, and poultry, and there was plenty of tropical fruit such as oranges, bananas, breadfruit, and cocoanuts. But it was plain that the voyage must be continued if Knowles was to rescue his companions marooned at Oeno, and he himself be returned to civilization. By ill luck their boat, shortly after they had landed, was stove in on a reef, and their first care was to replace it. They found six axes, one hammer, and a few other tools, and some of the houses were burned to obtain nails and iron. The timber had to be felled and hewed as best could be; and their boat, the John Adams, was launched July 23, a little more than four months after the wreck at Oeno. The ensign of the new craft was fashioned from the red hangings of the chapel pulpit, an old shirt, and some blue overalls. All being ship-shape and in order, Captain Knowles again set sail with his gold, the mate and two men, and “the wind being unfavourable” headed for the Marquesas. Their destination was Tahiti, fifteen hundred miles distant. Three of his men had preferred the comfortable solitude of Pitcairn’s Island to such an adventure. But fortune favored the daring, and on August 4 they made Nukahiva, where, by extraordinary luck, for no American ship had called at the island in the previous five years, they found the Yankee sloop-of-war Vandalia. Next morning, with his usual promptness, Knowles sold his boat to the island missionary, and was off on the Vandalia which sailed for the rescue of the marooned on Oeno and Pitcairn’s, dropping Knowles and his men at Tahiti. The mate joined the Vandalia as an officer. Knowles, at Tahiti, was offered passage on a French frigate to Honolulu, where he found an American barque loading for