Nearly a hundred years ago now, the brig Polly, under command of Captain William Cazneau, and with two Dennis men, accomplished seamen both, among the crew, sailed from Boston. Just south of the Gulf Stream she ran into a fierce gale that laid her on her beam ends, and in order to right her the masts were cut away. Loaded with lumber, she could not sink, and as if invisible she floated unseen, exposed to every caprice of wind and weather, in and out of the most frequented trade-routes of the sea. Provisions and water exhausted, one by one the crew died until only the captain and an Indian cook were left. They ate barnacles which by now were thick enough on the ship’s side, obtained fire by the old Indian device of rubbing two sticks together, and water by distillation. For one hundred and ninety days they managed to keep themselves alive until at last a ship sighted them; and the captain, in further proof of an iron constitution, lived to the good age of ninety-seven. In 1855 the Titan, commanded by a young Brewster captain who lived on through the first decade of the twentieth century, alert and active in the public service to the end of his long life, was chartered by the French Government to transport troops to the Crimea. For two years he cruised back and forth through the Mediterranean in such service, and then, home again, took from New Orleans to Liverpool the largest cargo of cotton that had ever been carried, and was nearly wrecked making port in a stiff gale. Refitted and made seaworthy, she took out over a thousand passengers to Melbourne, thence proceeded to Callao for a cargo of guano for London; but homeward bound, she sprung a leak in the South Atlantic and had to be abandoned some eleven hundred miles off the coast of Brazil. Sails were set and all took to the boats which, provisioned with biscuit, canned meats, jam, and none too much water, were moored to the ship that she might serve them as long as might be safe. Next morning the captain and an officer boarded her, saw there was no hope for her, returned to the boats, and cast off. They knew there was an island, Tristan d’Acunha, somewhere north of them, but as it was “too small to hit,” they decided to make for the mainland. But they were in the “belt of calms,” which might extend for ten miles or a hundred and ten, and oars must come before sails. As the men bent to their work, one cried out to look at the old Titan. A slight breeze aloft catching her sails, she had righted and seemed to be following them; but even as they looked, and wondered, she careened two or three times and went down. In a shorter time than might have been hoped, they were picked up, by a Frenchman bound for Havre who refused to interrupt his voyage for their convenience; but being provisioned for a small crew and the Titan’s men numbering fifty-three, he was soon glad to land them at Pernambuco. This same captain told of a voyage from Australia