The maritime element always furnished the most picturesque part of the Bristol story. Until half a century ago the boys of the town had the names of the famous ships and the exploits of the most famous captains at the tongue’s end. The most noted captains were Simeon Potter, John De Wolf and James De Wolf, of whom detailed accounts will be given later. We idealized those seamen, especially Simeon Potter. One sailor who was not a captain but a ship’s surgeon had had a most remarkable experience. He was an inveterate smoker and his inordinate use of the weed once saved his life. He was shipwrecked upon a cannibal island in the Pacific ocean. His fellow sufferers were all eaten by their captors. Because he was so flavored with tobacco, he was not deemed fit to be eaten at once by the savage epicures, and so lived to be rescued. He was also a most profane man. One day after a long attack of fever, which had wasted him almost to a skeleton, he ventured out for a walk. Unfortunately, he had not noted the wind. He wore a long cloak and the wind was fair and heavy. Having once started before it, he was not able to stop, but went on, gathering speed and scattering profanity, until friendly arms at last rescued him, entirely exhausted except as to his supply of oaths. Depraved boys when caught smoking sometimes brought forward his case in extenuation of their own crime. Boyish sports before the introduction of baseball in the “early ’60s” were largely nautical. As a matter of course every boy learned to swim almost as soon as he learned to walk. Before his anxious mother had really begun to worry about him he was diving from a bowsprit or dropping from a yard arm. One man whom I know still regards a forced swim of about half a mile which he took from an overturned skiff, at the age of nine, as the most delightful episode of his career. (He forgot to tell his mother about it until a considerable time, i.e., the swimming season, had elapsed.) One of the amusements of that olden time was unique. When we were about ten years old we were wont, as soon as school was dismissed, to hasten down to the wharves, “swarm” up the rigging of some of the vessels lying there, and having reached the point where the shrouds stopped, to “shin up” the smooth topmast and place our caps upon the caps of the masts. The one who got his cap on a mast first was of course the best boy. Singularly enough, I never remember to have proclaimed to my parents the proud occasions when I was “it.” My great chum in those days was Benjamin F. Tilley, who died quite recently, an Admiral in the United States Navy and one of the best loved officers in the service. When he was in Providence a few years ago, in command of the gunboat Newport, we indulged largely in reminiscences of our boyhood, and among other things “shinned” up those masts again. Very strangely Tilley could not remember that he had ever proclaimed to his parents that he was