CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 MARBLEHEAD SKIPPER 
 AND SHOEMAKER
 
 'TRUE AMERICAN TYPES" 
 
 Vol. I. JOHN GILLEY: Maine Farmer and 
 Fisherman, by CHARLES W. ELIOT. 
 
 Vol. II. AUGUSTUS CONANT : Illinois 
 Pioneer and Preacher, by ROBERT COLL- 
 YER. 
 
 Vol. III. CAP'N CHADWICK: Marble- 
 head Skipper and Shoemaker, by JOHN 
 W. CHADWICK. 
 
 Price, each, 60 cents, net ; by mail, 65 cents. 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 Publishers, Boston, Massachusetts
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 MARBLEHEAD SKIPPER 
 AND SHOEMAKER 
 
 BY 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 1906
 
 COPYRIGHT 1906 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 Published October, 1906 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 CAPTAIN CHADWICK was 
 born Nov. 18, 1809, truly a 
 year of grace, seeing that it was the 
 birth year of Lincoln and Darwin, 
 Tennyson, Holmes, and Gladstone. 
 My father had no public reputation 
 whatsoever, but I dare believe he 
 was as good as even the best of these. 
 He was born in Marblehead, Mass., 
 in the house which sets back from 
 the street, opposite the Unitarian 
 meeting-house. The old meeting- 
 house was standing then. It gave 
 place to the new one in 1832, the 
 first year of my father's skippership, 
 and, if he was not the youngest of
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 the contributors to the building fund, 
 he outlived all the others. His 
 father, Charles Chadwick, was born 
 in 1774 to Benjamin Chadwick and 
 Joanna Coombs. There was con- 
 siderable intermarriage between the 
 Coombs family and the Whites and 
 Haskells, from whom my father drew 
 his lineage on his mother's side ; and 
 it so happened that her grandmother, 
 Ruth Coombs, was a half-sister to 
 Joanna Coombs, her husband's 
 mother. "Aunt Smith," Mary 
 Coombs Smith (1770-1860), the 
 sister of my grandfather, Charles 
 Chadwick, outlived her brother forty- 
 five years ; and she was a great 
 authority on the Coombs branch of 
 the family, at once proud of its aris- 
 tocracy and ashamed of certain blots
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 upon the scutcheon ; for Michael 
 Coombs, her uncle, had been a Tory 
 in the Revolutionary War, had fled 
 the town, and his property had been 
 confiscated. This to Aunt Smith 
 was terrible as the sin against the 
 Holy Ghost, so ardent was her pa- 
 triotic zeal. She was never able to 
 do any political thinking except in 
 the terms of Revolutionary politics. 
 Republicans and Democrats she knew 
 not, but demanded, " Which are the 
 Whigs and which are the Tories?" 
 as the rival processions went by with 
 their flambeaux in 1856. There are 
 so many of the Smiths that her fre- 
 quent boast " Five good sea-captains 
 in that one family ! " was not extrava- 
 gant. In an upper chamber of her 
 house, which stood close by the sea 
 3
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 at Swampscott, she had in various 
 drawers and cabinets a great many 
 things her husband and her son had 
 brought home from the East Indies, 
 woods and spices, fabrics as rare 
 as Desdemona's handkerchief, and 
 she told them over as reverently as a 
 nun her beads, intoxicating a boy's 
 imagination with the mysterious scent 
 her trophies breathed, and with the 
 strangeness of her tale. There were 
 in her companionship elements of a 
 liberal education which the colleges 
 do not possess. 
 
 My father's maternal grandparents 
 were John White (1756-1833) and 
 Ruth Haskell (1757-1808). It was 
 a nice way they had of calling the 
 family patriarch " Sir ; " and " Sir 
 White " always had for me a pleasant 
 4
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 old-world sound, and invested my 
 ancestor, who was so called, with a 
 peculiar dignity, as if he " drew his 
 blood from men of royal siege." In 
 fact, he was a man of modest force 
 and humble occupations. He was a 
 Revolutionary pensioner, and when 
 a little boy my father sometimes 
 walked to Salem with him to draw 
 his pension. Sir White had tales to 
 tell : he had seen Washington so 
 many times in Cambridge, crossing 
 the Delaware and in the affair at 
 Trenton and Princeton, and in the 
 bitter days at Valley Forge. In def- 
 erence to the safety of Washington, 
 so necessary to the remainder of his 
 personal history, I have conceded the 
 doubtfulness of the family tradition 
 that Sir White crossed the Delaware 
 5
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 in the same boat with him, and it be- 
 hooves many others to be as self- 
 denying as I am. In 1777 ne was 
 discharged, and walked all the way 
 home from Pennsylvania, falling sick 
 upon the way, and being carefully 
 tended by the good Samaritans into 
 whose hands he fell. Later in the 
 war he was a privateersman on the 
 "Tyrannicide," but before the war 
 was over he was married to Ruth 
 Haskell (Oct. i, 1780), and the 
 following September, on the first day 
 of the month their first child, Ruth, 
 my beloved grandmother, was born. 
 Good trees must Sir White and 
 Ruth his wife have been, judged 
 by their fruit. And it was plenti- 
 ful. After Ruth came Philip, Mary, 
 John, Remember, Susannah, Jane, 
 6
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 Ambrose. Three of these, Mary, 
 Jane, and Susannah, lived for me 
 only as Polly, Jinny, and Sukey, in 
 my grandmother's memory and twi- 
 light talk, two of them having died 
 in childhood, and Susannah when 
 she was only twenty-five years old, 
 leaving an infant son, John Peach, 
 for my grandmother to bring up, 
 she being then (1819) a widow with 
 six small children of her own, and 
 her youngest brother in her care. 
 Susannah and Remember, whom 
 we always called "Aunt Member," 
 married Frenchmen, who were, I 
 imagine, refugees who had no taste 
 for the Napoleonic wars. 
 
 My father's uncles, John and 
 Philip White, were men of great 
 physical energy and endurance, and 
 7
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 of large experience as fishermen and 
 master mariners. I had a standing 
 difference with my father as to their 
 relative merits, my father inclining 
 to Uncle Philip's superiority, and 
 I to Uncle John's. The fact was 
 that Uncle John was one of the 
 most ardent lovers of children I 
 have ever known, and he let them 
 know how much he thought of 
 them. He was always doing them 
 some kindness or showing them 
 some pleasing attention, and he was 
 very confidential with them about 
 his own sad losses, which had, 
 indeed, been many. He was a 
 goodly sight at any time, so kindly 
 was his face and so beautifully 
 bronzed, contrasting with his snowy 
 hair, and on Sundays with his broad 
 8
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 white neckcloth semi-Directoire, 
 which was his daughter's special 
 pride. He was, of course, a pri- 
 vateersman in the War of 1812, 
 and was captured, as nearly all the 
 brave adventurers from Marblehead 
 must have been, seeing that five 
 hundred of them were in Dartmoor 
 Prison at the end of the war, and 
 many in other prisons in England 
 and in Halifax. 
 
 With Uncle Philip I had none 
 of the delights I had with Uncle 
 John. He had domestic ties, while 
 Uncle John, wifeless for many years, 
 went " wandering on from home to 
 home." Moreover, Uncle Philip 
 went to the Old North, the Ortho- 
 dox church, and so was not one of 
 those who foregathered on Sundays 
 9
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 at my grandmother's. He was a 
 man of yeas and nays, as if any- 
 thing more than these came of evil, 
 or would come to it. I could not 
 resist the impression that Aunt 
 White had kept the strong seafarer 
 under, and brought him into sub- 
 
 iection. She was a terror to such 
 j 
 
 evil-doers as my cousin Sidney 
 Herrick and myself, and some- 
 thing in her voice sent tremors 
 down my spine. I have been as- 
 sured, however, that her forbidding 
 manner masked a disposition gen- 
 erally kind. Without children of 
 their own she and Uncle Philip 
 had " the spirit of adoption," and 
 exercised it for the benefit of this 
 one and that, reaping in one in- 
 stance an unspeakable reward of 
 10
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 tireless care. Aunt White was one 
 of the Savages of Northeast Har- 
 bor, Mount Desert, not an indig- 
 enous tribe, but a family of that 
 name which is still flourishing in 
 those lovely parts ; and I have 
 sometimes wondered if my qualified 
 regard for her was not the merest 
 nominis umbra, some early miscon- 
 ception of an expression common 
 in the family, " the Savages of 
 Mount Desert." 
 
 No man ever had warmer ad- 
 miration than Uncle Philip had 
 from his brother Ambrose and my 
 father. He was, they told me, as 
 good a seaman as ever trod a deck, 
 absolutely fearless, and with a spice 
 of daring in his composition. He 
 was one of the five hundred Mar- 
 ii
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 bleheaders who were liberated from 
 Dartmoor Prison in 1815. Before 
 his final capture his experience was 
 an interesting one. He was prize- 
 master on board the ships " Alfred " 
 and " Alexander," and in the latter 
 met the " Invincible Napoleon," a 
 French corvette of sixteen guns, 
 which had been captured by the 
 British. She surrendered to the 
 "Alexander," and Uncle Philip was 
 put in command of her. Off 
 Cape Ann one fine Sunday morn- 
 ing he was chased by the frigates 
 " Tenedos " and " Shannon," and 
 ran his prize on Norman's Woe, 
 escaping with his crew. The cor- 
 vette was got off by the frigates' 
 boats, but she was again captured 
 by another privateer before reach- 
 
 12
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 ing Halifax. Uncle Philip was 
 soon off again upon the dangerous 
 seas, and was finally captured, as I 
 have said, and sent to Dartmoor 
 Prison, where, with nearly or quite 
 half of all the privateersmen hail- 
 ing from Marblehead, he awaited 
 the end of the war. 
 
 Ambrose Haskell White, my 
 father's youngest uncle, was born 
 Dec. 17, 1800, and died June 3, 
 1 88 1. He followed the sea for 
 thirty years, and for twelve of these 
 the Batavia and China trade. Af- 
 terward, for many years, he was a 
 commission merchant in Boston. 
 He was the only member of our 
 family to acquire wealth to even a 
 moderate extent. He was a perfect 
 gentleman of the old school, with 
 13
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 something of the reserve that often 
 came from the habit of the ship- 
 master sailing on long voyages and 
 on no footing of equality with the 
 ship's crew. Blair's sermons were 
 his delight, and the ideal they set 
 for him was perhaps in his mind 
 when he advised me frankly against 
 entering the ministry. For Daniel 
 Webster he had a boundless rever- 
 ence, and probably never believed 
 one allegation against his personal 
 character. There never was a bet- 
 ter brother, and in my grandmoth- 
 er's imagination he was a kind of 
 friendly deity. His wife, Harriet 
 Spaulding, of Newburyport, was a 
 lady of such lovely manners and 
 such kindly heart that she " made 
 human nature seem beautiful " to 
 14
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 all who had the privilege of her 
 acquaintance. 
 
 One of my father's earliest rec- 
 ollections was of the frigate " Con- 
 stitution's " successful escape from 
 three British men-of-war. This 
 was Sunday, April 3, 1814. The 
 " Constitution " ran into Marble- 
 head Harbor, and there was great 
 excitement, the people watching 
 the chase from the roofs and stee- 
 ples, and expecting the bombardment 
 of the town. In an earlier and 
 much more tragical event my father 
 had taken a not dishonorable part. 
 He had gone " down on the head " 
 to see the terrible fight between 
 the " Chesapeake " and " Shannon," 
 which resulted so disastrously for the 
 "Chesapeake." One of her crew 
 15
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 was " Uncle Frederick ; " that is, 
 William Frederick who married my 
 father's aunt, Remember White. He 
 was " the mildest-mannered man" that 
 ever was engaged in such a monstrous 
 business ; but when the "Chesapeake " 
 was boarded, and he was cornered 
 between decks by a British tar, he 
 opened his head with his board- 
 ing hatchet, and ever afterward had 
 the burden of that act upon his soul. 
 My grandmother was washing that 
 day, and when Charles, my father's 
 oldest brother (1802-1846), came 
 home, and she asked, " Where 's 
 John ? " and he made answer, 
 " Down on the head with Ben 
 (1807-1857) seein' the foight," she 
 dried her arms, rolled down her 
 sleeves, and went in search of them. 
 16
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 In February, 1815, the town was 
 illuminated for the peace of that 
 year, and father had a lively recol- 
 lection of going round with one of 
 his brothers to see the windows all 
 ablaze. The next August and Sep- 
 tember were months of fearful storm, 
 a hailstorm in August being long re- 
 membered for the destruction which 
 it brought upon the town. Septem- 
 ber 23 came the September Gale, 
 which figured so importantly in the 
 recollections of all persons who were 
 then living on the New England 
 coast. Garrison, who was then liv- 
 ing in Lynn, never forgot it ; Whit- 
 tier made it the subject of his first 
 literary effort in a manuscript-book 
 his mother made for him ; and 
 Holmes embalmed his memory of 
 2 17
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 it in his verses, " The September 
 Gale." But it was a storm of Sep- 
 tember 2 or September 3 which 
 wrought my father's greatest woe. 
 His father sailed for Grand Bank 
 September i, and was sighted the 
 next day, but never again. For 
 years my grandmother cherished 
 the fond hope that he would come 
 again, but she was solitary in her 
 vain imagination. 
 
 The loss of her husband left 
 Mother Chadwick, as we always 
 called her, with six children to care 
 for, the youngest but eighteen 
 months old. The oldest boy was 
 thirteen, and he and the others soon 
 found ways of helping their mother, 
 who was desperately poor. Parson 
 Bartlett, who was her minister from 
 18
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 1811 until 1849, was a friend and 
 an adviser whom she could ill have 
 spared. When my father was seven 
 he used to go up to the Ferry, the 
 Marblehead side of Salem Harbor, 
 with his brother, and get, time after 
 time, a peck of corn, the gift of 
 Uncle Mike Haskell, carry it up to 
 Forest Mills and have it ground, 
 and then carry home the meal. The 
 round trip was some seven miles. 
 Sometimes the growing boy had for 
 his supper a single baked potato. 
 His early schooling was but slight, 
 but after he began to go to sea he 
 studied navigation. When he was 
 ten years old Uncle Tom Haskell 
 gave him a wood-horse and saw, and 
 a sled to drag them on. He was 
 my grandmother's uncle, and I well
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 remember him, a man of violent 
 temper and benignant face, with 
 silver hair that was a glorious crown, 
 and every way most good to see. 
 He was one of the many who gath- 
 ered before church at my grand- 
 mother's, where dried flag-root, dried 
 orange-peel, and peppermints were 
 portioned out with much discrimina- 
 tion. There was always a cloud 
 upon his reputation, because in 1817 
 he was accessory to the breaking of 
 Uncle Mike Haskell's will which 
 gave Mother Chadwick six hundred 
 dollars, which to her would have 
 meant being "rich beyond the 
 dreams of avarice;" and even the 
 sixty that she got was something 
 wonderful. But, for all that, he 
 showed much kindness to her and 
 
 20
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 her boys. For two years, when he 
 was ten and eleven, my father helped 
 his mother a good deal with his 
 wood-sawing. At the best he could 
 saw a cord a day, and earn fifty cents. 
 This he often did when he was saw- 
 ing wood for the fishermen to take 
 on their vessels. During these ten- 
 der years he also worked on fish, 
 carrying them to the " flakes " to 
 dry, and off again, working some- 
 times ten hours a day, and getting 
 eight cents an hour because he did 
 so well, when only six had been 
 agreed upon, a man getting ten 
 cents ; and he was a little fellow for 
 his years. 
 
 In his school days, playing truant 
 with his brother Ben " up to the 
 Ferry," Ben got a serious hurt climb- 
 
 21
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 ing into a wagon by the wheel. My 
 father had to be the bearer of ill tid- 
 ings to his mother, and it was more 
 than one bad quarter of an hour he 
 had about it, then and for months 
 after when Ben couldn't walk. To 
 go to meeting Sundays was inexor- 
 able law, and the boys must go to 
 bed early Saturday nights to have 
 their one suit washed and mended. 
 The Ferry was a magnet that drew 
 my father powerfully. When Presi- 
 dent Monroe came to town, July 8, 
 1817, he spent most of the day going 
 to the Ferry and returning several 
 times, after getting a bad hurt from 
 a peaked fence, which he was climb- 
 ing to see the President. But he 
 saw him, and therein was more fortu- 
 nate than Whittier, who set out in 
 
 22
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 search of him in Haverhill, and mis- 
 took for his footprints those of an 
 elephant which had disputed with 
 him the honors of the day. To make 
 a sure thing of it, my grandmother 
 kept both Saturday and Sunday even- 
 ings sacredly, and her children were 
 subjected to close confinement from 
 sundown at Saturday until Monday 
 morning, except for going to church 
 and Sunday-school. My father 
 never kept back a cent of his earn- 
 ings for his private uses. They all 
 went to his mother ; and when one 
 day the family was in sore distress, 
 he went into pitch-penny "down to 
 wharf" with two cents, to see what 
 he could do. He had a dangerous 
 run of luck, and took home his win- 
 nings, forty cents, to his mother. 
 23
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 She at first refused to touch the un- 
 clean thing; but her children were 
 hungry, and there was not a cent in 
 the house to buy bread, and she suc- 
 cumbed to the insistence of her boy. 
 It was not at all like her to do so, 
 but with her Puritan conscience she 
 had a wondrous heart of mother- 
 hood. 
 
 Her own children did not exhaust 
 its fount of kindliness. Her mother 
 dying in 1808, she took her brother 
 Ambrose, then seven years old, into 
 her family, and mothered him until 
 he reached maturity. In 1819 her 
 sister Susannah died, her husband 
 went to " the Far Indies," and 
 Mother Chadwick adopted her only 
 child, John Peach, a baby some 
 eighteen months old. To her.he was 
 24
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 as one of her own children, living 
 with her until his marriage in 1846, 
 and amply repaying all her early sac- 
 rifice and care. Somewhat later, 
 Uncle John White losing his wife, 
 she took him and his children into 
 her little house, and did for them as 
 best she could. When I began to 
 know her in the forties, and she 
 was going on from sixty to seventy 
 years of age, she was so placid that 
 it seemed as if she never could have 
 known the burden of anxiety, the 
 touch of care. She helped her 
 daughter's tailoring, always, with sur- 
 prising prodigality for one whose res 
 angusta domi had been so extremely 
 narrow, demanding an extra quarter 
 of a yard for my trousers to avoid an 
 unseemly gore in the waistband. She 
 25
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 braided and " drew in " innumerable 
 mats, making a yellow dye for her 
 pieces from lichens which kind 
 Heaven forgive ! I scraped for her 
 from the pasture rocks; but she al- 
 ways had time for any one of her 
 several favorite books, of which 
 " Moses His Choice " was her pe- 
 culiar joy. That, like some of the 
 others, had lost its covers and a few 
 of the opening pages. At her death 
 in 1870, in her ninetieth year, her 
 widowhood had been fifty-five years 
 long ; and under her name and her 
 husband's on the stone on " the old 
 hill " it is written, " And there was 
 no more sea." 
 
 In his thirteenth year my father 
 began that seafaring life which, with 
 brief interruptions, he followed until 
 26
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 1860. Until the last days of his life 
 he could remember on what day he 
 sailed each time, and on what days 
 he set out for home and got there, 
 how much salt he carried, and how 
 much of it he wet, how many quin- 
 tals of fish he got, and how the wind 
 veered on such and such day. His 
 first fishing was with Uncle Tom 
 Haskell for mackerel around Block 
 Island, and on the Jersey coast. 
 One catch was brought into New 
 York, and packed upon the Brooklyn 
 side. He got in a little more school- 
 ing, and March 20, 1824, he sailed 
 for the first time for the Grand Bank 
 of Newfoundland in the schooner 
 " Mary," with Skipper John Good- 
 win. The name, the same as that 
 borne by the ill-fated vessel in which 
 27
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 his father had been lost, must have 
 chilled his mother's heart with sad 
 foreboding. It was a hard beginning. 
 The first night it blew a heavy gale, 
 so that a two-reef foresail was all the 
 vessel could bear. It was bitter cold, 
 and the smoke blew back into the 
 forecastle, so that they could have no 
 fire. In those days the fire was made 
 in the companion-way. Seasick and 
 homesick, the poor boy lay in his 
 berth, a contracted one in the fore- 
 peak, the cook's usual place, nib- 
 bling a loaf of bread his mother had 
 made for him, and salting it with 
 tears. The next morning there were 
 two feet of ice on deck. A few days 
 after getting to the Bank my father 
 was thrown down the main hatch by 
 a sudden lurch of the vessel, and dis- 
 28
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 abled for some days. This was one 
 of several accidents that would have 
 broken a less knotted strength. A 
 year or two before, a sixteen-foot oar 
 had pulled him off the wharf into the 
 bottom of a " Moses boat," and he 
 was taken up for dead. He was 
 home again on the ist of August, 
 twenty-five thousand fish in the good 
 " Mary's " hold, which meant a splen- 
 did fare. Looking back on those 
 one hundred and thirty days, it 
 seemed strange to him that he ever 
 went upon another trip. The cook 
 was generally the butt of endless 
 ridicule and of practical jokes, which 
 were sometimes extremely cruel, be- 
 sides general abuse. Crews varied in 
 the degree of their brutality. That 
 of the " Mary " was one of the worst, 
 29
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 and my father told me that he should 
 not have survived the ordeal if it had 
 not been for the kindness of Dick 
 Ireson,a nephew of" Old Flood," the 
 hero of Whittier's ballad, who stood 
 between him and the worst devices of 
 his enemies. Nevertheless he sailed 
 again in the same vessel September 
 3, the skipper delaying sailing for a 
 day that he and his crew might see 
 General Lafayette, who was then 
 making his triumphal progress 
 through the country. All day there 
 was a pouring rain. Some three 
 weeks out, a barrel of mackerel fell 
 upon his back and nearly finished 
 him. Getting home December 3, 
 still seriously ailing from the crush- 
 ing blow he had received, he went to 
 school again until the time came for 
 30
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 fitting out for the spring fare. This 
 time he sailed with his Uncle John 
 White in the schooner " Hope," and 
 in the same vessel with the same 
 skipper until 1831, two fares each 
 year, making at the best $200 a year. 
 It was easy in those times to hire a 
 man for one fare for $75 to $100, but 
 my father always went "on shares." 
 
 The year 1830 was a memorable 
 one in my father's life. Then he 
 for the first time met my mother, 
 Jane Stanley (born April 28, 1812; 
 died February 18, 1874). His first 
 sight of her was not auspicious, for 
 she was sitting in the chimney-corner 
 crying with the toothache. Her 
 brothers were plaguing her, and my 
 father's sympathy was the beginning 
 of the happy end. She had just 
 3*
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 come back to the old home from 
 Oxford, Mass., where, since 1827, 
 she had been a factory girl in Slater's 
 mills. The town had been ruined 
 by the embargo and the war, and 
 Father Stanley had taken his whole 
 family and gone to Oxford, in order 
 that the children might work in the 
 factory. The Stanley house in 
 Marblehead was one of the oldest 
 in the town, with the upper story 
 jutting out over the lower for con- 
 venience (at least so they said) in 
 shooting Indians in case of siege. 
 The chimney was of vast propor- 
 tions, and, sitting in the corner, one 
 could look up and see the wandering 
 stars. Father Stanley, publicly known 
 as " Master Alec," was a cripple 
 from his birth. In our time such a 
 32
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 trouble would have surgical remedy 
 at once; then it was suffered to go 
 on and increase. But he was an 
 active boy, and one year went to the 
 Banks. He was an inveterate 
 smoker, and one of the minor pleas- 
 ures of my childhood was to see 
 him light his pipe with his burning- 
 glass. His physical limitation was 
 turned to intellectual account. He 
 was the champion checker player of 
 the town. You would think you 
 were doing finely, taking piece after 
 piece, and suddenly you were com- 
 pletely done for. He always in- 
 sisted that Benjamin Greenleaf, whose 
 famous arithmetic lasted for two 
 generations of New England boys 
 and girls, had treated him dishon- 
 estly. Greenleaf was teaching in the 
 3 33
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 town, and Father Stanley's story was 
 that they made the arithmetic to- 
 gether, and then came the war, and 
 they could not get a publisher ; and 
 Greenleaf went off with the manu- 
 script, and ultimately published it, 
 and made himself comfortable for 
 life. Father Stanley particularly 
 claimed all those tremendous prob- 
 lems concerning the woman who 
 " went to market with a basket of 
 eggs," and others of that sort. One 
 thing is sure : he had all those prob- 
 lems at his tongue's end, and a pri- 
 vate repertory of others like unto 
 them. I always fancied that he 
 looked very much like Benjamin 
 Franklin. His wife, Jane Wills, 
 died in 1837, so that I never knew 
 her. 
 
 34
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 It was between the spring and fall 
 fares of 1831 that father and mother 
 were engaged to each other. They 
 were married by Parson Bartlett, 
 Jan. 19, 1834. Parson Bartlett was 
 very anxious for some years that 
 they should join the church, but 
 mother thought she " was not good 
 enough," and father felt sure that, 
 if she was n't, he was n't ; and so 
 they never did it. My father would 
 plague my mother sometimes about 
 their courting days, and she would 
 say, blushing like a rose in June, 
 " Father, how can you be so silly ? " 
 Or I would do the plaguing, beg her 
 to tell me all about it, and then she 
 would say, " Father, how can you sit 
 there and let that boy go on in such 
 a way ? " But in truth they were 
 35
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 both very reticent about their love 
 affairs. Not until the night when 
 mother was "fading away from the 
 land of the leal," and father and I 
 were waiting in another room for her 
 last awakening, were his lips unsealed. 
 That story I may not confide to any 
 other, but it was very beautiful in its 
 frank simplicity. I cannot conceive 
 of a more tender and unselfish love 
 than theirs, yet there was no outward 
 demonstration. Even when father 
 went to sea or came home again, I 
 think there was no mutual embrace 
 before the children's eyes. When 
 he was coming in, some one would 
 rush in and say, " Mrs. Chadwick," 
 or " Aunt Jane," " your husband 's 
 coming up the harbor." I can see 
 her now going about her work with 
 36
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 wilful steadiness ; and when father 
 came in how her color heightened as 
 he took her hand and said, " How 
 are you, Jane?" and she answered 
 in some simple fashion. 
 
 When he came home in 1834, 
 Nov. 25, he found a little daughter 
 two days old awaiting him. She was 
 named Jane Elizabeth, but we called 
 her Jennie in her maturer years. 
 Father had now come to be himself 
 the master of a vessel, and was 
 " Skipper Chadwick," or " Cap'n 
 Chadwick," to his friends for the re- 
 mainder of his life. The first vessel 
 which he sailed as skipper was the 
 " Ploughboy " in 1832, when he was 
 only twenty-two years old. But he 
 let no man despise his youth. Drink 
 was one of the dangers with which he 
 37
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 had to contend, his own temperance 
 being always strict without being 
 total abstinence. Once a drunken 
 hand grew mutinous, but was brought 
 to terms when the young skipper 
 took up a windlass-bar, and with 
 a strong expression threatened to 
 knock out his brains. At another 
 time the offending keg of liquor 
 "kag" was the usual pronunciation 
 was poured into the sea. His 
 profanity had none of Andrew Jack- 
 son's genial latitude, and it was 
 instinctively reserved for great occa- 
 sions. But he frequently in middle 
 life strengthened his speech with 
 terms which were undoubtedly cor- 
 ruptions of profane usage. " 'Od 
 dast you ! " was the worst of these, 
 and I remember that I once invited 
 38
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 it by throwing a bean-bag (one used 
 in a delightful game) and knocking 
 his pipe, which he had just filled and 
 lighted, out of his mouth, and break- 
 ing it into pieces. It came back 
 with a vehemence that would have 
 hurt me a good deal if I had not 
 dodged behind a door. He dearly 
 loved his pipe, and when times were 
 hard in 1857, and we were all of us 
 on short rations, he said he would 
 give up anything else sooner than his 
 tobacco. He had given it up in 
 1837, but he would never make the 
 sacrifice again. He avoided unclean- 
 ness in his speech even more com- 
 pletely than profanity. He not only 
 avoided it absolutely, but he would 
 not tolerate it in others. Many a 
 time in the shoemaker's shop I have 
 39
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 seen him blush at some questionable 
 narration ; and, when his own back- 
 shop was polluted, he would say, 
 though the offender were some 
 valued customer, " Stop that, or get 
 out of here." At the same time he 
 could not bear to have the ancient 
 landmarks removed or misnamed ; 
 and there was a half-sunken rock in 
 the harbor, which in ruder times had 
 been given a name not fit for ears 
 polite. Some one, with the best in- 
 tentions in the world, had given it a 
 new name, and once, when my father 
 was taking out a sailing party, the 
 new name was given in answer to a 
 question as to what rock it was. 
 Instantly my father flashed out in- 
 dignantly the traditional name ; and 
 the dovecotes were fluttered visibly. 
 40
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 In 1834, the year of his mar- 
 riage, my father's schooner was the 
 " Statesman ; " and he owned one- 
 third of her. One of his hands 
 died on the first trip, the only time 
 he met with this misfortune. The 
 winter of *34-'35 was one of the 
 happiest of his life. There was a 
 baby in the house, and he was now 
 adding some $50 a winter to his 
 clear gains, by making shoes be- 
 tween his return in the late au- 
 tumn and his beginning to fit out 
 for the spring fare. He had been 
 doing this since 1825. He was not 
 a rapid workman on the bench, but 
 few workmen could make a better 
 shoe. The stitch was never length- 
 ened, even in the shank, to hurry up 
 the work. It was this winter or the 
 41
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 next that he had an amusing experi- 
 ence. He was living at the foot of 
 Orne Street, in the Lawrence house, 
 and he started for Mother Stanley's 
 with little Jane in his arms. Idler's 
 Hill (so called because it was a fav- 
 orite loafing place) one of the long- 
 est and steepest in the town, was 
 very slippery, and near the top he 
 began to slip backward with his 
 precious freight. Afraid of injur- 
 ing that, his hands were, as it were, 
 tied, and he kept on slipping and 
 slipping until he brought up with 
 his back against Hawkes's store at 
 the foot of the hill. The small 
 boys coasting on the hill enjoyed 
 his discomfiture exceedingly. So 
 did not he. 
 
 His first year on the " States- 
 42
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 man " was a prosperous one, but 
 his second one (1835) was so on ty 
 in part. His fall fare was one of 
 the meanest that he ever got, only 
 5.40 quintals. Before sailing in 
 the spring of 1836 he exchanged 
 his third of the " Statesman " for 
 a third of the " Hero," paying 
 $333-33 f r hi bargain. The 
 " Hero " was fourteen tons larger 
 than the " Statesman," which was 
 only seventy-two. My father trod 
 her deck for eleven successive sea- 
 sons, twenty-one fares in all, only 
 one fare in 1841. To his mem- 
 ory in after years she was more a 
 living creature, a beloved friend, 
 than an inanimate thing. He dwelt 
 upon her virtues as upon those of a 
 dear child that he had lost. But his 
 43
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 first trip on her, though he brought 
 home twenty-two thousand fish, was 
 one of the most miserable he ever 
 sailed. It was on this trip that his 
 crew were mutinous. The offenders 
 were got rid of on his return, and in 
 the fall everything went smoothly 
 until November 8, when in a very 
 heavy gale he lost a shot of cable, 
 one hundred and eighty fathoms, 
 and shipped a sea that knocked off 
 the stern a good bit, and made it 
 every way desirable to get home as 
 soon as possible. On his return, 
 August i, 1837, he found a second 
 daughter in the house, Sarah, born 
 May 17, and destined to be his care- 
 taker for twenty-two years after her 
 mother's death in 1874. How lit- 
 tle could he imagine when he came 
 
 44
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 home in 1837, and found the help- 
 less child upon its mother's breast, 
 that he would find in hers for many 
 years a mother's patient heart ! The 
 year 1838 which was, for many per- 
 sons, because of the crash of 1837, 
 one of the blackest on the list 
 was for my father the most success- 
 ful of his life. On his spring fare he 
 got 750 quintals, and on both fares 
 cleared $700. His happiest day 
 was ever that on which he sailed 
 again into the harbor, whether he 
 had wet all his salt or only half of 
 it. He always protested that a man 
 did n't know what happiness was who 
 did not have the joy of coming back 
 to weans and wife from a sea-voy- 
 age. What blessed times those 
 weeks between the end of the first 
 45
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 fare and the beginning of the second 
 always were for me, when I was old 
 enough to go alone or with one of 
 my sisters to the " washing-out," or 
 to carry around the tokens of good 
 will that were expected as religiously 
 as wedding-cards in good society. 
 " Washing-out " meant the washing 
 of the fish which had been packed 
 in salt in the schooner's hold. This 
 was sometimes done in a pound 
 lashed to the side of the schooner, a 
 little off from the beach, and some- 
 times on the beach. Once washed, 
 the fish were carried to the flakes 
 and dried, and then packed in the 
 warehouse. Father's dinner was 
 always sent to him in two tin pails, 
 one of them full of tea. How those 
 tin pails did shine ! It would have 
 46
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 made my mother sick to discover 
 that hers were not the brightest on 
 the scene. As for the tokens of 
 good will we carried round, it was 
 a nice business who should have 
 only crackers, much prized for their 
 sea savor, and who should have in 
 addition a piece of smoked halibut 
 or some " tongues and sounds," or 
 a smoked hagdon, gamiest of the 
 game that is not quite inedible. 
 Hardly less interesting was the 
 packing of my father's chest ; and 
 nothing could exceed the neatness 
 and the carefulness with which my 
 mother bent above this sacred task, 
 and with the haunting fear each 
 time that it might be the last. 
 
 In 1839 tne profit n tne tw 
 fares fell off $300 from the previous 
 47
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 year. In 1840 his fortune was still 
 worse. That spring he had bought 
 a new, small two-story house on 
 Stacey Street. It was a very cosey 
 little house, with a bit of meadow 
 at the rear, where the frogs and 
 crickets had full orchestras. It was 
 just at the foot of Elbridge Gerry's 
 garden, and " the New Road," a nar- 
 row footpath leading to " Allen's 
 stile" and the sea-front, was only 
 a few steps away. 
 
 On his first fare in 1840 my 
 father lost $50, and on his second 
 did not much more than make this 
 up. This was the more discourag- 
 ing because on his arrival, Novem- 
 ber 20, he found a boy awaiting 
 him, the boy who writes this story, 
 born October 19, when the unspeak- 
 48
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 ably inane enthusiasm for hard cider 
 and William Henry Harrison was 
 filling all the air. He was hard put 
 to it for money to meet current ex- 
 penses, having put all he could rake 
 together into the little house. He 
 took what " lumping " he could 
 get ; that is, helping others to wash 
 out and handle their fish. In 1841 
 he went only one fare, one hundred 
 and forty-five days, from April 27 
 to September 19. Twenty-two 
 thousand fish meant a good catch; 
 but he did not get a cent for his 
 share till the next April ; and so 
 again it was close pickings. The 
 bounty money (paid by the United 
 States Government to encourage sea- 
 faring) was never so welcome as this 
 year. The amount was $36. The 
 4 49
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 next year the fish brought only 
 $1.75 a quintal, whereas at the best 
 they brought $3.00. "A man had 
 to cut his rashers thin to live " 
 was my father's comment on the 
 situation. For two good trips he 
 got only $250. In 1843 n * s ^ 
 fare was " a regular Bonanza," one 
 thousand quintals ! and his net 
 gains for the season amounted to 
 1500. The next year was less for- 
 tunate, and the fall fare had an inci- 
 dent that entailed for my father 
 countless hours of miserable pain, 
 and this for many years. Four 
 days out, in bad weather, a block 
 somewhere aloft was split, and the 
 shive and pin, following with hor- 
 rible momentum, struck him on the 
 head. When he came to, he imag- 
 5
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 ined that the vessel had been struck 
 by lightning, and his first question 
 was for her safety. He would not 
 have the vessel put about for home, 
 and the men did what they could for 
 him. Their remedies were drastic, 
 but they were measurably effective. 
 All that winter, however, Parson 
 Bartlett was a frequent visitor, tend- 
 ing the ugly wound ; for Parson 
 Bartlett was a physician literally, as 
 well as a physician of souls. Even 
 the orthodox did not object to his 
 gratuitous treatment of their bodies. 
 His face was rubicund, and he was 
 a goodly man to see. 
 
 The year 1845 was a tolerably 
 
 good year ; but the year 1 846 was 
 
 an annus mirabilis, a wonderful year 
 
 of sorrow both for my father and the 
 
 5'
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 town. The spring fare was so un- 
 profitable that my father moored the 
 " Hero " in the harbor after washing 
 out his fish, resolved not to try his 
 luck again that year. Later he got 
 another skipper for her, who backed 
 out; and my father, recovering his 
 spirits, got a good crew, and sailed 
 September 3. Ten days after his 
 arrival on the Bank came the great 
 gale of September 19, which since 
 then has been for Marblehead " the 
 September Gale " par excellence ; also 
 " the gale of '46." Out of twenty- 
 six schooners that sailed for a fall fare 
 only sixteen returned ; and one on a 
 long fare made the whole number 
 lost eleven, with sixty-seven men and 
 boys. I never tired of hearing my 
 father's story. Hardly ever did I 
 52
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 go home during the last years of his 
 life without encouraging him to tell 
 it ; and he was not unwilling, though 
 he would say, " What do you want 
 to hear about that again for ? " 
 
 The 1 8th was a lowering day, and 
 ominous of storm. On the morning 
 of the 1 9th the wind began to blow 
 at seven o'clock, and by ten o'clock 
 it was blowing a gale. There was no 
 rain, but the air was thick with 
 " wind-food," not fog, but a dry mist, 
 which lifted about noon. Until this 
 lifted you could not see a quarter of 
 a mile. As soon as the wind began 
 to blow hard, father hove up, and ran 
 to speak with John White, his cousin, 
 son of his Uncle John (schooner 
 " Clinton "), but could n't find him. 
 He had already hoisted his anchor, 
 53
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 and gone to the westward. The 
 " Hero " was then laid under a bal- 
 ance mainsail (a small mainsail kept 
 set while fishing) and head-of-jib till 
 twelve o'clock. Only one vessel was 
 sighted during the whole gale, and 
 that was the " Hezron," skipper, 
 Uncle Sam Blackler, and she was 
 riding at anchor. At twelve o'clock 
 the balance mainsail was taken in and 
 the jib handed, and a three-reef fore- 
 sail set, the vessel's head being to 
 westward all the time. As the after- 
 noon advanced the wind began to 
 haul to west-northwest, blowing as 
 hard as ever. At five o'clock the 
 foresail blew away "like an old 
 pocket handkerchief," and the gaff 
 was hauled down. The sea was then 
 taking the " Hero " on the quarter, 
 54
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 and threatening to "pitch-poll her 
 over ; " that is, first stand her on her 
 nose, and then throw her upside down. 
 The seas ran half-mast high and a 
 full half-mite long. They seemed 
 to break from the bottom as if the 
 Bank were one great reef or shoal. 
 This was the critical moment, and 
 father determined to wear the vessel 
 round. The chances were against 
 success, but to take the sea on the 
 quarter meant sure destruction. His 
 men begged him not to do it, but she 
 had good headway, about three 
 miles an hour, and he told them 
 he must do what he thought best. 
 They could go below if they liked. 
 The helm was put hard up, and the 
 vessel came round, and put her nose 
 "to the old sea" (that which the 
 55
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 wind made before it changed), and in 
 five minutes she was " riding the 
 water like a bird." For my father 
 the " Hero " was " named and known 
 by that hour's feat." A big lantern 
 was set in the main rigging, but not 
 a light of any other vessel was to be 
 seen. About half-past nine the stars 
 came out, but the heaviest squalls 
 were between that time and half-past 
 ten. Then it began to moderate. 
 
 At daybreak it was as moderate as 
 you could ask, and one vessel was in 
 sight, the " James Mugford," skipper, 
 Richard Dixey. A heavy swell was 
 rolling. After breakfast a new fore- 
 sail was set with balance-mainsail and 
 jib, and they stood westward, having 
 been blown a good piece off the 
 Bank's southeastern edge. Sailing 
 56
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 three or four hours, they came on a 
 lot of deck-plank, then a lot more, 
 then a mast, then a boat, which 
 proved to be the " Sabine's," Samuel 
 Dodd, and finally water barrels, and 
 everything imaginable belonging to a 
 vessel that could float. For the next 
 two days they kept on sailing through 
 an ocean wilderness, where tokens of 
 destruction greeted them on either 
 hand. They spoke with a Province- 
 town vessel which was going home, 
 and another that had thrown over 
 three hundred quintals offish. Sad- 
 dest of all was a big schooner, her 
 tonnage nearly twice that of the 
 " Hero," on her beam-ends, her 
 masts lifting up twenty feet out of the 
 water, and then plunging down again. 
 The " Clinton " also was encountered, 
 57
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 abandoned by her crew. Her deck 
 had been lifted, and her skipper, 
 John White, and one of his men 
 had been swept overboard and lost. 
 He was a genial soul. How well do 
 I remember him on the eve of his 
 departure, and others who came not 
 back ! They made a merry group 
 about the door of Samuel Sparhawk's 
 shop, where they were getting their 
 supplies. My father's brother Charles 
 was one of these. He was skipper 
 of the " Senator," one of the eleven 
 vessels that were lost. 
 
 The Provincetown vessel which 
 my father spoke on the morning 
 after the storm brought home the 
 news of his safety, and that of some 
 others ; but we were long in doubt 
 as to the limits of the disaster. My 
 53
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 mother was hardly less anxious than 
 she would have been if the " Hero " 
 had not been spoken. My uncle 
 George, her brother, haunted the 
 Old North steeple and the headlands 
 of the town, straining his eyes to 
 make out each approaching vessel, 
 if haply she might be one of the sur- 
 vivors of the storm. My father's 
 crew were sick at heart, and begged 
 him to go home, and his own incli- 
 nation was strong enough to do so, 
 but he held on into November, and 
 then sailed, arriving on the i8th of 
 the month. He was thirty-seven 
 years old that day, but I doubt if 
 he or mother had a thought of that. 
 It stands out from all others of my 
 boyhood with an awful vividness. 
 I went to the wharf with {C Bedo" 
 59
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 Frost, whose father was on board 
 the "Hero." Appleton's Wharf 
 was packed with people, but the 
 crowd made a passageway for the 
 crew to pass along, each with some 
 silent friend, all silent. On one side 
 of my father as we moved homeward 
 was his shoresman, and I walked on 
 the other, the crowd making a kind 
 of hollow square about us, and I not 
 insensible of the dignity of the situ- 
 ation. I can hear now the dull plod 
 of my father's heavy boots and feel 
 the nervous pressure of his hand. I 
 remember, too, that as we came out 
 on Stacey Street I looked back, and 
 saw the crowd defiling all the way 
 through the New Road. All day 
 long my father sat in the neat cellar- 
 kitchen, pleasantest of little rooms, 
 60
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 and answered with low voice the 
 questions of the wives and mothers, 
 the brothers and the friends, who 
 came inquiring for the living and 
 the dead, his own heart breaking 
 all the time with helpless sympathy. 
 I remember only one passionate 
 outbreak : " John Chadwick, do 
 you dare to tell me I shall never 
 see my husband again ? " 
 
 The fishing business of the town 
 never recovered from that blow. 
 Father had little heart for it, and 
 my mother begged him not to go 
 again. Moreover, she got Parson 
 Bartlett, who always had great in- 
 fluence with my father, to intercede 
 for her. There was something stolid 
 in his make, and they would not 
 have moved him if his will had 
 61
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 not been already undermined. The 
 "Hero" was sold in January, 1847. 
 As the years went on he blamed his 
 foolishness. Selling the "Hero" 
 and not buying the " Hezron," were 
 two regrets to which he frequently 
 recurred as he grew old ; and with 
 good reason, for in 1847 ne entered 
 on a period of ups and downs, 
 the downs, if I may say so, in 
 the ascendant, which lasted twenty 
 years. In 1847 ne fished for mack- 
 erel in the Bay and off Mount 
 Desert. At Mount Desert he met 
 the Stanleys, who are so numer- 
 ous on the Cranberry Islands, and 
 who all descended from one of my 
 mother's people. " Uncle Peter " 
 and the stalwart brothers of his 
 generation, so well known to early 
 62
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 visitors to Mount Desert, were the 
 sons of that first settler. In 1848 
 my father became part owner of a 
 new and handsome fishing smack, 
 the " Cabinet," forty-four tons, and 
 for two years went bay fishing in 
 her and to Brown's Bank. There 
 was not much in it; and in 1850, 
 mother's birthday, April 28, found 
 him off for Grand Bank again in 
 the schooner " Rose." This birth- 
 day gift my mother the more pain- 
 fully appreciated, because, for the 
 time being, having sold the little 
 house in Stacey Street, pending the 
 completion of another on Reed's 
 Hill, we were living in a house on 
 Little Harbor close by " the Fount- 
 ain Yard," as we then called the 
 space about my Uncle Bowden's 
 63
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 carpenter shop, quite ignorant of 
 the reason why it was so called, 
 and of Agnes Surriage's delightful 
 story. Soon after my father's sail- 
 ing there was a fearful storm, a 
 match for that of the next follow- 
 ing spring, in which Minot's Ledge 
 lighthouse was destroyed. Our house 
 stood on a cliff, at the foot of which 
 was a narrow garden. There has 
 been no garden since that storm. 
 The storm annexed it to the beach, 
 and the sea, breaking against the 
 cliff, so shook the house that my 
 mother took down her china from 
 the shelves, lest it should fall. That 
 storm may not have reached Grand 
 Bank, but it did so for my dear 
 mother's vivid imagination and her 
 anxious heart; and so did every 
 64
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 storm that blew that year, until her 
 husband came again upon the wings 
 of the most mighty of them all, 
 August 25. How it did rain and 
 blow ! We had been ten days in 
 the new house, and the good fare 
 of fish nearly half paid for it above 
 the cellar wall. We were " the first 
 that ever burst " into that quarter 
 of the town. There were bars to 
 let down, and pastures not far off, 
 and old John Gregory's fish fences 
 and warehouses just beyond us up 
 the hill. Father and mother lived 
 and loved there twenty-four years, 
 and for twenty-two more father lived 
 there without mother. 
 
 In 1851 the Saturnian days re- 
 turned. Mr. William Humphreys, 
 the shoresman whom my father 
 s 65
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 honored above all the rest of those 
 for whom he sailed, built the fine big 
 schooner " Emmeline," one hundred 
 and eight tons burthen, the old 
 measurement. She was launched 
 June 8, a happy boy, who shall be 
 nameless, on her deck. But he had 
 a bad quarter of a minute when, soon 
 after the first delightful sensation 
 when the crowd cried, " There she 
 goes ! " the ways spread and she 
 struck heavily, careened a good deal, 
 seemed in doubt for a moment 
 whether to stop or go on, but at last 
 found her true element. She had 
 started some of her trunnels, but had 
 sustained no serious injury. The 
 schooner " Ariel " was launched about 
 the same time, and the two vessels 
 sailed for Boston the same day to get 
 66
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 their salt. They made a race of it. 
 There was a throng upon each jut- 
 ting headland of the town and Neck ; 
 and when the " Emmeline " left the 
 " Ariel " way, way behind, I was like 
 Dr. Holland's hero who " felt the bud 
 of being in him burst." The ensuing 
 trip was phenomenal in my father's 
 experience. Sailing June 19 he " got 
 in " September 25 with one thousand 
 two hundred and twenty quintals of 
 fish. He was off again October 6 to 
 get his bounty, which required four 
 months at sea. November 6 he 
 started for home, after three weeks 
 of good fishing. The return passage 
 proved to be the worst he ever knew. 
 For nearly a month he was buffeted 
 by incessant storms ; and only when 
 it seemed that the vessel could not 
 67
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 live another hour, Provincetown light 
 sent forth its cheerful gleam and she 
 was soon riding at anchor safe and 
 sound. In 1853 he sailed in another 
 new schooner, the " Sarah Jane," one 
 hundred and twenty tons burthen, 
 nearly half as large again as the 
 " Hero." But my father always de- 
 clared that neither the " Emmeline " 
 nor the " Sarah Jane " was so good a 
 sea-boat as the vessel to whose sur- 
 passing excellence he was as true as 
 was Leander to the Hero of old 
 days. 
 
 " Home-staying hearts are happiest," 
 
 and his was a home-staying heart. 
 He loved the sea, but more and 
 more he dreaded the long separations 
 from his wife and children. In 1854 
 68
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 the " Cadet " a smaller boat than 
 the " Cabinet," which he had bought 
 a part of for the peace and comfort 
 of his uncles, Philip and John 
 White, who must still be fishing in 
 some sort went ashore on Skinner's 
 Head in a big storm that dragged 
 almost every vessel in the harbor 
 from her anchorage, but imbedded 
 the others safely in the sand of River 
 Head Beach. The " Cadet " was 
 repaired and lengthened out at great 
 and vain expense, and the oversight 
 which this business required had 
 much to do with my father's staying 
 at home in 1854. He built a little 
 shop, and for a few years endeavored 
 to combine shoemaking with the sell- 
 ing of West India goods. The ven- 
 ture was unprofitable, and went under 
 69
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 in the crash of 1857. But it is an ill 
 wind that blows nobody good. The 
 hard times blew to me the oppor- 
 tunity of my life. Working with my 
 father, I sewing and he lasting and 
 finishing, we made twenty-five pairs 
 of first rate slick-bottomed ankle-ties 
 a day at four cents a pair. In good 
 times they brought seven cents. 
 Here was a dollar for the joint day's 
 work. My father could not stand 
 it. He gave up the shop and the 
 shoemaking and went to sea again in 
 the "Emmeline;" and when he 
 came back and found me anxious to 
 go to the Normal School at Bridge- 
 water and my sister Jennie more 
 anxious for me to do so than I was 
 myself, and glad to pay the way in 
 part out of her slender salary (she 
 70
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 was a primary school teacher, her 
 salary $150 a year, then the regular 
 amount), he said that I might as 
 well be getting a better education as 
 "working for nothing and finding my 
 own thread ; " and so to school I 
 went, " the difference to me " not 
 measurable in current coin. 
 
 The next ten years were for my 
 father years of much anxiety. His 
 slender savings shrank from year to 
 year, until he had only a few hundred 
 dollars left. My sister Jennie, who 
 was the apple of his eye, fell sick 
 with a terrible brain fever, after which 
 came a long, slow convalescence, with 
 a whole year of speechless melancholy 
 for its most painful incident. Mother 
 was aging rapidly under this dreadful 
 dispensation. In 1859 he made his
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 last trip to the Grand Bank, sailing 
 the " Sarah Jane," and getting a most 
 miserable fare. Steaming across the 
 Bank in 1887 in the " Fulda," I 
 thought how he had spent more than 
 twenty solid years upon that waste of 
 waters ; and when the thick fog 
 settled down upon us I thought 
 how, from out such a fog, he had 
 seen the great ships looming up as 
 they went driving on. " Thank 
 God, my good fellows, that we cleared 
 you ! " cried one captain from his 
 deck as his ship's quarter almost 
 grazed the " Hero's " stern. From 
 out the fog there grew for us a 
 mighty wind, and our four thousand 
 tons seemed like a chip tossed on the 
 waves ; and so I had a better chance 
 to understand what it had meant for 
 72
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 the " Hero," eighty-four tons bur- 
 then, to encounter such a storm as 
 that of 1 846, ours but a zephyr in 
 comparison with its awful stress. 
 
 From 1860 to 1868 my father 
 worked at shoemaking. My sis- 
 ter's health had never been re-es- 
 tablished, and in 1869, August 20, 
 she died ; but not until she had en- 
 couraged my father to resume his 
 shop-keeping. Hers was a most 
 indomitable spirit, and from out the 
 dying embers of her life flashed 
 many a spark to kindle hope again 
 in her dear father's heart. The 
 new venture was an assured success 
 before she died, a modest one, 
 and that was threatened with de- 
 struction in the hard times of 1873 
 and the next following years, when 
 73
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 it was quite impossible for my father 
 to refuse credit to the poor fellows 
 who were out of work and had no 
 money. Some of them justified his 
 confidence in their integrity, and 
 after many years paid up their old 
 accounts. Others, and these his 
 heaviest debtors, lived comfortably 
 enough and made no sign. Alto- 
 gether, he lost several thousand dol- 
 lars, more than half of his lifelong 
 accumulation. This loss would have 
 been borne less patiently if his life's 
 greatest sorrow had not at the same 
 time befallen him, my mother's 
 death, Feb. 18, 1874. We have 
 been told that a majestic grief 
 should be " strong to consume small 
 troubles." His were by no means 
 small ; but my mother's death made 
 74
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 them, in comparison with that, a 
 matter of indifference. Her sick- 
 ness was of short duration. It 
 found her busy, after the customary 
 manner of her life, doing a kindly 
 service to some one who needed 
 mothering. From that time for- 
 ward my father's life was always 
 tender with the glow of memory 
 and hope. 
 
 His success in business was bound 
 to be a modest one, even in the best 
 of times, for he could never find it 
 in his heart to take advantage of a 
 rising market when he had stock in 
 hand. Sheer foolishness, of course ; 
 but I am glad he had that kindly 
 disposition. And, nevertheless, 
 perhaps not entirely so, he did a 
 thriving little business until Octo- 
 75
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 her, 1885, when, being seventy-six 
 years old, he gave over his busi- 
 ness to another and settled down to 
 the enjoyment of a pleasant and se- 
 rene old age. Easily it might have 
 been that, had not the gods seen 
 otherwise ; for he was a faithful 
 reader of good books and papers 
 all his days, and he had many 
 friends. In the early fifties he 
 took the National Era y when " Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin " was coming out in it, 
 and it was a penal offence for any 
 one to open the paper until " the tea 
 things " were put away. All the 
 great stories of actual adventure 
 both by land and sea that appeared 
 in the last years of his life he read 
 until his eyes grew dim. Besides, 
 he had the various and rich experi- 
 76
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 ence of his own life to draw upon, 
 and that of many old seamates and 
 companions. Some of these he 
 prized immeasurably, and they re- 
 sponded generously to his loving 
 trust. He did not so much ideal- 
 ize them as he appreciated their 
 essential worth. It was better than 
 a university degree or a royal decora- 
 tion, I often thought, to be spoken 
 of as he spoke of Andrew Paine 
 and Frank Hiller and Captain Chis- 
 holm and some others. The habit 
 of his middle life was reticent ; but 
 as he grew old he was both talka- 
 tive and affable, and, what was the 
 most surprising thing of all, he did 
 a little quiet boasting now and 
 then. There was one story tend- 
 ing to this complexion which he 
 77
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 told me several times in the last 
 years. It was about a time when 
 he and his brother Charles were 
 sailing with their Uncle John, who 
 fell sick on the home passage and put 
 Charles, as the older, in charge of 
 the vessel. On one occasion he had 
 told my father, "John, you know 
 nothing and fear nothing ; " and 
 the sharp speech was too well re- 
 membered when, as he drew near 
 the coast, Charles could not quite 
 make out his bearings. Appealing 
 to my father he was reminded of 
 his former saying; but, the situa- 
 tion growing desperate, my father 
 came down from his high horse 
 and helped his brother out. That 
 was the time when such a sea was 
 running that the channel between 
 78
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 Marblehead Light and Cat Island 
 Rock broke from the bottom, and 
 through that furious welter of the 
 waves the " Hope " came tearing 
 home. 
 
 The hope of a long evening rest 
 was rudely broken when, in Janu- 
 ary, 1888, he was overtaken by a 
 dangerous illness which was of long 
 continuance and left him but the 
 shadow of his former self. A mere 
 accident had induced a cold, and 
 this ended in pneumonia or some 
 profound bronchial inflammation. 
 The vigor of his constitution de- 
 clared itself in the wonderful rally 
 that he made from such a blow. 
 But his old strength did not re- 
 turn. No one could have more 
 tender care than my sister lavished 
 79
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 on him during the years of waver- 
 ing hope and gradual decline ; and 
 no one could have had more lov- 
 ing and intelligent assistance than 
 she had from her cousin, Jennie 
 Stanley, who now for many years 
 had been one of the little family. 
 He had a stubborn streak in him, 
 and could not be kept from over- 
 work sometimes, especially when 
 the fruit of his fine orchard was 
 being gathered, and he was making 
 sure that the best went to his son 
 John. Except when kept in doors 
 by special ailments or by stress of 
 weather he went hither and thither, 
 well nigh to the end, often making 
 a half-mile or more in good time. 
 A few months before his death he 
 gave me his quadrant. When he 
 80
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 bought it in 1830, it had served 
 another fisherman some fifty years. 
 On his eighty-sixth birthday, No- 
 vember 1 8, 1895, I sent him the 
 following verses ; and he did not 
 resent their praise as he would 
 have done a few years earlier. 
 Either the expression of affection 
 had become more sweet to him or 
 he had grown more perfectly sin- 
 cere and knew that he deserved it 
 all. 
 
 TO MY FATHER'S QUADRANT 
 
 Poor homesick thing, I fear I do you 
 
 wrong, 
 Far from the smiting of the eastern 
 
 seas, 
 
 Here in my city house to hang you up, 
 My pride to flatter and mine eyes to 
 
 please. 
 6 81
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 If you were conscious, you would ache 
 
 and moan 
 Through every fibre of your mystic 
 
 frame, 
 
 In this dull place to find yourself bestowed, 
 Nor hold me clear of treachery and 
 blame. 
 
 How would you long to find yourself 
 
 once more 
 Where the great waves go rolling up 
 
 and down, 
 
 And the loud winds that spur their steam- 
 ing flanks 
 
 The sailors buffet and their voices 
 drown ! 
 
 How would you wonder if the honest 
 
 hand 
 That held you sunward on the heaving 
 
 main 
 
 Had quite forgot the trick it knew of old, 
 And never so would manage you again ! 
 82
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 Yea, verily, it was an honest hand, 
 
 Warm with the beating of an honest 
 
 heart ; 
 Never from stouter did good courage 
 
 come, 
 
 Never from truer the good impulse 
 start. 
 
 You were his guide on many a dangerous 
 
 sea, 
 Through storm and darkness led him 
 
 safely home ; 
 
 As you to him, so he shall be to me, 
 Whatever seas I sail or lands I roam. 
 
 So onward sped, I cannot steer amiss, 
 Whatever darkness gathers round my 
 
 way : 
 Let night come down, I set the faithful 
 
 watch, 
 And wait it out until another day. 
 
 It was my great good fortune to be 
 at the old home a few days in March, 
 83
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 1896, before his last sickness began. 
 Friday, the thirteenth, was his last 
 day downstairs. But he was up 
 again, and making his waning strength 
 self-serviceable the Sunday following. 
 The end came on Saturday, the 
 twenty-first, at 1.43 A.M. He faced 
 it with clear-eyed intelligence, and 
 we said to one another how good it 
 was that we had loved each other 
 so much and had had such a good 
 time together. His body lies beside 
 my mother's in the Waterside bury- 
 ing-ground. The sea is not far off; 
 but it is the quiet side of Salem 
 Harbor, and not, as I would like, the 
 Atlantic's unimpeded rush and roar. 
 Yet the great tides forever come and 
 go and make a pleasant music on the 
 shore. The stone that marks his 
 84
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 grave tells that he "went down to 
 the sea in ships and did business on 
 great waters." It further tells that, 
 " In the good schooner ' HERO,' he 
 weathered the September Gale of 
 1846." 
 
 He was a good man. It was in- 
 conceivable that he could do any de- 
 liberate wrong, or vary by a hair's 
 breadth from the line of perfect 
 honesty and truth. He bothered the 
 Boston merchants a good deal by his 
 anxiety to pay his bills at once. His 
 most serious fault that I remember 
 was some drawback after he had 
 granted to our urgency a favor which 
 dulled the sweetness of its taste ; or 
 he would shut the door upon his last 
 remark, leaving us uncertain as to 
 that, and the debate hanging in mid- 
 85
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 air. Such things were slight deduc- 
 tions from a life of constant probity 
 and a temper of unvarying kindliness. 
 No man allowed himself more freely 
 the " delights of admiration " in his 
 relations with his friends. His faith 
 in the Eternal Goodness was as sim- 
 ple and entire as a child's faith in its 
 mother when it is lying snug and 
 warm upon her breast. 
 
 Who will has heard my father's 
 story told. It is a very simple one ; 
 so simple, possibly, that it was not 
 worth the telling. I have written 
 mainly for the joy of my own heart. 
 So doing I have rescued from a busy 
 time some days of sweet companion- 
 ship with one whose love enriched 
 my life unspeakably, and whose char- 
 acter was to me a quite invaluable 
 86
 
 CAP'N CHADWICK 
 
 assurance of an innumerable multi- 
 tude of men and women of his sim- 
 ple, steadfast kind, whose quiet service 
 is the saving salt of all communities 
 and states. It must be well with 
 him wherever he is sailing now, be- 
 low the line of our horizon, upon the 
 open sea, or to what port soever he 
 has come.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
 THERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 001 082 887 9