Sea yarns

Capt. Joshua N. Taylor, 1915
By CAPT. JOSHUA N. TAYLOR, of Orleans, Mass.
Copyright Applied for.
E Pluribis Unum.
The golden age of the American Merchant Marine has gone and the old-time ships have passed away. Their bones lie on the oceans bottom, on foreign reefs of islands far away, on the rocky ledges off Cape Horn, or are serving an inglorious fate as coal barges. In our great Civil War many were destroyed by the “Alabama” or other privateers. Their old-time commanders and owners are also gone from the stage of action. But if you will travel down to old Cape Cod you will still find a few of them left, the neat, clean, white houses, giving proof of the fact that they are yet “on deck,” and keeping things “shipshape.” The early training of these men was, for the most part, received on the fishermen that went to the Grand Banks, from which they “graduated” into the service of the Merchant Marine.
These little “ Sea Yarns ” are true stories from chapters in my own life, given to my readers as little experiences of a sailor of the old school. The old-time “ Yankee ” skipper was an important factor in placing the American Flag in every known port of the world and in proving the commercial superiority of its men and ships. Those times are now long past, and remain in our minds as remembrances only, of a day when American ships and American men were supreme in the maritime world.
My first voyage at sea was on March 25th, 1850. I started out as a big fat boy of eight years and eight months to do the cooking on board the schooner Pennsylvania, Captain Tracy Kenney as skipper.
We left home at eight in the morning, loading our bed sacks and bedding onto a team belonging to a man by name of Daniel Higgins, who carried the goods to Suet Creek, West Dennis, Mass. It was a fine morning, and with the crew I trudged along until at twelve we reached the old schooner, which had been hauled up for the winter. The tide was out and she lay on her broad side, looking for all the world like an abandoned old hulk. Nevertheless, I was destined to get the first baptism of old ocean aboard of her, learn some hard lessons, and acquire a love of salt water that would never be lost. The sea has ever been and ever will be a wondrous magnet to many men.