# Lost Ships and Lonely Seas

"It is hard to astonish a deep-water sailor, because nothing is too strange to happen at sea," writes the author of this first volume. Perhaps that is why no sea fiction has been written that is as thrilling as some of the actualities when those happenings are set down with sufficient verisimilitude to make them live. Hence Ralph D. Paine has done a service in rummaging among old logs and diaries and chronicles, retrieving ind revivifying some of the great sea adventures of 100 to 200 years ago—a period when the sailing ship was beginning that world commerce which is now so accepted a fact; when there were stupendous dangers and privations to be faced; when Yankee-built vessels and American-born sailors loomed large in the romance of ocean trade. . . . —from the review in The Nation, Feb 1922
LOST SHIPS AND LONELY SEAS
THE WRECK OF THE "POLLY"
LOST SHIPS AND LONELY SEAS
BY
RALPH D. PAINE
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1920. 1921, by
The Century Co.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
* chapterpage
* IThe Singular Fate of the Brig Polly3
* IIHow the Schooner Exertion Fell among Thieves25
* IIIThe Tragedy of the Frigate Medusa51
* IVThe Wreck of the Blenden Hall, East Indiaman76
* VThe Adventures of David Woodard, Chief Mate107
* VICaptain Paddock on the Coast of Barbary131
* VIIFour Thousand Miles in an Open Boat160
* VIIIThe Frigates That Vanished in the South Seas189
* IXWhen H. M. S. Phoenix Drove Ashore212
* XThe Roaring Days of Piracy232
* XIThe Loss of the Wager Man-of-War259
* XIIThe Cruise of the Wager's Long-Boat288
* XIIIThe Grim Tale of the Nottingham Galley309
* XIVThe Storm-Swept Fleet of Admiral Graves330
* XVThe Brisk Yarn of the Speedwell Privateer350
* XVILuckless Seamen Long in Exile367
* XVIIThe Noble King of the Pelew Islands393

### ILLUSTRATIONS

* The wreck of the PollyFrontispiece
* facing page
* Seamanship was helpless to ward off the attack of the storm that left the brig a sodden hulk8
* Fresh water trickled from the end of the pistol-barrel, and they caught it in a tin cup16
* Volusia off Salem, built at Falmouth, Mass., in 1801, and Wrecked at Cape Cod in 180220
* The pirate captain boarding the captured Exertion29
* Armed with as many of the aforementioned weapons as they could well sling about their bodies33
* Boats were filled with men whose only thought was to save their skins56
* The brig, which had made a long tack and was now steering straight toward the raft64
* Governor Glass and his residence97
* Woodard raised his empty hands to ask for peace and mercy112
* Wreck of the Grosvenor on the coast of Caffraria144
* Early American ship of the 18th Century176
* Perilous situation of the ship224
* The Charlemagne, a New York packet ship272
* Brig Topaz of Newburyport, built in 1807305
* The brig Olinda of Salem, built in 1825352
* Taking on the pilot in the 18th Century384
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1925, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 98 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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