The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1902-10-02
causes of the gulf stream, blowing
steadily from the equatorial regions Of

causes of the gulf stream, blowing
steadily from the equatorial regions Of
the old world. The warm current of
the gulf stream, which travels at the
rate of four miles an hour in some
places, washed the bottle EDWARDS till
it was caught in the wide sweep of the
Gulf of Mexico.
1t presumably rounded the curve of
the gulf, and kept on up by the Florida
peninSular and the Atlantic coast, still
following the gulf stream guidance.
The gulf stream passes Cape Hatteras
only ten miles seward, and it is sup
posed that about at this point the bot
tie was forced out of the gulf stream
current and drawn into the cOastwiSe
currents that were later to carry it by
Monomoy Point. There the bottle, pass
ed and re-passed by hundreds of YES
sells, was finally picked by Harwich-
port fisherman, and it's ocean wander
lngS We're over.
This presumptive sea journey is the
direct route. But as the bottle has been
rolling, tumbling and floating along the
ocean waves for twenty-eight years,
there is no knowing where it has &C
tually been in that long interval, at
what ports it may have touched or what
waters it may have traversed. Even a
bottle, drifting hither and thither at the
mercy of winds and currents, may cover
a vast deal of ocean surface in twenty
eight years, and this one, cast from the
Hattie f. Tapley," may have been in
many out of-the-Way corners of the
earth before floating along by Mono
moy Point, off Cape Cod.
MADpOCK's MOVEMENTS,
Meanwhile, during the bottles wan
behring's third officer Maddox had met
with many changes. He landed in Fal-
mouth, Eng, in 1874, at the end of that
voyage from the Indian ocean. The
Hattie E. was ordered to Bremen
haven, Germany. whittier Maddox sail
ed. There he left the Hattie t." and
came back to America for years
schooling.
He never saw the ship again. In the
spring of 1875 he signed on another YES
sci and took up sailors life once more.
In all, he followed the sea fifteen years,
rising to be chief officer, going round
the world three times, and seeing all
sorts and conditions of men and places.
In 1855 he came to Brockton to settle
and has lived here everSince. being HOW
employed as salesman at Guys furni-
ture store OH Centre street. He has
a rich fund of stories about the sea.
ii was wrecked on Squirrel Island in
3oothbay harbor, narrowly escaping
with his life, but in the main his sea
travels were fortunate
An unusual coincidence on one OF his
trips was taking out a cargo of railroad
iron from New York, and coming back
east on the railroad built from that
same cargo. The rails were taken
around the Horn and discharged at
Portland, Oregon, for the Northern Pa
cite road, then about to be constructed
Maddox came back to the Pacific coast
few years after this voyage and jour
ntyed east over the Northern Pacific,
by that time IN practical operation.
These are but the incidents and ad-
ventures of a sea-faring life, but this
bottle circumstance Is among tue most
singular he ever encountered. 1t comes
all the more strangely after he had
abandoned the sea and had been a
landsmau fifteen years IN Brockton.