The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-04-01
Allen &. Bell Attorneys
 at Law Rooms l and 2 Allen Bldg 1922 Third Ave. Birmingham. Ala.
SEA NoeeIN.
A Pre-Revolutionary Cocktail Dis
 pensed at a Waterfront Tavern.

Correspondent of the New York Sun.
 With no ungallant desire to deprive Betsey Flanagan of the immortal hon. or of inventing the cocktail. not fUr one minute disputing that it got It's present name in her famous hostelry, In the interests of cocktail literature I think it only fair to call to mind Tom Hinkley, or Hinklie, as it was sometimes spelled.
 About the middle of the eighteenth century Thomas Hinkey ran a one boat ferry between Manhattan Island and the Dutch settlement of Breucke- len acrtss the East river. He man. aged to get together enough money to retire from the ferry business when middle ago overlook him and opened a little tavern at what is now the corner of Gouverneur and Water streets. It was correctly known as Sailors Tavern, but more popularly as inkleys. That was about 1755. Hinkley's place was, as it's name would indicate, frequented for the most part by sailormen, some of
 
 earth, where they had acquired cath olicity of taste for stimulants. It was due largely to this widely travelled patronage that Hinkley's was at one time said to possess the greatest va riety of liquid stock on Manhattan Is- land.
 A few years after Hinkley opened it Hinkley's sea noggin" was known all o1r I,o ta,.frA Go fn,. I par1 ascertain, it never had any other name; certainly it was never called by anything that sounded like "cock- tail" A sea noggin was a compost tion of rum, Madeira and bitters. Not Angostura bitters, of course, but wild cherry bitters, made by Hinkley him. self. Iced drinks were unknown then and the sea noggin was drunk at whatever temperature the season die tated. It was potent and aromatic, as we may well imagine, and link ley's became so famed for it that even sne staid merchant residents of New \ ork, English and Dutch alike, would pay visits to the tavern for the pur- pose of slipping it. Sea noggin though Hinkley called it, it was essentially, both in theory and ingredients. a cocktail.
 Sailors Tavern continued it's career mp to and during the revolution. Dur ing the war it was a popular resort for English officers of the lower grades, one of it's famous-or perhaps nfamous-patrons being Captain Henry Sedgwick, later a colonel of British dragons. Sedgwick was no- torious for cruelties practiced upon American prisoners; Hinlley was consistent Tory He was a man of personal bravery and was, near the close of the war, concerned in the capture of a barge load of continental troops off Corlears Hook After the evacuation of New York by the Brit ish, Hinkley sold out his business and went back to England with a comfort able fortune The tavern was con. tinued lnder an3ther name for a few years by ar American named Tillot- son, until it's destruction by fire. Al ter that a mercantile structure was erected on the site There is a ref erence to Hinlleys tavern in the sec end volume of Conner's Colonial His tbry of New York" and some little description of it in William Hunters "Co,onial Tarerns.
 do not claim that Tom Hinl1ley. Britisher, invented tae cocktail, but I do, reye, the less, claim that link ley's sea noggin, manufactured as early as 1760, vas a cocktail, if it was anything at all