The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1926-06-04
SKIPPER TO SAIL
AROUND WORLD TO
HUNT LOST LAUGH
Cap'n Thomas Drake Says
LandSmen Smothered
Spirit and JoIIity.

BIZ NEA Service
MIAMI, Fla, June 4.-Never was
there a stranger quest since men
have gone down to the sea!
Romance clings like a barnacle to
seamen's search for things lost and
hidden-lost continents, hidden is
lands, buried treasure, mysterious
and unknown ports!
But Skipper Thomas Drake at IS
has set out to sea in his thirty-five-
foot, two-masted schooner, Pilgrim,
to find that freedom of spirit that
speaks in hearty laughter.
The world of men, with its con-
fiict and greed, had smothered his
laughter-he, who had never been
defeated in any conflict with the ele-
ments.
"Yessir,", he recited. 81 ran away
from home at IS and shipped in a
cooks outfit aboard the coaster Mary
Elizabeth out of Faversham, Eng
land. Three days out the ships mas
ter was seeing snakes and pink ele-
plants after too much grog. One
week out and the bo'sun killed him
SELF
And there followed many years of
sailing clipper ships-fifty years, to
be axact, with the salt wind and
sun leathering a skin in which hard
ships and experience gouged fur
rows.
But Skipper Thomas Drake amid
all the seas perils never forgot how
to laugh!
There was the time he took his
little craft, the st. Francis, on a
round-the-world cruise. He hit a gale
off lower California, and the Pacific.
in hungry mood. swallowed his
schooner in a single gulp. Drake
was captured by bandits when he
made his way to shore. They beat
him and left him for dead.
He wandered half-crazed for days
and finally came to a settlement. He
was Jailed as a maniac. But that
came out all right in the end. And
he sat back and laughed at it.
He built a second round-the-world
schooner, the Francis End. This
piled up and split on the rocks OF
the Cuban coast. He swan ashore
and somehow escaped the sharks.
That amused him. He laughed
about it-afterwagd,
.
Then he quit the sea. He said
good-by to all the good old crafts
of pleasant memory-the Old Guilty
Sark, Vaniala, City of Lucknow,
the square rigger in which he went
! round the horn.
He bought a sawmill on Pudget
Sound. He found himself in conflict
with the economic forces Of life. And
this was q new course for him.
Things didn't steer right, somehow.
"I got sick of people, all rotten
and money crazy" he relates. II
got bitter. I couldn't laugh any
more. Nothin' matters so long
as you can laugh at things. So
l thought I would dawdle around the
world again and I built myself an
other boat. l stop where / please
and I may make it or not. It don't
make any difference"
He might even share the fate of
Capt. Joshua Slocum, who disap-
peared on just such a world jaunt.
He has been under way about a
year, from Seattle. From here he
Will go up the coast and then south
again to start across" from Nassau.
He rides alone' and says he has no
family or pets, though there is some
story among stipmasters of a wife
in some port or other.
It is not recorded in the log book
OF the Pilgrim, but on certain date,
at certain degrees of latitude and
longitude, Skipper Thomas Drake
broke into a hearty laugh.
A lonesome laugh, it is true. No
ears to hear it but his own, and
those deafened to it bit by the
tapping of water aaginst the sides.
But a laugh, nevertheless! And
hence proof that he already has
found his lost island.