Rufus Rockwell Wilson
The Sea Rovers
language
(Transcript March 6, 2014)
The Sea Rovers by Rufus Rockwell Wilson
A glorious vision is Gloucester harbor, whether seen under the radiant sun of a clear June morning or through the haze and smoke of a mellow October afternoon. Gloucester town lies on a range of hills around the harbor, and fortunate is the man who chances to see it as the background to a stirring marine picture when on a still summer's morning a fleet of two or three hundred schooners is putting to sea after a storm, spreading their white duck against the blue sky and fanning gently hither and thither, singly or in picturesque groups, before the catspaws or idly drifting to eastward, stretching in a long line beyond Thatcher's Island and catching the fresh breeze that darkens the distant offing. Here the green of their graceful hulls, the gilt scrollwork on the bows and the canvas on the tall, tapering masts are reflected as in a mirror on the calm surface; or beyond they are seen heeling over to the first breath of the incoming sea wind that ruffles the glinting steel of the sheeny swell, forming as a whole a scene of inexhaustible variety and beauty.
Such a spectacle gives the stranger fitting introduction to Gloucester, for from earliest times the men of the gray old town have been followers of the sea. It was three years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth that the first Englishman settled on Cape Ann, at the place now called Gloucester, which took its name from the old English cathedral city whence many of its settlers had come. America's Gloucester doubtless seems young to the mother town, which is of British origin and was built before the Romans crossed from Gaul; but, despite the great cathedral in the English town and the importance in the clerical world of the prelates and church dignitaries who found livings there, the Yankee town was for many years a place of more consequence in the world of trade and profit than the English Gloucester has ever been
A glorious vision is Gloucester harbor, whether seen under the radiant sun of a clear June morning or through the haze and smoke of a mellow October afternoon. Gloucester town lies on a range of hills around the harbor, and fortunate is the man who chances to see it as the background to a stirring marine picture when on a still summer's morning a fleet of two or three hundred schooners is putting to sea after a storm, spreading their white duck against the blue sky and fanning gently hither and thither, singly or in picturesque groups, before the catspaws or idly drifting to eastward, stretching in a long line beyond Thatcher's Island and catching the fresh breeze that darkens the distant offing. Here the green of their graceful hulls, the gilt scrollwork on the bows and the canvas on the tall, tapering masts are reflected as in a mirror on the calm surface; or beyond they are seen heeling over to the first breath of the incoming sea wind that ruffles the glinting steel of the sheeny swell, forming as a whole a scene of inexhaustible variety and beauty.
Such a spectacle gives the stranger fitting introduction to Gloucester, for from earliest times the men of the gray old town have been followers of the sea. It was three years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth that the first Englishman settled on Cape Ann, at the place now called Gloucester, which took its name from the old English cathedral city whence many of its settlers had come. America's Gloucester doubtless seems young to the mother town, which is of British origin and was built before the Romans crossed from Gaul; but, despite the great cathedral in the English town and the importance in the clerical world of the prelates and church dignitaries who found livings there, the Yankee town was for many years a place of more consequence in the world of trade and profit than the English Gloucester has ever been
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