by Stan Grayson
COURTESY THE NEW BEDFORD WHALING MUSEUM
Joshua Slocum’s SPRAY sails near Sydney, Australia, where Slocum was given much-needed new sails during his pioneering solo circumnavigation. Throughout his sailing career, Slocum experienced many fortuitous events and near misses, and came to acknowledge his good fortune as “Slocum’s luck.”
COURTESY THE NEW BEDFORD WHALING MUSEUM
Slocum circa 1883, when he was 39.
Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, probably sometime in 1866, a ship named AGRA faces a rising wind. Launched in 1862 at the redoubtable Medford, Massachusetts, yard of J.T. Foster & Co., the 174′ AGRA is still a relatively new vessel. She is of a type known as a “moderate clipper,” designed to carry more cargo at some sacrifice in speed compared to the “full” clippers, whose heyday is all but finished. Still, AGRA can move. She has turned in runs of 350 miles per day, only about 50 miles less than the fastest clipper ships. Now, as the wind gusts
What to my wondering eyes should appear, but a cherry-red helicopter with no need for reindeer
The âFlying Santaâ tradition sails on at Coast Guard stations across New England
By Thomas Farragher Globe Columnist,Updated December 14, 2020, 7:03 p.m.
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Edward Rowe Snow as the Flying Santa in 1939. He inherited the Flying Santa franchise in 1947.Dolly Snow Bicknell
HULL â The rotor blades of his new-age red sleigh have barely stopped spinning when the jolly old elf himself steps out of his 21st century ride and â in that instant â disbelief is suspended, small eyes twinkle.
And Santa Claus is back in town.