peonies & rain

Around here, it's peonies and rain.

When I was in Provincetown I went on a whale watching boat--it was raining and windy, I was soaked and cold, but somehow that made the whole experience more fun, more real, and yes we saw whales which was awesome. Truly.

I love boats and spent a lot of time looking at the fishing boats. That's a hard life, and a dangerous one--commercial fishing is the deadliest job in the U.S. (more on that here) I am fascinated by it though. If you haven't read The Perfect Storm,  you should. It's a page-turner.

The kitties say this is the way to spend a rainy day.

Hope you are warm and dry.

Jen

Reef of Norman's Woe, part 2

I'm not happy with one of the mixed media pieces I showed you here--the one with the postcard Reef of Norman's Woe, Gloucester, Massachusetts. As I looked through papers, postcards, and tattered books for inspiration I came upon a 1931 world atlas. A map, I thought, might be what's needed. I then remembered some old nautical maps that I got at an auction last year, in the garage. I pulled them out--there were four rolled up in a barrel--and one is Ipswich Bay to Gloucester Harbor.

 It was published by the U.S Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington D.C. in 1920.

Next to the words "Lights, Beacons, Buoys and Dangers Corrected

For Information Received to Date of Issue." 

it is stamped June 26, 1923.

I looked for Norman's Woe.

There it is.

It was time to do some research. 

In January 1839, a great blizzard struck the northeast, destroying many ships, including the schooner Favorite out of Maine, bound for England. Twenty bodies washed ashore including a woman lashed to a piece of the ship. This was not the first shipwreck on Norman's Woe. In 1823 all crew members of the Rebecca Ann were lost. However it is the wreck of the Favorite that inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write The Wreck of the Hesperus. The last verse:

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of the Norman's Woe!

This map, and the others, feel loaded with history and I cannot bear the idea of cutting it up. Therefore, my search for ephemera for Norman's Woe continues, and I hope to find a way to incorporate the history of this bit of reef into my little project.