We were then drifting directly on shore, where the cliffs were rocky, abrupt, and almost perpendicular, and were perhaps almost 1,000 feet high.The chief mate (I think bloomfield hills real estate his name was Randall), a gallant young man from Nantucket, then took the command, rallied, and encouraged the men to continue the action with renewed obstinacy and vigor.It may be justly doubted whether history has ever known a race of men so hardy, so self reliant, so adaptable to the most complex situations, so determined to compel success, and so resigned in the presence of inevitable failure, as the early American sea captains.At bloomfield hills real estate this stage of the action, while the captain, with his speaking trumpet under his left arm, was endeavoring to bring one of his big guns to bear on one of the gunboats, a grapeshot passed through the port and trumpet and entered his chest near his shoulder blade.The story is a familiar one of the Boston clergyman who, in one of his discourses, described a poor, sinful soul drifting toward shipwreck so vividly that a sailor in the audience, carried away by the preacher's imaginative skill, cried out Let go your best bower anchor, or you're lost.In 1785 the publication of the journals of the renowned explorer, Captain Cook, directed the ever alert minds of the New Englanders to the great herds of seal and sea otters on the northwestern coast of the United States, and vessels were soon faring thither in pursuit of fur bearing animals, then plentiful, but now bidding fair to become as rare as the bloomfield hills real estate sperm whale.In his second voyage, while lying in the harbor of Gibraltar, he witnessed one of the almost every day dangers to which American sailors of that time were exposed While we were lying in this port, one morning at daylight we heard firing at a distance.The London Naval Chronicle at that time, bloomfield hills real estate and for long after, bore at the head of its columns the boastful lines The sea and waves are Britain's broad domain, And not a sail but by permission spreads.It was about this period (1794) that the American navy was begun though, curiously enough, its foundation was not the outcome of either British or French depredations, but of the piracies of the Algerians.Still, bloomfield hills real estate before that time there may, perhaps, be some favorable change.That's all I've got to say.To retard the schooner's drift, we kept bloomfield hills real estate the wreck of the foremast, bowsprit, sails, spars, etc.Often they became full fledged captains and part owners at the age of twenty one, or even earlier, for boys went to sea at ages when the youngsters of equally prosperous families in these days would scarcely have passed from the care of a nurse to that of a tutor.