The Wreck of the Hesperus

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Norman's Woe is a rock and reef off the western point of Gloucester's Outer Harbor.
The origin of the name varies between a man named Norman being shipwrecked and killed there to another Norman and his son settling the point of land nearby, but its history as a ship-wrecker is documented.  In March, 1823, the Rebecca Ann struck there in a snowstorm with all ten crew swept out to sea.  The most famous was the Favorite of Wiscasset, Maine, that struck there on December17, 1839.  Twenty bodies washed ashore, including a 45-year-old woman lashed to a piece of wreckage.  The Hesperus was actually lost near Boston, but it was that ship and this story from Norman's Woe that inspired Longfellow.  After reading the account in the Boston Post of the great blizzard that claimed 17 schooners and 40 lives , the image of the woman lashed to the wreckage haunted him and compelled him to sit up until 3 a.m.  to pen this poem. Upon publication, Longellow was paid $25 for this classic.
Picture of Norman's Woe: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eoconnor/3689600373/
 
THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS
   By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It was the schooner Hesperus
   That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
   To bear him company

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
   Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
   That ope in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
   His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
   The smoke now West, now South.

Then up spake an old sailor,
   Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
   For I fear a hurricane."

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
   And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
   And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and louder blew the wind,
   A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
   And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain,
   The vessel in its strength
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
   Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither!  Come hither! My little daughter,
   And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale,
   That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
   Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
   And bound her to the mast.

"O father!  I hear the church bells ring,
   Oh say, what may it be?"
"Tis a fog bell on a rock-bound coast!"
   And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sounds of guns,
   Oh say, what may it be?"
"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
   In such an angry sea!"

"O father!  I see a gleaming light,
   Oh say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
   A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
   With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
   On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
   That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves,
   On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
   Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
   Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between,
   A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
   On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
   She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
   Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
   Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
   Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
   With the masts went by the board,
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
   Ho! Ho! The breakers roared.

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
   A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
   Lashed close to a drifting mast.

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
   The salt tears in her eyes,
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,
   On the billows fall and rise.

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 Norman's Woe.