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Cape Cod Sea Captains
No lover of the sea or ships ever comes to the Cape who does not inwardly wish that he might meet the old captains of the clipper ship days, and hear them spin a yarn or two about brave voyages to distant lands.
It is now too late for any of these fascinating contacts, for none of these shipmasters are living. The daring skippers that for five decades in the middle of the nineteenth century brought to our foreign trade a greatness and a glory that remains unsurpassed in the history of our mercantile marine.
If there was any port of rich cargoes, or any corner of the seven seas that these sailing men didn’t know, no book has recorded the fact. But of their own country they knew little and saw less. The home harbor, the waterfronts of Boston, Salem and New York, and a little farm down on the Cape between voyages, that about was all.
It was a hard life, with storms, bad cargoes. failures, dreary stretches, and mutinies at times, but it was also a life crowded with adventure, success, honorable careers, and a varied knowledge of the wide world.
The lovely spacious homes of some of the sea captains who attained success and wealth are sprinkled over the entire Cape.
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