"WRECK OF THE HESPERUS"

As a tween (that being somewhere between a teenager and a kid) there were mornings I did the 'normal' kid thing. I'd get up, take care of bodily needs, clothe, eat and then find something to do to play. Well.... One of the 'bodily needs' that my parents were trying to teach me (I guess) was the need to brush my hair, do something with it (take responsibility for it) and make myself presentable (for others to look at). I just didn't do anything about it. My bad.

Their bad? They would try to 'shame' me into taking responsibility rather than teach me into it. I didn't brush my hair. Okay. So help me develop the habit by:
1) Teach me that others have to look at me and though I only see out through my eyes so I don't have to see what I look like, doesn't mean that's so pleasant for others if I don't brush my hair.
2) Like putting clean clothes on, brushing your hair is done regularly, first thing in the morning.
3) Provide for me implements and training to use those implements (the most I was ever taught was drag a comb through my knotted hair, cry a lot, and use a newspaper rubber band to hold it all back).

Yes, that should have done it. I was a mother of six when I met a family who had a 10 year old daughter who braided her own hair. I was shocked and in awe. You can do that? That is possible? But how? The mom said she could. So I started working, a little with my girls to care about and take care of their hair more. Of course, I had brushed (not combed like my mom did) their hair all along so was trying to help them learn but...

What brings this up? Well my parents in their efforts, would say to me, "Here comes the Wreck of the Hesperus," when they'd see me first thing in the morning. I had NO idea what that meant. I didn't ask. They didn't explain. Neither of us got anywhere with this.

The only time I started caring about my hair was when I started dating. Then it mattered because it seemed to matter that other girls got guys to ask them out when the girls seemed to know how to consistently take care of their hair. Whatever. Now I have a grand daughter who runs around like I did, a Wreck of the Hesperus.

This coupled with a husband for the last 36 years who when I wake up and my hair is tousled (bedhead) says to me, "Morning beautiful", well, all I can think is yeah-you don't have your glasses on, you're blind as a bat, and I do not look beautiful.



"WRECK OF THE HESPERUS"

It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintery 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 open 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 and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed 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 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 sound 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 wave,
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
Tow'rds 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 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 sea-weed,
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!

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

After reading the poem (for the first time in my life) I wondered what Norman's Woe was all about. Thank you Google!

Norman's Woe (Gloucester Harbor)

Location and Description

Norman’s Woe close upThe rock and reef of Norman’s Woe are a short distance from the westernmost point of Gloucester’s outer harbor. Norman’s Woe can best be seen from Hammond Castle on Hesperus Ave., off route 127 in Gloucester.

History and Legends

There is no clear record of how Norman’s Woe got its name. Tradition tells that a man named Norman was shipwrecked and lost there, and it is for him the rock and reef are named. John J. Babson’s history of Gloucester notes that Goodman Norman and his son settled the headland near the islet.

Woodcut of the 1839 Gloucester Harbor storm that inspired Longfellow’s poem, “The Wreck of the Hesperus”The history of uninhabited Norman’s Woe is the history of its many shipwrecks. One noted shipwreck was of the “Rebecca Ann” in March, 1823. In a snowstorm, all ten crewmembers were swept out to sea, and one survived by holding on to a rock in the water. Perhaps the most famous shipwreck at Norman’s Woe was of the schooner “Favorite” out of Wiscasset, Maine, in December 1839. Twenty bodies washed ashore, among them that of an older woman lashed to a piece of the ship. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow took that story and named the ship “Hesperus” after a wreck near Boston in creating the legend of “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” the most famous “shipwreck” associated with Norman’s Woe. (from: http://myweb.northshore.edu/users/ccarlsen/poetry/gloucester/normanswoehistory.htm)