Results: The Wreck of the Hesperus

Decades ago when I was a kid, if my grandmother was unkempt, she would sometimes blurt in dismay, "I look like the wreck of the Hesperus." I understood this to mean she was a mess, but never questioned the origin. Have you heard the phrase, "I look (or you look) like the wreck of the Hesperus?

It turns out that British poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had written a fictional narrative poem published in 1842 called, "The Wreck of the Hesperus". In it, a captain ignores the warning of a crewman and wrecks his ship by sailing into a hurricane. He secures his young daughter to the mast of the schooner to prevent her being swept overboard; but finds her body the next day, still tied to the mast. Have you heard of this haunting poem?

Longfellow's inspiration for the poem was a horrific blizzard of 1839, which victimized the north-east coast of the United States, destroying 20 ships and killing 40 people. He drew from two actual shipwrecks: a ship named the Hesperus, and another that was wrecked at the location mentioned in the poem. A dead woman was found in the sea lashed to the windlass (a machine that restrains and raises and lowers the anchor chain of a schooner). Have you ever survived a shipwreck?

Are you intimidated by the thought of a shipwreck?