History Literature / TheWreckOfTheHesperus

"The Wreck of the Hesperus" is a balladic NarrativePoem by Creator/HenryWadsworthLongfellow that was inspired by the many shipwrecks the coast of Massachusetts suffered in December of 1839 starting the 14th. In his journal entry of December 17, 1839,[[note]]Quoted in a letter Longfellow wrote to Charles Lanman in 1871.[[/note]] Longfellow mentions four pieces of inspiration. Those are that as many as forty bodies of shipwreck victims washed ashore at Gloucester, one of which was a woman lashed to some wreckage, that many of these tragedies occurred at Norman's Woe, a nearby rock reef, that among the lost ships there was the ''Hesperus'', and that the ''Sea-Flower'' suffered the same fate at Black Rock, an island in Bristol County.

* AdultFear: The skipper's death means his little daughter is left tied to an uncontrollable ship during an unforgiving storm.

"The Wreck of the Hesperus" is a balladic NarrativePoem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that was inspired by the many shipwrecks the coast of Massachusetts suffered in December of 1839 starting the 14th. In his journal entry of December 17, 1839,[[note]]Quoted in a letter Longfellow wrote to Charles Lanman in 1871.[[/note]] Longfellow mentions four pieces of inspiration. Those are that as many as forty bodies of shipwreck victims washed ashore at Gloucester, one of which was a woman lashed to some wreckage, that many of these tragedies occurred at Norman's Woe, a nearby rock reef, that among the lost ships there was the ''Hesperus'', and that the ''Sea-Flower'' suffered the same fate at Black Rock, an island in Bristol County.

In "The Wreck of the Hesperus", an unnamed skipper bring his little daughter along on a trip. Despite the concern for her safety that should make him extra careful, the skipper arrogantly refuses to sail the ''Hesperus'' into a nearby port when an aged sailor warns him that a storm is approaching. As the wind picks up and the temperature drops, the skipper's daughter becomes scared. To calm her, the skipper gives her his coat for warmth and ties her to the mast so she can safely stay with him. Then he freezes to death at the wheel. All the girl can do is pray as the rest of the crew is swept overboard by the waves, but it doesn't do her any good. The next day, her corpse is found by a fisherman. She's covered in frost and salt and still tied to the mast.

"The Wreck of the Hesperus" is a balladic NarrativePoem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that was inspired by the many shipwrecks the coast of Massachusetts suffered in December of 1839 starting the 14th. In his journal entry of December 17, 1839,[[note]]Quoted in a letter Longfellow wrote to Charles Lanman in 1871.[[/note]] Longfellow mentions four pieces of inspiration. Those are that as many as forty bodies of shipwreck victims washed ashore at Gloucester, one of which a woman lashed to some wreckage, that many of these tragedies occurred at Norman's Woe, a nearby rock reef, that among the lost ships there was the ''Hesperus'', and that the ''Sea-Flower'' suffered the same fate on Black Rock, an island in Bristol County.

From Longfellow's description, it's been gathered that the woman he'd read about was the 59-year old captain's widow Sally Hilton, who was on the ''Favorite'' when it went under. The wreckage she was tied to was part of a windlass, which suggests accidental entanglement rather than anything purposeful as Longfellow would pen down in the poem. The ''Hesperus'' mentioned was not actually wrecked at Norman's Woe, but was damaged while docked in Boston. Another journal entry detailing the night of December 29 to December 30 states that Longfellow wrote most of the poem in those hours in a burst of inspiration. "The Wreck of the Hesperus" was submitted to ''The New World'' and published on January 11, 1840. In 1842, Longfellow included the poem in his own ''Ballads and Other Poems''.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Longfellow was inspired by the devastation caused by the storm of December of 1839, which is fairly reflected in the poem. The ''Hesperus'' was a victim of the storm, although Longfellow seems to have mistaken it for a ship that was actually off at sea, and it certainly was nowhere near Norman's Woe. A deliberate dramatization is that Longfellow substitutes the real-life middle-aged Sally Hilton for a fictional young girl as the focus victim of the storm.

* DeathOfAChild: There's several deaths in the poem, but all of it works up to the dramatic death of the skipper's daughter in particular. Because she's described as the skipper's "little daughter", she's probably not even a teen yet.

* SnowMeansDeath:

* HostileWeather:

* MeaningfulEcho:
* NoNameGiven: None of the characters in the poem are named. This is intentional, because at the time of publication the deaths that inspired the poem were still fresh and any sort of naming would have taken away from the memorialization by fiction.
* {{Pride}}: