Verses composed on the schooner Washington and crew, : who was blown off the coast on the 24th of November 1811, being bound from New-York for Salem: light, commanded by Nicholas Thomas, of Frenchmans-Bay, and arrived at the island of St. Thomas, after being at sea 36 days

The headnote tells the story of this broadside: on November 21, 1811, a small schooner with passengers and a crew of five sailed up Long Island Sound heading from New York to Salem, Massachusetts. As the ship rounded Cape Cod, it encountered a strong northeaster. Unable to tack back toward land, she had to put out to sea to keep from being destroyed by the wind and hail. Sailing before the northerly wind, she finally reached St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands after a journey of thirty-six days with minimal supplies. The author was evidently a passenger terrified by the ordeal. He may have been a minister who wrote the piece later as witness to God’s “boundless love” in saving them from certain death. From its length, title, and meter, the lyric was probably simply a long didactic and rather sensational narrative poem that was never intended to be sung.[1]

The captain of the ship was Nicholas Thomas of Mount Desert, Maine. When he was seventy-eight, he wrote a “sketch of the life of Nicholas Thomas of Eden written by himself August 6, 1857, . . . taken from minutes kept by him thro’ the former part of his life.” In ballad meter, verses 37-50 describe the same storm from his somewhat more sanguine viewpoint (N. Thomas 349-57).