Stories

True stories of the Plasketts and their neighbors — bears and gold, shipwrecks and weddings — drawn from letters, newspapers, and family memory.

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Byron's sturdy ten-room house survived every coastal winter — but not the sale to Hearst.

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A Plaskett captain married the sister of the Essex's captain — the shipwreck that inspired Moby-Dick.

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In Canton harbor, Captain Plaskett ordered a Masonic pitcher from Chinese artisans. It survives him.

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Ten voyages made his name; the last one, and the bottle, unmade it.

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Joseph Plaskett soldiered in the Revolution, then took his fight to the whales.

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Widowed by a hunting accident in 1794, Tabitha Plaskett opened a school in Plymouth and taught her way through.

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Ice on the Delaware, the Revolution on the line — and a Plaskett in Washington's boats, two generations before the family reached the Pacific.

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Four years at sea, 1,832 barrels of sperm oil — the Daniel Webster's great voyage under Captain Joseph Plaskett.

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Warpaint at the door, her son hidden in the attic — and Sarah met a war party with gentleness, baby clothes, sugar, and nerve.

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A quiet stranger was fed at Sarah's table and slept under the Plaskett roof. Only later did the family learn the name he traveled under.

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Not Christmas but Boat Day was the great holiday — the day the ship came in with everything the coast couldn't make.

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Crocodiles in the Chagres, fever in the air, two boys lost from sight all day on the jungle trail — the family's 1852 shortcut to California.