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160 by Captain Babcock she eclipsed them all in speed.

Captain David Sherman Babcock, brother-in-law of Captain N. B. Palmer, was born at Stonington in 1822, and came of a distinguished family, his father being Major Paul Babcock and his grandfather Colonel Harry Babcock of Revolutionary fame. He received the usual New England school education of those days, which appears to have been a sufficient equipment for some of the most useful men that the United States has yet produced.

As a boy David developed a strong desire for a seafaring life, which cannot be wondered at, as at that period Stonington and the neighboring town of Mystic were flourishing seaports, whose ships sailed to every quarter of the globe, and whose jovial mariners kept the social atmosphere well charged with shadowy visions of strange lands, ancient temples, pagodas, palms, and coral isles lying in distant tropical seas. The departure of a ship with colors flying, the crisp, incisive orders of her captain and mates, and the clomp, clomp, clomp, of the windlass pawl, the songs of the sailors heaving up anchor, the hum of the running gear as it rendered through the blocks, and the music of their straining sheaves to the last long pulls on sheets and halliards, were a more potent means of recruiting bright, young boys, soon to become mates and captains of American ships, than all the press-gangs that were ever heard of.

So it came about that young Babcock, at the age of sixteen, was allowed to ship as boy before the mast with Captain Nat Palmer on board the