Page:The history of yachting.djvu/270

 134 first mention of the name I could find there. In the next year appears, in the inventory of Capt. John Stacy, late of Marblehead, 'a skooner called Indian King, £250.' A day's examination of several volumes of the Suffolk Probate Records ended at 1714 with the desired result. No schooner was found. In that year was entered the inventory of John Wilson, shopkeeper, of Boston, from which I copied as follows: 'A sloop lying at Cape Anne (¼) £45; a quarter of another sloop at Cape Anne, £45; 1 quarter of the sloop Society, £40; the sloop Sea Flower, £20; one half of a sloop, £75; ⅛ part of a sloop, £25.' The early Boston newspapers do not always mention in their marine intelligence the class to which a vessel reported belongs. In looking over imperfect files of these papers, the first schooner I found was the Return, outward bound (June, 1718) for Great Britain; the next (March, 1720), the Hope, for Virginia; and the Phœnix, for Terceira. In 1722 were the schooner Hope, for Virginia; a schooner of about fifty tons, taken by pirates at the eastward; the schooner Mary, and schooner Samuel, taken by Captain Edward Low, a pirate, near Cape Sable; and the schooner Milton, and schooner Rebeckah.

"One can imagine the eagerness with which the active and inventive mind of Robinson seized upon the strange word applied to the peculiar motion of his vessel as she glided from the stocks, and the delight with which he exclaimed, as—according to the custom of the time—he dashed a bottle of rum against her bow 'A schooner let her be.' Tradition