Albert Bigelow Paine

“ And get outen this pilot-house!" yelled Brown. "You ain't fatten to become no pilot!" An order that Sam found welcome enough. The other pilot, George Ealer, was a lovable soul who played the flute and chess during his off watch, and read aloud to Sam from Goldsmith and Shakespeare. To be with George Ealer was to forget the persecutions of Brown. ”

“ Occasionally there were stirring adventures aboard the Pennsylvania. In a letter written in March, 1858, the young pilot tells of an exciting night search in the running ice for Hat Island soundings:
Brown, the pilot, stood in the bow with an oar, to keep her head out, and I took the tiller. We would start the men, and all would go well until the yawl would bring us on a heavy cake of ice, and then the men would drop like so many tenpins, while Brown assumed the horizontal in the bottom of the boat. After an hour's hard work we got back, with ice half an inch thick on the oars. . . . ”

“ I was out in the yawl twice, and then we got through, but the infernal steamboat came near running over us. . . . The Maria Denning was aground at the head of the island; they hailed us; we ran alongside, and they hoisted us in and thawed us out. ”