A SAILOR'S WIFE.
Reading edition
There have been heroines as well as heroes on the sea, and of these Mrs. Annie Wilson is certainly one. When she was fourteen years of age, she married the captain of a vessel sailing from Boston, and for seven years accompanied him on his voyages around the world, without accident.
But in 1872 the ship encountered a terrible storm off the banks of Newfoundland. The captain was knocked down and his shoulder was broken by the fall of one of the masts. The first mate and several of the crew were also disabled, and the second mate was so frightened that he could not give any orders. The captain was carried down, lashed on a door, into the cabin; and when his wife saw him rendered helpless in this way, instead of yielding to useless lamentations, she only thought of what she could do to supply his place. She rushed on deck, and called the men around her.
"Boys, our lives are in danger," she said; "but stick to me, and do what I tell you. I'll take you into port all right."
She set them to work to clear away the wreck; they manned the pumps; and when the gale had subsided a little, they rigged up a jury-mast, under their new captain's orders, set sail again, and in twenty-one days the ship was safely anchored at St. Thomas.
After the necessary repairs had been made there, and as her husband was still quite helpless, the brave woman worked the ship to Liverpool, and made the voyage in thirty days. After this, she settled down in New York, and for seven years has supported her crippled husband and her child by working as a clerk in a dry-goods store in this city.
A few months ago her husband died, and Secretary Sherman has appointed her to the post of inspectress in the New York Custom-house.