286 BEACH GRASS 



the inner side. A week or so later the same 

 schooners, taking advantage of the ebb tide, are 

 departing, but now sunk almost to the level of 

 their decks. With a fresh northwest wind they 

 push a great wave before their broad bows and 

 disappear from sight around the end of Cape 

 Ann, south-bound for Boston. They are sand 

 schooners and their captains and crew are spoken 

 of as Sanders. 



Captain Charley commands the schooner Ed- 

 ward S. Eveleth, "built with copper fastenings," 

 for the Gloucester fisheries forty years ago. The 

 captain has been a sander for over fifty years — he 

 began the year Lincoln was shot — and his father 

 for fifty years had followed the same profession. 

 His father said before he died that, in spite of 

 all his labors, there was more sand at Ipswich 

 beach than there was when he began, which con- 

 firms my own studies and observations that the 

 beach is extending southward. The remains of 

 an iron spindle on a rock now exposed on the 

 beach at low tide, was, when Captain Charley be- 

 gan, separated from the beach by a good channel. 



The sand schooner selects a steep part of a 



