was bound from New Bedford to Brava in mid- 
June, 1922. A green hand was at the wheel and 
Rose felt the schooner jibe suddenly while he 
was below in his cabin. He rushed on deck just 
in time to have the helmsman jibe her again 
and sweep him overboard. The young captain 
hung to the log line for a few minutes and then 
had to let go. It was dark and nobody on board 
seemed to know what to do, not even the mate, 
but they got the schooner hove to somehow. 
After two hours of swimming, Rose managed to 
reach his ship and was hauled on board. The 
Yolante made St. Vincent in nineteen days 
- \ 
MV 
and was twenty-one days to Brava — record time. 
Cap’n Henry’s best days were spent as master of the 
old schooner Valkyrie in which he made fourteen cross¬ 
ings before she went down, November 5, 1926, some 900 
miles east of Bermuda. The Valkyrie was a two-masted 
schooner, a former whaler built at Boothbay, Maine, in 
1888, of 104 net tons. In 1923, the Valkyrie , outward 
bound, ran into a northeast gale in the middle of the 
Gulf Stream. She was carrying thirty-two passengers 
and a general cargo, but 50 tons of it was thrown over¬ 
board at Captain Rose’s orders to lighten the vessel. The 
Valkyrie was hove to under a storm trysail for ten days, 
her cabins repeatedly flooded, and then the storm blew 
itself out, and the Valkyrie made Brava in 45 days. 
On April 9th, 1924, the Valkyrie and the Yukon, a 
former Gloucesterman, sailed from Brava together. They 
both made 36-clay passages, arriving in Providence on 
May 13th, the Valkyrie landing her seven passengers a 
few hours ahead of those on board the Yukon. Five 
packets had arrived in Providence from Brava that 
spring, the Valkyrie, Yukon, William A. Graber, Claudia 
and Ambrose Snow. That was the high tide of the pack¬ 
ets, without question; five arrivals in two weeks, four 
arrivals in three days, three arrivals in a single day. 
The backers of the Yukon were far from satisfied that 
the Valkyrie, trim of hull despite her lack of paint and 
polish, was the faster vessel, in view of the narrow mar¬ 
gin of victory she held in that westward crossing. The 
two skippers, Rose and Costa, and Frank Silva, met at 
the Customs Office when they went to get their clearance 
papers and fell to arguing about the sailing merits of 
their respective schooners. Finally, Silva wagered 
"There was gallantry in the courage of the Brava sailors in ven¬ 
turing matter-of-factly on a 3000-mile voyage in a smell 
schooner, usually weakened in hull and masts by the batter r, is M 
of nearly half a century at sea." Above, such a vessel wa* be 
"Ambrose Snow." Left , unloading her passengers at Prcvkd&.ncf 
i 
Captain Costa $1000 the Valkyrie would beat the 
Yukon to Brava. The rival crews heard of this and 
agreed to a bet of $500 to be settled when they 
were paid off at Brava, and even the passengers got 
the fever and took up a collection for a small 
wager. The two schooners and the William A 
Graber, another ex-whaler, with Captain John 
Sousa in command, sailed from Providence, October 
19th, 1924. The Valkyri'e arrived in the islands Novem¬ 
ber 13th and Captain Rose cabled Frank Silva, “We 
win. Beat the Yukon here. Made trip in 25 days.” 
Captain Rose immediately set about lining up freight 
and passengers for his next voyage in 1925 and he sailed 
from Providence on October 23rd with a passenger list 
of four and a crew of eleven men. The old schooner was 
forced to anchor in lower Narragansett Bay until a 
storm had blown itself out and it was not until the 26 h 
that she ventured out into the Atlantic to begin her 
familiar 3600-mile voyage. The bold headlands of 
Block Island had little more than dropped below the 
horizon when a new gale swept down on the deeply 
laden little packet and for five days the Valkyrie bravely 
tried to keep on her course under a jib, forestaysail and a 
storm trysail, with giant waves sweeping her deck. 
Then the jibboom was carried away, and her foremast 
cracked. Rose climbed the spar and tried desperately to 
secure the rigging, but his efforts were in vain. A short 
time later, the mainmast broke off at the deck, carryiug 
the foremast overside with it. While the crew tried to 
chop away the raffle, two seamen were swept overboard 
to death. The survivors succeeded in freeing the dizzily 
rolling hulk of the wreckage, and then began thirty-five 
hours of work at the pumps, battling to keep afloat until 
some vessel came along to take them off. At the end of 
that time the British tanker Oyleric sighted the wallow¬ 
ing vessel and lowered a boat, which took off the packet’s 
people. They left her in the nick of time, saving only the 
clothes they wore, and Captain Rose had only his sex¬ 
tant and chronometer when he landed in New York. 
Above, after many difficulties, Captain Henry Rose bought 
the fishing schooner "Dorothy G. Snow." He renamed her 
"Benvinda" and took her to Brava, where she was lost trad¬ 
ing among the islands. Right, the "John R. Manta, a 
former whaler, being converted for the Brava packet service 
meantime, Captain Rose had purchased the Elle7i S. 
Little, sailing her back to Brava, where she swung at 
anchor, due to the inroads of worms, too unsea worthy to 
venture out of the harbor. The Little’s pumps were 
worked most of the time and she sank for good on the 
very day Captain Albertino Senna was bringing the 
Manta into Providence — June 19th. 
After a summer spent in refitting and rerigging the 
old ship the Manta sailed from Providence for Brava on 
November 8th, 1934, with a crew of nineteen and a 
passenger list of thirteen, including three women and six 
children. Many there were who, watching her depart, 
spoke of having heard she was tender both in her bow 
and stern, but she went down the bay with her pas¬ 
sengers cheering bravely and a Guernsey heifer bawling 
unhappily in her pen below. A week before Christmas, 
the newspapers noted that the Manta was now thirty- 
nine days out of Providence and unreported but “sup¬ 
posedly winging her way to Brava.” On February 12th, 
1935, a Providence woman received a letter from the 
islands that said the Manta had been sighted on January 
9th, 1935, far to the windward of the islands, sixty days 
Next to the trip during which he lost the 
Valkyrie, Cap’n Henry thinks his worst voyage 
was one with the Manta. She was fifty-three 
days from Providence to St. Vincent, arriving 
there in late January, 1928. She had encountered 
calms during which she made a total of fifty 
miles in seven consecutive days, and on one of 
these days, when no air stirred his sails, Rose 
could see the mountain peaks of St. Antonio, 85 
miles away. He made five round trips on the Alanta, but 
stayed in the islands rather than complete his sixth, 
when she sailed for Providence in 1929. The old whaler 
had a hard time of it that trip. She left Brava in com¬ 
mand of John J. Barros, a 1 / -year-old youth. The Manta 
cleared May 2nd and on the 31st she was among the tide 
rips of Nantucket Shoals, striking on the rocks. Four of 
her crew set out in a boat for Nantucket, ten miles away, 
to get help. They turned back, terrified by the rips, 
after having rowed six miles. The next morning, another 
party set out in the longboat and succeeded in getting 
two power trawlers to come out and pull the packet off 
the rocks. She was towed into Vineyard Haven. 
There immigration officials warned the Coast Guard 
that they were suspicious of the vessel and a patrol boat 
came alongside and searched her. The Coast Guards 
found nothing but played a hunch they had and left 
some men on board. Their presence kept eleven aliens 
in their uncomfortable hiding place in the bilges, and 
they were found after the schooner had been sailed into 
Providence. Arrests followed thick and fast, and the 
Manta wound up on the Government’s auction block. 
She continued in the islands packet trade, but it was not 
until 1934 that she came to Providence to provide serv¬ 
ice from that port under charter to Frank Silva. In the 
out, and moving away from her destination. This was 
later believed to be a case of mistaken identity, for it 
was believed a storm overtook the ship only three or 
four days out and that she went down during a wild 
night. 
By mid-January the belief that she was lost began to 
possess those having relatives and friends on board the 
old ship, and John Baptiste, who had purchased freedom 
for the Manta’s master with a $1,000 bond when the 
latter had been haled before a U. S. Commissioner over 
the matter of a couple of alien stowaways, began to 
worry about his money. New Bedford also had its wor¬ 
ries, for two packets that had sailed from there, the 
Winnepesaukee and the Trenton, had failed to reach 
Brava. The Trenton, an old New York pilot schooner, 
eventually made port, but the Winnepesaukee was lost 
with all hands. The last hope for the Manta and her 
people was abandoned February 24th, 1935, when the 
vessel had been missing 107 days. No survivors or 
wreckage has ever been seen to this day. 
One of the largest vessels to trade to the islands during 
the forty-three-year history of the Providence-Brava 
packets, was the old Boston coal schooner Charles L. 
Jeffrey. She also brought the record passenger list into 
(Continued on page 108) 
