I’m invited to Hampton on Friday to tell a few Hampton stories at the Historical Society with the idea of priming the pump for more stories to be harvested from the townsfolk. Oral history on the spot. To prepare, I’ve been combing the website of Hampton’s Lane Library -- a wonderful source for all kinds of Hampton history, oral and otherwise. This story by Thomas Leavitt was published November 4, 1898 in The Exeter News-Letter. I shortened it up for telling -- by about half -- but you’ll get the gist and I hope the flavor of Thomas Leavitt’s lively prose:
July 1843 or 4 on a bright calm morning, all the people of the old Winnicumet house except one man were at breakfast or otherwise engaged. “Sleepy David,” the hosteler, was working at the shower house on the bluff, above the hotel, working to repair the brake of the great log pump used to pump sea water into the bathing tank -- and ruminating -- when he heard, borne across the water, the agonized cry of a man in mortal peril and fear.
He ran for the house, and into the hall, shouting, "Man overboard!” He ran for the shore, staggering over the rocks to a small boat -- a little "float" -- at the landing. The people in the house tumbled out. They saw David in the boat and a young fellow joining him.
And they were off, pulling with all their might toward a boat bottom up at the point and a man in the water. A pitiable sight that stirred their hearts.
The little float arrived in time, the man was saved and rowed to shore, where it was noticed he had on just one shoe.
He explained that he had gone out to draw a lobster trap -- in those days, hard wood rods run through four ribs, four feet long and two feet wide and deep, and weighted with stones. He drew the trap to the surface but when he reached underneath to slide it onto the gunnels, the boat tipped, he slipped, pulling the trap overboard after him. It pushed him to the bottom. Worse still, his foot caught between the rods and to get clear he had to pull his foot out of his shoe. He couldn’t swim so he “hollaed” for help. Luckily Sleepy David heard him and he was saved.
Someone expressed a doubt as to the accuracy of his statement about his entanglement with the trap. He calmly drew from his pocket a soaked wallet and said there was a five dollar bill in there, and that he would bet it with the doubter or any other man in the company that they would find his shoe and a lobster, too, in the trap.
A man was sent to retrieve the trap. Sure enough: one shoe, one lobster.
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