MERRILL, Frank S., & Theodore M. Plimpton.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

A Cruise on the "Dawn" Aug. 1878. A previously unrecorded account of a week-long cruise off the coast of New England. This delightful work recounts the adventures of five friends who chartered the yacht Dawn. A rare work, printed in a very small run, most likely as a copy for each crew member; not in WorldCat and no copies recorded at auction.The five were all well-connected Bostonians. John M. Call Jr. and Ned Tuttle were tailors and members of the Boston Yacht Club. Call commissioned what is considered one of the finest Victorian houses in Boston. Arthur Burnham was a stockbroker, and a major contributor to sending the American team to the first modern Olympics. Theodore M. Plimpton was a bookkeeper for the Downer Kerosene Co., a company to which the artist Frank S. Merrill had family connections. Merrill executed the original calligraphic manuscript and provided excellent illustrations. As a professional artist, illustrator, and engraver, he had worked on illustrated editions of Scott, Thackeray, and Twain. Louisa May Alcott considered his work on the 1880 edition of her novel Little Women "capital".This is a decidedly social account. The men go to dinners and balls, and meet frequently with other yachtsmen, both at sea and ashore. The people they meet are recorded with as much gusto as the landscape they pass. The party sailed east from Boston, stopping at Gloucester Harbor, where they laid in stores and stopped at a boatyard on Rocky Neck. The next day they went to Apple

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