Aloft
BILL ADAMSwas a writer of the sea who endeared himself to Atlantic readers by his stories and by his autobiography, Ships and Women. He was born in Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1879, and at the age of sixteen apprenticed himself as a sailor for a period of four years to C. E. DeWolf, shipmaster of Liverpool. During, those four years he rounded the Horn a half-dozen times and learned to know the sea and the beauty of the great sailing shifts. After some thirty years in sail, he came ashore in Dutch Flat, California. and there for twenty-five years he wrote the stories that won him national recognition. A short time before he went to the hospital for his final checkup, he sent this letter to the Editor of the Atlantic. It stands as his Hail and Farewell.