The Young Deliverers of Pleasant Cove: The Pleasant Cove Series
By Elijah Kellogg
The vessel, built by Charlie Bell at Pleasant Cove, modelled for speed, with a numerous crew of able seamen, having already made a successful voyage to Marseilles, a blockaded port, is now ready to sail again. Walter Griffin is a Pleasant Cove boy—belonging to a very athletic, committed family—who began active life in a store, but, finding that mode of life ill-adapted to his inclinations and capacities, became a sailor, shipped in the brigantine before the mast, and is now first mate. Ned Gates is a Salem boy in his nineteenth year, relatively small for his age.
He was rescued at the same time as Arthur Brown by Captain Rhines (the details of which occurrence will be found in the previous volume); being a townie and at school with Arthur, he was an excellent boy and much beloved by him. On the former voyage, Walter and Ned were before the mast together, in the same watch, and slept in the same berth till Walter was promoted on the home passage; their friendship continues, although with fewer opportunities for intercourse. Jacques Bernoux is a Frenchman, a native of Marseilles, a fisherman by occupation, and thoroughly acquainted with the coast.
James Peterson is a negro, born of slave parents in Martinique, but sold in boyhood to an American captain, residing near Pleasant Cove, and obtained freedom when slavery was abolished in New England. Although ignorant and addicted to intemperance at particular times, he was very much liked (especially by two families, Captain Rhines’s and Edmund Griffin’s) and all the boys because of other sterling qualities. He possessed great personal strength, was an excellent seaman and pilot, a first-rate calker, perfectly honest, and of a most affectionate disposition.
The boys idolized him because he taught them to wrestle, tie sailor knots, and when at leisure, was ever ready to make playthings for them. On stormy days, when he could not work, his house would be thronged with boys, coaxing him to make one thing or another. Luce, his wife, was a splendid cook, and nothing suited them better than to be asked to stop to dinner; victuals tasted a great deal better there than at home. Ben, his oldest son, was as great a favorite with the young fry as his father,—excelling in all sports that required strength and agility, always good-natured, never presuming, and full of queer, witty sayings. Ben Peterson was (in boy language and estimation) a bully fellow.
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Elijah Kellogg
Elijah Kellogg Jr. (May 20, 1813 – March 17, 1901) was an American Congregationalist minister, lecturer and author of popular boys’ adventure books.
Biography.
Born in Portland, Maine, Kellogg was the son of a minister and missionary to local Native Americans. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1840 and Andover Theological Seminary. Kellogg served as a minister of the church in Harpswell, Maine 1844–54, as chaplain of the Boston Seaman’s Friend Society and pastor of the Mariners’ Church of Boston 1855–1865; and ended his career as minister of the church in Topsham, Maine, from 1871 until he died in 1901. Kellogg married Hannah Pearson Pomeroy and had three sons and one daughter.
Wilmot B. Mitchell of Bowdoin edited Elijah Kellogg’s The Man and His Work: Chapters From His Life and Selections from His Writings (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1903). Bowdoin College offers an online collection guide to Kellogg’s papers and those of his father (a trustee of Bowdoin). Elijah Kellogg Church, Congregational in Harpswell, Maine (where he served as pastor), is now named for him.
Kellogg began writing children’s books in the 1860s and was highly productive. While he is best known to students of rhetoric as the author of the once-popular monologue “Spartacus to the Gladiators at Capua” (written for a student competition while still an undergraduate at Bowdoin), he later produced several series of books.
Elijah Kellogg
