The Wreck of the Hesperus
A skipper sailing with his little daughter scorns an old sailor's warning to seek port before a storm. He binds her to the mast for protection, but freezes at the helm, and the schooner strikes the reef of Norman's Woe and sinks. At daybreak, a fisherman sees the dead girl lashed to a drifting mast.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Ballad, Maritime Literature · 898 words
First lines
It was the schooner Hesperus, / That sailed the wintry sea; / And the skipper had taken his little daughter, / To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, / Her cheeks like the dawn of day, / And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, / That ope in the month of May.
Genres
- Ballad — Rhymed four-line stanzas recount a fatal shipwreck through successive actions and repeated exchanges between a daughter and her father.
- Maritime Literature — The narrative follows a schooner through a winter gale, the skipper's death at the helm, and destruction on a coastal reef.
Tags
shipwreck · winter storm · sailing · father and daughter · ballad
What this Textopian page supports
The Wreck of the Hesperus is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Ballad, Maritime Literature
- Length: 898 words
- Structure: 1 section, 22 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Wreck of the Hesperus by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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