Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 4.

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[p. 100] from far and near,—the ‘school-marm’ and her flock of boys and girls. It was a sight—grand, impressive, to look at the great ship that had been building so many months, now awaiting, in her dress of black and green, the incoming tide, when, the last block knocked from under, she would slide into the Mystic.

I remember while awaiting the high tide at a launch at Foster's yard that the ‘Great American Traveller,’ Daniel Pratt, located himself, with the aid of the boys, on a post at the river-end of the yard and began one of his rhapsodies on ‘that famous ship-canal from Medford to Chelsea, wherein great vessels should float to the sea,’—that about in the middle of his remarks the launch took place and the water displaced rushed inward over the yard, leaving Daniel on the post surrounded, his audience being fleeter of foot having escaped inland. The flood soon subsided, and folding up his manuscript, which he always carried, Daniel was helped down and departed.

The impressions of boyhood last. Especially indelible are the pictures of the ship-yards upon memory, although the yards are grass-grown and scarcely a timber marks the spot. The daily procession of toilers to and from the yards, and the rhythmic clank, clank—clank, clank, of the calkers, still are seen and heard.

Of all the buildings in all the yards but one stands today—an old building in Foster's yard. A slight depression near by on the edge of the river marks the spot where the last ship was launched,—the ‘Pilgrim.’ The tides come and go as they always have. Old Ship street with its ships has passed into history. No shipbuilder is now living. Their sons and daughters are still with us.