A bit more on Old Stormalong and his exploits:

According to "A Treasury of American Folklore" (B.A. Botkin, Ed., Crown Publishers, NY, NY, 1944) Old Stormalong was the greatest, boldest and strongest of the deep-water sailors in the age of mast and canvas. He first arrived on ship with his trunk bearing the initials A.B.S. He claimed they stood for Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, but the captain took one look and declared: "A.B.S. Able-Bodied Sailor. By your size and strength they should measure the talents of all other seamen." And so it's been ever since.

A man of prodigious size and strength, he was every inch a legend among his fellow salts. Said one: "He took his whale soup in a Cape Cod dory...his fav'rite meat was shark. He like ostrich eggs for breakfast and then he would lie back on the deck and pick his teeth with an eighteen foot oar."

Stormalong was a big man and he liked to serve on a ship to match. By all accounts, he was the most loyal of sailors...until a bigger ship passed his way. In a trice, he was over the side with his trunk and making steadily for his new berth aboard a better ship.

The last ship her served aboard was the Courser, "her rigging so immense that no living man could taker her in at a single glance. Her masts penetrated the clouds and the top sections were on hinges so they could be bent over to let the sun and moon pass."

Among other exploits, he was credited with making the Cliffs of Dover white, the result of soaping the sides of his ship so that it could just squeak through the English Channel. He also dug the Panama Canal by virtue of piloting his mighty ship across the Isthmus during a mighty hurricane.

Not coincidentally, Old Stormalong met his end as the Age of Sail was slipping beneath the waves, overtaken by the coming of the steamships, a mode of travel he could neither respect nor abide.

(and with that, I'll be a-weigh, hey!)