oh... maybe I should mention that both my great grandfather and my grandfather had their captains papers...

Jesse Williams skippered small coastal vessels along the eastern seaboard. My grandfather, George, was an able bodied seaman on coastal steamers, but after his third shipwreck worked the Steel Pier in Atlantic City to raise enough money to buy his own boat... which he ran for almost 40 years out of Cape May NJ... taking out day fishing parties. One of the first to do so... and not bad for a guy who lost his right arm when he was a kid.