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"The Far Away Island" A Personal Remembrance by Theodore C. Wyman JUST AS THE Galapagos Islands are called by many names, The En chanted Isles, The Ends Of The Earth, and others, so too there are many names for the island of Nantucket. Among them are The Far Away Island and The Little Grey Lady Of The Sea. There have been many stories written about Nantucket and a great deal about the history of the island, so I shall not add to that. What I shall do is to write of the island as I knew it when I went there for two weeks and a decade passed before a war broke me loose from my moorings. Perhaps what I write will help to answer a question that is often asked about what there is to do on the island during the winter months. One of the first times I saw the island was when I was aboard the schoolship Nantucket of the Massachusetts Nautical School at the end of a summer cruise. The ship was a three masted barkentine that had been a naval ship in the China Squadron and had been named the Ranger when she became a schoolship. Then her name was changed to Nantucket in September of 1919, at which time the town of Nantucket presented her with a new ship's bell. She ended her career as the Emery Rice of the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, Long Island, where she served for fifteen years as a museum ship before being sold to be broken up for scrap metal at the age of seventy-eight years. There was one more time when I saw the island of Nantucket before I went there to drop my anchor. That was at the end of a summer's work in Woods Hole when I went to the island for a few days before going to New York to look for a ship. A ship that might be going any place in the world and that happened to be going to San Francisco. What was of interest to me at the time was that I had started to read a story that last evening in Nantucket and the story was about San Francisco. So I went ashore and finished the story during the time I lived there. And all during that time, even though the island of Nantucket had touched me but lightly and I did not realize it, the island was there waiting for me to return. When I did return to the island, it was to finish some summer work for the New England Steamship Company and I felt as though I was
