James Brendan Connolly, the man Joseph Conrad once called the best sea-story writer in America, has been justly celebrated as a realistic chronicler of the Gloucester fishermen and their lonely, heroic struggles with the implacable sea.

Others have written of the sailor's life; Connolly lived it-- and then wrote about it. He was born on 28 October 1868 to John and Ann O'Donnell Connolly, descendants of a long line of Aran Islands seafaring folk who had left the islands off the west coast of Ireland when quite young to settle in South Boston (Little Ireland). In addition to instilling James with "a strong body and love of old-fashioned virtues--courage, justice, honesty, reliability," virtues which would later manifest themselves in his depiction of character, his family brought him into close contact with the sea. His father sailed with the Boston fishing fleet; his mother's brother Jim, who lived with the family...