... was not a real life ship, but Longfellow's poem was inspired by the wreck of the Favorite, which was one of 20 ships wrecked off the north–eastern coast of the USA in a storm of January 1839 – and was indeed destroyed on the reef of Norman's Woe. The bit about the captain's daughter being lashed to the mast to prevent her from falling overboard, and dying there, may also be based on fact, although there seems to be no evidence to suggest that the woman reportedly washed ashore tied to a mast of the Favorite was the captain's daughter.
© Haydn Thompson 2017