IN A BREEZE The annual Gloucester Schooner Festival showcases the majestic two-masted boats, such as the Schooner Columbia. Photo: Getty ImagesWHEN I WAS growing up in Gloucester, Mass., we were steeped in local fishing-port legends. In elementary school, a teacher introduced us to “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” a poem published in 1842 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and if we hadn’t read “Captains Courageous,” Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 novel, we’d probably seen the 1937 film starring Spencer Tracy. We knew the tale of Gloucester hero Howard Blackburn, who rowed his dory to Newfoundland in an 1883 storm, his hands frozen to the oars.

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