3. Benjamin Franklin wrote a ballad called The Light House Tragedy at the age of 12
When Benjamin Franklin was a boy in Boston an incident occurred at Boston Light, which was located in the harbor on the aptly named Beacon Island (now Little Brewster Island). George Worthylake held the position of Harbor Master, whose duties entailed serving as a pilot for ships entering the harbor, and maintaining the beacon atop Boston Light. Worthylake lived on Beacon Island with his family, and traveled to Boston for shopping and other errands via a small sloop provided for the purpose, as well as to serve as a pilot-boat. On November 3, 1718, Worthylake, his wife and daughter, a servant, a slave, and a guest were drowned near Beacon Island while returning to the island following church services in Boston. Dutifully interred by the citizens of Boston, Worthylake was replaced in the role of Harbor Master (a critical position in the seafaring town) by a man named Robert Saunders. Saunders’ position was a temporary one, pending selection of a permanent replacement by the General Assembly.
On November 14 Saunders ventured out to meet an incoming ship, and upon learning that the vessel’s master did not require the services of a pilot attempted to return to Beacon Island. The heavy seas and contrary winds overwhelmed his craft and Saunder’s too drowned in the chill waters of Boston Harbor. One man of his crew of four managed to swim to the Boston shore and survived. The drownings were reported in the Boston Newsletter, and the young Franklin was inspired to write his ballad. In his autobiography Franklin described the ballad as “wretched stuff” but he printed it on broadsheet and sold it in the streets of Boston. It sold well. The Worthylake family was interred beneath a triple headstone in Boston’s Copp Hill Burying Ground, which is still there today. No copy of Franklin’s ballad dating to his lifetime has been found, but fragments of a copy dating to the nineteenth century were found in an attic on Middle Brewster Island in Boston Harbor in 1940.