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I Will Never Be Drowned!

My intent here is to bring back to your remembrance a long-forgotten, but most useful moment, in history.

Two young men left Yale University campus in New Haven Connecticut and walked toward New Haven Harbor. Nate was 17, Isaac was 15 and they were bent on an afternoon of leisurely sailing. The sky clouded over as they pushed their sloop out from shore—the wind at their back.

Not long into their adventure however, the wind picked up and the sea turned violent. Waves crashed into the bow and threatened to swamp the boat. Isaac was afraid and looked to Nate for assurance and comfort.

Nate said calmly, “I will never be drowned.” The words did little to comfort Isaac. It was as though Nate knew something—that he was not destined in the plans of the Almighty to drown at sea. Isaac, however, was neither comforted, nor convinced.

Nate kept working with the boat, steering toward shore. As he did, he pointed to a blemish on his neck and invited Isaac to look closer. It was a large mole with a hair growing out of it. The folklore of the day said that such was a sign of bad luck, and if you had such a mole you were destined to die by hanging. In fact, as a boy, Nate was often taunted by his playmates that he would die by hanging.

For whatever reason, Nate seems to have believed the tradition. As the two lads pulled their boat to shore, surely waterlogged and grateful to be alive, Nate pointed to the mole again and said confidently that he was not going to drown. When Isaac asked how he could be so certain, Nate said, matter-of-factly, “I am to be hung.”

And that is exactly what happened to Nate just a few years later. But it was not for the reasons you might assume.

The year was 1772, Nate was Nathan Hale. The same Nathan Hale who four years later, on Sunday, September 22, 1776, was hanged by the British as a spy. The same Nathan Hale who said just before he died “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

He was America’s first spy and one of our early greatest heroes. He represents a principle that today needs to be restored in America—that sacrifice and effort are essential to be free as a person—a people–as a nation. I will tell you more of his story later.

Source:

M. William Phelps, Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008) 1-3.