Old Stormalong (Campfire Story)

One stormy morning on Cape Cod, the tide washed up something enormous on the beach. The fishermen ran down to see what it was, figuring on a whale. But it wasn't a whale. It was a baby. A baby boy eighteen feet tall, sitting in the sand and laughing at the WAVES.

His name, he said, was Alfred Bulltop STORMALONG. Nobody ever found out where he came from. But everybody agreed on one thing: a boy that size was born for the sea.

So STORMALONG went to sea as a cabin boy. He was too big for the cabin, so he slept on deck. When the captain wanted to drop anchor, STORMALONG threw it overboard with one hand. When the ship needed to go faster, he blew on the sails. And when he was thirsty, he drank his soup out of a lifeboat.

One day his ship was sailing off the coast when the anchor got stuck on the bottom. The crew pulled and pulled. It wouldn't budge. So STORMALONG clamped a knife in his teeth and dove over the side, down through the WAVES. The water started to churn. Bubbles boiled up. Something was fighting down there.

It was the KRAKEN, a sea monster as big as an island, with a hundred long arms. It had wrapped its arms around the anchor and was holding on with every one. STORMALONG didn't fight it. He grabbed the arms one by one and tied every one of them in a knot. A square knot, a bowline, a sheepshank, a clove hitch, and ninety-six more. The KRAKEN spent the next two years untangling itself, and it never bothered a sailor again.

Well, after that, no ship was big enough for STORMALONG. So the shipbuilders of New England built him one of his own. They called it the Courser. It was so big that the masts had hinges, so they could fold down to let the moon go by. The sailors rode horses to get from one end of the deck to the other. And a young sailor who climbed the mast came back down with a gray beard.

STORMALONG sailed the Courser all over the world. But one day, coming home from Norway, he steered her into the English Channel, the narrow stretch of sea between England and France. And halfway through, the Courser got stuck. She was too fat to fit. The WAVES pushed and pushed, but she wouldn't move an inch.

The crew looked at STORMALONG. STORMALONG scratched his head. Then he grinned. 'Boys,' he said, 'break out the SOAP!'

Every sailor grabbed every bar of SOAP on board. They lowered themselves over the side and scrubbed. They scrubbed the right side of the ship until it was slick as an eel. They scrubbed the left side until it shone. SOAP! SOAP! SOAP!

Then STORMALONG blew into the sails as hard as he could. The Courser groaned. She creaked. And with a great big squeak, she popped right through the Channel and out into the open sea.

But as she squeezed past, the right side of the ship scraped all along the English shore. It rubbed the cliffs of Dover so hard that every speck of dirt was scrubbed away, and all that SOAP was left behind. And that's why, to this very day, the White Cliffs of Dover are white.

Old sailors say STORMALONG is still out there somewhere, sailing the Courser across the biggest ocean of all. And when you hear thunder rolling over the WAVES on a stormy night, that's just Old STORMALONG, laughing.

Storyteller tips: the SOAP scene is the big finish, so get everyone scrubbing faster and faster before the ship pops free. For the KRAKEN fight, let the crowd blub and wave their arms, then stop them cold as each arm gets tied.

Stormalong is a hero of New England sailors and the old sea shanty "Stormalong John." The White Cliffs of Dover are really made of chalk, the tiny shells of sea creatures. That's almost as amazing as soap.