These incredible memoirs began in 1899 by 15-year-old Gaither Stevens soon after he joined the Navy as an Apprentice Boy.  It was a different world and a different Navy. His extraordinary experiences were captured in a typed manuscript kept safe and unpublished until now.  In these writings, you’ll find adventures of a lifetime highlighting encounters with a grizzly bear, bar fights, a train robbery, murder, boxing, fiestas, abduction as a sex slave, turtle races, wild shipmates, an Eskimo prostitute, and other savory scenes.  Gaither’s chronicles of fellow “blue-jackets” and places he visited are wonderous, humorous, and heart-warming.  This wild rollercoaster reveals life in a nearly forgotten time that produced some of the Navy’s finest men.