April 16, 2003:

Straight out of High School, in 1941 I went to work at SISCO, A Bethlehem shipyard as a riggers apprentice.  In the nearly two years I spent there, the old hands taught me to splice wire, and they all swore by C. Drew and Co. marline spikes.  

In 1943 I went to Kings Point, and eventually sailed for Mobil Oil, until 1953 when I came ashore to go to Boston College.  I thought I had "swalled the anchor", but my first job out of college petered out, and I found myself as a prof. at Massaachusetts Maritime academy, from whence I retired in 1983.  

Never straying far from the water, went to work in the rigging loft at MacDougall's Cape Cod Marine Service here in Falmouth.  The first job I did there was to make up all the standing rigging on a boat they were building.  My old rigging kit with Drew spikes were well used.  

Years later I encountered a woman who was a sales person for what I recall was an outgrowth of the Drew Co., loaned her one of my 10 inch spikes that she was going to show the men in the shop.  Never heard from her again, and my spike never came home.  

They were the most marvelous tools, and in all my time at sea, saw many spikes, but none that had the "hand" that a drew spike does.