author
Henry Merrihew Plummer
1865–1928
A New Bedford sailor and Harvard graduate, he is remembered for a lively travel memoir about a father, a son, and a cat making their way down the Atlantic coast by small boat.
1 Audiobook
The boy, me and the cat : Cruise of the Mascot, 1912-1913
by Henry Merrihew Plummer
About the author
Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1865, he was the son of Leander Allen Plummer and Elizabeth Merrihew Plummer. Genealogy and memorial records also identify him as a Harvard graduate from the class of 1888 and note that he died in Boston in 1928.
He is best known as the author of The Boy, Me and the Cat: Cruise of the Mascot, 1912-1913, a compact, personal account of a voyage from Massachusetts to Florida in a Cape Cod catboat. The book follows Plummer, his son Henry Jr., and their cat Scotty, giving the story an easy charm as well as a strong sense of place.
What stands out most about his surviving work is its mix of adventure and family warmth. Even in brief form, it offers a vivid glimpse of early-20th-century coastal travel and the pleasures of small-boat sailing.