In many ways it was a typical New England town. It was in Massachusetts on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, where the white caps would pound the shoreline filled with many jagged rocks. It was in the days before modern navigational aids. Ships would sometimes run aground in the dark and stormy seas on their way to Boston Harbor and small craft would capsize and those aboard would perish.

Then the mayor of the town called many of its citizens to a town hall meeting. The citizens who answered the mayor