Thonias Hewlings Stockton, clergyman, wrote fantastic tales for children under the pen name Frank R. Stockton. He also wrote books for adults. Among his amusing books for children Rudder Grange is the best known. The Lady and the Tiger, Adventures of Captain Horne, Mrs. Null, The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine, The Hundredth Man, Great Stone of Sardis, and Captain's Tollgate were also quite popular. The book begins: Early in the spring of the year 1884 the three-masted schooner Castor, from San Francisco to Valparaiso, was stuck by a tornado off the coast of Peru. The Storm, which rose with frightful suddenness, was of short duration, but it left the Castor a helpless wreck. Her masts had snapped off and gone overboard, her rudder-post had been shattered by falling wreckage, and she was rolling in the trough of the sea, with her floating masts and spars thumping and bumping her sides.