]ohn Masefield's Minor Sports                      17

sports. Both in the long poem Wonderings and the prose sketch
"Bredon Flood" from Grace Before Ploughing, Masefield records
his first experience on water when, a boy of three, he spent an
 

John JVIaselield in 1896 at the age of 18 photographed when
he was living in Yonkers. (Author's collection)
 

ecstatic half-hour with two "half-remembered men" in a boat
"wherein my pilgrim self first went afloat." At that early age, he
wrote, "life stamped within my soul delight in water."

Masefield learned to row at the age of thirteen, if not before, for
at that age he became a cadet on the training-ship Conway. That
rowing was a universally practised and favorite activity among
the cadets is evident from the two books The Conway and New