From the foreword:
Although on the cover I am credited with the authorship, the real spinner of this true sea story is Captain O'Brien, the indomitable, fiery "Dynamite Johnny," who led a colorful and exciting career of sixty-five years before the mast.
Although "Dynamite Johnny" has trimmed sail for his last voyage, his life is a criterion for men of today. He never wanted his men to do what he, Captain O'Brien, could not do. His fighting spirit was one of his greatest assets. Frequently he reminiscenced about his greatest scrap – on a sailing ship in the harbor at Portland, Oregon, when he knocked "seven bells" out of a mate from a rival ship plying the China trade. Even though O'Brien was knocked down forty-eight times by actual count, he came through. Through the illness and up to his death at the age of eighty, in August, 1931, O'Brien fought- fought with all the courage at his command to forestall the Master Mariner. A fighting spirit was his heritage.
...
I hope that readers will have one-tenth of the enjoyment from this work that I had in chronicling the Captain's storied life. His whimsical stories, his philosophical understanding of the sea and men who go down to it, are pleasant memories. Tonight I can hear "Dynamite Johnny" on his feet at the age of eighty, inviting me to wrestle or spar for relaxation from our journalistic pursuits. I can see him in retrospect roaring like the howl of a gale, "You, you wall-eyed, three-cornered thrugmullion siwash, come up here and I'll knock any A. P. A. ideas out of you." And, when leaving his cheery apartment, "Chin, Chin, you old Orangeman." But beneath it all, O'Brien was a gentleman, equally at home in the parlors of the elite or when his ship was riding out a storm under reefed sail.
His life seems legendary, yet it filled an epoch – a glorious epoch in American shipping when the great square riggers sailed the sea's trade routes. It was men of his type, of his courage, his fortitude, and his uncanny knack of handling men, that helped to establish the Stars and Stripes on the Seven Seas. Hail and Farewell to Captain "Dynamite Johnny" O'Brien! "O'Brien of the Seven Seas" and the venerable "Nestor of the Pacific" is gone but his memory is cherished and revered.
MILTON A. DALBY.
April 3rd, 1933 Seattle, Washington
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