conched wrote:Maybe the Chicamauga is a different ship all together.
Found this little blurb, but who knows how factual it is?
http://www.saltcay.net/whatDo.html
Wander And Visit. You can just wander about and spend time getting to know the folks that call Salt Cay home. Good company and you'll probably hear plenty of intriguing stories. Who knows, you may even find someone who recalls when the Chicamauga sailing out of Pascagoula, Mississippi would pull to get a load of salt and the son of Captain James Buffett would come ashore and head out to the beach to chase flamingos and catch lobsters. That little boy romping with the local kids would become the father of Jimmy Buffett.
Here is another reference to a ship owned by Jimmy's grandfather.
http://lyricschase.com/?action=team&det ... mmyBuffett
A nice lyrics page too.
There is no question that Jimmy's childhood was influenced by ships and the lure of the ocean. In addition to his father's sea related occupation, Jimmy's grandfather, James Buffett Sr., captained his own ship, the Chicamauga, throughout the oceans of the World. The stories told by grandfather to grandson certainly inspired the songwriter, and these stories are easily recognized as themes and values throughout many of Jimmy's musical works.
Here is another description of Jimmy's grandfather's Chicamauga
http://www.saltcay.org/history.htm
Among the sailing ship captains was a man named James Buffett. The skipper of the
five-masted barkentine Chicamauga, from Pascagoula, Mississippi, was the grandfather of singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. In his autobiography, A Pirate Looks at Fifty, Buffett quotes his father, who spent much of his child-hood aboard the Chicamauga and remembered Salt Cay as the place he had some of the best times of his life. While salt was being loaded onto the ship, bound for New Orleans, the six-year-old boy who would grow up to be Jimmy’s father, would "take off with a group of local kids and…chase flamingos and catch lobsters from the beach."
Wow. Thanks for sharing all the great info. It adds so much more to Cat. and the Kid.
I never use to miss the chance
to climb upon his knee and listen
to the many tales of life upon the sea.
We'd go sailing back
on barkentines and
talk of things he did, tomorrow just a
day away for the Captain and the Kid.
His world had gone from sailing ships
to raking mom's back yard;
he never could adjust to land although
he tried so hard.
We both were growing older then and
wiser with our years;
that's when I came to understand
the course his heart still steers.
He died about a month ago
while winter filled the air,
and though I cried, I was so proud
to love a man so rare.
He's somewhere on the ocean now,
the place he ought to be;
with one hand on the starboard rail,
he's waving back at me.
For the Captain and this kid.
got to stop wishin' got to start fishin'....