Michala Woodruff

Lightning ricocheted across the dark sky. Thunder roared as trees waved violently in the wind from off the harbor. The storm boiled. Thicker. Louder. Darker. And yet brighter at the same time, depending on who one conversed with.

              If one conversed with a fellow Patriot, the storm was a remembrance to pray for the soldiers who fought so bravely for the United States of America’s liberty. Not that there weren’t enough reminders, but one could never pray too much. If one conversed with a wealthy settler, the storm was a signal to retreat indoors. Safe, dry, and relaxing in the candlelight made for a pleasant evening. However, if one conversed with an inventor, author, and basically a man-of-all-trades, the storm was an adventure.

               Benjamin Franklin—this man-of-all-trades—lived up to his saying, “Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing.”

              Many of us have learned about this founding father. Inventor of the lightning rod. Author of Old Richard’s Alamac. Even a newspaper man. However, I’ll try not to repeat what you already know in this post.  

              As a historical fiction, Captain She 1: Her Revolution was going to feature the notorious Benjamin Franklin. However, I learned that Benjamin Franklin actually was not in Philadelphia (PA) at the time of the siege in 1777. He was in France! According to Cengage’s The American Pageant Vol. 1 (2020) by David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen, seventy-year-old Benjamin Franklin left for France in 1776 and returned to the US in 1785. So . . . Captain She 1: Her Revolution doesn’t feature the man-of-all-trades. (But . . . SPOILER ALERT: perhaps he’ll appear in the third and final book of the Captain She series). 😉

              Another interesting fact about Benjamin Franklin is that he was fascinated with “the river in the ocean” (aka the Gulf Stream). Dive and Discover: Expeditions to the Seafloor put it well, “But the waters that make up the Gulf Stream are “channeled” into a certain direction and speed by many factors-including prevailing winds, the rotation of the planet, and colder currents around and below the Gulf Stream” (To find more information, here’s the link: https://divediscover.whoi.edu/history-of-oceanography/benjamin-franklin-discovering-the-gulf-stream/ ). They also pointed out that the current is why ships usually sailed north or east!

              Thirdly, did you know that Benjamin Franklin invented swimming flippers? And not only did he like swimming, but according to BJU Press’s United States History (2018), Benjamin Franklin would use a kite to propel him when windsurfing.

              Last fact. In 1783, Europe was covered in fog so thick that the sun was unable to melt the snow for Summertime. Franklin wrote, “It was the vast quantity of smoke, long continuing to issue during the summer from Hecla in Iceland, and that other volcano which arose out of the sea near that island; which smoke might be spread by various winds over the northern part of the world.” He was right! A volcano in Iceland erupted to be the biggest record of volcanic eruptions. (https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/people-franklin-science.htm ).

              Benjamin Franklin was a pretty cool founding father of the United States of America. I hope you enjoyed these interesting facts. If you have a favorite historical figure, feel free to jot the name and maybe why in the “Leave a Reply” box below. Excited to see who! Until then . . . God bless!