IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE 1880S IN VICTORIAN LONDON, the directors of the Monarch Line, a small shipping concern, decided to join in the burgeoning transatlantic passenger and freight trade to America. Ill luck would dog the company from the beginning. All ve of their new steamers would be subjected to some form of accident or disablement, but one vessel, in particular, had more than her fair share of troubles. The Persian Monarch, later to become the sailing vessel May Flint, was a troublesome vessel throughout her career. Every imaginable misadventure would come her way. Strandings, res, collisions, ill-treatment of crewmen, even shipboard deaths, all of these ordeals would become commonplace for this vessel. Becoming a sailing vessel did little to alter the ship’s reputation as a troublesome vessel, even earning the label “hell-ship” under a brutal captain, until she sank in San Francisco Bay. Was she in fact “Cursed by Either Name” or was she a lucky vessel to have escaped so many accidents that should have led to her demise much sooner?