Story Archive

The Tempest

A couple in a sailboat on Newport Harbor, Maine, fell asleep; the man thought it happened at about 12:30 p.m. — after morning cocktails. “He said the next time he woke up was when the boat hit the Newport Bridge,” said Sgt. Michael Schipritt of the state’s Department of Environmental Management’s Division of Law Enforcement. Apparently the man didn’t do anything about that, since the boat continued to slowly travel until it ran aground at 11:40 p.m. At one point, the man had looked in the cabin and saw a quilt; he assumed his wife was asleep underneath. “He drove the boat back to their slip,” Schipritt said. “Sometime between 1:00 a.m. and 1:30 a.m, he realized his wife was not asleep in the cabin and not on board, at which point he called 911.” His wife had fallen overboard sometime that afternoon, and swam ashore. By the time police arrived, it had been too long to determine blood alcohol content, but William Shakespeare, 50, and his wife Delyse, 55, were cited for operating an unregistered boat, improper look out or having no look out, and failing to take appropriate action to avoid a collision. (MS/Providence Journal, Newport Daily News) ...“Why, sir, for my part I say the gentleman had drunk himself out of his five senses.” —Bardolph, in The Merry Wives Of Windsor.