Captain Kane of Blue Hill sailed the seven seas. In 1873, he survived the wreck of the brig Fanny Keating in the Gulf of Mexico. In 1875, he rescued a crew of twenty-five from the British ship Elmete; Queen Victoria expressed her gratitude with an inscribed silver cup that is kept in the Blue Hill Public Library. Later in life, he sailed the sloop Libra, peddling the concoctions of the Morrison Medical Company, a firm he ran in the basement of the old town hall on Pleasant Street.