sea struck the bow, the hoop and canvas were forced upward so as to
throw the water off its sides, thus effectually preventing its ingress
into the hold of the craft. The improved apron originated with Mr.
John Crammer, Jr., a short time after Captain Seaman built the first
sneak-box. The second sneak-box was constructed by Mr. Crammer; and
afterwards Mr. Samuel Perine, an old and much respected bay-man, of
Barnegat, built the third one. The last two men have finished their
voyage of life, but "Uncle Haze,"--as he is familiarly called by his
many admirers,--the originator of the tiny craft which may well be
called multum in parvo, and which carried me, its single occupant,
safely and comfortably twenty-six hundred miles, from Pittsburgh to
Cedar Keys, still lives at West Creek, builds yachts as well as he
does sneak-boxes, and puts to the blush younger gunners by the energy
displayed and success attained in the vigorous pursuit of wildfowl
shooting in the bays which fringe the coast of Ocean County, New
Jersey.

A few years since, this ingenious man invented an improvement on the
marine life-saving car, which has been adopted by the United States
government; and during the year 1875 he constructed a new ducking-punt
with a low paddle-wheel at its stern, for the purpose of more easily
and secretly approaching flocks of wild-fowl.

The peculiar advantages of the sneak-box were known to but few of the
hunting and shooting fraternity, and, with the exception of an
occasional visitor, were used only by the oystermen, fishermen, and
wild-fowl shooters of Barnegat and Little Egg Harbor bays, until the
New Jersey Southern Railroad and its connecting branches penetrated to
the eastern shores of New Jersey, when educated amateur sportsmen from
the cities quickly recognized in the little gunning-punt all they had