Rebecca Huycke Ellison, who unearthed Capt. Daniel O. Killman’s suppressed memoir "Forty Years Master," appears at the library. 

Killman was a two-fisted, square-rigged sailor of the old school. Born in Maine in 1860, he went to sea as a teen and sailed for more than fifty years, most of which was out of west coast ports.  He settled in Tacoma in the early 1900s and died there in 1936. The ships he captained encountered and survived hurricanes, typhoons, murders and attempted murders, court cases, World War I, whalers in the Arctic, fishermen and gold seekers in Alaska, and difficult crews all around the world. In 2016, the book won a Lyman Award, presented by the North American Society for Oceanic History. It was published by Texas A&M Press.

In the 1970s, publication of the book was stopped when a family member objected to its publication. Everett resident Ellison approached the family forty years later and finally secured permission to publish this lost nautical gem.