In the ' old days ', they were fishing a lot on the shoal Grand Banks. When a sudden storm arose, ships would hopefully slip their cable ( cut away their anchor and rode ) and, hopefully sail off the banks , many times under just bare poles. Those less fortunate , particularly in real shallow conditions, might just bottom out on the ground as the water went away, only to return minutes later as a large wave and crash down on the grounded- out vessel. Whole crews were lost this way. Another cause of great losses was the fashion to design shoal draft vessels which would sail like the wind, but would not be able to stay upright in a beam sea. Many vessels just rolled over, lacking underwater resistance offered by a full length, deep keel that had been abandoned. They willingly, or naively traded lives for speed and profit. Getting fish to market was more important than the tragic loss of whole crews, back ' in the day.' Joe