The schooner Favorite was wrecked at Norman's Woe near Gloucester, Massachusetts, during a destructive storm in December 1839. Everyone aboard was lost, and the body of a woman was reportedly found lashed to wreckage. The disaster was one of several losses associated with the great coastal storm.

The wreck supplied important details for Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus, especially the woman found tied to the ship. Longfellow combined fact, folklore and invention to create one of the nineteenth century's most enduring narrative poems.