James B. Connolly

James Brendan Connolly (1868–1957) was a South Boston writer and athlete of Irish Catholic stock who became the first champion of the modern Olympic Games, winning the triple jump at Athens in 1896. He left Harvard to compete, later served in the Spanish-American War, and then built a long career writing about the sea. Drawing on years aboard fishing schooners and naval vessels, he published more than 200 short stories and roughly two dozen books, earning a reputation as one of America's finest chroniclers of Gloucester fishermen and life on the water.