"Man's inhumanity to man, Makes countless
thousands mourn." —Burns.
UNDER improved auspices I entered on my
second voyage, and soon discovered that my old enemy was not to
be cheated out of its victim. Calm weather, with a heavy ground
swell, gave rise to a motion in the vessel that intensified the
disease, and deeming it also aggravated by the obnoxious smell
of camphor, I had to lay the charm aside until we returned to
Shields, when, in respect to the feelings of the charmer, the
charm should resume its intended location. During this voyage I
became reluctantly convinced that nature had not cut me out for
a sailor. I. became as much disgusted with my uselessness as
with the cruel disease that caused it, and in that frame of mind
resolved that in the event of another voyage failing to improve
my condition, I would try some other course for a living. On
arriving at Shields I found Mr. Walmsley, notwithstanding the
exaggerated report of Patterson, still desirous of keeping me in
his service. Mrs. Cookson approved of my determination. Jane
seemed somewhat down in the mouth, lamented the failure of her
charm, and hoped if I did quit the sea I would do so at this end
and not at the London end, where there is so much
wickedness. I could go back to my own business as well at the
one place as the other. But my destiny led Londonward, and there
I left the old Barbara on my third trip, and threw myself once
more on the heartless world, with threepence in my pocket, which
the carpenter gave me when he rowed me ashore, while the captain
was up town, saying it was all the cash he had by him or he
would have given me more (Jesus was the son of a carpenter), and
I believe him. He had hurried me ashore to escape a punishment
as certain as that the sun gives heat. A young
fellow-apprentice, who, unlike myself, gave evidence of becoming
a good seaman, had offended his high mightiness, and had
committed the unpardonable offense of making an effort to escape
the enraged fool while in a paroxysm of anger, and was therefore
felled to the deck by a hand-spike in the hands of the veritable
Captain Patterson, of the Barbara, of North Shields, formerly
boatswain's mate of a man-of-war in good King Geordie's reign.
At the sight of this wanton brutality I imprudently, yet
voluntarily, gave utterance to an audible murmur, without any
articulation, at which he turned his fierce fiendish eyes on me,
and said, "I will attend to your case when I return on board."
Taking the hint, I imparted my secret intention of leaving the
ship to the carpenter, who suggested immediate action as above,
and left the impotent creature to find a new cabin-boy, and
thereby augment the number of his legion of haters. Now I am in
the great metropolis of the world, a stranger in a strange land,
where, after discussing my two-penny breakfast, I had one penny
left still, in the event of absolute starvation driving me to
the necessity of applying for succor to one of whom a word of
mention must now again be made,—my half brother Alexander, whom
we recognized as a good soldier, and whom we left in the
enjoyment of a comfortable sinecure in Leith Fort, troubled with
a restless wife, and while the Iron Duke remained,
Master-General of the Ordnance. It was only to ask a change more
congenial to her caprice to obtain it. She was too near the sea
at Leith, in Edinburgh Castle too high, in Calshot Castle,
Hampshire, too low, in Yarmouth Castle, Isle of Wight, too
lonely, in Seaforth, ditto. Now they are vending Barclay and
Perkins' Entire, near Wellclose Square, E., London. Under the
impression of a dreaded correspondence with home, awakening in
my guilty conscience an awful sense of my foolish conduct, I
resolved to hold out. It took six days to conquer my aversion to
an interview with that family, passing their door in a starving
condition every day. At length my brother, having noticed a
poor, emaciated sailor boy once or twice strolling by, resolved
to arrest the attention of the same, should he again make his
appearance, and sure enough, out he came, with the dreaded
interrogatory, followed by a good meal and a much-needed clean
shirt. The reader will readily perceive how these would be
appreciated when I inform him that my food for four days
consisted of the maggoty remains of the bread locker of a West
Indiaman, which I had earned by assisting the rigger employed to
dismantle her, and my bed was among the weeds in a neglected
corner of the West India docks. After the largest dose of humble
pie that ever fell to my share to swallow, my future was
promptly settled in the most approved military fashion. Home
letters, like bullets, were mercilessly leveled at my devoted
head. The luxury of one night of bed repose was receding rapidly
from view. Said my brother: " Captain Christie, of the Leith
smack Trusty, now at Downing's wharf, sails for Leith by the
morning's tide ; so to secure your passage you must get on board
tonight. The captain, a friend of mine, will take you to Leith,
and you can walk to Haddington the next day." To consult me in
cutting and drying these trifles would fail to comport with the
dignity of the court. Some are slow to discover the mettle of
those with whom they are dealing. In this case I ventured to
inform the supreme judges that London was my destined field of
future action (which in after years was amply proven); that
during these six days of untold misery I had not failed to
endeavor to obtain employment, and even dared to hint that all
that was needed were a few articles of decent clothing. But no ;
the fiat had gone forth. Nothing left but to obey. My obedience
was more seeming than real. I wished them good-by and went on
board the Trusty, not by any means, as they thought, to avail
myself of a passage home, but simply to take advantage of the
food and shelter which a night on board might furnish. After a
generous supper the crew remained in the forecastle, spinning
yarns, till "the 'oor o' night's black airch the keystane." The
company was enlivened by a cousin of one of the crew, who
inquired if there were any steerage passengers on board. " None
but this poor boy going back to Scotland under the care of the
captain. He has been trying to be a sailor, but fails to
overcome sea-sickness. He is therefore going back to his
parents, from whom the young rascal ran away." Kindly turning to
me, the stranger asked me if I really wished to go back on the
effort necessary to become a seaman.
"Man," said he, "the great Lord Nelson
himself never thoroughly overcame seasickness, and yet you have
no doubt read at school what kind of a sailor he made of
himself. I am sailing on board the Ann Dal-rymple, of Methel, in
Fifeshire, lying in the Pool. Our captain wants a cabin-boy, and
I think you will suit. Come right along with me. The same tide
that takes the Trusty down stream this morning takes us. We
ballast at Purfleet, and off to Riga, in the Baltic sea. We have
a kind captain. I'll protect you from the mate, who is, nae doot,
a bit of a Tartar."
This man's eloquence silenced every scruple,
and away we went rejoicing, together, to tackle once more my
insidious enemy, lured to the combat by the beauty and grandeur
of old Father Thames. The dockyard at Deptford, named by Caesar
in finding the streamlet a little too deep for the passage of
his legions on his way to London, is now mainly used as a
granary for the army and navy of the great nation, and the old
Dreadnaught, eighty-four gun ship, used as a hospital for the
navy. The Isle of Dogs is opposite, where the pleasure-seeking
profligate, Charles, kept his favorite canine specimens, who
vied with himself in wisdom. To attempt to describe the glory
and grandeur of Greenwich would be out of place here, further
than to simply make mention of a few of its outstanding
features: its proportionate architecture; the humane purpose to
which it is appropriated; its celebrated painted ceiling and
hall; the identical coat through which the ball sped to reach
the heart of England's noblest naval hero at Trafalgar; the deer
park; the far-famed hill surmounted by Flamborough House, from
which the longitude of the world is computed; the marine school,
with its ship full-rigged on dry land, and the number of
disabled naval pensioners to be seen perambulating ad libitum
about the extensive grounds, making the glorious
resting-place of the disabled seamen of Old England a world in
itself and a credit to the nation. About two miles below this
princely building, and opposite Blackwall, there still stood in
that day a remnant of barbarism happily to be seen now nowhere
within the bounds of civilization, viz : the skeletons of eight
fellow-creatures on three gibbets dangling in chains. Blackwall
has long been famed for its catering capacity, particularly for
its whitebait, a tiny fish caught nowhere else, and which the
caterers know how to cook. A dinner at Lovejoy's is not easily
forgotten, but the little knowledge I possess on the subject has
been acquired many years subsequent to the period of which I am
writing. We leave the table and the means by which man is
supposed to be recruited and turn to the potent instruments at
once of his protection and destruction. We are now off Woolwich.
Patriotism has had much to do with the attainment of the
wonderful perfectibility of the architecture of the British
navy. The prescriptive constitution of England appears to be
naturally interwoven in the heart and soul of every one born
under her flag. The protection of that constitution has for many
years largely fallen to the glory of her wooden walls. Here from
keel to royal in mathematical proportions those huge leviathans,
which prove in their dextrous handling a terror to less
scrupulous nations, are constructed. Here, also, adjoining in
the Royal Arsenal, the death-dealing ordnance is forged and
tested, with all the concomitant operations necessary to
accuracy of aim, and all the countless variety of missiles with
which the warlike student problematically mitigates the evils of
war by rendering it more fatal and terrific. Abreast of the
arsenal lie at anchor two vessels called the Hulks, where the
evil-doers of the United Kingdom are concentrated preparatory to
transportation to distant misery. Nor must the more remote
features of Woolwich be overlooked: the extensive artillery
barracks, the practicing ground, the cadet academy, and the
Rotunda, which was formerly erected in St. James's Park, wherein
to entertain the crowned heads of Europe during the transitory
peace of 1814, now employed on Woolwich common as a repository
of arts, in which may be seen a variety of fine models of
British possessions abroad, such as Gibraltar, Malta and others;
also, models of ships in sections, showing improved methods of
shipping horses, etc. An ingenious clock in this building may
deserve a passing notice, from the fact of its requiring no
winding up, and is reputed to be the nearest approach to
perpetual motion. On passing Woolwich we heave in sight of
another historically interesting spot on the opposite bank of
the Thames. Purfleet stands on the Essex bank of the river, and
here, in imminent danger of invasion, Elizabeth adressed her
troops. The fleet being threatened with destruction by the
approaching formidable Armada, the queen in ecstacy was made to
ejaculate, "Alas, my poor fleet! " Hence the name of the
village. Situated in a quiet, secluded nook, out of the way of
navigation, the government was not long insensible to its
advantages as a spot wherein to deposit the nation's
combustibles. Therefore, at an early day, in a very
unostentatious way, the great national magazine was founded.
