OUR SHIPS CREW. 37 



CHAPTER III. 



SAILORS. &quot;SOGERS.&quot; BOOKS. ANECDOTES. 



IF the purport of my title would permit it, I should like to 

 write a long chapter on our ship s crew, and the general 

 subject of American officers and seamen. I will, however, 

 but give, in this one word, my testimony, as one having had 

 some experience as to the tyranny, barbarity, and lawlessness 

 with which in most of our merchant ships the common sea 

 men are treated ; and the vice, misery, and hopelessness to 

 which, as a body, they are left on our shores, by the neglect 

 or ill-judged and parsimonious assistance of those who com 

 pass sea and land to make proselytes of the foreign heathen. 

 Our ship s crew, as is usual in a Liverpool packet, are 

 nearly all foreigners English, Scotch, Irish, Danes, French, 

 and Portuguese. One boasts of being &quot; half-Welsh and half- 

 Heelander,&quot; judging from this specimen, I have not a very 

 high opinion of the cross. The mate is a Dane, the second 

 and third mates, Connecticut men. The captain, also, is 

 from somewhere down east. He is a good and careful 

 seaman, courteous in his manners, and a religious man, much 

 more consistently so than pious captains I have known before 

 proved to be, after getting on blue water. He never speaks 

 to the seamen, or directly has any thing to do with them. 

 In fact, except when he is taking observations, or in bad 

 weather, or an emergency, you would never see in him any 



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