OUR SHIP'S CREW. 23 



CHAPTER HI. 



Sailors " Sogers " 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 sub- 

 ject of American officers and seamen. I will, however, but give, 

 in this one word, my testimony, as one having had some experi- 

 ence, to the tyranny, barbarity, and lawlessness with which in most 

 of our merchant ships the common seamen 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 compass 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 Por- 

 tuguese. One boasts of being " half-Welsh and \ia\f-Heelander" 

 Judging from this specimen, I have not a very high opinion of 

 the cross. The mate is a Dane, the second and third mates Con- 

 necticut 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 

 whom I have known before proved to be, after getting on blue 

 water. He never speaks to the seamen, or directly has any thing 



