44 . THE SEA. 



the Royal Navy and Mercantile Marine, training-ships have been organised, which have 

 been, so far, highly successful. Let these embryo defenders of their country's interests 

 have the first place. 



Of course, at all periods the boys, and others who entered to serve before the mast, 

 received some training, and picked up the rest if they were reasonably clever. The 

 brochure of "an old salt,"* which has recently appeared, gives a fair account of his 

 own treatment and reception. Running away from London, as many another boy has 

 done, with a few coppers in his pocket, he tramped to Sheerness, taking by the way a 

 hearty supper of turnips with a family of sheep in a field. Arrived at his destination, 

 he found a handsome flag-ship, surrounded by a number of large and small vessels. 

 Selecting the very smallest as best adapted to his own size he went on board, and 

 asked the first officer he met one who wore but a single epaulet whether his ship was 

 manned with boys? 3 ' He was answered, "No, I want men; and pray what may you 

 want?" "I want to go to sea, sir, please." "You had better go home to your mother," 

 was the answer. With the next officer " a real captain, wearing grey hair, and as 

 straight as a line" he fared better, and was eventually entered as a third-class boy, and 

 sent on board a guard-ship. Here he was rather fortunate in being taken in charge by a 

 petty officer, who had, as was often the case then, his wife living on board. The lady 

 ruled supreme in the mess. She served out the grog, too, and, to prevent intoxication 

 among the men, used to keep one finger inside the measure ! This enabled her to the 

 better take care of her husband. She is described as the best "man" in the mess, and 

 irresistibly reminds us of Mrs. Trotter in "Peter Simple," who had such a horror of 

 rum that she could not be induced to take it except when the water was bad. The water, 

 however, always was bad ! But the former lady took good care of the new-comer, while, 

 as we know, Mrs. Trotter fleeced poor Peter out of three pounds sterling and twelve 

 pairs ot stockings before he had been an hour on board. Mr. Mindry tells the usual 

 stories of the practical jokes he had to endure about being sent to the doctor's mate 

 for mustard, for which he received a peppering; of the constant thrashings he received 

 in one case, with a number of others, receiving two dozen for losing his dinner. 

 He was cook of the mess for the time, and having mixed his dough, had taken it to 

 the galley-oven, from the door of which a sudden lurch of the ship had ejected it on 

 the main deck, " the contents making a very good representation of the White Sea." The 

 crime for which he and his companions suffered was for endeavouring to scrape it up 

 again ! But the gradual steps by which he was educated upwards, till he became 

 a gunner of the first class, prove that, all in all, he had cheerily taken the bull by the 

 horns, determined to rise as far and fast as he might in an honourable profession. He 

 was after a year or so transferred to a vessel fitting for the West Indies, and soon got 

 a taste of active life. This was in 1837. Forty or fifty years before, the guard-ships were 

 generally little better than floating pandemoniums. They were used partly for breaking in 

 raw hands, and were also the intermediate stopping-places for men waiting to join other 

 ships. In a guard-ship of the period described; a most heterogeneous mass of humanity 



* Robert Mindry, " Chips from the Log of an Old Salt." 



