22 COCK-PIT 



earliest duty should be to attend and assist the signal 

 officer, who was then present arranging the different 

 parti-coloured pieces of bunting, and immediately 

 commenced his tuition ; and I had the good fortune soon 

 to ingi-atiate myself with one whom I afterwards found 

 to be a thorough-bred gentleman, and a most excellent 

 officer/ 



The cock-pit of a man-of-war may be justly termed the 

 school of our naval heroes, where the peculiarities of 

 mind and temper are sure to be developed. The 

 characters and dispositions of its different inmates, their 

 amusements and their feuds, have been so graphically 

 described by Captain Marryat and other nautical novelists, 

 that I can only testify to the general truth of their 

 delineations. It was some little time before I was 

 admitted among them, and more before I became 

 thoroughly acquainted with the usages of so unique an 

 assemblage as a midshipman's mess, or acquired anything 

 like a perfect knowledge of those who comjDosed it. 



An old seventy-four, called the Russell, with an 

 additional fleet of merchantmen, had joined us off 

 Plymouth; so that together we made a considerable 

 flotilla, not only in numbers, but in wealth. Our sail to 

 the island of Madeira, where we stayed but two days, was 

 marked with only one incident worthy of recording ; my 

 time was taken up principally in assisting to make and 

 repeat signals, to keep the convoy together, to prevent 

 them straggling too much to windward or to leeward, and 

 to compel the sternmost to make more sail. In the 

 evening the crew were exercised at the guns, or sometimes 

 ' Lieutenant Samuel Green way. 



