VI 
LIFE OF CAPTAIN CLAPPERTON. 
was a handsome, athletic, powerful man. He received no classical education, and could 
do little more than read and write, when he was put under the tuition of Mr. Bryce 
Downie, a man of general knowledge, but chiefly celebrated for his mathematical abilities. 
He remained with Mr. Downie until he required a knowledge of practical mathematics, 
including navigation and trigonometry. He was found an apt scholar and an obliging 
boy by Mr. Downie, whose attention was never forgot by the traveller; as he expressed a 
great wish, when he arrived the first journey from Africa, that he could have had time 
to see his native country, and shake his old master once more by the hand. Captain 
Clapperton left Mr. Downie about the age of thirteen; when, by his own wish, he was 
bound an apprentice to the owner of a vessel of considerable burthen, trading between 
Liverpool and North America. After making several voyages in that vessel, he either 
left her, or was impressed into his Majesty’s service, and was put on board a Tender 
then lying at Liverpool, which vessel carried him round to Plymouth, where he with 
others were draughted on board of his Majesty’s ship Gibraltar, of eighty guns. He 
did not remain long in that ship, as in 1806 he arrived at Gibraltar in a naval transport; 
from which he was impressed, with others, on board his Majesty’s frigate Renommee, 
Captain Sir Thomas Livingston. Opportunely for our traveller, at that time his Ma- 
jesty’s ship Saturn, Captain Lord Amelias Beauclerc (belonging to Lord Collingwood’s 
fleet off Cadiz), arrived for the purpose of watering and refitting; and our traveller, 
learning that his uncle (now Lieut.-Col. Clapperton) was captain of royal marines on 
board the Saturn, sent him a letter describing his situation in the Renommee. The 
uncle having been an old messmate of Sir Thomas’s, when both were lieutenants at 
the Cape of Good Hope many years before, made it his business immediately to see Sir 
Thomas; and, through his intercession, Sir Thomas very kindly put our traveller, for the 
first time, upon the quarter-deck as a midshipman. The Renommee very soon after left 
Gibraltar for the Mediterranean ; and, when on the coast of Spain, had occasion to send 
boats to attack some enemy’s vessels on shore. Clapperton, being in one of the boats, 
was slightly, as he considered it, wounded in the head, which, however, afterwards gave 
him much annoyance. He remained in the Renommee, with Sir Thomas, until she 
returned to England, and was paid off, in the year 1808. He then joined his Majesty’s 
ship Venerable, Captain King, in the Downs, as a midshipman, where he did not remain 
long, having heard that Captain Briggs was going to the East Indies in the Clorinde 
frigate, and wishing to go to that country, he applied for his discharge, that he might 
enter with Captain Briggs ; but he could not accomplish it before the Clorinde had 
sailed from Portsmouth ; he was ordered, however, (by the admiral) to have a passage 
in a ship going to the East Indies In the course of the voyage, they fell in with a ship 
in great distress, it then blowing a gale of wind ; but humanity required assistance, if it 
could be given. A boat was ordered to be got ready, and Clapperton to go in her. He 
declared to his messmates his decided opinion that the boat could not possibly live in the 
