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Updated: May 19, 2025
The following letter, addressed by Captain Lipson, the Harbour-master, to the Colonial Secretary, in reference to the improvements that have been effected at the bar, will best explain its present state, and the description of vessels it will admit into the Port. "Port, 6th July, 1847.
During my stay at Djidda, scarcely a day passed without some arrival by sea, chiefly from Yembo and Cosseir; and there were constantly forty or fifty ships in the harbour. An officer, entitled Emir al Bahhr, acts as harbour-master, and takes from each ship a certain sum for anchorage. This was an office of considerable dignity in the time of the sherif, but it has now sunk into insignificance.
Au revoir, as they say in this whisker-ridden country." Boulogne harbour was crowded with grimy tramp steamers, fishing boats, and a rabble of plebeian harbour craft, but the yacht "Starlight" was not in view. Rivière inquired at the office of the harbour-master, and was informed that a telegram promised the yacht's arrival by nightfall.
He found that Captain Bunbury, the chief harbour-master, had gone away in the buoy-boat, a small schooner called the 'Apollo', so he hired a whale-boat, and overtook the schooner off the Red Bluff. When he went on board he spoke to Ruffles, master of the schooner, and said: "Is the harbour-master aboard? I want to see him." "Yes, but don't speak so loud, or you'll wake him up," replied Ruffles.
Our plan is to appear ahead of her, steaming to the northward and westward to meet her, in fact, instead of overtaking her; and the proper time to do this will be about a quarter of an hour before sunset. I take it that she is steaming at about the pace which my friend the harbour-master allowed her that is to say, about eight knots.
They eyed him with silent encouragement. "Why don't they act like it, then?" repeated number two, who, being a man of few ideas, was not disposed to waste them. Captain Nugent and his friend turned to the harbour-master to see how he would meet this poser. "They mostly do," he replied, sturdily. "Treat a seaman well, and he'll treat you well."
"Will you tell me what you intend, sir?" demanded his lordship, quivering with anger. "Just to make myself and my lads here safe from Colonel Bishop's gallows. I've said that I trusted to your gallantry not to leave him in the lurch, but to follow him hither, and there's a note from his hand gone ashore to summon the Harbour-Master and the Commandant of the fort.
When the little stout pilot was pacified, and unanimity restored, the Harbour-Master, a man of immense stature, and great personal beauty, came up to me, and said, with an excellent dialect, in the English language, "I could perceive, Sir, your vessel was an English one, the moment she weathered that point; for none but a British vessel could dash along in such style as yours did."
Should a prisoner have any call in town, whether of pleasure or affairs, he has but to unhook the window-shutters; and if he is back again, and the shutter decently replaced, by the hour of call on the morrow, he may have met the harbour-master in the avenue, and there will be no complaint, far less any punishment. But this is not all.
Taylor was only a poor fisherman, and when he dared to make love to the pretty daughter of the Ramsgate Harbour-Master, that exalted individual, who entertained for the girl social ambitions in which fishermen's shacks had no place, resented his advances as insufferable impertinence. A word to Lieut. Leary, his friend at the local rendezvous, did the rest.
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