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Updated: May 15, 2025
After he had noted these and the German, French, and English merchants in white duck, and the Dutch man-of-warsmen, who look like ship's stewards, the French marines in coal-scuttle helmets, the British Jack-tars in their bare feet, and the native Kaffir women, each wrapped in a single, gorgeous shawl with a black baby peering from beneath her shoulder-blades, he would decide, by using the deductive methods of Sherlock Holmes, that he was in the Midway of the Chicago Fair.
Men-of-war and privateers were constantly coming in with rich prizes, whose cargoes added greatly to the wealth of the city; the streets were crowded with blacks carrying bales of all descriptions to the stores; merchants' clerks were hurrying to the quays to superintend the unloading of vessels, and naval and military officers were moving about in all directions; the seamen on leave were rolling here and there, shouting forth their sea ditties; while black and brown women with baskets of fruit and vegetables were standing at the corners of the streets, often surrounded by a party of Jack-tars, who quickly emptied them of their contents.
And let us impress on you, reader, that the band of the somethingth Regiment was something to be proud of! This brought numerous friends to the "Officers' House," and great numbers of soldiers and Jack-tars to the various rooms of the Institute.
"But on this grand opening day the men came down in hundreds, and a great surprise some of them got especially the sceptical among them. The entrance was decorated with palms. At the further end of the reading-room the trophy of Union Jacks and the Royal Standard, which you see there now, was put up by a band of Jack-tars who had come to help us as well as to see the fun.
I'd bin cruisin' about her off an' on for a considerable time, tryin' to make up my mind to go into action, an' screwin' my courage up to the stickin' pint by recallin' all the fine sentiments that has carried Jack-tars through fire an' smoke, shot and shell since the world began `England expects every man to do his dooty, `Never say die, `Hookey Bunkum, an' such like.
Nothing foaled o mortal mare can collar that chestnut, once she's away. So I bangs my hat down, catches the old orse by the ead, and rams him down the hill for Newhaven." He began to push at the oars again. "For there's two roads to Birling Gap, my lad: one by land, and one by sea. We've missed him by land. Now we'll see what the Jack-tars can do." The boy said nothing.
It was these iron-clad gunboats that used to rouse the anger of the doughty Admiral Farragut, who persisted in declaring them cowardly engines of destruction, and predicted that as they came into use, the race of brave fighting jack-tars would disappear. On one occasion the admiral was ploughing his way up the Mississippi above New Orleans, in one of Commodore Bailey's river iron-clads.
Twenty-five vessels laden with coal had sailed the day before. On the placid waters of the bay, under the frowning walls of Fortress Monroe, floated fifty men-of-war and transports. The day was clear, and the breeze brisk, and the hearts of the jolly jack-tars bounded within them as they thought of escaping from the long inactivity of a season in port.
When he considered himself to have acquired the necessary information, he fitted out two vessels at his own expense: the Swan, of twenty-five tons, commanded by his brother John, and the Pasha of Plymouth, of seventy tons. The two vessels had as crew seventy-three jack-tars, who could be thoroughly depended on.
His brow was a countless mass of ever-varying wrinkles, which gave to his sly visage an aspect of humorous anxiety that was highly diverting and all the more diverting when you came to know that the man had not a spark of anxiety in his composition, though he often said he had. His dress, like that of most Jack-tars, was naturally rugged, and he contrived to make it more so than usual.
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