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Updated: June 7, 2025
The incident in question opened in Bristol river, with the boarding of a merchant-man by a tender's gang. As they came over the side Broadfoot met them, blunderbuss in hand.
The rough old sea-dog of the Haddock and Vernon period, who had been a privateer; and who still, as skipper of a merchant-man, when he visits a friend or gallants the ladies, decorates himself with a scarlet coat, cockade, and sword; who gives vent to a kind of Irish howl when his favourite kitten is suffocated under a feather bed; and falls abjectly on his knees when threatened with the dreadful name of Law, is a character which, in its surly good-humour and sensitive dignity, might easily, under more favourable circumstances, have grown into an individuality, if not equal to that of Squire Western, at least on a level with Partridge or Colonel Bath.
I leaned on a tussock of grass, with Rob's head upon my knee, and there as we sat alone in peace in the wilderness, even there we saw suddenly thrown upon the waters in front of us the shadow of that great man over yonder, who had scrawled his name in red letters across the map of Europe. There was a ship coming up with the wind, a black sedate old merchant-man, bound for Leith as likely as not.
Bets were made between the captains, and the crews took it up in their own way; but as she was bound to leeward and we to windward, and merchant captains cannot deviate, a trial never took place; and perhaps it was well for us that it did not, for the Ayacucho had been eight years in the Pacific, in every part of it, Valparaiso, Sandwich Islands, Canton, California, and all, and was called the fastest merchant-man that traded in the Pacific, unless it was the brig John Gilpin, and perhaps the ship Ann McKim, of Baltimore.
No one interfered with us; and we were talking eagerly about the probability of falling in with an English man-of-war, or of making our way home on board a merchant-man, when we suddenly felt a shock, but not of sufficient force to throw us off our feet. "The ship has struck!" exclaimed Boxall. "What are the fellows about? They ought to clew up everything, and she might be got off."
At length, good Words, and a Bowl of Punch the Captain made for each Mess, laid this Storm for a while; but that which at first pacify'd these turbulent Spirits, was what blew them up again: For when they were all drunk, the Boatswain said the Captain was a Coward, and took a Merchant-man for a Man of War: That his Fear had magnified the Object, and deprived them of the Means of either taking others, or defending themselves.
It is a great mistake to suppose that the working man, any more than the merchant-man or the clerk-man, or the tradesman, is ardently desirous of learning. But there will always be n few; and especially there are the young who would fain, if they could, make a ladder of learning, and so, as has ever been the goodly and godly custom in this realm of England, mount unto higher things.
First our stately ship suddenly burst upon the astonished gaze of two European gentlemen taking their evening walk, who, seeing her crowded with the eager faces of men ready for the fray, took off their hats and cheered wildly; then the respectable skipper of a merchant-man worked himself into a state of frenzy, and made us a long speech, which we could not hear, but the violence of his gesticulations left us in little doubt as to its import; then his crew took up the cheer, which was passed on at intervals until the thunder of our 68-pounders drowned every other sound; shattered the windows of sundry of the 'palaces; attracted a crowd of spectators to the Maidan, and brought the contents of Fort William on to the glacis.
Captain Condent was a blaspheming corsair from the wicked town of New York, who had left that port as quartermaster on a merchant-man and next morning had appeared with a battery of pistols and had calmly taken the ship out of the hands of her officers.
There is a story current among seamen, though I know not how true it is, that it was checked owing to the lieutenant of an English man-of-war being drugged and carried on board an American merchant-man. However, there is now, or was but lately, a boarding-house keeper in San Francisco whose Christian or first name had been abolished in favour of "Shanghai."
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