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We are left to gather his feelings about Oxford and the system pursued there, from casual references in his critical writings; and these are uncomplimentary enough. He praised a comparison of the Universities to "enormous hulks confined with mooring-chains, everything flowing and progressing around them," while they themselves stood still.
Wharf rats, a foot long hundreds of them going up the mooring-chains, the cable to the dock, the lines, the fenders, and the gangway, some over the rail, others in through the mooring-chocks. The watchman was quiet, perhaps asleep; so, perhaps, every rat that went aboard got into the hold. I signed on next morning.
The seamen having, therefore, some spare time, were occasionally employed during fine weather in dredging or grappling for the several mushroom anchors and mooring-chains which had been lost in the vicinity of the Bell Rock during the progress of the work by the breaking loose and drifting of the floating buoys.
The seamen having, therefore, some spare time, were occasionally employed during fine weather in dredging or grappling for the several mushroom anchors and mooring-chains which had been lost in the vicinity of the Bell Rock during the progress of the work by the breaking loose and drifting of the floating buoys.
The third season was commenced early in the spring of 1809. The first works consisted in laying down mooring-chains with floating-buoys, for mooring the stone-lighters and praam-boats; the beacon was also fitted out as a more permanent residence for the workmen, in order to lessen the amount of sickly motion which is so distressing to landsmen in a rough sea.
But it was not until the steamer had given them three Manila and two steel hawsers, four weak too weak mooring-chains, and a couple of old and frayed warping-lines, that the coming up to the bow of an anchor-chain of six-inch link told them that the end was near, that the steamer had exhausted her supply of tow-lines, and that her presumably sane skipper would not give them his last means of anchoring the other chain.
Great rusty iron rings and mooring-chains, capstans, and fragments of old masts and spars, choke up the way; hardy rough-weather boats, and seamen's clothing, flutter in the little harbour or are drawn out on the sunny stones to dry; on the parapet of the rude pier, a few amphibious-looking fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling over the wall, as though earth or water were all one to them, and if they slipped in, they would float away, dozing comfortably among the fishes; the church is bright with trophies of the sea, and votive offerings, in commemoration of escape from storm and shipwreck.
The duty at that time yielded some 21,000 pounds a year, and was commuted for a perpetual annuity of 19,000 pounds, payable out of the Consolidated Fund. In like manner the Duke of Grafton was indemnified in 1806 for loss incurred through the resumption of the "prisage and butlerage" of wines; nor was Lord Gwydir permitted to suffer by the compulsory surrender of his lease in the mooring-chains.
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