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Updated: June 21, 2025
Some property having been left to the two brothers, or to the survivor of either, Eben had been compelled to make inquiries respecting his long unrecognised uncle, and had thus been induced to pay the visit to Portsea which had produced such disastrous results to Mary and me. The house and furniture and wherry were sold, and directly afterwards he disappeared from Portsmouth.
Thus it was that I came to embark at the Common Hard at Portsea, and had to beat down the harbour. "Do you think as how you'd know your ship when you sees her, sir?" asked old Bob, with a twinkle in his one eye, for he had discovered my very limited amount of nautical knowledge, I suspect. "It will be a tough job to find her, you see, among so many."
And yet such, literally such and no better, is the refinement of modern England; such, and no better, is the civilization of our great towns. Such I fear from what I am told, is the civilization of Southsea, beside the barbarism to be found in Portsea close at hand.
As the ship had been only two or three days in commission, few seamen had as yet entered; but shortly afterwards they came on board in sufficient numbers; and I have sometimes ascribed the facility with which we got the ship manned, not a little to the attractive agency of the diverting vagabond, recently come from town, the fame of whose tricks soon extended over Portsea; such as catching hold of the end of the sail-maker's ball of twine, and paying the whole overboard, hand over hand, from a secure station in the rigging; or stealing the boatswain's silver call, and letting it drop from the end of the cat-head; or his getting into one of the cabin ports and tearing up the captain's letters, a trick at which even the stately skipper can only laugh.
Looked at in this way, Charles Dickens' education, however untoward and unpromising it may often have seemed while in the process, must really be pronounced a prize of value quite inestimable. His father, John Dickens, held a clerkship in the Navy Pay Office, and was employed in the Portsmouth Dockyard when little Charles first came into the world, at Landport, in Portsea, on February 7, 1812.
In a couple of hours Portsmouth, Gosport and Portsea had ceased to be towns. They were only areas of flaming ruins; but at last the ammunition gave out, and Castellan was compelled to signal the See Adler to shape her course for Bracklesham Bay in order to replenish the magazines. They reached the bay, and descended at the spot where the Leger ought to have been at anchor.
There were lively times in the Portsea lodging-house, next morning. The many last small tasks that crowd upon the out-going voyager had kept even Hope too busy to talk much, and she at length stopped breathlessly, to cry, as she jammed her dressing-sacque and tooth-brush into an already over-crowded bag, "Dear me! Faith, have you a spot for my hair-brush?
He knighted several officers, others received promotion, and sums were distributed among the dockyard artisans, the crews of his yacht, the poor of Portsea and Gosport, and the prisoners confined for debt in Portsmouth jail. Another voyage was undertaken to the North Pole in the hopes of discovering a passage to the East Indies.
From the front of the well-known inn, the "Keppel's Head," the portrait of the brave old admiral, which I always looked at with awe and admiration, thinking what a great man he must have been, gazed sternly down on us as we made our way along the Common Hard of Portsea towards the water's edge.
The next morning I bade farewell to my dear Aunt Milly and Captain Bridgeman, received a very ungracious salute from granny, who appeared to think, as she kissed me, that her lips were touching something poisonous, and set off with my mother in the coach to Portsmouth. We arrived safe at Portsmouth, and my mother immediately took lodgings on the Common Hard at Portsea.
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