 Dedication, Preface, and Chapter 1 of A Water Biography by Robert C. Leslie This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Dedication to my dear wife in affectionate remembrance of many days of self-denial spent at sea with me. Preface, boating and yachting men may be roughly divided into two classes. Those who go to sea for the sake of competitive sport afloat and those who do so for love of it. Their boat and all that moves on the waters. A sporting yachtsman's craft is worthless to him after. Owing to some change of racing measurement, she fails to end a season with a string of prize flags from top mess to bow sprit and boom ends. While as soon as the racing season is over, he quits the sea for the moors and stubbles. And though sometimes, as he grows older, a racing yachtsman here and there tones down into a cruiser, the line which marks him from the cruising yachtsman becomes, I think, more distinct every year. What may be called the seamanship of large racing craft and the watermanship of smaller ones is usually left to their skipper and crew. But much of a cruising yachtsman's pleasure consists in acquiring some knowledge of the details of handling his craft and of the seamanship required for making passages. While the smaller boating man, who loves it as an art, is equally desirous of becoming proficient in what may be termed watermanship, by which I do not mean the mere steering a boat under sail, but the art of placing her in varying conditions of wind, weather, and tide, alongside a landing place or quay, boarding a vessel at anchor, picking up a mooring, getting underway, or bringing up in or from a crowded anchorage, mooring and legging up his boat on a hard for a scrub, etc. Beachwork, again, is another distinct form of watermanship, and may be described as the art of launching or landing in a boat under sail or through a surf. Little, of course, can be taught or learnt about such matters in books, but people like to read of the accidents and experiences of others in any art they care for. I have, therefore, in the following pages of water biography jotted down among other personal experiences one or two actual squeaks or shaves met with during a boating life of fifty years, hoping they may have some interest for the rapidly increasing number of those who delight in boat sailing and watermanship and the healthy tacks on mind and muscle entailed by it. Robert C. Leslie, Southampton, June 11, 1894 Chapter 1 I am put into salt water, make a voyage to America, come back, return to London, want of education, early pursuits there, learn to swim, don't run away to sea, why? Explore the river Lee with a cousin, don't get drowned in it, milk maids replaced by savages on its banks, under fire on the Lee, a council of war, some dangers attending being able to swim, a drift seaword, under a boat's bottom, I join a rowing club, race with a putney steamer and result, ram a coal barge in an outrigger, an honest owner, etc. Chapter 2 I was born a cockney, footnote one. When this took place in 1826, there were genuine English cockneys. Englishmen now are born all over the world, while London has so extended that it is not easy to be born a cockney even there today. And first introduced to salt water by a stout strong old lady of Brighton in a blue surge suit, who took me by main force from the top step of a little rickety bathing machine, round which small waves were rolling, and selecting one of unusual size in fury, this sourced me under it. This she repeated three times, after which I scrambled into the machine again, with eyes, nose, and ears full of salt foam and sand. I was about four years old at this time, and remember seeing nothing of the sea afterwards until four years later, I crossed the Atlantic for the first time in the Black X sailing packet, Philadelphia, and after six weeks at sea was told that a low line of flat grey cloud on the horizon ahead of the ship was American land, Long Island shore. Matters over which I had no control led six months later to another delightful trip over the sea in the same ship, and in three weeks to a sight of the chalk cliffs of the Isle of White. I have no recollection of any storm or nautical incident of importance during either of these voyages, nor even of sea sickness, and was only sorry to change the pleasant deck of the little five hundred ton packet for the outside of the Portsmouth coach for London. Boys, however, never look far ahead, and a sail from the ship at Spithead to Portsmouth in a small cutter-rigged tender consoled me greatly at the time. Having now crossed the Atlantic twice in a full-rigged ship, I of course felt at once competent to take charge of anything in the shape of a boat. This was sixty years ago, and I have held that opinion ever since, and seldom missed the chance of doing so whenever one was offered. Luckily for me, being the eldest of a large and rapidly increasing family, I had the advantage of a judiciously intermittent and well-neglected education, and this period of my life appears now to me to have been one long half-holiday, spent on the banks of suburban ponds and canals, sailing homemade model boats, or bathing and catching stickle-backs and gudgeon. Nothing, I think, tends more to habits of self-reliance than an early and well-neglected education. But my Pickwickian tastes for the margins of the Hampstead and other suburban ponds led my father about this time to try and add the art of swimming to my other desultory studies, and I was handed over to an old boatman of Margate who professed to teach me this noble art at the rate of two shillings a lesson. This was a mistake, for perhaps if the job had been a contract one, I might have learned something even from this experienced old expert. As it was, I really first learned to keep my head above water in the Paddington Canal, finishing my education in the old, whole-born baths, and that then deep, treacherous lake, the Serpentine. According to all ordinary or well-regulated water biographies, I ought now to at once have a comfortable home and indulgent parents, and stow myself away on board a collier-brig, or on what I should then have liked better, one of the great brown-sailed Thames barges. The course of true sea-love should, I know, run in this direction, but even love of the sea does not always run smoothly, and in my case was probably marred by a too early personal observation of some aspects of real life on the ocean-wave before the mast, so that even after a long course of study of my Robinson Crusoe and other nautical fiction, I never remember at any time being tempted to leave my base of operations on good family bread and butter by running away to sea. And thus it came to pass that at this time my most ambitious nautical rovings were limited to short inland explorations of that cockney hunt, the River Lee, where, near Upper Clapton, in the company of my cousin, a blue-coat boy of intensely nautical tastes, I spent what little pocket-money I got in the hire of crank-skiffs, well-found not only in skulls, but mast, sail, and rudder. There were many other places nearer home where boats might be hired, but none where the owner of one fitted with mast and sail could be persuaded to trust it in the hands of enterprising youngsters of our experience. Most of the craft on the lee were owned by two old watermen brothers of the suggestive name of Solomon, and the chartering of one was always a serious matter, which my cousin, being a city-man and a year older than myself, always negotiated. He was also the actual owner of a watch, which together with the combined cash in our pockets remained in the hands of the Solomon's as a form of insurance upon their craft, or guarantee for the hire of her in case of accident too, or desertion of her by the crew. General holidays, or long summer Sunday afternoons, were usually selected for these cruises, but then, for the outlaw of a shilling each, we were able to enjoy three or more hours of this kind of boating, and as both of us were agreed that sailing, whenever practicable, was the only mode of progression for boys of our nautical ability, a windy day was always chosen for them. It was upon one of these early cruises that I first nearly came to grief in a boat, by being carried by a strong current under the great water-wheels of certain mills. Just above these mills was a low bridge, where in turning our boat, she drifted, and we got her jammed broadside across it with the full strength of the stream, running under her in such a way that any movement on our part to clear her caused her to heel over toward it until the water poured into her on that side. We at once saw that in a few seconds, if we capsized, we should be under those mill wheels, and this, I believe, made us keep quiet and think what was best to be done. Luckily our mast was not up, and the bridge was wide enough, if only we could get the boat round, head to stream to use our skulls under it, so that, keeping very carefully amid ships in the boat, and pulling the bow or with the after one ready the moment her head was round, after a few anxious moments we got out of this awkward fix and clear of what we called that beast of a bridge with the strong dark stream below it. Divided councils, I think, led to her getting a thwart the bridge, and before we were clear of it, the importance of one directing head in cases of emergency became evident to us both. This incident, however, had the effect of much increasing our confidence, not only in small boats, but ourselves. Because we both felt that it did not happen through any fault of the boat, while as to our share in it the truth of the saying was evident that it takes a good man to keep out of trouble, but a better one to get out of it. Sunday boating in those days was looked upon by people who did not indulge in it as a sureer row to ruin than it is today, while at the end of the journey it was then easier to get hung than now. We were therefore both logically safer from a watery grave than boys of the present day. While to save any anxiety in home circles all such expeditions were really carried out under sealed orders, that is on the sly. In those days the River Lee was for the most part a quaint silvery stream, which quite near London still wandered among cow slip banks and green meadows, as it did when old Isaac Walton and his scholar Venator angled in it for trout and chub. Walton's milkmaid, Maudlin, in her mother head, however, long vanished from its shores, their place being filled in our time by dark native races engaged in the discharge of brick and coal barges. Harmless savages enough on working days, but I shall not easily forget one Easter morning afternoon when a gang of twenty or more of them had gathered on two barges moored to a coal wharf, and under the influence of much strong Waltham ale, etc., were killing time between their drinking-boats by discharging coal not onto the wharf, but into every passing pleasure-boat. On our outward voyage the coast was clear of them, and no doubt they were then all busy over pots and pipes. But on our return, the moment we opened the bend of the river where the barges lay, we saw what was in store for us. So long as a boat had females on board, even these light-hearted ruffs let her pass with some innocent river-chaff and a handful of coal-dust. But whenever a boat manned only by lads-hove in sight, they poured a heavy broadside of lumps of coal into her as long as she was within range. This blockade had to be run, and a council of war therefore was held on board our skiff as to the best tactics to be followed. We had observed among the boats on the river that day that the crews of many consisted of boys or lads-hove, though not able to return the coalies' material fire for lack of ammunition, were well supplied both as to quality and quantity with strong below-bridge slaying, the effect of which was rather to concentrate the coalies' fire on these boats. After resting, therefore, on our oars for a time out of range, we determined to start under convoy of one of these boatloads of young ruffs, on the principle that a big lump of coal could not pitch into more than one boat at any time. We were lucky in the selection of a very foul-mouthed convoy, closely following which, until abreast the coalies' battery, we put on a spurt, and with faces toward the shower of black missiles, were quickly out of range, with nothing more than one bruised finger and a splashing throne on board by some large lumps of coal which just missed our boat. Many smaller ones fell into her and were carried back as trophies of war to the brothers Solomon, who merely remarked that they would help bile the cattle, which stood upon a rusty old boat-stove in their riverside cabin. But the playful conduct of these natives of the banks of the Lee gave us rather a shake as to the pleasures of boating upon it on a general holiday. Being able to swim, of course, gives confidence in the water, but after a long boating experience I am inclined to think that at times the mere fact of being a swimmer leads to risks from which a non-swimmer would be exempt. I do not, of course, mean danger incurred by jumping into deep water to save another's life. One I have never personally had the honour of running. But in the course of over fifty years boating, I am able to recall only one case in which I can really say that I owed my life to being able to swim. While I know of more than one risk which would never have been run had I been unable to do so. The first happened through my early preference for a plunge from a boat in place of a sea-bath from the shore. I had with me a younger brother and had got the loan of a punt or dingy belonging to one of the cow's pilots when lodging with him or rather his misses at Bembridge. And after rowing down to deep water in the mouth of that little haven and finding the tide taking us faster seaward than I expected, I threw over the boat's painter with a small grapnel attached to keep her in place while I undressed. This would have been all right had I weighed anchor again before going overboard, which boylike, of course, I did not do. With the result that when, after some easy strokes down tide, I endeavored to regain the boat, I found that, spite of hard swimming, I was steadily and surely drifting away from her toward the sea. My brother was a mere child, so that I was practically alone, and I remember feeling more bothered as to what he would do left alone in the boat than about myself. But with a rapidly widening channel to right and left, there was little time to think and less to waste in a useless struggle against the strong ebb tide. I therefore shaped the course downstream and toward the nearest shore, and after a time to my great relief was able to gain soundings, and the land, though a long way from my boat-clothes and little brother. The rest was easy enough, for after a short repose I had merely to run back along shore until far enough above the boat to regain her with the tide. I need not say that this was my last attempt at a bath from anything anchored in a strong tideway. I was at this time a fairly good swimmer above water, but had given little attention to the valuable art of diving and swimming underwater, until bathing one day with some friends from a broad, rather flat-bottom boat off Brighton, I tried to follow an experienced underwater swimmer who dived easily below the boat, coming up on the opposite side, and was much surprised at finding myself firmly jammed up against the boat's bottom and keel in the buoyant salt water. In such a position one cannot take long to decide on what to do, but I must have remained some time under the boat before I cleared myself by placing one foot against her keel as a bearing to strike from, for I felt her lurch from side to side more than once. Caused I found afterwards by my friends on board moving quickly across her to see on which side I would come up. I am not certain now whether it was to starboard or port, but after this first experience of some of the sensations of a keel-haul, I took care, next time I tried it, to dive deep enough to allow me time to turn and swim under the boat clear of her bottom. A bold first-rate swimmer bathing from the shore constantly runs greater risks than one who dare not venture far beyond his depth, or than anyone bathing from an unmoored boat. The strong swimmer will dive through the first line of breakers and start seaward for a quarter of a mile or more beyond them, at which distance in rough water he is nearly lost to sight and, if seized by cramp, quite helpless. Again, in all ordinary boat accidents, people find themselves not only in the water, but their clothes, and it is not so much the weight of these which impedes a swimmer as the greatly increased surface friction which reduces his speed almost to nothing. The truth is that in such cases swimming should mainly be relied on as a means of support in the water, aided, whenever possible, by sticking to the boat, or if she goes down to anything remaining afloat. I once picked up a man in Aerith Reach who had capsized his sailing canoe. There was a strong wind and tide, but I felt pretty sure of him because I saw that he had an arm over the bottom of his canoe. After hauling him into my boat I asked him by chance whether he could swim, and was not a little surprised at the answer of, not at all. He was a small, delicate-looking person, and there was quite a little boiling sea on where he was capsized. On the other hand he was a teetotaler, which accounted perhaps for the quiet nerve he showed in difficulties. I have also never forgotten the fate of a strong young swimmer who with a friend was swamped on a stormy dark evening in an old-fashioned pair or racing worry. The wind was against the tide and the water so rough that their boat took in wave after wave until she rolled over with them in crossing the river above Vauxhall Bridge. The strong swimmer at once got hold of his companion who could not swim, and showed him how to support himself with his arms across the bottom of the boat, and then struck out himself for sure to obtain help. The man on the boat held on until picked up below the bridge by a waterman, and at once hurried off to his boat club at Westminster, expecting to find his friend there. Nothing, however, was heard of him again until his body was recovered a fortnight later. This sad incident is fixed in my memory, because shortly after it I joined the club to which this boat belonged, and heard of it first on board her on a windy night near where it happened. This club's racing worry, or inrigged pair or, was then considered the fastest boat of her kind on the river, and I may say that it was in her under the able teaching of an older member that I first learned to really pull an or. The headquarters of London boat clubs were then at Searle's, near Westminster Bridge, and many young men engaged all day in town, met on summer evenings for a poll up to Putney and Mack. Ours was an old-fashioned city club. Real watermen then plied on the Thames, and like them our uniform was a single-breasted, long-waisted blue cloth coat, with upright collar and a wide skirt set in pleats around the waist. As the evenings grew short in autumn, our return trips from Putney were mostly after dark, and the club worry, which was nearly always at our disposal, being rather a low-ticklish craft, we had to be careful in her when crossing the wider reaches of the river from point to point to avoid filling her in lumpy water. On all these trips during daylight, we of course tried speed with every decent pair or four-ord boat we fell in with, also with the old-fashioned river steamers, which we could hold easily for a short time. But in one of these spurts just below Putney Bridge, while keeping too close to a steamboat to speak some members of our club on board her, a big swell, not one of our club, ran over the wary's bow and filled her up to the thwarts. The following one swamped her, and though we contrived to keep her right side up under us, we had to get out into the river as soon as we reached Soundings, under a fire of chaff from our friends, and drag her to shore before we could empty her and re-embark. Out-rigged boats had then only just come into fashion, and our club did not own an out-rigged pair or, so that whenever my friend and I wished to practice in one, we had to hire the boat. Being the heavier and longer man, I always pulled the stroke, or after-or, and had, therefore, little to do with the pilotage of the boat. My companion, however, was a good oarsman and river pilot, so that I was much astonished one evening on a return trip from Putney in one of these hired out-riggers with a strong ebb tide at finding myself on my back in the bottom of the boat, with my feet in the air, and on looking forward to see how in the same position and beyond him a black, bluff-bowed boat into which nearly eighteen inches of the sharp beak of our narrow craft was firmly sticking. This was just below Battersea Bridge, and the first thing I remember doing was sounding with my oar close alongside the boat for a bottom, and finding it to keep that oar stuck up right in the river mud close to the boat, so that she might not slew with the tide and break her nose off in the bow of the barge or a large boat we had rammed. Bow then crawled forward as far as he safely could, and with his oar placed against the planking of the barge, tried to shove our craft astern. She proved, however, to be too firmly wedged, and we at once decided that the only thing to be done was for us to both roll carefully out of her on opposite sides at the same moment, and then try and haul her nose out of the hole. The river here was not quite breast-high, and we had barely got over this very ticklish operation and were wading ashore with the outrigger in order to get into her again when we saw that we had become objects of interest to a grimy-looking person pulling hard against tide in a heavy boat toward the barge. Here, no doubt, was the owner or skipper of the barge. He kept an eye over his shoulder on us between each stroke, but did not waste breath in words until close alongside our boat, when, as he followed us ashore, he opened fire with, A nice afternoon's work you've been and done. We replied at once by asking, What was the damage for the hole in his rotten old barge? And began to think we had to deal with an honest fellow, when, after a moment's thought, he mentioned ten shillings as the very lowest figure what anyone would take for to repair the damage we had done. Pointing out that, to make anything like a job of it, four planks would want shifting. We were in flannels, and the joint contents of our damp pockets was three shillings and six pence. The honest fellow was, however, very civil, and readily took this small installment, saying that with our names and that of our club he was quite satisfied. As it turned out, we never saw or heard anything again of that grimy man, so that perhaps, after all, he had merely a passing interest in the barge, or the hole in her. We were also greatly surprised and relieved on examining the slight brass-bound beak of the outrigger, to find it was hardly scratched, because, being a hired boat, if she had left her nose in the barge, the cost of her repair would have fallen entirely on us, instead of being shared by the club. We never, of course, gave the hole in the barge a second thought. Looking upon her very much as the burglar in punch did, the coal scuttle left by some careless person in the passage of a house, and over which he broke his shins in the dark. Naval experts, who looked to the ram as a means of offense in sea-fights of the future, are welcome to the above practical little experiment, which was made just as related some years before rams or ironclads were thought of. The rather dry, brittle planking of the barge, which was clenched built, was nearly an inch thick, while our speed would be almost eight miles an hour. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Here, in Meet His Captain, I narrowly escape becoming a naval architect. Interview Sir William Simons, his answer. Make a second voyage to America. Learn a little navigation. At sea in sailing ships. A hungry crew. Icebergs. Arrive in New York. Visit Baltimore. An early twin-screw boat. Sea Niagara. Take a shower-bath under it. Return to London. Get hopelessly involved in art. Become a student at the RA. Work there? A sailor's view of the sea, not the popular one. Another trip to New York and back. A winter passage. Ship pooped. Wheel takes charge. Getting down royal yards. Thirty days of van't et un. Hard a port. A near shave. Cod fisherman on the banks. There risks. Force of wind. A deck hatch in the air. A calm after a gale. How I calculated ship's angle of heel. The captain's joke. Return trip of the Hendrick Hudson. How my cousin saw the last of her. It is a curious fact that, though on whatever part of earth I may find myself, I have always selected the first and steepest downhill road, which, steadily followed, surely ends in a river bank or the seashore. That about this period, the watery tide of my biography showed signs of ebbing, and left me for a time aground among the innervating shoals and mudbanks of an artistic career. This was just after I lost the companionship of my sturdy, blue-coated cousin, whose true love of the sea now led to an honest apprenticeship to the captain of a smart little clipper bark of four hundred tons, bound round Cape Horn for certain Pacific ports. She lay in the London docks, and had real gun ports and caronades on a flush upper deck. My cousin was immensely proud of this his first ship, and before joining her, as they say in the Navy, took me down with him to the docks, just to see what a beauty she was. Where we were met by his burly skipper with— Look here, Mr. B., I can't have you a dance and abort my ship in the garb of a gentleman, with your friends, and ants in your pockets. I want you aboard here with me, with your ants in the slush and tarpots. After which, seamen like snub, the skipper turned on his heel, and my cousin and I left him alone in his glory, pacing the afterdeck of his ship. My own desultory education, which was drawing to a close, was now followed by an attempt to obtain a birth as naval draftsman in a government yard. With a view to which I received, through a friend of my father, an introduction to Sir William Simons, then surveyor of the Navy, who at once politely told me that appointments of that kind were all strictly reserved for relatives of those who had held similar births for generations, adding that to give one to an outsider, even if it were to be his own nephew, would bring a hornet's nest about his ears. Many a time since then have I blessed Sir William, or I should say, the good old conservativism of his department. For had I unluckily got that birth, I must certainly have lost what wits I ever had in striving to solve that hopeless problem, the design of a modern ironclad which should fulfill a fourth part of the conditions required of her. Sir William Simons was the last of our real old sea-going and sea-keeping ship designers, and it must have been hard lines for him to see his noble fleet of sailing cruisers converted one after another into bad screw steamers, or raised down to mere harbour defence ships, just when he had reduced the art of naval construction to a system, in which each class of vessel from a revenue-cutter upward was to be as permanent in type as the specimens in a case of butterflies. It was in 1841 as I continued to busy myself in the study and construction of models of ships and boats, both on paper and in other material, that a friend gave me a passage on board a ship of which he was part owner and captain. This voyage was made chiefly with a view to a look at the ship-building yards of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and thus I found myself one bright morning afloat in a fine new American ship, bound for New York, with nothing to do and plenty of time to do it in. I was now old enough, however, to pick up some knowledge of handling a square-rigged ship, and under the practical instruction of her captain, to take and work out from an observation the latitude and longitude. Not, as he said, that I was likely to ever want such knowledge, but that it was a good thing to know the reason why of anything. A westward voyage from London to New York was then rarely made even by the smartest sailing ship in less than thirty days, while five or six weeks was not considered a long passage. But so far as I was concerned, a headwind or a flat calm with the ship building a chapel, or slowly heading round all the points of the compass, was a gain. I had my sketchbook to fall back on, and to me it mattered nothing when day after day our packet was bounding overhead seas, with head north-northwest on one tack and south-southwest on the other. On board a sailing vessel, indeed, life at sea is seldom long of a monotonous character, especially in the North Atlantic, where more than one day of calm is rare. Continual change in the strength and direction of the wind entails frequent trimming of yards and taking in or shaking out reefs, and when, after standing for a few days on one tack, the wind draws more and more ahead. There is quite a bustle on deck at the word, call the watch to tack ship, after which the long, steady heel of everything over to port is changed for a list to starboard. And when this occurs at night, all those below in a thwart-chip bunks find themselves with their heels higher than their heads, unless they rouse out and shift end for end. At the same time, unfastened cabin doors on the lee side all fly open, and those on the weather side shut with a bang, and remain obstinately closed with one or two heavy pieces of loose baggage piled against them. We had a pleasant and uneventful passage. One calm day was spent rolling in the company of a small bark, until, as the two vessels drew nearer and nearer together, a small speck of a boat was lowered from her, man by four swarthy-looking fellows who pulled alongside our ship, and begged for a bag of potatoes and a little fresh biscuit. They were ninety days out from Calcutta. As we neared the banks of Newfoundland, we spent another calm day in the company of several large, steep islands of ice, and some small cod-fishing schooners. Soon after which, about two hundred miles from Sandy Hook, we fell in with a brightly painted white, red, and green pilot schooner, out of which we took a dapper-looking little man, who handed about among the passengers some New York papers about a week old, together with the news that the yellow flag was up in many streets on a count of smallpox. After we got inside Sandy Hook, our handy little ship was accompanied by a squat-shaped tug. But as the wind was fair, she did not require her assistance, and only clued up her mane and four topsoils just before she glided into her berth, alongside of Peck's slip, at the bottom of Number Something Street. There I left my friend and his ship, and while she was unloading and lading again for London, I spent some weeks among the shipping ports of the eastern states. American shipping and wooden shipbuilding was at that time making rapid strides, and all the slips between the wooden jetties round east and north rivers were full of smart-looking, square-yarded sailing-craft bound to all parts of the world. Iron had not yet entered the soul of oak, elm, and hemp. The great western and a few other English cunard paddle-boats had, it is true, begun to interfere in the passenger trade on board the old sailing-liners, and, as my friend the packet-captain said, you might get a cross in one, but if you wanted to make sure you'd better take your passage in one of his ships. The most interesting American port to me was Baltimore. In going there from Philadelphia a night was spent on board a canal boat, or steamer, fitted with twin propellers under each quarter, after the fashion of our modern battleships, her two little screws being driven by an old railway, or, as the Yankees called it, a locomotive engine. We crossed the upper part of Chesapeake Bay in her, and I shall never forget the night in her narrow, crowded cabin, which, though little over six feet high, was a three-decker as to tears of temporary sleeping-shells. Or how, when these were all rapidly stowed away, in the morning her passengers, disposed of a breakfast of fried pigs' liver and sausages, supplied to them at an almost nominal price. Baltimore was then the headquarters of the builders of fast schooners, some of which were still engaged in trade between American southern ports and the west coast of Africa. And I see that the round, spoon-shaped bow of these Baltimore clippers has been revived in several modern racing yachts. I was, of course, not allowed to leave the States without making a pilgrimage to Niagara. It was then a long steamboat and railway journey of four days or more, the pace of the train never exceeding sixteen miles an hour. The line cut through a narrow lane between the primeval forest, the tall bare stems standing in dank, boggy ground so thickly that there was hardly room to swing an axe among them. While even the few improved lots were cumbered with stumps three or four feet high, round and among which the plow had to be driven. On the Canadian shore of the falls the celebrated table-rock had not yet fallen, and I made a sketch of the great horseshoe fall from it. The vibration of this overhanging shelf felt exactly like that on the after-deck of a fast screw steamer. Near it a spiral wooden stair, built round the tall stem of a great fir tree, led down to the cave of the winds, and from there by means of a narrow ledge cut in the rock one could pass two hundred feet or more behind the horseshoe fall. This was something more than a damp expedition, and a bathing suit and sow-wester were put on before undertaking it in the company of a Negro guide. I do not know whether the fall of table-rock has since altered or interfered with this pathway behind the fall, but in those days a certificate to the effect that he or she had stood two hundred feet behind the great fall was always given. On first entering the passage one had to keep the head bent to avoid being blinded by the heavy shower of spray, but toward the end of it there was little of this, so that I was able to look up and admire the thick sheet of amber water as it shot out from the black shelf of rock overhead, twenty or more feet in front of one, and rushed down until pounded into a mass of foam among enormous blocks of rock eighty feet below the ledge we stood upon. On my arrival in London upon the return voyage certain sketches made at sea were thought too much of, and led in those good old easy days of art to my drifting into it. Born and brought up among pictures and the smell of the painting room, I scarcely recollect the time when I first began to handle a brush. But lest I might become prematurely dexterous in the handicraft of a painter, I now entered as student at the RA, where, under the casual and gentlemanly supervision of the keeper, Jones, RA, I began to slowly acquire the art of stippling, with Italian chalk and breadcrumb, studies from the antique. It took about an hour to reach Trafalgar Square, and by the time I had entrenched myself behind an academy board, and successfully returned a fire of bread pellets from fellow students, and got rather more than a square inch done of one of these antique studies, it was time to pack up my traps and walk home again. These episodes of art study have, however, no place in a water biography, and long before I had made any attempt to rise above them into what is known as the life, I was temporarily rescued from them by my friend the Yankee Skipper, with another offer of a voyage to New York and back. On looking back upon this part of my artistic life, I fear that though, like Turner, born a cockney, I was not born an artist. I never took much pleasure in art, except as a means of recording incidents at sea, which, though of interest to seafaring men, had little or no pictorial value. The sailor's view of the sea and ships has never been the popular one, and judged by my own experience, even members of the RA do not always care for technical accuracy in marine painting, while their public delights more in the sea as seen from the four shores of a seaside watering place than from the deck of a ship. In my various trips across the Atlantic, I had plenty of splendid opportunities of studying the dark, ink-like waves of the North Atlantic, and in many shorter ones between London and Spithead in the same vessels the greener seas and moving ship life of the Channel. Ever since the song of, as we lay all that day, etc., was written, or when our frigates cruised for months at a time blockading the French summer and winter in the Bay of Biscay, the sea there has been credited with or expected to play terrible freaks in that corner of the western ocean, while equinoctial gales have quite a proverbial reputation. But among the old Atlantic packet captains the dreaded bay was merely regarded as a sample of any part of the North Atlantic. Taken at random between the chops of the Channel and Sandy Hook, while as to equinoctial gales these old salts stuck to it that no bad weather meant by them compared with that of the three winter months of December, January and February. And one of these winter passages I was at this time lucky enough to fall in with on board the good ship Hendrick Hudson, in which I left New York November 21st, 1842. She was in charge of a very smart young captain on his first voyage as skipper. The old man, by which name her former captain, my friend of forty, was known, staying to hum with his family for the winter. He was, however, part owner, and on going over the ship side into the tender at Sandy Hook, wished his mate a pleasant voyage, adding, Take care of yourselves, you're deep as a sand barge, which was true, for eighteen feet draft left but five feet freeboard. We started in light easterly headwinds and wet gloomy weather, which, on nearing the banks, suddenly backed in squalls of rain to southwest. Yards were at once squared, and under double reef topsals and forstals we were soon making twelve knots on an easterly course for London Town. Day after day the same fair gale followed the ship, varying a trifle in direction but always increasing in strength, until sail was reduced to a close reefed four topsoil and four topmass stacyle under which we were still able to stagger along with our head to the eastward. Each day, however, the following seas grew bigger, as the increasing wind howled louder through the naked rigging, until now and again one threatened to overtake us, owing to the four topsoil being become by a sea towering a stern, so that for a moment, in spite of four good men at her wheel, the ship would lose steerage way. Everything, however, held on well, and the young captain rejoiced, as he reckoned upon having made over eight hundred miles in four days under that straining strip of canvas. But on the evening of the fourth day, with a heavy thud aft, a larger sea than usual did really overtake us, and splitting two stern deadlights poured six inches deep through the poop cabin, knocking down at the same time the men at the wheel, while at once, as sailors say, took charge. The captain and mate were the first to grapple and arrest that madly spinning helm, and just saved their ship from slewing broadside to the gale, or as it is called, broaching to. After which, in spite of his fair wind, our skipper guessed he'd heave to, and before midnight succeeded in doing so under a main trisel. Though we had to man the capstan on the poop, and take the lee trisel sheet to it before he could get it aft, this weather continued with a few hours' lull between each gale, until near the English coast, so that we counted eight gales in three weeks. Soon after the first of these gales a man was missing, though how or when lost was never known. The ship was not over manned, and her crew had become so fagged out, with double shifts at the wheel, spells at the pumps, and illness, that out of twenty-five all told they now only mustered fifteen fit for work aloft, and with all available hands on the yard, including the mate and carpenter, one topsel only could be furled or reefed at a time. Packetship fashion our royal yards remained aloft, until the weather became almost too bad to send them down. And when, in a lull between two gales, our skipper sent two of his strongest youngsters up the fore and main to gallant mass with this object, the excitement on deck as to the fate of one of them was for some time considerable. The four royal yard was sent down our right in spite of the heavy rolling of the ship, but the lad on the main mast, by some mischance, lost control of his yard, which then, as it swung to and fro from the yard rope, threatened every moment either to break his legs or knock him off the to gallant mast, to which he clung by them. Until it last his skipper, in a voice like a watchman's rattle, fairly yelled at him to come down by the to gallant backstay. He was too good a hand, however, to give in, even to the swearing commands of his captain. If indeed he clearly heard them where he was. And after many unsuccessful efforts and risk of life and limb, he at last secured his yard and sent it down safely on deck. We had among our passengers an old traveler who had crossed the Atlantic twenty seven times under canvas, and his remarks to our skipper on this occasion also when pooped by the sea were not complimentary. We had ten cabin passengers, all men, who passed most of their time below, playing vanthe by lamp light, the skylights being batten down, and the words, I stand, double all around, pay up, became terribly monotonous. But I remember how, on a dark moonless night, when running before one of the strongest gales, a loud quick shout on deck of port, port, hard of port, startled even this group of players, most of whom knew that such an order when scutting before a heavy sea in mid-Atlantic meant something in the way. Even the eternal double all around was hushed for a moment, as the card players paused and listened for the next order. None came, however, and I was alongside the captain on deck, just as a huge black phantom tore past us and disappeared in the darkness astern. Our captain waving his binnacle lantern over our rail in answer to a feeble spark of light, frantically waving to and fro on the deck of the other vessel. I guess that was close enough, Bob, was all the captain said, adding, A miss is as good as a mile. Did you see her? I made her out to be bark-rigged, hove to under a close reef topsel. Ships then carried no lights, and at any risk we, being before the wind, were bound to keep clear of a ship-hove to. Though had we gone over her, it is not likely that a collision that night would have been followed by a trial at law. In the long dark winter nights, low deep vessels like ours must have often crossed one another's course within hail without seeing anything of each other, especially when the seas between them were big enough to hide a ship halfway up her top-mask rigging. While on the banks we constantly ran close by small cod fishermen, mostly French, hove to under a scrap of storm trisel. One such we passed in daylight near enough to look down upon her low deck as she lay like a duck in the hollow of a sea. There was not a soul on watch on her deck, and this gave rise to a yarn of how a Liverpool packet must have run clean over one of these schooners at night, and only discovered it in the morning by finding a small scrap of her upper rigging hanging about the ship's jib-boom. When running before it, the strength of the gusts in a gale are hard to measure. But in one of the hardest of these blows the skipper and I nearly came to grief by being knocked on the head by a heavy hatch, or covering of a wheelhouse aft, which was lifted into the air by the wind and carried forward just clear of our heads, to the break of the poop where we stood holding on to the rail. It struck the deck between us, and cutting a large splinter out of it bounded over into the waist below. The kick-up of the ship's stern on a sea helped the wind no doubt to lift this piece of stout woodwork, which was eight feet long by four feet wide, and fourteen inches high above the wheelhouse deck under which the men steered. It was a strong-made hatch, and so securely fitted over a deep ledge or combing on the deck that it had never been known to move before, even when the ship was pooped by the sea. The short, sudden spells of calm between each breeze often gave far more trouble than the gales. Because continued bad weather had so strained and stretched our nearly new rigging that when, for want of steerage-way, the ship fell broadside into the trough of the sea, she threatened to roll her masts overboard. All that could be done under the circumstances to help the slackened shrouds was to cat-harpen them by means of capstan bars lashed across below the photic shrouds, and get a strain with a tackle upon ropes passed across between these bars from one set of shrouds to the other. Preventor backstays were also rigged to support the top masts. But in a heavy rolling ship these operations were not easily carried out. It being difficult to get about, or even stand on deck, without holding on or taking a turn of rope round one. The captain's joke on me at these times was that my length, six foot two-and-a-half inches, did away with all risk of falling overboard. I might, as he said, veer or pay myself over, but there would be always plenty of time to take a turn of me round something before I left the ship altogether. No doubt this was a very funny joke, because, like judges' jokes, those made by captains are always funny. Besides, it was made one day when, owing to the ship's angle of heel, I found myself dangling from the rail with both feet clear of her deck. Another source of anxiety after a spell of heavy rolling was our cargo of raw turpentine. The big flimsy casks in which it was stowed, working one against another, until quantities of the viscant stuff oozed out of them into the ship's bilges and choked the pumps. Which, as we wanted pumping at least a quarter of an hour each watch, had to be lifted several times during the voyage to clear them of it. And so, after all, in spite of strong and often fair gales, the voyage was a long one. For after making the land, we had baffling winds up Channel, and it was two days after Christmas Day before we hauled into dock. We had lost a man, and all our bulwarks on the port side between the poop and folksal. I met that young skipper in London on his return trip in spring, and he said, Yes, I guess that was a rough time, but you ought to have made the westerly trip back with us in January, when we were seventy days from the Downs to Sandy Hook. And when, after beating down Channel to the lizard, with a cow's pilot on board, the weather being too rough to land him, we fell in with a gale, and after lying to, first on one tack, and then the other for a week, drove back to the Downs. The Hendrick Hudson was built at New York in 1841, in eighty-nine days, and launched ready for sea with spars, etc., all standing. She foundered in Mid-Atlantic with a cargo of rails thirteen years afterwards, my blue-coat boy cousin being then first mate. All hands took to the boats, and were picked up by a passing vessel, and as my cousin said, that was the last I saw of the old Hendrick Hudson. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of A Water Biography by Robert C. Leslie This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 3. I exhibit at the Royal Academy. Get married and moored for a time near London as an artist. But gravitate toward the river at Greenwich. A floating dockyard there. I charter an old boat. The lower thames in those days. I make a studio in a boat. Too late for a tide. Join Waterman's boats in tow of a West India man. Pleasures of towing. Under the boughs of a brig. Save my tide. Cheating the tide. Blackwall Point. Men ashore take an interest in my boat. Discover why, just in time to save her mast. Meet J. W. M. Turner early in life. And in the Royal Academy later. The English merchant seamen of 1842. I quote Shakespeare on tides, but not taking his advice, move my family to Sidmouth. Regret of conscientious RA at this step. How I consoled myself for loss of his friendship. Harry Conant and England's Rose. A fisherman's life on Sidmouth Beach. I build a boat. A rival boat builder. Soon after this trip to New York, my name appeared in the Royal Academy catalog as the painter of a picture called Morning at Sea. And three years later I exhibited a large picture, a deck scene with many figures entitled A Complaint from the Folk Soul. Suggested by Dana's wonderful book Two Years Before the Mast. I was now regularly moored in the London Swim of Artists and known familiarly among them as Bob Leslie. But a far stronger link in my ground tackle was a young wife and home of our own. This, however, was at Blackheath, whence, as all Londoners know, a steep descent leads easily down to the Thames at Greenwich. Following which, just below the hospital, I fell in one day with an amphibious old naval architect who, hermit crab-like, had appropriated and roofed over the derelict hulk of a Margate Hoy. On which he lived, by tinkering up boats and barges, a better trade as most shipbuilders know than building new ones. His floating dockyard was reached by a long plankway projected from the adjoining marsh. While moored in the stream beyond it lay a small, open, spritz sailed pleasure-boat, with a board hanging over her side stating that she was for hire, together with the well-known signal at her masthead that she was for sale. I had formed a plan of establishing a small floating studio on this part of the lower Thames, and here, under my nose, was the exact article. It is true she appeared well stricken in years, but after a survey I concluded that there was enough paint and old tar about her, both inside and out, to hold her together. And that in my trade she might be classed A-1 for the next two months, especially as her owner was ready to let on a repairing lease at a weekly rent of twelve shillings, which included not only all marine stores then on board, but a well-worn bit of chain to which she rode when in port. My objection to the age of this mooring being wisely overruled by her owner, on the ground that a stronger one might lead to her being sunk if fouled by a passing barge, in place of merely breaking a drift. No one today would care to sail on the lower Thames above Arith Reach, and even below it. The river is so crowded with heavy steam traffic, an hour or two before and after high water, that one has to wait some time for a chance of crossing it in a small sailing boat. While scientific arrangements of sewage outfalls, etc., gas and glue works have so changed the flavor of Thames' water between Greenwich and Gravesend, that clothes once wetted with it are not so nice to wear until washed again. Fifty years ago, however, this part of the river had quite a pleasant, tidal, tarry flavor, and more traffic was then carried on under canvas than steam. Fleets of collier briggs, sailing barges, and fishing boats, it is true, filled the river in places, with now and then an East Indian man slowly picking her way among them in tow of a feeble paddle-tug, and there were the old Gravesend Margate and Ramsgate packets. But few of these craft move very fast, when colliers and even small sailing ships worked under canvas through Blackwall Reach, almost to the dock gates, or into the pool below London Bridge. Woolwich and Galleon's reaches were then my favorite cruising and sketching grounds, with now and then an extended trip down to Longreach or into the hope. My plan of operations, when the tide suited, was to drop down the river under sail or paddles with the ebb, and having selected a spot suitable for sketching, to let my boat ground upon a shelving mud flat, after which, as the tide left her, she would sit quietly upright, affording a steady platform for an easel or sketching stool for several hours, or until she floated again with the returning tide. Thus I became, as it were, a kind of artistic tide waiter. One drawback to this arrangement was the loss of the first part of a flood tide on return voyages, and on one occasion, after a longer trip down the river than usual, and making many tax across the lower end of Longreach against a fresh wind, a shrimper in company hailed me with, Why don't you haul down a reef? And on my saying, Because I'm in a hurry, he asked, Why, where are you bound? And being told Greenwich gave me the comforting information that, I should not save my tide, adding, If I was bound up as far as that, I'd get a pluck up a stern of one of them big weasels under steam, alluding to some large merchant men then towing into the reach. The man was right, and I struck my mast at once, and lay by on my oars just clear of the track of the first, a bark-rigged West India man. She had a long train of waterman's skiffs, et cetera, a stern, and throwing my painter to the last of these, I found myself speeding rapidly up the river against the wind, a very pleasant change after thrassing to windward in a dumpy little boat, with spray flying over one at every jump. I have often observed that a state of real content or comfort, either a float or a shore, is rarely allowed us for over half an hour, or, say, the time it takes to smoke a pipe, without some petty matter or person turning up to mar it. And sure enough, I had hardly got through my first pipe, a stern of the bark, then she began to thread her way among a fleet of coal-brigs, beating up the river under sail, in doing which they continually crossed our track. And I soon saw that though the tug and bark took care to keep clear of those lumbering craft, no allowance was made for the string of boats a stern, which were expected to look out for themselves, either by shortening up their tow-lines or letting go altogether. Unluckily, I was the last of the string, and began to foresee an early end to my rapid progress. For one great brig was actually standing across the river in such a way that though she might go clear of the leading boats, she appeared certain to cut off the two last. All the watermen in the boats ahead, of course, took this view, and to make sure of clearing the brig had shortened in their painters until they were close under the West India man's stern. The men in the boat ahead of me were of the Thames pilot-class, and used to close-shaves of this sort. I, of course, was not. And as the great bluff-bows of the brig came nearer and nearer to my little cockle-shell, I asked them, rather anxiously, whether I had not better drop a stern. And the answer of— Well, I don't know. Hold on a bit. You can always let go. Was not altogether satisfactory. With a wave of yeasty foam before them, the brig's bows were within a few yards of us, and I was on the point of casting off my tow-line when the man ahead called out, Hold on! Sheer your boat straight at her, and then aard over to the other way, you'll clear art to all. While I did by a foot, or close enough to fend my boat off the shining, pitching bow of the brig with one hand as I steered with the other. This evolution, however, cost me eighteen pence. For as my boat sheared across and across in the wake of the waterman's skiff, and jumped in the swell, my painter contrived to unship his rudder-yoke, for the loss of which, of course, I had to pay. But I saved my tide, and was home in good time for dinner. In those days single-handed, floating studios were rare upon the lower Thames. And as I lay high and dry on a mud-bank, I was often an object of pity or sarcastic congratulations to passing bargees with— A nice tide, you've been inmate of it, young man, etc. While as a grave-send packet swept past my carefully selected wreck-sting place, even her passengers seemed to understand the helplessness of my position. On the other hand, as the wash from her paddles broke in miniature rollers against my mud-bank, I, in turn, thanked my stars that the floor of my little studio was undisturbed by the swell of passing steamers. It was by carefully following the light-draft Thames barges that I first learned the art of cheating an adverse tide by working the eddies, and how to make the best of a fair one by a mid-channel course from point to point. One fine morning, however, I narrowly escaped coming to grief in making the best of a fair tide around Blackwall Point, which separates Blackwall from Bugsby's Reach. I was running dead before a strong, fair wind and tide, when all at once I found myself an object of unusual interest to a gang of riverside navies ashore. They said nothing, but I was near enough to note that they all stopped work, and looked at my boat as though they expected to see her blow up or go to the bottom. She was not a boat to do anything in a hurry, but at this particular time she was swinging round that low point of Thames mud at something approaching six miles an hour. Some minutes before coming to this point I had noted the masts of a sunken schooner standing almost in midstream, and was about to round the point inside them without seeing the real cause of the men's interest in my boat. In the form of a hauser stretched taut as a bar about three feet above the water from the main mast of the wreck to the shore, where it led to a winch or capstan at which the men were at work, and which they had only stopped just to see whether my boat's mast would go by the board or capsize her on fouling the rope. There was no time to get my mast down, and I had barely brailed up my sail and got out my paddles to get her head to wind before she was within a few yards of the hauser. The tide was running so strongly round the point that pulling hard against it and the wind for some time I only just held my own. My brailed up sail held a lot of wind, and I dare not quit my paddles an instant to lower it by taking down the sprit. But after the first flutter of excitement was over, the sight of those grinning navvies gave me strength, and I found to my relief that slowly but surely I gained a ground, and after fifteen minutes' hard work I was far enough to winward of the wreck to set my sail again and pass outside her and the long rope connection with the navvies ashore, who now lost all interest in me and my boat, and continued their work of riding the sunken vessel, with a view no doubt to her ultimate resurrection. There are, I suspect, few among living artists who made the personal acquaintance of J. W. M. Turner earlier than I did, as a boy, in the year 1834. When staying with my father at Lord Egremont's at Petworth, and I shall never forget how, while watching some trimmers set for pike in the lake in the park, Turner gave me an early lesson in seamanship by rigging scraps of paper torn from his sketchbook upon three little sticks stuck in a bit of board to represent a full-rigged ship, which, to my great delight, he then launched upon the lake. It was sixteen years later that I met him for the last time at the academy, when he did me the honour of walking up to a picture of mine entitled A Sailor's Yarn. And after looking at it for a moment, said, in his strange, laconic way, I see a gull, I like your colour. I have this picture now, and have reproduced it here, as it gives the type of English merchant jack of forty-five years back, as compared with the narrow-chested, round-shouldered steamboat deckhand of today. Thanks to sail drill and training, our naval blue jacket still retains a sailor's figure, while among the crews of our large merchant sailing ships one still meets fine, broad-shouldered Scandinavian seamen who have been trained on board some smart Norwegian brigantine. There are many nice sayings and proverbs about what we ought to do to secure success in life, any one of which strictly followed should no doubt lead to eminence in any career. Shakespeare's, there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, omitted all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. Sounds well here. And I lost that tide, I fear, together with my swim in the art world of London in the year 1854, by moving my goods and chattels by road-van from London to Sidmouth, Devon. This was before Mr. Ruskin's dictum had gone forth, that no landscape painter had any business in London, and this step was much deplored by certain elder brethren of art. Among these was one who said terrible things about talents stowed away, etc. But he was a man who kept a ten-force-power conscience, and as one of the hangers had that very year kindly and conscientiously rejected my picture at the RA, I feel now that he was a true friend, but consoled myself for his loss at the time, or soon afterwards, amongst the Sidmouth fishermen and their boths. The first of these new friends was a weather-beaten-looking man I met as he landed on the beach after his night's work among the crabs and lobsters in a small fourteen-foot boat. He looked worn out and tired as he stepped out of his boat with a heavy basket at his back, and merely dropped a small anchor on the sand, and giving his boat a shoved seaward left her riding to it a few yards offshore. It was a fine spring morning, and I asked him if he were going to see again. He said, No, he was bound home for a nap till high water. I had not been afloat for months, and as she lay offshore head to wind under her mizzen, the little boat looked so inviting that I offered the man a shilling for an hour or two's use of her. He answered in a simple confiding way, Take her, sir, for as long as you like. England's rose was rigged with a lugged sail forward and a mizzen, and I had a delightful cruise in her along shore under the lofty cliffs. Harry Conant and I were friends from that day, and I had the use of his boat for anything I liked to give him, whenever the tide and his work suited. Unlike most of the local fishermen, I found that my new friend had sailed in the coal trade, and began life on board a small west country coaster of which his father was skipper, and that, like all the old school of seamen, he was an accomplished rigger and sailmaker. He was also carpenter enough to keep his own boats in repair besides making his own sails and those for most of the other boats on the beach. The work and life of a fisherman who goes down to sea in small open boats, among the surf rolling in a pond and unsheltered shore, is precarious in more ways than one. His boat must be small and light, yet strong and sea-worthy to stand the weather and heavy strains in launching her through and hauling her out of the surf. While in spells of bad weather he has to pass days of enforced idleness on shore, when day after day the sea rolls in upon his port in a way that defies any attempt to go out to his work from it. All this kind of thing was new to me, but I could have hardly selected a better spot for the study of it than the half-mile of shifting shingle across the valley between Peek Hill and The Ham, or Mouth of the Little Sid under Salcombe Hill. This beach is backed shoreward by a strong sea-wall, built years ago by Rennie, when a pier and harbor was proposed for the place. And the older fisherman said that in preparing a foundation for the western arm of this harbor, masses of rock were blown up and destroyed, which, when they were young, afforded some shelter from south-westerly gales in landing or launching. Now there is none. The sea-wall, though a fine piece of work, causes such variations in the level of the beach, that at times the only retreat for boats after a succession of south-westerly gales is by means of a kind of ladder, upon which they are hauled over the wall to a place of safety. Though after long spells of fine weather, the shingle will lie against the wall within a foot or two of its top. These are some of the difficulties the men have to contend with in rough onshore gales. While owing to the lofty cliffs for miles on either side of the valley, the sea with an offshore wind is vexed with squalls, such as are only met with on mountain lakes. It was on this inhospitable strip of beach that I first really became the owner of a boat. Because I found, as summer came, and with it the mackerel season, that every boat on the beach, conants included, were at sea nearly all day. I did not buy my boat ready-made, but in the form of half-inch elm planks, and other wood, which being a bit of a carpenter, after many consultations with conant, and the help of some copper nails, I contrived to put together during the winter in an empty coach-house. Her sails were made, of course, by conant, and when finished a low pair of wheels was arranged, so that when balanced upon them she was easily moved by one man down to the sea from which my house was a mile distant. Long, however, before the boat was finished, it was known on the beach that Mr. Leslie was building a boat, and one after another nearly every fisherman in the place dropped in upon my dockyard. So that if the finished boat had turned out a failure, it would not have been for want of practical criticism and advice. I heard in this way that I had a rival amateur naval architect at work at the same time, in the shape of a shoemaker and fisherman combined. And in spite of the fact that the art of shoemaking is rather akin to that of boat-building, I learned from some of my visitors that my rival's craft head, after all his efforts, developed a midship section six inches wider than he expected. Competition, however, brings out the best qualities even of amateur boat-builders, and those she rather exceeded her designed beam my rival's boat cut mine out altogether as a bit of decorative color on the beach. It is surprising what an interest every tap of a hammer has when riveting together the planks of your own craft. And what a pleasure it was, when the foam was ready at last for sea, to find oneself the owner of a handy little boat, fifteen feet six inches, by six feet three inches wide at a cost of a little over eight pounds. And here I may note that on leaving Sidmouth, after many years' use, I sold her for the same money.