 Chapter 13 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 13 Difficulty of getting a boat. Here of one at Occam's. The way there. I see the lily fall in love with her. She becomes mine. Not a young boat, but cheap. Her birth parentage, etc. A good boat compared with a horse. Advantages of boat over horse. Safety of modern lead-keeled racers, etc. Southampton water. Large boats easy to handle there. My lady friend and her 10-tonner. My third boy takes his sister's place at the tiller. Precaution against his getting overboard. Fishing. I start a beam trawl net. Drawbacks and pleasures of the sport. Steering with the trawl warp. I am not overboard. My boy does not care. I got inside my boat again. An old watch still ticking. A cold bath. Watch all right again. It parts its caba one day and takes a bath alone. Is recovered. How to treat a watch after being four hours in the sea. The lily in winter quarters. Fitting out at Occam's. Energetic skippers. Sugar. Its effect on them. Work to be done. How to judge of it. Ready for sea. London owners. Whether its effect upon fitting out. The beginning of the end. After trying in vain to repurchase my half-decked boat, the water spaniel, and finding nothing suitable for sail among the boat-yards on the itchen, I turned my attention to Occam's yard. After from information obtained quite independently of the great Occam himself, I hoped to find a certain pretty little fishing-boat for sail. The leader in quest of a boat for sail or hire has only to walk down the main street of our great seaport until, where it ends in a broad expanse of quay, he can go no further by land. And keeping along the quay to the right he will find a narrow lane leading toward a low archway or water-gate built, so Mr. Murray tells us in the eleventh century. Beyond this gate right facing you stands a little white, clench-built wooden house with bright green window-shutters that evidently once were cabin doors. This is the private residence of Mr. Occam. To the right of it a small wicket, also an old cabin door, leads into his yard, where lie clustered, like a flock of seabirds at rest, a number of small yachts hauled up in winter quarters. The boat I expected to find was not, however, hauled up in the yard, but moored just beyond it at a little dock, which in the days when Southampton was frequented by the quality as a watering-place had been built for a seawater bath. A glance at the lily as she lay afloat here was enough to tell me that she was one of the fastest little half-deck boats in the port. Her owner, who had no further use for her, was anxious to sell. She was therefore at once taken out of the dock, and after a close survey became mine at the low price of fifteen pounds. She must have been cheap, because the day after her purchase Mr. Occam said he would have given more for her to sell again. The lily was a nineteen-foot itchen-fairy fishing boat, and when I bought her must have been nearly thirty years old, her name appearing as a winner of prizes in regattas for twenty-eight years. But having been faithfully built of the best material by Alfred Payne for an experienced waterman, she was still almost as sound in plank and timber as when she left his yard. She was built before the days of outside lead ballast, but had four hundred weight of iron on her keel and a tonne inside. Her sails were old, but lasted me nearly two seasons. After some years of selfish indulgence in boat-sailing, a fast, powerful boat becomes as necessary to a man as a means of outdoor exercise as a good horse. In her, with a fresh breeze, he can always enjoy and be sure of a few hours gallop over the nearest stretch of broad salt water. A boat is quite as much a companion as a horse, while after a short acquaintance with one there is all the difference between sailing in her and a hired one as there is between riding your own cob and one from a livery stable. Though sometimes advised to do so by sarcastic pedestrians, you cannot get inside your horse as you can a boat's cutty in a shower. While though a boat like Lily will do anything you ask of her but speak, she is, unlike a horse, devoid of foolish, nervous fear. When I first began boating in the early forties, what is now called single-handed cruising was almost unknown among amateurs. And though a far less risky outdoor recreation than hunting, or then even riding along a turnpike road, people had a curious vague dread of it. Much of this has passed away and hundreds of amateur boatmen and even ladies are now as much at home and really safer in a sailing boat than they would be on the back of a hunter or bicycle. Outside lead ballast has had something to do with this by having made it almost impossible to capsize a boat. While if sufficiently decked or covered in so that the water cannot get below, the smallest modern racer or pleasure boat is as uncapsizable and unsinkable as a boy's toy model. Which, even if placed in the water mass downwards, will at once turn right side up again. Boats of this sort when I was young were unknown and one had then to look out for squalls and take care of a boat in one. Now I often say that my boat, with a ton of outside lead, looks out for herself and takes care of me in a squall. Southampton water is essentially a comfortable single-handed cruising ground even for old men. While owing to its landlocked character, boating may be indulged in upon it in almost any weather which a mast or canvas will stand to. The short steep sea, which gets up in all tidal waters with the wind against the tide, is admirably provided against in the class of boat used upon them. Like the lily, half decked in forward and with broad waterways round the open well room or cockpit aft. Up to certain limits, the size of a boat for cruising in such waters is immaterial. And I have a lady friend who for years has handled her ten ton cutter during long day cruises in Southampton water and the Solent with the help only of one man nearly seventy years old. Soon after returning to Southampton, my youngest boy took his sister's place on board my boat. He began boating, indeed so early in life, that when alone with him in the boat I always tied the end of a rope round his middle in case of his scrambling overboard. He objected at first to this, but until able to swim it was not safe to leave him a moment in the cockpit aft without taking this precaution. Many, as we called him, and I had many long cruises together, and though not an ardent fisherman myself, I used generally to contrive something of the kind for him at one end or another of a cruise. Having been built as a fishing boat, the lily had a regular trawl deck aft, and a year or two after I bought her I fitted up a small beam trawl net for her, which, though it seldom added much to the family supply of fish when it went down to the sea, always brought to light many strange wonders of the deep, and was an inexhaustible sorts of amusement to my little boy. While on the coldest day the work it entailed was more than enough to keep one warm. This was especially the case when the net got hold of what the fishermen call a tariff, or a large bit of decayed timber, not uncommon in Southampton water being, it is supposed, the remains of a submerged forest. When this happened the boat was brought up suddenly with the full strength of the tide running past her, and to release the net, or lift what it had fouled, the tow-rope had to be at once taken forward in the boat, which was then, if possible, sailed over the net in the opposite direction it had just been towed. At times even this failed to release the net, and the boat's main halyard tackle had to be used to lift it and the tariff from the bottom. Sometimes the net would all at once become filled to the mouth with a kind of seaweed, and after being raised with difficulty to the surface had to be emptied alongside by hoisting the small end up by the halyards. Old or unbooied moorings, or anchors, were also a source of anxiety and trouble in trawling. Many was, however, too young to care for or share these drawbacks to the sport with me, and when, after a twenty minutes haul, the white underside of a few flat fish, or the silver scales of a gore, a good-sized bass gleamed through the dark meshes of our net as it came in on the trawl deck, his delight was enough to compensate me for much hard work. When a trawl is down at work, the boat is steered almost entirely by the position of the warp over her stern, or one quarter. By shifting a little forward she is brought to the wind, and by taking it from one quarter over her stern to the other she may be jibed round before the wind on the other tack. It was in doing this that one day I was knocked overboard by the mainsheet blocks, and found myself outside my boat a stern of her in the water with my little boy alone in her. He was hardly tall enough to see over the sides of the cockpit. But when I first came up I told him, in order to check her speed, to try and haul the foresheet over to windward. But recollecting instantly that having jibed it was already in that position I said, All right, Manny, let it alone. Luckily the lily was not going fast, and getting hold of the trawl warp some distance to stern I soon hauled myself alongside and climbed on board again by the mainsheet tackle which had knocked me out of her. I felt light enough in the water, but like a lump of lead in my wet clothes when I tried to rise out of it. On getting on to the trawl deck the first thing I did was to pull out my watch, and finding thanks to a tight case and close fitting pocket it was still going I gave it to Manny to hang up in the cutty. This was the only time during a long boating experience that I can say I owed my life to being able to swim. I was pleased at the composed way Manny took the incident, and to show him that it was a matter of no importance I hauled in the net at once and lowered it again for a fresh haul. The day was fine and warm, and by the time we had made the next haul and my clothes were nearly dry, Manny, like a kitten at play, had entirely forgotten the whole business. Since then I have once been accidentally in the water outside my boat, but it happened in port when a short dinghy turned head over heels as I stepped forward in her to alter the position of the lily before docking her for scrubbing. I was alone, and the time of year and day, November 7 a.m., with a sharp white frost, made a retreat homewards desirable. I did not forget my old watch, and as soon as I was out of the water it was out of my pocket and hanging dry, and still ticking inside the cutty while I walked home for a change. This watch, however, some years later had a longer saltwater bath, when, in stooping over forward to clear my boat's bob-stay of a small boat's gunnel, it flew out of my pocket and the chain, after taking a half turn round the bowsprit shroud, snapped, leaving the watch to go plump to the bottom alone in eight feet of water. This happened close to a quay, and an old waterman standing on it remarked, Never mind, sir, we knows where she be. Don't say nothing to nobody, and you'll ever again at low water. Which I did four hours afterwards, and thanks to a sound constitution in that old chronometer watch, built in London six years before I was born, is going now, and has kept good time ever since its last seabath eight years ago. After this incident I took care, however, to fit it with a stout hemp cable of hambreau line, in place of the silver chain. Boating friends, who had had watches wet inside with sea water, assured me that mine was ruined. But I always found that they had allowed their watches to dry, before placing them in the hands of the doctor. This, if possible, should never take place, and a watch into which sea, or any other water, has penetrated, should always be kept immersed in fresh water or oil, until it can be placed in the hands of a watchmaker. About the end of October the lily nearly always returned to her old haunt, and was carefully hauled up in Oakham's yard. Five and twenty years ago, when I first knew the place, not half a dozen private boats or small yachts made use of it as winter quarters, while none of them exceeded ten tons. Oakham has now been dead many years, and under his successor the business has so increased, that there is hardly a square foot to spare today among the yachts hauled up there in winter. But long after the decease of Mr. Oakham, his name and certain old traditions, I, among others, hung about the yard, and every year as spring advances, signs and sounds among the yachts indicate that more than one enthusiastic yachtsman has already given orders to fit out. Some days before such sounds are heard, burly skippers cruise round with smudgy telegrams, seeking counsel and advice from others of their class, as to the meaning and answer required to a short message, such as, Get mermaid ready for sea at once, wire time required. It matters little whether a craft be three or thirty tons, as to the answer her owner is likely to get. While, as the skipper has to go over every detail of the job with three or more brother skippers before he composes his telegram, the owner seldom receives a ply earlier than the following morning. It's no good going and overfist about a job, or to go and tell a gent three weeks, and then have half the work to do again. But now and then an energetic skipper, after a few hours deliberation and a long consultation with the great Oakham himself, has been known to wire a reply to his owner the same day. Whether permitted, by about first of next month. Should the craft be a large one, say of thirty tons, the first few days of fitting out are devoted by the skipper to a private survey. Held either on the sunny side of her, or whether not permitting of that, before the folks so fire, which is always started by her skipper early in the business of fitting out, in order to hair things up a bit. But wherever he may select to hold this important survey, the skipper, if the crew is to be chosen by him, becomes at once an important focus of attention to the loungers about Oakham's. The first great points to be settled are the probable length of the commission, the wages per month, and what his gent finds in the way of clothing. Long before all these details are arranged, the skipper has accumulated quite a handful of pink telegrams, each of which has to be read before he answers the latest one. In this way the first few days of fitting out pass pleasantly away, and towards the end of the first week, when what is known as some sugar in the shape of owner's money arrives, everybody's grog is sweetened by it, and a resolution put by the skipper is carried by the crew in the power of the Union Jack, that it is too late in the week to make a start today, but that all hands are to turn up early on Monday morning. The captain of a very small yacht may, as was the case with the lily, represent the whole crew. But as these little cutters generally have at least as many ropes, blocks, etc. about them as a big one, and each one of these has to be overhauled, scraped and varnished by one man, it may happen that the fit-out of a little three-tonner will take as long as or longer than a big one. Before the day comes that, with every spar, rope and block in place, she lies ready for sea on her cradle, the sun glancing off her polished sides as from the panels of a new carriage. We always say, ready for sea at Occam's, though many of our little fleet sell them venture beyond the mouth of our port. Still there is a feeling on board such vessels that this is only a matter of taste, and when one of the smaller craft, with her condensed crew of skipper and owner, does not turn up at her moorings before dark, such a yacht is spoken of in our yachting circles, and even at times reported in the shipping news of yachting papers as the blank Mr. A.B. cruising. London yachting men are often great fidgets, and think nothing of a rundown at Easter by train from town to disturb the calm of Occam's by a grumble at the progress, invisible to the naked eye in the decorative external repairs of their craft in a paltry three weeks. I used even to do so until, by doing most of my own work, I found out how much there was to do and the time it took to do it. Now I often wonder that the annual fiddling ornamental toilet of a yacht ever gets finished at all. Two quite opposite kinds of weather are required for different stages of the work. For a mast scraping, painting, or caulking operations, it can hardly be too fine and dry. While during the removal of the winter coat of rough varnish from the deck, the skipper rejoices in a small drizzling rain, which keeps a certain caustic composition known to yachtsmen by the mysterious name of skew-gee-mew-gee damp and active under the scrubbing brushes of her crew. So that while one crew are splashing about on a wet day with buckets and their trousers rolled up to their knees, scrubbing decks, the mate of the next ship hangs aloft on a mast-head stool, grumbling at the rain as he scrapes a winter jacket of white or red-lead and tallow from his mast. Maybe his growls are a little qualified at times when he sees that the result of his work is drifting and falling upon the fresh scrubbed deck of his rival, the mermaid. What's he got to do with where the stuff falls? He didn't make the wind and rain, did he? And wishes they were somewhere else. On these wet days, however, there are always plenty of choice-little-hole incarnate jobs, so to say, for the skipper himself to enjoy a pipe over, if so disposed, in dry corners of oakum stores, such as scraping blockpins, pointing or knotting a rope's end, serving, rigging, etc. And unless he be one of that hard class of old smacksmen, who are never happy but when half wet to the skin, there he will be found, attended by a small knot of those talented men who always appear to make a comfortable living in such places by looking on. As long as he is ashore, no skipper, however, is safe from the telegraph boy. Or at last a message comes from London rapidly followed by the owner himself with all his sea-traps at the nearest station to Oakums, where he is met by his overworked skipper in full uniform. And from that time his days of useful work or play at Oakums are numbered. Chapter 14 The lily is armed. Boys and guns. Some experiences. I buy a new dinghy. Make mud patents and become a wildfowler. Exploration of creeks, etc., with the boy Robin. He learns to shoot and walk upon mud. First attempt. Planted in mud. Variety and extent of creeks. List of wild birds. Rough weather. A hard beat home. Water in forepeak. A pump out. Main sail split. Pick up our mooring and lose the dinghy. Her narrow escape. History of my mainsail. A weak point on it. Robin alone in the lily among the wildfowl. A morning row. Robin in India. The old lily drops her iron keel. My moorings tested by a timber raft in a gale. Lily sobbed by Bill Kirby. Lily among lee. Careless neighbors. An anchor through bottom of lily. She sails in the port in a sinking condition. Why she kept the float at all? The landlubbers plea. My mate, little nut. Her dread of a squall. How she kept a reckoning by nose. I fall in with a friend a float and a new boat. Foam the second. Itchenferry rig versus sloop for single-handed sailing. Description of foam number two. Winds and weather in south Hampton water and Solent. Hamble River. Up to Bersalden. Eighteenth-century ships built there. The training ship Mercury. Bolew River. Bucklers hard. Old ships built there. Solitude of Bolew River today. A wet night in it. How navigated by an old trader? His lookout. Directions for sailing into Buley Haven. Conclusion. Two lives insufficient to exhaust various conditions of cruising under sail, etc. When Manny, or Robin, as he was now called, was about half past twelve, my water byography became greatly mixed up with him and a new twelve-bore single-barreled gun which from that date nearly always formed part of the armament of the lily. My experience of the average boy is that if kept from guns he takes to pistols. And having in my younger days some personal knowledge of that dangerous combination, the boy and gun, in the shape of two escapes myself, one from the bursting of a thirty-shilling gun and nearly losing an eye from the long-range fire of another. Besides once just missing a friend one day at close quarters by careless handling of one, I was naturally anxious that my youngster should first make the acquaintance of his gun under my supervision. Besides this gun I had added to my fleet a light nine-foot dinghy and a pair of mud patents. And thus equipped we made for several years in the autumn months voyages of discovery together up all the winding leaks or creeks which run for miles in shore from Southampton water toward the new forest. The extent of these inlets and variety of wildfowl feeding upon their banks at low water is not apparent to those merely sailing up or down Southampton River. And our plan of exploration was to anchor the lily as a base of operations, food or retreat in bad weather, in or near the mouth of one about low tide, and leaving her to paddle up it in the light-draft dinghy. At first Robin used only to take the easiest shots at the tamer flights of sanderlings or oxbirds. But he rapidly got to be a good shot from a boat. And after the first season I seldom went with him in the small boat, but lay at anchor or cruising on and off in the lily near the entrance of the creek. One of which was rarely explored in this way, or all the water-fowl in it duly stocked in less than two hours, because it frequently chanced that something killed had to be retrieved from soft mud on the patents or mud shoes which always led to some delay. He soon acquired the art of walking safely on them, but I shall not forget one of his first efforts to retrieve some birds on them off a very deep soft mud bank. When, standing for a moment too long to look round, both feet sank about a foot into it, and he called out to me that he could not get them out. I was only a few yards from him in the dinghy, but where he stood, rooted in mud, pulling hard first at one foot and then at another, until he was seized with the kind of panic felt by people in the water when out of their depth for the first time. I told him he must get clear or wait till I could get nearer with the boat when the tide rose. But as he recovered from his first helpless feeling, his strength returned, and getting clear, he learned that you can no more stand still upon patents on soft mud than upon a bicycle. The banks of most of these creeks vary at low water from three to six feet, and soon after entering one, a boat is quite lost to sight, while they extend so far toward the mainland that the report even of a gun is not heard in a boat outside one. And when my boy first began to explore them alone, I passed many a half hour of anxious suspense on board the lily as I lay waiting his return. Not that I was at a loss for something to do, for nobody need fear that who keeps his own craft in order. Added to which the natural history to be studied, and sky effects to be noted, lying quietly in a boat in this way, are an unfailing source of pleasure. Robin Rayleigh came back empty-handed, and among the birds he used to bring were oxbirds, red and green shanks, doterel, knots or newts, curlew, wimbral, coots, plovers, ducks, teal, sea-pies, etc. After killing one or two first, he never fired at gulls, but shags or cormorants were always shot, when they gave him a chance. I may mention here, that though we never fell in with any, a flock of twenty of that rare bird, the avoceth, was seen here in January 1881. They were very tame, and I am sorry to say eight were killed and sold to a local taxidermist. On these rather long expeditions we sometimes got caught in bad weather, and one of the hardest fights I ever had to winward in the old lily was from the large leak just above Cal Shot Castle to my moorings off West Quay. This creek winds inland a long distance, and unites with another higher up the river, and though it was blowing fresh when Robin left me in the boat, the water in the creek was smooth, and the lily lay snugly sheltered under the lee of the high banks most of the time he was absent. The wind, however, hauled into the northwest, and about two p.m., just as I finished dinner, began to blow hard right down the river. Robin had his lunch with him in his boat, and plenty of cartridges for his gun, and far up the creek knew nothing of the change and strength of wind, so that I had ample time to prepare the old boat for a dusting before his return, by close reefing her mainsail and foresail, and stepping down the old storm-jib ready for setting on her bowsprit. He did not turn up, however, until past three, by which time the first of the flood had covered the sheltering banks, and the lily was tugging impatiently at her anchor, anxious no doubt as I was to be off home. Robin brought back what he called a good bag of three brace of clovers and newts beside a bunch of oxbirds. I told him to stow his gun and everything that wanted keeping dry in the cutty, and hurry up, so that we might get away before the strength of the tide kicked up more sea. As we left the creek under a close reef mainsail and small jib, I saw my old friend, John Nichols the pilot, come out of hamble, close reefed in his little eight-ton cutter, the fawn. We had but one suit of oil-skins between us. I told Robin, therefore, to stay in the fore-peak, except when actually wanted outside. The first two tacks across the river were made in comparative comfort, but as the tide grew stronger, so did both wind and sea. And before the end of the third tack, Robin sung out from the cutty, I say, look here, the water's washing up in her to leeward, so that I had to ease the main in four sheets, and what is termed, Jill her long easy a bit, for a pump-out. This had hardly been done when Robin, who had returned to his cutty, called out, I say, that Bausprit's kicking up an awful row, I expect something will carry away. And I told him to come out again to the tiller while I stowed the jib, ran in the Bausprit, and set the close reef forcely. Robin turned in again, and found matters a lot better. She was, however, going head and shoulders into the short, steep seas like a porpoise, and soon wanted another spell at the pumps. This kind of thing went on until just above Netley I saw, to my disgust, the after-leach of my mainsail beginning to give out, as they often do, just above the last reef-earing. I eased the sheet a trifle, but slowly the rent grew longer. Until three hours after leaving Kalshot, I found myself just able to weather the pier in a smother of foam and sea, with a split in my mainsail four feet long, but still hanging on by the hem to the sheet. The moment I passed the end of the pier I was more or less on a lee shore, with the pier dead to leered of me, and if we failed to secure my mooring buoy, knew that in such a breeze no anchor would hold, or keep her from driving on to it. Three hours at the tiller, in this kind of weather, with eyes constantly full of salt water, and the spray flying over the boat as we stood in towards her mooring, made it almost impossible to see anything before one. I knew, however, by other boats riding near, about where the buoy ought to be, and calling Robin out of the cutty, told him, as I brought her head to the wind, that though I could not see it, our buoy must be close under her bowels. He jumped forward, and throwing himself face down on deck with his arm over her bow, sung out, I've got it! And a moment afterwards, between us, we got in the buoy rope, and had her fast hooked by the nose to her chain. The wet canvas was soon stowed, and I was glad to light a pipe and rest a bit under the lee of the cutty, out of the blinding wind and spray. These moorings above the pier at Southampton are, in a norwester, exposed to a long drift of sea, when boats ride so heavily there, that now and then even half-decked ones, like the lily, unless attended to, sink at their moorings. That is, if they do not break a drift, and get knocked to pieces against the pier. While it is sometimes not easy, either to board or leave one for shore in a small boat. And as I lay resting in my cutty, I turned over in my mind, whether to risk a landing in our little dinghy, or wait for a larger boat to come off for us from West Quay. This question and my repose was cut short, and soon settled for me by the dinghy unhitching her painter, by which we had towed her from cal-shot, and drifting away toward the pier, where I knew she would become matchwood in five minutes. Luckily a steam-launch was moored right in her line of drift, and seeing a man on board, I managed to hail, and ask him to try and get hold of her as she passed. Which he did, and we landed soon afterwards in a large boat sent from shore, where I learned that shortly before we took our mooring a more powerful boat than mine, with eleven hundred weight of lead on her keel, had just been forced to run back into the itch-en to escape sinking after an attempt to beat up only two miles from Hyde. My friend Nichols was at his moorings in the fawn more than an hour before we got round the pier, and said next day, I thought when I saw you get under way that you'd run for a hamble and walk home. And though I never did such a thing before, perhaps had I foreseen that split in my sail I might have done so, and saved the fourteen shillings which it cost to mend. That mainsail was not new, being when I bought from my friend Mr. Knight, author of Cruises of Falcon Alert, etc., who had used it a season or two in his boat The Ripple. I know it had twice crossed the channel in her with him. But for the benefit of owners of single-handed cruisers, I may point out here that sail-makers seem to forget that the fourth or last reef earringle, etc., in the mainsails of such boats being rarely used, except in hard winds or squalls, should be stronger than those below it. This is seldom the case, and I had lately quite a strong mainsail give-out in this way. One ought, of course, to be provided with what is called a tricell for such occasions. But when caught in a breeze in awkward corners, there is not always time to stow a mainsail and set a tricell. Though I often started with Robin on these expeditions before breakfast, and we were not home sometimes before dark, he, boylike, always had an idea that we did not reach his shooting in time, and left it too soon, and in order to prove this, begged to be left anchored in one of the large creeks on board the lily for one or two nights. And knowing he could come to no harm, the lily was victualed one fine day in August for two days, and after carefully mooring her in hours' leak with two anchors, I left him there, monarch of all he surveyed, among the mudflats and waterfowl, and took passage up to Southampton in the old bee, cow's trader, promising not to rejoin Robin or my ship again for eight and forty hours. The weather kept fine, and I kept my promise, and did not disturb his solitude before the appointed time, when I left West Quay at five a.m. in a light skiff, and with an ebb tied after an hour's paddle of six miles reached the lily before six o'clock, where I found Robin so sound asleep in the cutty, with the door shut, that he did not hear me get on board. The result of his two nights' watch was almost nil. And after boiling the kettle for breakfast, we unmoored ship, and in almost a dead come, slowly tied it and rode the lily back to Southampton. The boy Robin is now an engineer on the East Indian Railway. He became a first-rate rifle-shot as a volunteer, both in the Winchester School Corps and the regiment he belongs to in India, where he this year won the Viceroy's Cup, and has passed more than one solitary night's watch in a tree looking out for a shot by moonlight at Tiger, being one of the few men who combined the qualities of a good snapshot with long-range rifle shooting. I kept the old lily for fourteen years, and sold her for more than I gave for her. During that time she had several escapes of becoming a total loss. She dropped her iron keel of four hundred weight one day somewhere in the mud, and I did not discover the loss for some weeks, though she puzzled me at times before I did so by her want of stability under sail. She was followed on one occasion on her mooring in a northwest gale by a timber raft of eight hundred railway sleepers, which tested the strength of my chain by riding with her to it for a short time. This happened early one morning, and the old boat was only saved from being knocked to pieces by the activity and energy of my friend Bill Kirby of West Quay, who, with difficulty cleared her of the raft and making sail, ran her safely on the mud the other side the river. She had also a bad time of it one winter when left the float longer than usual among ice, in which she became frozen for three days, the ice being too thick to get at her from shore in a boat, though not strong enough to walk out upon to her. And we fully expected that, if it broke up at night, she would be either stove and sunk by it on her moorings or be carried away down the river in the flow. Luckily the first signs of the breakup occurred in daylight, and a passage was forced through it in a boat to her, after which one hand breaking the ice in front of her with a stout oar she was brought safely into port. The distance was not great, but the oar used to break the ice was reduced to a mere pointed stump in doing so. One of the most provoking things to those who lay down efficient moorings for their own boats is the careless way in which others' owners leave craft insecurely anchored near them. And I remember boarding the lily one day in a gale to pump her out and finding to my surprise that she was quite half full of water. I had a good pump, but after working at it for some time did not gain perceptibly on the water. I had in fact only boarded her in time to save her from sinking, owing to her having sunk at low water upon a yacht's anchor, which had dragged under her during the preceding night and made a hole in her bottom. It was blowing a gale with a good dale of sea, but I had just time to set the foresole and working the pump with one hand steer her with the other into West Quay harbour, where I found after the tide left that she would have sunk before I boarded her had it not been for a piece of iron ballast which lay over the hole and partly closed it inside as the tide lifted the boat off the point of the anchor. I had warned the owner or skipper of this little cutter some days before that she was anchored too near me, but he was too lazy to move her and when written to for compensation for the damage pleaded stress of weather, a plea which has protected many a landlubber under similar circumstances. After Robin left home, my only mate and companion on board the lily was our trusty and affectionate little dog, Nut. Nut, I believe, like my wife, never really enjoyed sailing, and only regarded the hours spent in the boat with me as something to be endured or got through. She had a curious dread of a strong wind, and when the boat lay over to it, always scrambled up to windward under the seat I sat upon. In moderate weather she would curl up for hours and pass the time away, apparently asleep. But though unable to see anything round us where she lay, Nut invariably knew by some mysterious nose reckoning where the boat was and at the end of a cruise about five minutes before picking up the mooring would come out from under her seat and jumping upon it look round for the well-known landmarks of home. And having made sure that she was not out in her reckoning, put herself away again until the sails were furrowed and the boat alongside for shore. It was while cruising in the lily with my mate, Nut, that I first made the acquaintance of a kind friend, one of the best single-handed boatmen I ever fell in with. He did not care himself for match-sailing, but went on the water in his boat, built especially for him for single-handed use by John Pickett of West Quay. He always enjoyed a trial of speed and watermanship in her with any boat he chanced to meet. And as we were both single-handed, this led to many friendly contests between us. My friends was a beautiful little boat, which might be described as a cross between the deeper keel boat and the centerboard, or uniboot. She had outside led on her keel, but with her centerboard up drew less water than the old lily. She was sloop-rigged. That is, she had only one head sail with a short bowsprit. The lily was a foot shorter, and I should have had no chance against my friend's boat had she not been a trifle under canvas. I also had the advantage at first of knowing the water and set of the tides better than a stranger. So that in light winds, working against tide, the lily at times had the best of it, while a large cotton jib I made for her often gave me the advantage in a long reach. On the other hand, the gear of my boat, like her hull and skipper, was growing old, and I had often to be careful in a breeze not to put too much strain on it or her hull. I think it was feeling this that first led my friend to propose a new boat for me, to be built at his expense, but according to my own plans for speed and single-handed cruising. I told him that I was getting too old for a new boat, and that it would be like an old man marrying a young wife if I accepted his kind offer. He, however, overruled this and all other objections, and said simply, I want to see and meet you in a boat in which you can carry sail safely in all weather. The result was that in May 1886 Foam II was launched. She was designed and built by Arthur Payne, son of the builder of the lily. My friend also had a larger and more powerful boat built for him, in which he kept to the sloop-rig, and though she drew more water than his first boat and had nearly two tons of outside lead, he had her fitted with a center-board. I have always held that for single-handed sailing the itchen ferry-rig, with the two head-sills of a cutter, is easier to handle than a sloop, especially in a squall or bad weather, when, with a small jib, sail can be reduced quickly by lowering the foresail. My friend's new boat had a counter- and modern overhanging stem, and though a much longer boat overall, her waterline was a foot shorter than the foams, which had an upright stem above water and a square stern. My only directions, in fact, to Payne were to build a twenty-foot boat, making any improvements he could on his father's boat, her draft of water to be three feet six inches, and the weight of lead twenty-five hundred weight, with spars and sails in proportion for easy use by one hand. As this little boat rather exceeded both my own and designer's expectations in all-round speed, comfort, and handiness, I give here the lines of her hull. The foam's upright stern post and deep keel help her to run true on a sea, while the size of her rudder obviates the use of much-weather helm on a wind, and helps to keep the boat on a straight course for a short time when left to herself, while a single hand is attending to other things. It also enables one to bear away quickly without easing the mainsheet, and when picking up a buoy or coming alongside a quay can be used as a drag upon her speed by putting it hard over quickly in opposite directions. My friend's boat proved a fast, powerful boat, both in light and strong winds to windward, but her floor was rather short, and the foam could always outreach her. Indeed, on this point of sailing it would be hard to find a faster boat, and just after she was launched in a trial with a new racing-craft by the same builder, she proved able, when towing a nine-foot dinghy, to hold her own, though the racer was a foot longer on the waterline and had no boat behind her. The foam is also very fast to windward in smooth water. Her average speed with a fresh beam wind is seven miles an hour, and with a northeast breeze a trip from Southampton to Portsmouth and back of 35 miles can be made in about five hours. The most favorable winds up or down Southampton water are those from northeast or southwest, both of which are soldiers' winds in the river and across the solent to cows. With the wind at southeast it is a dead beat down to Cowshot, and with a norwester a dead beat up to Southampton. In fine summer weather you may often run down Southampton water in the morning before a northerly breeze as far as Hamble Point, and there, after a spell of calm, pick up a fresh southerly or southeasterly breeze from the sea, which after midday will probably haul round with the sun to the westward. In such weather, however, the wind generally falls light toward evening, and unless certain of a good flood tide you stand a chance of not getting home to tea or even a late dinner. One of my favorite short day voyages is from Southampton up the Hamble, past Worsash, Hamble, and the pretty training ship Mercury, to Burseldon, an old world red brick village on the left bank of the river about four miles from Hamble Spit, Bowie. Here, in the 18th century, ten or more fine frigates were built for the Navy, among them were the Galatia, Quebec, Eagle, Jason, and Ruby. Besides the Anson and Ardent, sixty gun ships. The way up all these smaller tidal rivers is best seen at or about low water, when the high mud banks are exposed. I cannot leave Hamble River without a word of admiration at the public-spirited devotion of Mr. C. A. R. Hoare, the founder and supporter of the above-mentioned Mercury. One feels indeed that he must have had Elizabethan ideas of the duties of an English gentleman when he fitted her out single-handed, so to say, as a training ship for boys for his Queen's Navy. For so far the whole initial and annual expense of this patriotic work has been allowed to rest entirely on him. An attempt even to obtain from the Council of the County of Southampton a small part of the fund placed in their hands to assist technical education has so far failed. Probably one reason why this valuable institution has had no outside help is that the Mercury is not a receptacle for waves and strays, but a training ship for the education and maintenance of poor boys only, whose antecedents allow Mr. Hoare to hope that in helping them he is working upon material which in afterlife may stand the strain of honest, useful work. For he feels that sound heart of oak sailors can no more be made of the children of drunken loafers or cornermen than sound ships can be built of poplar trees. Putting aside the first expenses, 8,000 pounds of fitting her out eight years ago, the ship has cost Mr. Hoare about 3,000 pounds a year. The only reimbursement for which has been the 25 pounds received for each boy passed into the Navy. Surely there must be among the rich gentlemen of England others with enough Elizabethan blood left in them to induce some of them to give Mr. Hoare a helping hand towards manning our ships with English boys. But leaving private help out of the question Mr. Hoare's work has certainly at this time acclaim on government, or what is now the same thing, the support of the people. Southampton is one of our largest ports, surrounded by an amphibious population, but at present the Mercury is the only practical school for the technical training of young sailors in the port. Another lovely and interesting voyage is up the Bolu River, which is easily navigated in a boat like the foam. Seven miles from its mouth in the Solent to Bolu, past Buckler's Hard, were also in the 18th century numbers of men of war were built, including two of 74 guns, and the Agamemnon and Europa of 64 guns, besides several frigates. Both Hamble and Bulehaven, as it is called in old maps, must in those days have been bustling busy inlets resident with the click of cocking mallets and the shipwright's mall. A letter, however, cannot even be posted today at Buckler's Hard, and it would not be easy to find a place surpassing the solitude and repose of Bolu River as it winds through broad banks of green ooze bordered by the thickly wooded shores of the new forest. But to thoroughly enjoy its scenery at least one day and night should be spent on the river. It is easy when sailing up this now almost unknown creek to forget at times that we are within a mile or two of one of the most important English waterways. And the scenery as the boat tacks up reach after reach through the forest impresses one with the idea that you are sailing on some unexplored South American or African stream instead of an English river within one hour's sail of cows or portsmouth. And yet after sleeping soundly in the foams cutty one night I found that even this forsaken old haven was not entirely without trade of a sort, and that I had run some risk of being roused out at midnight while anchored in it. The night was a pouring wet one, and to keep the open part of the boat dry abaffed the cutty I had rigged a waterproof tent over it, under which I hung a riding light. But when I turned out at daylight I began to think my boat must have drifted during the night, for there, in the gray of the morning, lay just a stern of me a weather-beaten old catch, and knowing for certain by the tide that nothing could have come into the river during the night, I dropped back to her in my dinghy to ask her crew one solitary old man of about seventy where she hailed from and when he brought up there. He answered with, Drop down from Buley last night. Then I said, You must have had a wetting. No I didn't. I were below in the rain. I asked whether he saw my boat. Oh yes, I cedar and the light, because I come up about twelve o'clock just before I let go my anchor. Which was lucky, for if he had fouled the foam on the ebb tide, she would probably have parted her chain or carried away her bow-sprit. The old fellow was bound to Southampton, so we got under way together, and I learned from him his simple plan of navigating the Bollew River by night, and how he started his old catch on a drift down it with the tide, trusting to its sweep to carry her along about mid-stream, and to the certainty of not falling in with anything to run foul of. The mouth of Bollew River has no doubt greatly changed, even since the time large ships were built on it by one Adams of Buckler's Hard and is not easily seen now from the Solent. But by standing straight in for the shore from Leap Bowie, it will be found marked by three small poles on the mud on the port-hand, while two posts on shore with boards across their tops, kept in line, are the leading marks into the river in the best water. I think one reason for keeping these old shipyards so far up a long winding creek must have been to ensure them from night attacks and the burning of ships on the stocks by enemy cruisers. I have sailed in foam number two for seven years, and in her met all kinds of weather and squalls mostly alone, that is, if one can call it being alone in such a boat. But after a boating experience of over fifty years, I may say that I have never made a trip afloat without learning something. The changes or combinations of wind, weather, and tides are so endless that had a man two boating lives allotted him, he would still meet conditions under canvas afloat he had not met before. It is this which gives to every little voyage in a sailing boat the freshness and interest of a game of chess, especially when the cruising ground is the crowded waterway of a great seaport. End of a Water Biography by Robert C. Leslie