Chapter III: Section II: His first year's Apprenticeship

In the quiet of a country home, my Father now resumed those studies which bore more immediately upon the profession he had chosen, and perseveringly continued them till the time appointed, the middle of March, for his joining his ship. His preparations towards the supplying of his maritime costume and equipment being already made, he repaired to Whitby, and was duly set to work, with others of the destined crew, to rig and fit out the ship. Towards the end of the month the arrangements were so far advanced, that she was hauled down the harbour into a berth convenient for putting to sea. But whilst here a hard gale set in from the north, which brought so heavy a sea into the harbour that the Jane was in danger of breaking adrift. This circumstance called for the prompt and active exertions of the crew to get out cables and hawsers for additional security, an occasion on which my Father received his first lesson on mooring a ship,--a lesson which could not be lost upon one who associated with great physical strength and energy so observant and reflective a mind.

Early in the month of April, the weather proving favourable whilst the spring-tides prevailed, the Jane put to sea, and for a time made pleasant progress. Nearing the Naze of Norway, however, they were overtaken at night, and that suddenly, by a heavy gale of wind, which in its effect was in no small degree alarming, and from the quality of the crew, indeed, twelve out of about twenty hands being apprentices, some mere lads, and several quite inexperienced, eminently perilous,--for the ship being lightly ballasted, was quickly thrown upon her "beam-ends," the water rising over the lee gunwale till it reached the "combings of the hatches," whilst the requisite measures, demanding instantaneous promptness, were seriously delayed by the general inaptitude of the crew. They were enabled, however, in time to save them from the threatened foundering, to get the sails clewed up, whereon the ship righted, though the sails were left fluttering, the sport and prey of the storm, until the morning. The gale then happily abating, and veering to a favourable quarter, the canvas, as far as preserved to them, which so recently had threatened their destruction, became available for the furtherance of their voyage, and enabled them without further adventure to reach Memel, the port of their destination.

But when outward danger had been safely passed, and nothing but a feeling of perfect security could naturally be realized, the object of this memorial became sensibly alive to the impressiveness of the solemn sentiment of our Church's funeral service--"In the midst of life we are in death!" The ballast had been taken out, and the hold and 'tween-decks cleared to make way for the cargo, when my Father, being below, near a "raft-port,"--an opening at the bow or stern by which a timber cargo is received into the hold,--heard the voice of the Captain calling for a boat's crew to put him on shore. There being no _deck_ now laid upon the hold-beams, but only a series of "carlings" from beam to beam, the summons was attempted to be answered by running along these very narrow supports. Ill directed, however, by the very deceptive light admitted by the raft-port, my Father's head came in contact with an unobserved break in the upper deck, by which he was precipitated into the hold, a depth of about twelve feet, and was taken up by his comrades in a state of insensibility. In this alarming condition he remained for several hours, being meanwhile carried for surgical assistance on shore.

He was but barely passed out of the immediate hands of the surgeon, who contemplated his case hopefully, when the carpenter of the Jane was borne to the same place, having also fallen into the hold in a similar way, with an adze in his hand, a fearful cut from which in his forehead added to the severe effects of so considerable a fall.

Under careful and skilful assistance, however, both the endangered sufferers were soon restored, being enabled to return to the ship in about eight days' time,--the carpenter, indeed, with his wound but imperfectly healed, and with a long and conspicuous scar which might have been admonitory for the rest of his days. The lesson to my Father had not been forgotten when, near half a century after, on recurring to the adventure, he remarked, "This was another kind interposition of Providence which has a claim on my grateful homage."

Their cargo of timber being completed, they immediately sailed from Memel, and joining convoy at Elsinore, safely reached the Thames, whither their cargo was destined.

Whilst the ship was lying at Limehouse, my Father and another of the apprentices obtained leave, on a Sunday, to go on shore and visit the great Metropolis, where they met with another, and to them a previously unknown, species of adventure. On reaching the city they were accosted by a man dressed in regimentals (apparently a serjeant), who, pretending that he was a Yorkshireman and knew them, contrived to insinuate himself into their confidence, and offered to guide them in their object of sight-seeing, remarking particularly that they had a fine opportunity of seeing the King, who was about to attend a general review in Hyde Park. Catching at a suggestion so naturally pleasant, they, without an idea of mistrust, put themselves under his, apparently, friendly guidance, and proceeded in the direction of the Park. On reaching Temple Bar he invited them to accompany him into an eating-house, where he ordered refreshments.

But the landlady, on making her appearance--a respectable and benevolent person, as they subsequently had good reason to know--observed and surveyed the little party with a very unusual kind of scrutiny, first looking the soldier sternly in the face, and then, with an expression relaxed into compassion, turned her gaze on his youthful and obviously too confiding associates. Repeating her scrutiny of their pretended friend till assured of his identity, she addressed him with an air of stern authority, and commanded him to leave the house. The man affecting surprise, and 'presuming that she must have mistaken him,' endeavoured, by a well-practised self-possession, to avoid the threatened defeat of his insidious purpose. But she, persisting in her knowledge and accusation of him, and threatening to call in a constable to her aid, succeeded in causing him to feel that it might be for his safety to take himself off.

On his departure she turned to the wondering young sailors, and to this effect addressed them:--"I perceive, young men, you are from the country, and are strangers in London. I am from the country myself, but I know that man to be a villain. Not long since he stole some articles from this very house, and I am fully assured he will wait for you to get you trepanned; you shall therefore not leave my house this night."

They accordingly remained her guests till the morning, when she allowed them to depart for their ship; but on offering her compensation for her kindness, she refused to take anything more than was barely sufficient to pay for their moderate refreshments.

"This act of generous friendship," remarks the writer of the Memoir, "deserves to be recorded on three accounts: first, for the honour of our common nature; secondly, to be contrasted with the villany of the pretended soldier; and thirdly, to illustrate the watchful Providence of God."

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Having delivered their cargo at Limehouse, and taken in ballast, they sailed on their second voyage, to St. Petersburgh, for a cargo of hemp and iron. Here they were unfortunately caught in the formation of ice, with but little expectation of escaping during the winter. But on the 4th of November, a gale from the eastward having broken up the impeding ice, they immediately sailed, and in four days reached Elsinore, where they expected to join convoy for England. All the men-of-war from home, however, having sailed, they joined a fleet of similarly unprotected ships, numbering altogether six-and-twenty sail, and together proceeded for England. About half-way across the German ocean, they proved the advantage of their mutual association for defence, a large cutter privateer having hove in sight, and attacked the rear of the fleet. For a considerable time the enemy's fire was directed from a respectful distance against the nearest ships, which they, according to their proportion of armament, as actively returned,--so actively, indeed, that, in their ill-provided warlike stores, they soon expended the greater part of their ammunition. The enemy, however, ignorant of this circumstance, and unable to detach any single vessel, kept aloof, probably for the chance of the night; but the night proved dark, and afforded them a screen from the prowler, and they all escaped unscathed into port.

They reached Portsmouth, their new destination, about the middle of December, and delivered their cargo among the naval stores of the King's Yard.

During the discharging of the cargo, my Father received vexatious abuse, without any provocation on his part, from the chief-mate of the ship, which so annoyed him that, under the impulse of a strongly excited feeling, he had resolved to quit the Jane, and enter on board His Majesty's ship the Royal George, just then passing them from the graving-dock, where she had been undergoing repairs. But reflecting on something which, in the bustle and confusion amongst her crew as she hauled away, he had observed incongruous with his feelings, he happily paused in his hasty resolve, and ultimately decided on submitting himself to a continuance, though under the constant exposure to like arbitrary annoyance, of the duties of his humble station, with a view to the fulfilment of the engagement he had entered into with the owner of the Jane. And, as estimated by the probability of his being involved in the disaster of that ill-fated ship, had he entered on board of her, the decision appeared to be Providentially guided; for at no long interval after this time it was that the Royal George came to her end so strangely, as to place the catastrophe alone and without parallel, amid the varied and marvellous records of our naval history. The story is well known. She was "careening," for the purpose of having some caulking of her seams effected, or damage of her copper sheathing repaired, whilst anchored at Spithead, with her lower-deck ports open in all imaginable safety. A sudden squall, whilst the ship swung across the tide, laid her on her beam-ends; the water poured in by the open ports in such force and quantity, that she sunk in less than eight minutes, involving officers, men, and visitors, so generally in the common catastrophe, that out of about 1200 souls, or upward, on board, only 331 escaped alive! The brave Admiral Kempenfelt, an experienced and accomplished navigator, who, through many perils of war and tempest had passed unscathed, suffered among the rest, a fate which, very probably, had been that of my Father, had he carried out his impetuously-formed design. But, with the good hand of God upon him, he escaped the then unimagined peril.

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On the laying up of the Jane for the winter, the seamen, as usual, were discharged, and the apprentices sent by a coasting vessel passengers to Whitby. My Father repaired to his country home for the interval of service, until summoned again to London, in the early spring of 1781, to join his ship on her being chartered for a voyage to Riga, for a cargo of deals for the Government.