There was
Charles Petersen, a Swede, who had once been "fancy man" in a toy
shop; there was David Burton, who had been a hairdresser and proved
unfortunate as a gold-digger in Australia; there was James Lussoni, an
Italian, who claimed to be a descendant of the old Genoese merchants;
and there was John Jones, a runaway man-of-warsman, pretty nearly worn
out, and subject to apoplexy.
Four sailors and three apprentices make seven men, a cook and a boy
are nine, and a mate and a captain make eleven; and eleven of a crew
were we, all told, men and boy, aboard the three-masted schooner
_Lightning_ when we sailed away one April morning out of the river
Mersey, bound to Boston, North America.
My name was then as it still is--for during the many years I have used
the sea, never had I occasion to ship with a "purser's name"--my name,
I say, is David Kerry, and in that year of God 1855 I was a strapping
young fellow, seventeen years old, making a second voyage with Captain
Funnel, having been bound apprentice to that most excellent but
long-departed mariner by my parents, who, finding me resolved to go to
sea had determined that my probation should be thorough: no half-laughs
and pursers' grins would satisfy them; my arm was to plunge deep into
the tar bucket straight away; and certainly there was no man then
hailing from the port of Liverpool better able to qualify a young chap
for the profession of the sea--but a young chap, mind you, who liked
his calling, who _meant_ to be a man and not a "sojer" in it--than
Captain Funnel of the schooner _Lightning_.
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