A Six Years Diary
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: We soon came to an anchor again on Monday, as it fell quite calm, and lasted so until this morning, accompanied by a thick fog; thus neither sailing-boat nor steam-packet could move. Where we were situated there were flats all around, which made it impossible to move, even had there been a wind. We were, therefore, necessitated to remain all Monday night and the whole of Tuesday, not being able to see twenty yards before us. However, on Wednesday morning, about seven o'clock, I heard the capstan heaving, preparatory to weighing the anchor. This immediately roused me; I was up, and soon on deck, but found that there was merely a slight breeze. It, however, gradually increased through the day, and we are now proceeding at a brisk rate, having passed Margate, Ramsgate, and Dover, the last-named place we did n
...ot reach till dusk; but we are now (eight o'clock) full twenty miles from it, and expect to be off Hastings before to-morrow morning. We have a very large complement of people on board, more than fifty, including sailors, independent of the passengers, who are to embark at Portsmouth. The reason of this number is, that the Captain has been obliged to take on board twenty- five boys, and leave them at the Cape, where they are to be apprenticed out to different trades. They are most of them little thieves, who have been picked up in the streets by a society in London, and thus shipped off out of further crime. There are consequently a very large live stock on board, about a hundred fowls, a large number of geese and ducks, with sheep and pigs, which, with the noise of the boys, and bawling of the sailors, make a most discordant sound. I have not yet been ill, although my companion has. We have breakfast at half-past eight o'clock, and a very substantial one it is; but it is only (w...
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