Excerpt from James Braithwaite, the Supercargo: The Story of His Adventures Ashore and Afloat From his earliest boyhood young Kingston evinced a strong liking for the sea. In consequence of family connections, and his father's occupation, he had much opportunity of being in the society of seafaring men, and their tales of peril and adventure fostered his own inclination for the life of a sailor. At one time he was nearly joining the navy, but circumstances required him to remain in his father's business house at Oporto till he was beyond the age for entering the King's service. He never, however, lost his first taste, and he had opportunity for several voyages. To the end of his days he cherished an ardent affection for sea men, and took deep interest in everything that tended to their welfare. He was proud, also, of the history of the British navy, as he has shown in many of his Spirit-stirring sea-stories. When the Boy's Own Paper was started, in 1879, he led off with a characteristic story of the navy in the time of the great wars of the reign of George III., under the title of From Powder Monkey to Admiral. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

A passage from the book... "What's the name of the craft you want to get aboard, sir?" asked old Bob, the one-legged boatman, whose wherry I had hired to carry me out to Spithead."The Barbara," I answered, trying to look more at my ease than I felt; for the old fellow, besides having but one leg, had a black patch over the place where his right eye should have been, while his left arm was partially crippled; and his crew consisted of a mite of a boy whose activity and intelligence could scarcely make up for his want of size and strength. The ebb tide, too, was making strong out of Portsmouth Harbour, and a fresh breeze was blowing in, creating a tumbling, bubbling sea at the mouth; and vessels and boats of all sizes and rigs were dashing here and there, madly and without purpose it seemed to me, but at all events very likely to run down the low narrow craft in which I had ventured to embark. Now and then a man-of-war's boat, with half-a-dozen reckless midshipmen in her, who looked as if they would not have the slightest scruple in sailing over us, would pass within a few inches of the wherry; now a ship's launch with a party of marines, pulling with uncertain strokes like a huge maimed centipede, would come right across our course and receive old Bob's no very complimentary remarks; next a boatful of men-of-war's men, liberty men returning from leave. There was no use saying anything to them, for there wasn't one, old Bob informed me, but what was "three sheets in the wind," or "half seas over,"-in other words, very drunk; still, they managed to find their way and not to upset themselves, in a manner which surprised me. Scarcely were we clear of them when several lumbering dockyard lighters would come dashing by, going out with stores or powder to the fleet at Spithead.