Each fleet had its admiral and vice-admiral, appointed partly by the owner, and partly by the skippers of the vessels. The devil-may-care spirit was always a great factor with the men. The admiral directed operations by flags in the daytime and by rockets at night, thus indicating what the fleet was to do and where they were to fish. Generally he had the fastest boat, and the cutters, hunting for the fleet always lay just astern of the admiral, the morning after their arrival. Hundreds of men would come for letters, packages, to load fish, to get the news of what their last assignment fetched in market. Moreover, a kind of Parliament was held aboard to consider policies and hear complaints. At first it was a great surprise to me how these men knew where they were, for we never saw anything but sky and sea, and not even the admirals carried a chronometer or could work out a longitude; and only a small percentage of the skippers could read or write. They all, however, carried a sextant and could by rule of thumb find a latitude roughly. But that was only done at a pinch. The armed lead was the fisherman's friend. It was a heavy lead with a cup on the bottom filled fresh each time with sticky grease. When used, the depth was always called out by the watch, and the kind of sand, mud, or rock which stuck to the grease shown to the skipper. "Fifteen fathoms and coffee grounds--must be on the tail end of the Dogger. Put her a bit more to the westward, boy," he would remark, and think no more about it, though he might have been three or four days looking for his fleet, and not spoken to a soul since he left land. I remember one skipper used to have the lead brought down below, and he could tell by the grit between his teeth after a couple of soundings which way to steer. It sounds strange even now, but it was so universal, being just second-nature to the men, who from boyhood had lived on the sea, that we soon ceased to marvel at it. Skippers were only just being obliged to have certificates. These they obtained by _viva voce_ examinations. You would sometimes hear an aspiring student, a great black-bearded pirate over forty-seven inches around the chest, and possibly the father of eight or ten children, as he stamped about in his watch keeping warm, repeating the courses--"East end of the Dogger to Horn S.E. by E. 1/2 and W. point of the island [Heligoland] to Barkum S. 1/2 W. Ower Light to Hazebrough N.N.W."--and so on. Their memories were not burdened by a vast range of facts, but in these things they were the nearest imaginable to Blind Tom, the famous slave musician.