“During the period of my confinement the Jersey was never visited by any regular clergyman, nor was Divine service ever performed on board, and among the whole multitude of prisoners there was but one individual who ever attempted to deliver a set speech, or to exhort his fellow sufferers. This individual was a young man named Cooper, whose station in life was apparently that of a common sailor. He evidently possessed talents of a very high order. His manners were pleasing, and he had every appearance of having received an excellent education. He was a Virginian; but I never learned the exact place of his nativity. He told us that he had been a very unmanageable youth, and that he had left his family, contrary to their wishes and advice; that he had been often assured by them that the Old Jersey would bring him up at last, and the Waleboght be his place of burial. ‘The first of these predictions,’ said he, ‘has been verified; and I care not how soon the second proves equally true, for I am prepared for the event. Death, for me, has lost its terrors, for with them I have been too long familiar.’ “On several Sunday mornings Cooper harangued the prisoners in a very forcible yet pleasing manner, which, together with his language, made a lasting impression upon my memory. On one of these occasions, having mounted upon a temporary elevation upon the Spar-deck, he, in an audible voice, requested the attention of the prisoners, who having immediately gathered around him in silence, he commenced his discourse. “He began by saying that he hoped no one would suppose he had taken that station by way of derision or mockery of the holy day, for that such was not his object; on the contrary he was pleased to find that the good regulations established by the former prisoners, obliged us to refrain even from recreation on the Sabbath; that his object, however, was not to preach to us, nor to discourse upon any sacred subject; he wished to read us our By-laws, a copy of which he held in his hand, the framers of which were then, in all probability, sleeping in death, beneath the sand of the shore before our eyes. That these laws had been framed in wisdom, and were well fitted to preserve order and decorum in a community like ours: that his present object was to impress upon our minds the absolute necessity of a strict adherence to those wholesome regulations; that he should briefly comment upon each article, which might be thus considered as the particular text of that part of his discourse.