Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own WritingsBruce, Wiliam Cabell
History
Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed, Volume 1 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings
Bruce, Wiliam Cabell
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
"He that has neither fools nor beggars among his kindred, is the son of a
thunder gust," said Poor Richard.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] This lady, whose father was Lewis Evans, of Philadelphia, a surveyor
and map-maker, was a god-daughter of Deborah, and, according to a letter
from Franklin to Deborah, dated July 22, 1774, fell little short of being
ubiquitous. He wrote: "She is now again at Tunis, where you will see she
has lately lain in of her third Child. Her Father, you know, was a
geographer, and his daughter has some connection, I think, with the whole
Globe; being born herself in America, and having her first Child in Asia,
her second in Europe, and now her third in Africa."
[17] A readable essay might be written upon the sea-voyages of Franklin.
The sloop, in which he absconded from Boston, in 1723, was favored with a
fair wind, and reached New York in three days. His voyage from Philadelphia
to Boston in 1724 lasted for about a fortnight. The "little vessel," in
which he sailed, he tells us in the _Autobiography_, "struck on a shoal in
going down the bay, and sprung a leak." "We had," Franklin says, "a
blustering time at sea, and were oblig'd to pump almost continually, at
which I took my turn." The cabin accommodations and abundant sea stores
that fell to the lot of Ralph and himself, under circumstances already
mentioned by us, on their voyage from Philadelphia to England in 1724, in
the _London-Hope_, Captain Annis, were rare windfalls; but the voyage was
marked by a great deal of bad weather. The return voyage of Franklin from
London to Philadelphia in 1726, in the _Berkshire_, Captain Clark,
including _obiter_ delays on the south coast of England, consumed the whole
interval between July 21 and Oct. 12. All the incidents of this long voyage
were entered in the Journal kept by him while it was under way, and there
are few writings in which the ordinary features of an ocean passage at that
time are so clearly brought before the reader: the baffling winds, the
paralyzing calms; the meagre fare; the deadly _ennui_; and the moody
sullenness bred by confinement and monotony. The word "helm-a-lee,"
Franklin states, became as disagreeable to their ears as the sentence of a
judge to a convicted malefactor. Once he leapt overboard and swam around
the ship to "wash" himself, and another time he was deterred from "washing"
himself by the appearance of a shark, "that mortal enemy to swimmers." For
a space his ship was in close enough companionship for several days with
another ship for the masters of the two vessels, accompanied by a passenger
in each instance, to exchange visits. On his second voyage, of about thirty
days, to England, in 1757, the packet, in which he was a passenger, easily
outstripped the hostile cruisers by which she was several times chased, but
wore about with straining masts just in time to escape shipwreck on the
Scilly rocks. Of his return to America in 1762, he wrote to Strahan from
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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