We will now return to our own vessel and crew. As I stated in the former part of my journal, we shipped Irishmen in Hobartown, and Englishmen in Vasse. During the time they have been aboard we have been thoroughly convinced of their utter uselessness--their indolence preventing their acquiring sufficient insight into a seaman’s duties to render them a useful part of the ship’s company; and our captain was anxious to get rid of them. On the first liberty-day, two, whom we shipped at Vasse, overstaid their liberty, and were informed by the captain that he would not receive them aboard again. On the same day, one, whom we shipped in Hobartown, was discharged for inability to do duty. W. B. Wood, whom we brought from New Bedford, was also discharged sick. Joseph A. Lewis and John Cunningham, discharged sick, and sent to the hospital. Wood and Cunningham were both of our original crew; the remaining one, whom we shipped at Vasse, deserted. A seaman, shipped in Hobartown, was discharged with the consent of the contracting parties; one, shipped in Vasse, in January, 1857, and who, during the time he has been aboard, has been acting as fourth mate, was discharged with his own consent; and one, whom we got in Hobartown, is in jail--so that we are ten less in number than when we dropped anchor on the day of our entering the harbor. In their places we have shipped five men, all of whom are Americans, and have been whaling before. I said that we had shipped five, but two of the five came aboard without any agreement with the captain. These two were policemen, who had become disgusted with wearing her majesty’s button, and on their hinting their wish to get afloat again, our boys readily offered to assist them. Besides these, we shipped a lad of fifteen as steerage-boy. Although we had thus replaced the ten with but five men, we found, as soon as we got into blue water, that we had a much more effective crew than we had had at any time during the preceding sixteen months. The ten discharged and deserted comprised all the useless material in the ship--the foreign portion of them, in fact, being worse than useless; for, together with their incapacity, they had a propensity to growl, and made both themselves and those with whom they were associated uncomfortable. Their thievishness, too, had still adhered to them, notwithstanding their penal servitude. One of them, we discovered after leaving port, had on his dismissal carried away with him a considerable portion of the cooper’s tools. This was Leonard, professedly a cooper by trade. CHAPTER XIII.