The street contained shops of all sorts--shops of curios brought home by the sailors and sold to their merchants; jewellers' shops; shops offering telescopes, sextants, and all kinds of naval things; taverns and hotels--then called inns. These shops, however, were not designed for able-bodied Jack, I believe, but for his officer. It was a fine lookout from the Hard upon the harbor, which was crammed full of ships--ships fitting, ships just come home, harbor-ships, hulks, store-ships, tugs, tenders, and small steamers. As yet the man-o'-war was a wooden ship. She carried 120 guns and a thousand men; mostly she sailed, and in the art of sailing she had no equal. As a boy I thought, and still think, that there is no work of man's craft and ingenuity more wonderful, more beautiful, than a great three-decker in full sail. Those who wished to cross the harbor or to visit a ship, started from the "Beach" or from the "Logs." The Beach was a narrow spit of sand and shingle running out into the water; it was the "stairs" for the watermen, who all day long kept up a perpetual bawling. "Going over? One more. Just going over. Only one more!" When they had a boat-load, say six or eight passengers at a penny apiece, they put off, and rowed across the harbor to Gosport, on the other side. Saw one ever a more animated sight than the harbor on a fine summer morning in the forties? Boats manned by Royal Navy men working their way here and there, yachts letting out their sails for a cruise in the Solent, wherries plying backwards and forwards, ships in the grip of the tide. We pass on our way the _Victory_, Nelson's last ship; she is moored off the Beach, and swings round with every tide. If you went on board you would see the place where Nelson fell, and the place where Nelson died--a dark and noisome hole on the orlop-deck down below. Yonder black hulk without masts is a ship whose exploits would fill a volume. Her name is the _Billy Ruffian_--mealy mouths call her the _Bellerephon_. Beside her, another dismasted hulk, now a coal-ship, is the _Asia_, from which was fired the shot which blew up the Turkish Admiral at Navarino. Beside her is the _Arethusa_, another historic ship. Beyond, in line, the old worn-out ships are laid up one after the other up the harbor; they are all historic ships; to hear their names is to be reminded of Copenhagen, the Nile, Trafalgar; they are store-ships, coal-ships, training-ships now, and those painted yellow are the convict-hulks. How much misery, how much brutality, how much despair had their permanent home on those terrible yellow ships called convict-hulks? The men were taken ashore every day to work--their work, the heaviest and the most disagreeable, lay chiefly in the Dock-yard; they worked under warders armed with guns, shotted and bayonetted. Many a time have I gone into the yard, a penny quid or screw of tobacco secreted in my pocket. One would get as near as one dared to one of the gang without raising suspicions.