It was at Whitsuntide of the year 1764, I then numbering eleven summers, that I was placed on the books of the Folkstone cutter, commanded by a particular friend of my father's, Lieutenant Clover; the amount of learning I possessed on quitting school just enabling me to read a chapter in the Bible to my old blind grandmother (on my mother's side), who lived with us, and to tell my father how many times a coachwheel of any diameter would turn round in going to Penryn. Having received my father's and mother's blessing and a sea-chest, which contained a somewhat scanty supply of clothes, a concise epitome of navigation, an English dictionary, and my grandmother's Bible--the only gift of value the kind old lady had it in her power to bestow--I was launched forth into the wide world to take my chance with the bustling, hard-hearted crowd which fills it. I was speedily removed from the cutter into his Majesty's packet the Duncannon, Captain Charles Edwards, in which vessel I crossed the Atlantic for the first time; and after visiting Madeira and several of the West India Islands I returned to Falmouth on the eve of Christmas, 1767. I next joined the Duke of York, Captain Dickenson, in which vessel I made no less than sixteen voyages to Lisbon. As, however, I had grown very weary of the packet service, I was not sorry to be paid off and to return once more home, if not with a fuller purse, at all events, a better sailor than when I left it. I was not long allowed to enjoy the luxury of idleness before my father got me appointed to the Torbay, seventy-four, commanded by Captain Walls, who was considered one of the smartest officers in the service, and I was taught to expect a very different sort of life to that which I had been accustomed to in the slow-going packet service. There were several youngsters from the neighbourhood of Falmouth, who had never before been to sea, who were appointed to the same ship. One of them, my old messmate poor Dick Martingall, used to speak of the unsophisticated joy with which his old mother, in her happy simplicity, announced to him the fact of his appointment. She came to his bedside long before the usual hour of rising and awoke him. "Richard, my dear son, Richard!" she said; "get up, thou art made for ever!" "What am I made, mother?" he asked with astonishment, rubbing his eyes, which were still full of sleep. "Oh, my boy, my dear boy!" replied the good lady, her countenance beaming with satisfaction, "thou art made a midshipman!"