Coming home from the China Station in 1872, I was Commander of the old Battleship “Ocean.” She was an old wooden Line of Battleship that had armour bolted on her sides. When we got into heavy weather, the timbers of the ship would open when she heeled over one way, and shut together when she heeled the other, and squirted the water inboard! And always we had many fountains playing in the bottom of the ship from leaks, some quite high. At Singapore the Chaplain left us; he couldn’t face it, as we were going home round the Cape of Good Hope at the stormy season. So I did chaplain! When we put into Zanzibar on the East Coast of Africa, I heard there was a sick Bishop ashore from Central Africa who had been carried down on a shutter with fever. I went to see him, to ask whether he could take on next day, Sunday, and give the crew a change! He turned out to be a splendid specimen, and had given up a fat living in Lincolnshire to be a Missionary. I found him eating boiled rice and a hard boiled egg on a broken plate--we gave him a good feed when he came on board--but I am telling the story because his Sermon was on Prayer. He gave us no text, but began by saying he had been wondering for the last half-hour what on earth that thing was overhead between the beams on the main deck where we were assembled! Of course we knew it was one of the long pump handles for pumping the ship out with the chain pumps (a thing of past ages)--all the crew had to take continually to the pumps, she was leaking so badly--and “There!” he said, “I’m a Bishop, and instead of saying my prayers I’ve been letting my thoughts wander,” and he gave us a beautiful extempore sermon on wandering thoughts on Prayer that hit everyone in the eye! I believe he died there in Central Africa, a polished English gentleman, with refined tastes and delighting in the delicacies of a cultured life! A missionary had come preaching at his Country Church and had made him ashamed of his life of ease, so he told me! We got into a fierce gale off the Cape, and I began to envy the Chaplain we had left behind at Singapore, especially when the Captain said he thought there was nothing for it but for me, the Commander, to go aloft about the close reefed fore topsail as the men would follow no one of lower rank. My monkey jacket was literally “blown into ribbons!” I had heard the expression before, but never had realised it could be exact! Sir Thomas Troubridge foundered with all hands in the exact place in an old two-decker--I think it was the “Blenheim.” He was Nelson’s favourite, and got ashore in the “Culloden” at the Nile; but that’s another story as Mr. Kipling says! HOW I BECAME CAPTAIN OF THE “INFLEXIBLE”