About this time, for some unexplained reason, there was a change of skippers, and our new one was R. K. Jeffery. He was a most important personage, with a great deal of the Methodist about him. There were two or three apprentices and one Bob McCarthy, an ordinary seaman, who was a friend of the owners. He was supposed to be suffering from consumption and came to sea to be cured or killed. He was cured, as it happened, and we were chums for the voyage, as he lived in the deck-house with the carpenter and myself. The last I heard of him, some years ago, was that he was in command of a steamer and doing well. The apprentices disappeared from the ship before we put to sea. This was early in the year 1866, and the winter season in the Atlantic had been bad. It was shortly after the _London_ went down in the Bay, and our anticipations of the trip were not hopeful. It will be remembered that this was before Mr. Plimsoll began his celebrated crusade, and, in point of fact, here was as fine an illustration of overloading as any one could wish to see. So far as I know there was at that time no check at all upon the amount of cargo a master or owner might think fit to place on board, and I am sure that no one was ever more entitled to the gratitude of seamen than was Samuel Plimsoll. His method of procedure might have been crude, but the fact remains that his book was a fair and just account of the usages of the sea at the time it was written. Some years afterwards, when it came into my hands, I found how closely my experiences coincided with his remarks. This matter of overloading ships was a very vexed question, and “as deep as a collier” is a proverb not altogether forgotten even to-day. The evil now to some extent corrects itself, for a deeply-laden steamer is always lightening herself by her coal consumption, but I am confident that I could go to the docks to-day and point out first-class steamers that would be overloaded if down to their Plimsoll mark, and which, if they put to sea in the teeth of a bad breeze of wind, would give considerable anxiety to those in charge of their navigation. Of this, however, I may say more anon. We put to sea loaded as deeply as possible, and had no great luck to speak of, for after rounding Ushant the wind drew to the southward of west and began to blow hard. The barque laboured heavily, commencing to make a good deal of water. The pumps eventually got choked with small coal and we had to bale the water out by buckets. This was only possible because, owing to the nature of the cargo, the hold was not full, and we were able to clear a way pretty deep down in the coal and so keep the water under. Then the maintopsail yard (patent) carried away, and that gave us more joy, and finally the men came aft to the captain and demanded that he should put back to Plymouth or the nearest port.