Captain John Wyrill, who, I am glad to say, is still hale and hearty, took _Berean_ from the stocks and only left her when she changed her flag. He is one of the few sailors left of the good old sort, for he has the distinction of never having served in a steamship. Coming from one of the foremost seafaring families in Scarborough, Captain Wyrill went to sea as far back as 1850; his apprenticeship indentures were for seven years, but he was an acting second mate within three years of his going to sea. His first command in T. B. Walker’s ships came about in rather a curious way. He was appointed to command a ship, belonging to Mr. Hodgson Smith, the father of Scarborough’s present harbourmaster, in place of a captain who was ill. This ship lay in a South Coast port, but on Captain Wyrill arriving there to take up his command he found that the sick skipper had recovered and sailed on his voyage. Mr. Smith thereupon introduced him to Mr. T. B. Walker and his brother Henry Walker, who, by the way, were natives of Scarborough. Through them he obtained command of a ship called the _Lady Stanley_, his next command was the _Asphodel_, then the _Velocidade_, which he left to take the _Berean_. Captain Wyrill circumnavigated the globe no less than 36 times, and was 44 years in command of sailing ships, for 42 of which he was in the Tasmanian trade. Indeed no history of Tasmania’s rise to her present prosperity and importance would be complete without some mention of the _Berean_ and her commander. And when it was known in Launceston that Captain Wyrill was leaving Tasmania homeward bound for the last time, with the intention of retiring from the sea, a meeting and public send-off was arranged and a purse of sovereigns and an illuminated address were presented to the veteran captain by the Mayor of the town after several eulogistic speeches, in which Captain Wyrill was referred to “as one of the most popular men ever connected with the shipping of Launceston.” Like many another sailing ship captain, Captain Wyrill was no mean surgeon and the setting of broken limbs at sea held no terrors for him. He once made a very good job of his second mate’s broken arm. The _Berean_ was so free from accidents at sea that after she had been afloat some years the underwriters at Lloyd’s offered to insure her at a specially reduced premium. Her most serious misfortune, whilst under Captain Wyrill, occurred whilst she was towing up to the docks from Gravesend. A large ship ahead suddenly took the ground and the _Berean_ was unable to clear her, the collision costing her a new bowsprit, besides damages to figure-head and cutwater. Her narrowest escape from shipwreck was owing to a wrong light in 1888 in no less a place than the Channel. _Fairplay_, in criticising the misdeeds of Trinity House, gives the following account of the incident:—