For upwards of forty years Mr. Ellerthorpe was known as a fearless swimmer and diver, and during that period he saved no fewer than forty lives by his daring intrepidity. In his boyhood, he, to use his own expression, '_felt quite at home in the water_,' and betook himself to it as natively and instinctively as the swan to the water or the lark to the sky. 'This art,' to use the words of an admirable article in the _Shipwrecked Mariners' Magazine_ for October, 1862, 'he has cultivated so successfully that in scores of instances he has been able to employ it for the salvation of life and property. Perhaps the history of no other living person more fully displays the value of this art than John Ellerthorpe. Joined with courage, promptitude, and steady self-possession, it has enabled him repeatedly to preserve his own life, and what is far more worthy of record, to save not fewer than thirty-nine of his fellow creatures, who, humanly speaking, must otherwise have met with a watery grave.' [Sidenote: HIS RECKLESS DARING.] It is but right to state that, in the early period of his history, a thoughtless disregard of his own life, and an overweening confidence in his ability to swim almost any length, and amid circumstances of great peril, often led him to deeds of 'reckless daring,' which in riper years he would have trembled to attempt. Respecting most of the following circumstances he says, 'I look upon those perilous adventures as so many foolish and wicked temptings of Providence. I have often wondered I was not drowned, and attribute my preservation to the wonder-working providence of God, who has so often 'redeemed my life from destruction, and crowned me with loving kindness and tender mercies.'