These ships differed from any other merchant vessels in that they carried midshipmen and not apprentices. These midshipmen were drawn from the same families who supplied officers to the Royal Navy, and were known as “young gentlemen.” Very often in the case of a country rector who had two sons, you find the eldest going into the Navy and the younger into a Blackwall frigate. If a guardian could get a boy into one of these ships, there was no further cause for worry: a fine career was assured. He went to sea in what were happy ships and he gradually rose in his profession until he was making about £5000 a year in the case of the best captains. The guardian or parent had to pay a premium of £60 a voyage for the young midshipman, but those were the days when the commanding officers were the finest navigators in the world and had time to instruct the aspirant. It was a life totally different from that of a modern apprentice. For some time the officers in these ships were allowed to wear the lion and crown of the East India Company on their uniform buttons, but eventually the house flags of the companies were substituted. A great deal of the old dignity and semi-naval routine were retained in this new service, with action stations and sail-drill. For they were frigate-built and carried guns, so that they could readily be turned into corvettes and be useful fighting units. In an interesting little book entitled _Reminiscences of a Blackwall Midshipman_, published some years ago, Mr. W. I. Downie remarked with pride: “It was a fine service and afforded a good opening for younger sons, whose elder brothers were in the Army or Navy, but whose parents could not very well spare the means to dispose in the same way of all their sometimes numerous progeny.” He himself joined up in the ’sixties, having considered himself disappointed at not entering the Royal Navy, but lucky to obtain a berth as midshipman in Green’s Blackwall frigate _Trafalgar_, and bound to India. This ship was built in the year 1848, and was of 1038 tons, her construction being of teak.