Such a voyage must to a great extent be an amateur business, by which I mean one to be undertaken only by a pleasure sailor of experience, accompanied by friends of like tastes; for I can imagine nothing so remote from an amusement as for a novice to sail away on a vessel of this size with a purely professional skipper and crew on whom he has to implicitly rely. He is completely at the mercy of his servants; hands who are well enough when carrying their employer about in home waters and on short foreign cruises are apt, unless they are exceptional men indeed, to take advantage of his ignorance and helplessness in many ways when the vessel is thousands of miles from home and on coasts where--and they are thoroughly well aware of this--he cannot discharge them, since it would be impossible satisfactorily to replace them. To travel in such a fashion would be productive of so much annoyance and anxiety as to sicken one for ever of the sea. With a larger vessel it is of course a different matter; a first-class skipper is engaged, the crew is carefully picked, all is properly ordered, and a discipline not altogether feasible on the small craft is maintained; and yet I have heard it whispered that discord and trouble are not always absent even from the big vessel on a lengthened cruise. There is no man I would rather have at sea with me than the honest British yachting tar of the right sort; but it is difficult to get him to ship for a long voyage on a small craft, and as a rule one has to put up with an inferior article. The owner of our roaming 50-tonner therefore, if he wish to enjoy any comfort and have an easy mind, must know sufficient to be entirely independent of his crew; and if he is not his own skipper--which he ought to be--he should at any rate be entered on the ship's papers as captain, and every man on board should sign articles under him. Should the skipper choose to leave the vessel, the owner must be capable of taking his place. The men must be made to understand that their employer can do without them; that, in case of their attempting any nonsense, he is quite prepared to put all hands on shore and ship a crew of any sort of foreigners in any port if necessary; if he cannot do this, he had far better stay on shore, or only cruise in home waters. But when once the owner has attained this absolute independence, he will find there is no more fascinating pursuit than that of navigating his little vessel across the seas from country to country, to whatsoever corner of the world he may fancy to betake himself.