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- CHAPTER I.
HOW WELLINGBOROUGH REDBURN’S TASTE FOR THE SEA WAS BORN AND BRED IN HIM
“Wellingborough, as you are going to sea, suppose you take this
shooting-jacket of mine along; it’s just the thing—take it, it will
_save_ the expense of another. You see, it’s quite warm; fine long
skirts, stout horn buttons, and plenty of pockets.”
Out of the goodness and simplicity of his heart, thus spoke my elder
brother to me, upon the _eve_ of my departure for the seaport.
“And, Wellingborough,” he added, “since we are both short of money, and
you want an outfit, and I _Have_ none to _give,_ you may as well take
my fowling-piece along, and sell it in New York for what you can
get.—Nay, take it; it’s of no use to me now; I can’t find it in powder
any more.”
I was then but a boy. Some time previous my mother had removed from New
York to a pleasant village on the Hudson River, where we lived in a
small house, in a quiet way. Sad disappointments in several plans which
I had sketched for my future life; the necessity of doing something for
myself, united to a naturally roving disposition, had now conspired
within me, to send me to sea as a sailor.
For months previous I had been poring over old New York papers,
delightedly perusing the long columns of ship advertisements, all of
which possessed a strange, romantic charm to me. Over and over again I
devoured such announcements as the following:
FOR BREMEN.
_The coppered and copper-fastened brig Leda, having nearly completed
her cargo, will sail for the above port on Tuesday the twentieth of
May.
For freight or passage apply on board at Coenties Slip.
_
To my young inland imagination every word in an advertisement like
this, suggested volumes of thought.
A _brig!_ The very word summoned up the idea of a black, sea-worn
craft, with high, cozy bulwarks, and rakish masts and yards.
_Coppered and copper-fastened!_ That fairly smelt of the salt water!
How different such vessels must be from the wooden, one-masted,
green-and-white-painted sloops, that glided up and down the river
before our house on the bank.
_Nearly completed her cargo!_ How momentous the announcement;
suggesting ideas, too, of musty bales, and cases of silks and satins,
and filling me with contempt for the vile deck-loads of hay and lumber,
with which my river experience was familiar.
_Will sail on Tuesday the 20th of May-and_ the newspaper bore date the
fifth of the month! Fifteen whole days beforehand; think of that; what
an important voyage it must be, that the time of sailing was fixed upon
so long beforehand; the river sloops were not used to make such
prospective announcements.
_For freight or passage apply on board!_ Think of going on board a
coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking passage for Bremen! And
who could be going to Bremen? No one but foreigners, doubtless; men of
dark complexions and jet-black whiskers, who talked French.
_Coenties Slip._ Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be
lying there. Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of
grim-looking warehouses, with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled
roofs; and old anchors and chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned
coffeehouses, also, much abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt
sea-captains going in and out, smoking cigars, and talking about
Havanna, London, and Calcutta.
All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy
reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a
residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.
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