After many voyages, in many vessels, on many occassions both naval and mercantile, I feel, now that I have retired after fifty years at sea, that I ought to leave the younger and future generations a printed record of seafaring life as I found it during the transition from the sailing ships of the 1890s to the "monster" liners of today.

Preface.

When I was five years of age, in the year 1888, I saw the S.S. Great Eastern lying at her moorings in the Mersey.

Chapter I.