used to tell the story as having happened to himself; and he
had told it so often, that he firmly believed it, and used
to get into a passion when any of the crew dared to doubt or
laugh. I have, of course, licked the rough outlines of the
story or anecdote into something like shape; but the main
incidents are repeated to this day by the sailors of the
'Barking Fleet,' as the squadron of handsome smacks are
called, which, hailing from the town of Barking, in Essex,
pursue the toilsome task, in all seasons, and almost in all
weathers, of supplying the London market with North-Sea
turbot, soles, and cod. The story is told in the first
person, as Dick Hatch himself might have narrated it.]


Nigh forty years ago, mates, when I was as young and supple as the boy
Bill, there--though I was older than him by some years--I was serving
my apprenticeship to the trade aboard the sloop _Lively Nan_. There
were not such big vessels in the trade then, mates, as now; but they
were tight craft, and manned by light fellows; and they did their work
as well as the primest clipper of the Barking Fleet. Well, the _Lively
Nan_ was about this quickest and most weatherly of the whole fleet;
and she had a great name for making the quickest runs between the
fishing-grounds and the river. But it wasn't owing so much to the
qualities of the smack, as to the seamanship of the skipper. A prime
sailor he was, surely. There wasn't another man sailed out of the
River Thames who could handle a smack like Bob Goss. When he took the
tiller, somehow the craft seemed to know it, and bobbed up half a
point nearer to the wind; and when we were running free with the
main-sheet eased off, and the foresail shivering, her wake would be as
straight as her mast; only, he was a rare fellow for carrying on, was