half-a-dozen times, but swore he would not budge. Cooper had a little row
with this boarding officer, but was silenced by the captain.

After the news received from the sloop of war, it may be supposed we did
not venture to anchor anywhere on English ground. Keeping the channel, we
passed the Isle of Wight several times, losing on the flood, the distance
made on the ebb. At length we got a slant and fetched out into the
Atlantic, heading well to the southward, however. Our passage was long,
even after we got clear, the winds carrying us down as low as Corvo, which
island we made, and then taking us well north again. We had one very heavy
blow that forced us to scud, the Sterling being one of the wettest ships
that ever floated, when heading up to the sea.

When near the American coast, we spoke an English brig that gave us an
account of the affair between the Leopard and the Chesapeake, though he
made his own countrymen come out second-best. Bitter were the revilings of
Mr. Irish when the pilot told us the real state of the case. As was usual
with this ship's luck, we tided it up the bay and river, and got safe
alongside of the wharf at Philadelphia, at last. Here our crew was broken
up, of course, and, with the exception of Jack Pugh, my brother
apprentice, and Cooper, I never saw a single soul of them afterwards. Most
of them went on to New York, and were swallowed up in the great vortex of
seamen. Mr. Irish, I heard, died the next voyage he made, chief mate of an
Indiaman. He was a prime fellow, and fit to command a ship.

Such was my first voyage at sea, for I count the passage round from
Halifax as nothing. I had been kept in the cabin, it is true, but our work
had been of the most active kind. The Sterling must have brought up, and
been got under way, between fifty and a hundred times; and as for tacking,
waring, chappelling round, and box-hauling, we had so much of it by the