Sect. III.—HIS BIRTH, EDUCATION, AND YOUTHFUL ADVENTURES.
He was born in the year 1788, and was, as we have seen, soon after placed under the charge of a stepmother, by whom it is said he was not only neglected, but treated with harshness and cruelty; and hence throughout his life stepmothers were regarded by him with a feeling of unconquerable horror.[4] The accounts which he occasionally gave his companions of the sufferings of his youth, arising from the causes which have been specified, were appalling. In reference to them, an enemy, who, however, seems to have been in possession of accurate information on the subject, says, that while a schoolboy, “the climate of Lapland and that of Timbuctoo alternated several times in the course of a day—a species of seasoning, or rather case-hardening, that must go far to render him invulnerable on the sultry banks of the Joliba.” And one of the most intimate of his friends thus speaks of them in a letter now before us: “How can the hardships and privations of his early life be touched upon without hurting the feelings of relatives? These had much better be buried in oblivion, although they tended to form the man hardy and self-denying.” When he was a boy, he was nearly drowned in the Annan; and on that occasion he used to say, that he felt as if a calm and pleasing sleep was stealing over his senses, and thought that gay and beautifully painted streamers were attached to his legs and arms, and that thereby he was buoyed out into the sea; but he always declared that he experienced no pain until efforts were making to restore him to a state of animation. At this time he was an expert swimmer, having been previously taught that useful art by his brothers; but he had exhausted his strength by continuing too long in the water. When the alarm of his danger was given by some one to his father, he hastened to the spot, plunged in, and found his son in a sitting posture in very deep water.
Among the injuries of his early life, that of a neglected education was none of the least. He was taught the ordinary acquirements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, which are generally imparted to the lowest classes of the Scottish youth; but he was never initiated into a knowledge of the classic authors of Greece and Rome. Under Mr. Bryce Downie, however, a celebrated teacher of geometry in the town of Annan, he acquired a practical knowledge of mathematics, including navigation and trigonometry, and afterwards, by means of his own application, he acquired many other branches of useful and ornamental knowledge, and excelled especially in drawing.[5]
He very early discovered a strong propensity for this latter accomplishment, so that, with the aid of a few instructions from his father, who excelled in the knowledge of geography, he could sketch a map of Europe, while still a child in frocks, with chalk on the floor. His love of foreign travel and romantic adventure, were likewise very soon manifested in the delight which he took in listening to his father, while he pointed out the likely situation of the “North West passage” to him and his brothers on the globe; in the enthusiasm which he displayed, when told by his father that he might be the destined discoverer of that long sought for route from Europe to Eastern Asia; and also in the avidity with which he devoured books of voyages and travels of all descriptions whenever they fell in his way.
The circumstance of his entering upon a seafaring life is variously reported. By one account we are assured that his situation at home being so unpleasant, he became so thoroughly disgusted with his father’s house, that he left it clandestinely, and went on board the first vessel in the harbour of Annan that was willing to receive him. By his anonymous and unfriendly biographer, it is said that he was promoted to the rank of an apprentice to a coasting sloop of Maryport, commanded by Captain John Smith, and that soon afterwards he was again promoted to the rank of cook’s mate on board his majesty’s tender in the harbour of Liverpool. His uncle’s account, in the sketch of his life prefixed to the Journal of his Second African Expedition, is, that on leaving Mr. Downie, at the age of thirteen, he was, by his own desire, bound an apprentice to the owner of a vessel of considerable burden trading between Liverpool and North America: that after making several voyages in that vessel, he either left her or was impressed into his Majesty’s service, and put on board the tender lying at Liverpool. It is clear, from all these accounts, that Captain Clapperton commenced his naval career as a common sailor boy—a situation which implies hard duty and rough usage; yet, as is testified by the following well authenticated anecdote, this, with all he had previously endured, was unable to break his spirit, or to subdue the dignified feelings of a noble nature. As soon as he had joined the trading vessel in which he first sailed, he was told that one piece of duty which he had to perform on board was to brush his captain’s boots and shoes. This he positively refused to do, adding, that he was most willing to take his full share of the hardest work which belonged to the loading, the unloading, or the working of the ship; but to the menial drudgery of cleaning boots and shoes he certainly would not submit. After he had for a short time served on board several trading vessels, he was impressed into his Majesty’s service at Liverpool; and in 1806 he was sent to Gibraltar in a navy transport.[6] The idea, however, of having been placed on board a man-of-war by force, and retained there as a prisoner, was so galling to his nature—to a spirit panting and struggling to be free—that he formed the resolution (one most difficult to be put in practice) of deserting whenever the opportunity of doing so should occur: and such was the reckless daring of his disposition, that, watching the time when he was least observed by his messmates before the mast, he actually threw himself headlong overboard, and swam towards a Gibraltar privateer—a vessel of that class which, during the late war, were usually called rock scorpions by our sailors. He was taken on board the privateer, and so for a short time he was the associate of an abandoned and a lawless set of robbers. But he was soon disgusted with their regardless, savage and brutal manners, and so embraced the first opportunity of leaving them, and of going again into the merchant service. While, however, he was on board the Rock Scorpion, she had sustained an engagement, in which our hero was severely wounded by a grape-shot—an accident by which his body was seamed and scarred in a frightful manner, and which, had it happened to his face or his limbs, must have rendered him deformed or lame for life.