Confessions of a Tradesman

by Frank Thomas Bullen

To my great sorrow this good time came to an end with the finishing of the houses, and I was again adrift. And now let me say in deepest gratitude, that through cold, hunger, wet, and sleeping out, I do not remember ever ailing anything. True, I was stunted in my growth owing to privation, but I was wiry, and except for the curse of bad teeth, I do not think I ever had an ache or pain except the transient ones of cold and hunger. But my great sorrow, continually haunting me, was the fact that I never was able to get permanent employment. No sooner did I seem to get settled and satisfied, than some catastrophe or other would come along and heave me out into unattached desolation again. I was like a homeless dog, ready to fawn upon any possible proprietor, and gladly give up my hated freedom for the certainty of continuous employment.

Now I had heard many things about life at sea, for an uncle of mine, whom I had not seen for years, had commanded ships for a long time, and his remarks upon the sailor's life I had often drank in with greedy care. Nothing that he ever said gave me the slightest desire to adopt his career, for from my earliest recollection I had an analytical mind, and I really had no desire to seek adventure at the cost of all that most people consider makes life worth living. I am afraid my bent was essentially bourgeois, strengthened and set as time wore on and experience came to me. I felt that I could understand, dimly perhaps but certainly, how boys who had never known a hardship, a want unsupplied, should be led away by the glamour of what they read, but how ever a boy who knew what the stress and struggle of life meant ashore could go to sea knowingly, to encounter conditions far worse, I did not understand.

And now, for me at least, the explanation came. It was continuity of employment. You might not like your job, or your employer might be entirely dissatisfied with you, but you were compelled to put up with each other until the passage was over, at anyrate. This made the prospect of sea-life tolerable to me. I was under absolutely no apprehensions as to romantic adventure, for I was certainly not the stuff of which adventurers are made. All my adventures had been forced upon me, and I was never so happy as when I was under somebody's command, if that somebody would only give me an encouraging word now and then.

So I determined to try and get to sea. But owing to my puny size I found it very difficult. I was told that the easiest way to begin was to hang about a certain public-house in Thames Street, whither coasting skippers used to resort for their crews. It was just opposite the Custom-House steps, and was called the King's Head (or Arms). A certain individual, popularly known as Sam, who was, I suppose, a species of crimp, was always in evidence and acted as go-between. To him came all sorts of rough coasting skippers, masters of barges, of "billy-boys," ketches and schooners, in quest of men and boys, and the latter looked to him as their earthly providence.

How he got paid I do not know, a certain commission from both sides was paid him, I expect. The candidates were allowed to haunt a grim den, a tap-room at the back of the public-house, where a good fire was always blazing, and though dark and gloomy in the extreme, it afforded a shelter from the bitter blasts which swept down that grimiest of London's business thoroughfares.

I am afraid that it is impossible for me to attempt any adequate description of the time I spent looking for a ship in this terrible place. I had to live, and did, but how I hardly know, for so small an urchin as I stood but little chance in the incessant struggle for employment that went on down there. But I had learned to live upon very little, and it is an incontrovertible fact that the stomach of a young human being that has never known pampering can assimilate food that should, theoretically, derange the digestion of an ostrich. For instance, Fresh Wharf, Thames Street, was the rendezvous of many steamers from Spain, laden with dried fruits, nuts, oranges, etc. In the handling of cases, sacks, and other packages, there was a good deal of breakage, and I could often snatch a few handfuls of currants, nuts, raisins, etc. I always ate of them ravenously, in spite of their copious admixture of dust and dirt, but even after devouring a couple of pounds of currants I never remember feeling the slightest ill effects.

But when by some happy chance I managed to get hold of a few coppers, there was a cook shop opposite the main entrance to Billingsgate Market that never failed to attract me. Their specialité was pea-soup, which was exposed most temptingly in a large tank in one of the windows. It was sold at twopence a basin; but the half basin for a penny, not being carefully measured, lacked very little of being full. Moreover, to the initiate, there were degrees in the quality of this soup. It was freshly made on Monday, and even then was good. On Tuesday, however, the thick residue at the bottom of the tank remaining unsold was left, and the usual ingredients for a fresh mess were added to it, making it much richer and more substantial. On Wednesday, this process was repeated, with the result that Wednesday's soup was a thick pureé in which a spoon would stand erect, and he who could buy a penn'orth and eat it with a ha'penny hunk of bread, could go in the strength of that meal for twenty-four hours without any inconvenience. At least I can say for myself that I very often did, and my appetite in those days was terrible, abnormal. I really do not seem ever to have been fully satisfied.

One thing I have reason to be thankful for; my pilfering propensities had almost entirely disappeared, for with the exception of an occasional roll from a baker's shop, or some unconsidered trifle of cheese or the dried fruit aforesaid, I never took what was not mine, and when I did, it was only under the pressure of great hunger.

Once I made a serious mistake which gave me a bitter pang, disappointment so keen that I feel the sting of it even now sometimes. I was ravenously hungry, and there seemed to be no possibility of getting anything to eat. So diving down into the shell-fish market beneath the main building of Billingsgate, I watched my opportunity, and filled the breast of my shirt with whelks from a mighty tubful. My booty secured, I hastened back to the gloomy tap-room, there to devour my prize, but was immediately confronted with the difficulty of extracting the whelks from their shells.

I had often seen it done by the men who kept whelk stalls in the streets, and it looked ridiculously easy. But I could not do it, and I was fain at last to smash the shells, no easy task either. Then clearing the mollusc from débris I tried to eat it, but it was quite impossible, it was tougher than gutta-percha, and I realised that my whelks were unboiled! These morsels require immense masticatory powers to deal with them at any time, but uncooked they would defy the jaws of a stone-crusher.