Seal of the Girls’ High School, Hull.
A school of a very special kind was that conducted on board the H.M. Training Ship ‘Southampton.’ The Southampton, an old ‘three-decker,’ after serving as a battleship in the early years of last century, was sent to the Humber to become a floating Industrial School. For forty-three years it fulfilled its duty, during which time some 2,600 boys were educated on it for a life at sea.[[74]]
In towns private schools of all classes were increasing rapidly when the nineteenth century opened. A Directory of Hull for the year 1831 shows that there were then in the town seven Ladies’ Boarding Academies, four Gentlemen’s Boarding Academies, twelve Classical and Commercial Academies, and no fewer than seventy-four Day Schools.
The following is the advertisement issued by the Principal of a Commercial and Mathematical Academy in the year 1787. In it the mysterious letters appended to the Principal’s name may be taken to stand for ‘Writing Master.’
HULL, July 11th, 1787.
At the Commercial and Mathematical Academy.
On the SOUTH-SIDE of the DOCK,
Facing the NEW-BRIDGE;
GENTLEMENS’ CHILDREN are instructed in the first principles of English, so as to be enabled to read and write their native Language with elegance and propriety; the English Grammar agreeable to the strictest rules of Syntax, resolving a sentence into its different parts of speech. The free and natural method of Writing, and striking by command of hand; Arithmetic, Merchants’ Accounts, or the Italian Method of Book-Keeping; Mensuration; Gauging; Surveying of Land; Plain and Spherical Trigonometry; Euclids Elements; Navigation; Algebra, and the Use of the Globes.