of the anti-slavery cause. This eminent jurist who built his life upon the plan of his words, "Duties are ours and consequences are God's" (as did also Cooper), was graphically addressed and described by Cooper as "Thou most pugnacious man of peace."
Leaving Yale to the more studious, no doubt the young man enjoyed this brief period of home-life and the distinguished guests drawn by its hospitality to Otsego Hall. Yet even this could not for long hold him there. Perhaps he was influenced by what he heard from them of the great outside world, and he, too, wished to see what it was like. As a stepping-stone to a commission in the navy, Judge Cooper secured a berth for his son, who shipped as a sailor
before-the-mast in the Stirling, of Wiscasset, Maine, John Johnston master and part owner. In the care of a merchant, young Cooper went down to the docks to look about the ship and sign the articles, and the next day he returned in his sailor's garb. The Stirling was taken into the stream, and his new comrades, a mixture of nations,—four Americans, a Portuguese, a Spaniard, a Prussian, a Dane, an Englishman, a Scotch boy, and a Canadian,—tumbled aboard, not quite themselves; but by night they were in working trim. The young commander was described as "kind and considerate of all hands," and the ship as "carrying a motley crew." When "all hands" were called to get the Stirling under way, Cooper, with another boy, was sent aloft to loose the foretopsail. With eager will he tugged stoutly at "the robbins," when the second mate appeared just in time to prevent him from dropping his part of the sail into the top. The good-hearted mate had a kindly mind for the "new hand," and the men were too busy to notice small failures aloft. Young Cooper soon found an old salt who taught him to knot and splice with the best of them, and old Barnstable was repaid for these lessons by the merry times
they had together when they got ashore.
However, with her cargo of flour, the Stirling sailed from New York in the autumn of 1806 for the English market at Cowes, and therefore when Cooper should have been taking his class degree at Yale, he was outward bound on the sea's highway. Being to the manor born did not admit the sailor before-the-mast to the captain's cabin, but no doubt the long, rough voyage of forty stormy days did make of the young man a jolly tar. Through her usual veil of fog came Cooper's first view of Old England when threatened with Napoleon's invasion. Forty-odd sail of warships were sighted by the night-watch when the Stirling passed the straits of Dover at daybreak. They gave the young man an object-lesson that he never forgot, in the watchfulness and naval power of Great Britain. The Stirling had but dropped anchor in English waters when she was boarded by a British man-of-war's boat-crew, and one of her best hands was forced into the English navy service, and another sailor barely escaped, he having satisfactory papers. At London a third hand was lost, and Captain Johnston himself was seized by a press-gang.
Finally, in round-jacket and tarpaulin, the future guest of Samuel Rogers and Holland House, planted his feet on British soil. At London he saw about everything a gay young fellow of seventeen in sailor's gear could, of that wonderful city,—or so thought Ned Myers, one of his shipmates, who was with him most of the time. Concerning these jaunts Myers says: "I had one or two cruises of a Sunday in the tow of Cooper, who soon became a branch pilot in those waters about the parks and the West End, the Monument, St. Paul's and the lions; Cooper took a look at the arsenal, jewels, and armory [Tower of London]. He had a rum time of it in his sailor's rig; hoisted in a wonderful lot of gibberish." And with his fine stories of each day's sights in old London town, the young sailor would make merry evenings for his forecastle
comrades, of whom it is recorded his strength could lay flat on their backs in two minutes.