My cousin, having now reached home, was desirous to have me devote myself to some business. He proposed that of a sailmaker; but by this time I had quite a desire to go to sea again.
The Constitution, the Frolic sloop of war, and the gun brig Siren, were all shipping hands in Boston. My feelings inclined me towards old Ironsides; but my cousin, having sailed with Captain Parker,[18] of the Siren, recommended that officer so strongly, that I was induced to join his ship, in company with the quartermaster and several of the former hands of the United States. My cousin also overruled my design of shipping in a false name; so that, in defiance of my fears, I suffered myself to be entered as Samuel Leech, on the books of the U. S. brig Siren, of sixteen guns. The payment of three months’ advance, with the sum I brought with me from New York, enabled me honorably to discharge my board bills at my cousin’s, and to purchase a little clothing necessary to fit me for sea. I was then in the seventeenth year of my life.
Once more in a man of war, my seriousness all vanished like mist before the sun. Alas, it was poor soil to nourish the seed of life! barren of everything that related to purity, religion, and immortality.
My first impressions of the American service were very favorable. The treatment in the Siren was more lenient and favorable than in the Macedonian. The captain and officers were kind, while there was a total exemption from that petty tyranny exercised by the upstart midshipmen in the British service. As a necessary effect, our crew were as comfortable and as happy as men ever are in a man of war.
While we lay in Boston harbor, Thanksgiving-day arrived. Some of our Salem men inquired if I was not going home to keep Thanksgiving, for they all supposed I belonged to Salem. What they meant by Thanksgiving, was a mystery to me, but, dissembling my ignorance, I obtained leave, determined to learn what it meant. The result of my visit was the idea that Thanksgiving was one in which the people crammed themselves with turkeys, geese, pumpkin-pies, &c.; for, certainly, that was the chief business of the day, so far as I could perceive. With too many people, I believe that this is the leading idea associated with the day even now.
Our brig had before this taken in her guns, consisting of two long nine-pounders, twelve twenty-four pound carronades, and two forty-two pounders. Our crew was composed of some one hundred and twenty-five smart, active men. We were all supplied with stout leather caps, something like those used by firemen. These were crossed by two strips of iron, covered with bearskin, and were designed to defend the head, in boarding an enemy’s ship, from the stroke of the cutlass. Strips of bearskin were likewise used to fasten them on, serving the purpose of false whiskers, and causing us to look as fierce as hungry wolves. We were also frequently exercised in the various evolutions of a sea-fight; first using our cannon, then seizing our cutlasses and boarding-pikes, and cutting to the right and left, as if in the act of boarding an enemy’s ship. Thus we spent our time from early in the fall until after Christmas, when we received orders to hold ourselves in readiness for sea.
