Whilst on this voyage, to relieve the monotony of the daily routine of sea life, I taught myself navigation, took my trick at the wheel, and had my place aloft when reefing next to the weather earing, where I worked with an old man-of-war's man named Amos. Amos was a noble specimen of the old-fashioned British sailor. He was the king of the fo'castle, and while he was on hand no swearing or bad language was heard. The knowledge I then obtained of navigation and seamanship has been most valuable to me through life. It was a great opportunity, which I was wise enough to avail myself of. During the whole time I was on board this ship—nearly eight months—I never missed taking my trick at the wheel, or going aloft to reef. I well remember laying out on the fore yardarm, off Cape Horn, for two hours, while we got a close reef tied. We had to take up belaying pins to knock the frozen snow and ice off the sail before we could do anything, and the ship was labouring so heavily in the seaway that our task was most difficult. In navigation I became so proficient that I could work lunars with ease, and after the passage home of 110 days without seeing land I placed the position of the ship within three miles of her true position, near the Wolf Rock, Land's End, the old captain being ten to twelve miles out in his longitude. I remember feeling very proud of my good landfall. I told the old skipper that I thought we should see land at noon. He smiled and replied that we should not make it before three o'clock. I went aloft on to the fore yard-arm at one o'clock, and had not been there many minutes when I shouted "Land Ho!" I saw the sea breaking over the Wolf Rock.
CHAPTER III. LIVERPOOL.
Liverpool occupies the unique position of having filled two important places in the history of England. There was, firstly, the little town clustered round about its castle, and holding a charter from King John dated 1207, its estuary affording a safe haven for the trifling commerce passing between England and its sister island, Ireland. Thus situated it had to bear its part in the political movements and the foreign and civil wars which for long years harassed and distressed the country and checked its progress. Although the six centuries which intervened between 1200 and 1800 are filled with many incidents which clothe this portion of the history of Liverpool with much that is picturesque and romantic, at the close of the eighteenth century we still find Liverpool a small if not insignificant place, with a population in 1790 of only 55,000, while the tonnage of her shipping was only 49,541 tons.
This may be said to close the history of "old" Liverpool. With the dawn of the nineteenth century a new Liverpool sprang into existence. The opening of the American trade, the peace of 1814, and the introduction of steamships, gave an enormous impetus to the growth of the trade of the port and laid the foundations of that vast and world-wide commerce which has made the name of Liverpool synonymous with the greatest achievements in commerce and in science. The building of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the mother of railways, the docks, and the bridging of the Atlantic by what is practically a steam ferry, will ever stand out as epoch making.
Thus in little over a hundred years Liverpool has grown from a small town into a great city, the city of to-day.
Liverpool in 1860-1870.
My story must, however, begin with the 'sixties, when I commenced my business career. The growth of the city and its commerce has since been fully commensurate with the growth of the country. In the fifty years which have intervened the Empire has doubled its area and population, and the United Kingdom has trebled its trade. The population of Liverpool, including the newly added areas, has during the same period increased from 433,000 to 750,000, and the tonnage of our shipping from 4,977,272 tons to nearly 17,000,000 tons. She conducts one-third of the export trade and one-third of the import trade of the United Kingdom, and she owns one-third of the shipping of the kingdom, and one-seventh of that of the world. It has been a privilege to have been engaged in the commerce of the port during this remarkable expansion, and to have been associated with the conduct of public affairs during this period of growth and development in the city. Very much of this has been due to the enterprise and enlightenment of her own people. Liverpool shipowners have been in the vanguard of steamship enterprise, which has contributed so greatly to her prosperity; her merchants have built up her great trade in cotton and grain, and her citizens have not been slow to promote every sanitary improvement which made for the health and well-being of her people.
During the past fifty years the town has been re-sewered, the streets paved with an impervious pavement, and a new water supply has been introduced. The city has been encircled by a series of public parks and recreation grounds, baths and washhouses have been established, free libraries have been opened in the various suburban centres of population, cellar dwellings have been abolished, and rookeries in the shape of courts and tenement houses have been done away with, and in their place clean and comfortable working-men's cottages and flats have been substituted. The curse of drink has been effectively checked by the closing of twenty-five per cent. of the public-houses. To quote from Professor Ramsay Muir's interesting History of Liverpool: "Thus, on all sides and in many further modes the city government has, during the last thirty years especially, undertaken a responsibility for the health and happiness of its citizens unlike anything that its whole previous history has shown, and if any full account were to be given of what the city as a whole now endeavours to do for its citizens much ought also to be said of the extraordinary active works of charity and religion which have been carried on during these years."