The Passage of the Palmetto

There are many pleasanter spots than the deck of a sailing ship, as on some winter's morning she hangs to the buoy at Gravesend ready for a start; and Merchant Jack, both fore and aft, as he eyes the cold, grey sky and low-lying dingy shores on either hand, curses the climate, the service, and his bad luck in not having shipped on board a steamer in place of on a wind-jammer. That is in these days. In the old ones, he took matters as they came, rather, indeed, affected to look down upon all "smoke jacks," and prided himself upon belonging to a "flier." Steam, however, has changed all that. There are no "fliers" to speak of now, and British Merchant Jack has become so scarce that the powers that be, alarmed lest he should disappear altogether, have caught a lot of him young, and sent him in mobs to learn his trade in certain merchant ships, and qualify himself in some of the good old-fashioned seamanship before inevitable steam claims him for its own.
But to return to our outward-bounder, lying at the buoy this grey and dismal February morning, and attempt to describe to you scenes that will, ere many years are over, be only found in books. Presently, the river pilot comes on board, a tug catches hold of the big liner, and she moves slowly away down the Thames; her crew sulky, sore-headed, and shivering; her officers trying to discover what sort of a "crowd" they had dropped across; and all hands more or less bad tempered and uncomfortable. Of course, there are vessels that leave on fine, warm, sunny summer's mornings as well as in the bleak ones of winter.