George Brown: In his own words (Going to sea II)

CONTENTS

Family Background / My father: the able man / My father: the lay preacher / School days / Dangerous Occupations / Going to Sea I / Going to Sea II / Going to Sea III / Passage to America / First Steps / The Great Lakes / Return to England / A Narrow Escape / Passage to New Zealand / Auckland / Finding a Mission / Fit for Mission Work? / A Suitable Helpmeet / A Bush Honeymoon / Our Worst Night / Missionary Heroes / Sydney to Samoa
Acknowledgments & Links

I next shipped on board a nice barque called the Alice, bound for Algoa Bay, but not this time as cook. I left that to another and more qualified individual. Just before we signed articles I had come back from the City, when the other boy handed me a card, saying: There is a longshore cove looking for you, and he says if you do not go up to his house to-morrow morning he will send the police down after you. I took the card, and found it was from Messrs. E- & K-, solicitors, Bloomsbury Square; and I knew at once that my father's London agents had found where I was. Next day I went up, and was shown into the office; but Mr. E- was engaged, and I had to wait. One of the clerks leant over his desk, and asked if I was Mr. Brown's son, of Barnard Castle; and when he found that this was the case, he and his fellow-clerks began to indulge in what is generally known as chaffing. I was confidently assured that I should be sent to prison, and would have to endure some other preliminary punishments. They succeeded in making me pretty angry, which was just what they intended to do. They were safe behind the partition which separated them from the general office, and I was in the full swing of giving them my opinion of their conduct, and inviting them to come out of the office one by one that I might impress it more strongly upon them, when the door opened, and they subsided at once into apparently hard-working and attentive clerks. Mr. E- told me that I must go back home; but I told him that it was no use my doing so, that I had determined to go to sea, and that I was quite sure it was the best plan for me, and would give the least trouble to my father. It ended in my being supplied with a little cash to purchase a suitable outfit, with my father's reluctant consent for me to go. A day or two afterwards I received a letter from my uncle in Sunderland, saying that if I was determined to go he would find a ship for me under the command of one of his own friends; and so a few weeks afterwards I left London in midwinter on board a large East Indiaman called the Santipore, Captain L-, chartered by Her Majesty's Government as a troop-ship.

George Brown: In his own words

The Early Years
and The Call

Index