that the very idea of compelling them to enter it was essentially ridiculous. Of the two hundred individuals pressed, like myself, there were not perhaps twenty who had ever set foot on shipboard before. The majority had been carried off by main force, or trepanned by drunkenness: they had inveigled others by a promise of a free passage to Batavia, where they wished to settle; amongst these were two Frenchmen, one a book-keeper from Burgundy, and the other a gardener of Lemosin, who, it is evident, were admirably calculated to make sailors. To console us, the crew told us that, for fear of desertion, we should not go ashore for six months, which is likewise a plan practised in the English fleets, where the sailor may be whole years without seeing any other land than the main-top-gallants of his ship: trustworthy men are made the boats' crews, and foreigners are sometimes employed amongst the crew. To soften the severity of this usage, they allow some of those women who swarm in all the seaports, and whom they call, I know not why, queen Caroline's daughters (les filles de la reine Caroline) to come on board. The English sailors, from whom I have since learnt these details, which we are not to consider as precisely true in every particular, add, that to disguise in some measure the immorality, some puritanical captains occasionally require that these lady visitors should assume the names of sister or cousin.[1]
To me, who had so long intended to enter the navy, the situation was not so repugnant, if I had not been constrained to it, and if I had not had in perspective the slavery which threatened me; added to which, was the ill treatment of the boatswain, who could not forgive my first essay with him, On the least false manœuvre or mistake, the rope's end descended on my back in a style so argumentative and
- ↑ Certainly M. Vidocq's statement, as he himself says, must be taken 'cum grano salis!'—Translator.
