In the first place, this forcing of men who have been up all
night to stand on their feet for hours longer, is as cruel as it is
needless. We were weak, famished, and exhausted from our night's
hardship and lack of sleep, and yet there we stood, and stood, and stood,
without rhyme or reason.
Sailors were very plentiful in this crowd. It seemed to me that one man
in four was looking for a ship, and I found at least a dozen of them to
be American sailors. In accounting for their being "on the beach," I
received the same story from each and all, and from my knowledge of sea
affairs this story rang true. English ships sign their sailors for the
voyage, which means the round trip, sometimes lasting as long as three
years; and they cannot sign off and receive their discharges until they
reach the home port, which is England. Their wages are low, their food
is bad, and their treatment worse. Very often they are really forced by
their captains to desert in the New World or the colonies, leaving a
handsome sum of wages behind them--a distinct gain, either to the captain
or the owners, or to both. But whether for this reason alone or not, it
is a fact that large numbers of them desert.
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