Excerpt from Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days: From Forecastle to Quarter-Deck; With 29 Illustrations From Photographs This question has been often asked me when relating some tale of adventure or humorous anecdote of my sea life. For the reason that I know nothing of book writing, I have replied. A school experience of seventy years ago, cut short at the age of twelve years, was not likely to leave a boy, however bright, with a high order of literary attainment. But, as years rolled on, after giving up the sea as a profession, I concluded to jot down from memory my quarter-century's sea experience. The characters are from life, the scenes and incidents as they appeared to me at the time, in a story of a New England boy's career from the age of twelve to thirty seven. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.