owner forty dollars out of every hundred.  During the winter, from December to March, the navigation is impeded by ice, and the bay-craft seldom run.  The men commonly spend this long vacation in visiting, husking-frolics, rabbiting, and too often in taverns, to the exhaustion of their purses, the impoverishment of their families, and the sacrifice of their sobriety.  Yet the watermen, if many of them are not able always to resist the temptations held out to them, are in general an honest and simple-hearted set, though with little education, and sometimes rather rough in their manners.  The extent of my education when I took to the water—­and in this respect I was not, perhaps, much inferior to the generality of my brother watermen—­was to read with no great fluency, and to sign my name; nor did I ever learn much more than this till my residence in Washington jail, to be related hereafter.

Having followed the wood business for two years, I aspired to something a little higher, and obtained the command of a sloop engaged in the coasting business, from Philadelphia southward and eastward.  At this time a sloop of sixty tons was considered a very respectable coaster.  The business is now mostly carried on by vessels of a larger class; some of them, especially the regular lines of packets, being very handsome and expensive.  The terms on which these coasters were sailed were very similar to those already stated in the case of the bay-craft.  The captain victualled the vessel, and paid the hands, and received for his share half the net profits, after deducting the extra expenses of loading and unloading.  It was in this coasting business that the best years of my life were spent, during which time I visited most of the ports and rivers between Savannah southward, and St. John, in the British province of New Brunswick, eastward;—­those two places forming the extreme limits of my voyagings.  As Philadelphia was the port from and to which I sailed, I presently found it convenient to remove my family thither, and there they continued to live till after my release from the Washington prison.

I was so successful in my new business, that, besides supporting my family, I was able to become half owner of the sloop Superior, at an expense of over a thousand dollars, most of which I paid down.  But this proved a very unfortunate investment.  On her second trip after I had bought into her, returning from Baltimore to Philadelphia by the way of the Delaware and Chesapeake canal, while off the mouth of the Susquehannah, she struck, as I suppose, a sunken tree, brought down by a heavy freshet in that river.  The water flowed fast into the cabin.  It was in vain that I attempted to run her ashore.  She sunk in five minutes.  The men saved themselves in the boat, which was on deck, and which floated as she went down.  I stood by the rudder till the last, and stepped off it into the boat, loath enough to leave my vessel, on which there was no insurance.