Lincolnshire is the most uninteresting part of all England.  It is frequently water-logged till late in the summer:  invisible a part of the year, when it emerges it is mostly a dreary flat.  Willoughby is a considerable village in this shire, situated about three miles and a half southeastward from Alford.  It stands just on the edge of the chalk hills whose drives gently slope down to the German Ocean, and the scenery around offers an unvarying expanse of flats.  All the villages in this part of Lincolnshire exhibit the same character.  The name ends in by, the Danish word for hamlet or small village, and we can measure the progress of the Danish invasion of England by the number of towns which have the terminal by, distinguished from the Saxon thorpe, which generally ends the name of villages in Yorkshire.  The population may be said to be Danish light-haired and blue-eyed.  Such was John Smith.  The sea was the natural element of his neighbors, and John when a boy must have heard many stories of the sea and enticing adventures told by the sturdy mariners who were recruited from the neighborhood of Willoughby, and whose oars had often cloven the Baltic Sea.

Willoughby boasts some antiquity.  Its church is a spacious structure, with a nave, north and south aisles, and a chancel, and a tower at the west end.  In the floor is a stone with a Latin inscription, in black letter, round the verge, to the memory of one Gilbert West, who died in 1404.  The church is dedicated to St. Helen.  In the village the Wesleyan Methodists also have a place of worship.  According to the parliamentary returns of 1825, the parish including the hamlet of Sloothby contained 108 houses and 514 inhabitants.  All the churches in Lincolnshire indicate the existence of a much larger population who were in the habit of attending service than exists at present.  Many of these now empty are of size sufficient to accommodate the entire population of several villages.  Such a one is Willoughby, which unites in its church the adjacent village of Sloothby.

The stories of the sailors and the contiguity of the salt water had more influence on the boy’s mind than the free, schools of Alford and Louth which he attended, and when he was about thirteen he sold his books and satchel and intended to run away to sea:  but the death of his father stayed him.  Both his parents being now dead, he was left with, he says, competent means; but his guardians regarding his estate more than himself, gave him full liberty and no money, so that he was forced to stay at home.

At the age of fifteen he was bound apprentice to Mr. Thomas S. Tendall of Lynn.  The articles, however, did not bind him very fast, for as his master refused to send him to sea, John took leave of his master and did not see him again for eight years.  These details exhibit in the boy the headstrong independence of the man.