The text contains a lot of dialect spelling, which has been left as printed. Punctuation has been amended where required to clarify the sense of the text. A small number of errors that appear to be typographical rather than authorial have been corrected; otherwise inconsistent spelling and hyphenation (agoin’/a-goin’, anigh/a-nigh, apiece/a-piece, ashen grey/ashen-grey, befel/befell, black fellow/black-fellow, bulkhead/bulk-head, close hauled/close-hauled, dark blue/dark-blue, doorposts/door-posts, enquiries/inquiries, far inland/far-inland, fo’c’sle/fo’c’stle, greenhide/green-hide, half way/half-way, head sea/head-sea, highly connected/highly-connected, lifelike/life-like, lookout/look-out, main deck/main-deck, middle age/middle-age, mopoke/mo-poke, native born/native-born, new chum/new-chum, newcomer/new-comer, out an’ out/out-an’-out, p’raps/p’r’aps, rain water/rain-water, remarkable looking/remarkable-looking, rope coils/rope-coils, saddlestraps/saddle-straps, soger/sojur, sojur ants/sojur-ants, such like/such-like, thundrous/thunderous, topsail/top-sail, upturned/up-turned, viÂ/via) have been retained as printed.