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64 difficult business to enter a King's ship, and no doubt Ward had a wide acquaintance among the warrant officers of the ships in harbour. A word from one of them would have been sufficient to obtain a post for him. We do not know the exact nature of his employment, but it was probably that of ship-keeper, or petty-officer. As such, he went aboard the Lion's Whelp, a small man-of-war, then lying in the harbour. The work, whatever it was, was probably not very arduous, nor does it appear that the ship had her full complement "of 63 hands" aboard her. Ward helped to fit her for the sea, and made one of the crew (probably a scratch crew) which worked her round, shortly afterwards, to Portsmouth, where she anchored.

The Navy, at that time, was by no means a popular service. Sir Walter Raleigh, writing in this very year, tells us that "They go with as great grudging to serve in his Majesty's ships as if it were to be slaves in the galleys." Five years after this date, when matters had grown rather worse, under a Stuart administration, the Navy was "for the greatest part manned with aged, impotent, vagrant, lewd and disorderly