Page:Autobiography of Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes.djvu/42

16 estimation. This put a stop to the feuds and after a time we heard that Moore was out of danger and the fights ceased.

The youngsters of our school were far the most resolute and courageous and they had afterwards little consideration for the older ones. The affair made a great stir in the Village of Greenwich and the school was, by Mr Smith's orders, to be kept within certain bounds and held strictly to them. While on the other side, the police, such as it was, prevented the Village boys and their coadjutors from marshalling any forces. It had a disastrous effect upon Smith's School as many of the Parents, mine among the number, removed us from his school.

I was then sent as a day scholar to the Revd Dr Harris, on the East side of New York near the Stuyvesant Meadows, Dr Harris then being Rector of St Mark's Church on Stuyvesant Ave., and had a walk of two miles every day from near the Battery where my father then lived. Dr Harris' was a Select School; he a tutor highly beloved and respected. It was a preparatory school for Columbia College. I remained with him some eighteen months, when my predilection for a naval life became known and I suppose my father, although greatly adverse to my going to sea, induced me to enter the counting House of Messrs. Chescot & Co. This I did not fancy and then I became a boy in my father's office and had certain hours in which masters attended me in Mathematics & the Modern Languages, drawing, &c, which fully kept me employed and affording considerable aid to his business. Some knowledge of Commercial law, drawing up protests &c, & of Sea Captains was more congenial to my wishes; but the hankering after naval life & roving life still grew stronger & stronger. At length my father gave me permission to go to sea.

Application had been made for a warrant for me and a promise if I went to sea, this time [in the merchant marine] should be allowed me in the antedate of my warrant from the Secretary of the Navy. I [was] to choose my ship, this I readily did. It was the Hibernia belonging to Messrs. [William] Craig & Brothers, intimate friends of my father, and of which Capt [H.] Graham was master, who was considered one of the best captains of the port & would be kind and attentive to me. [Hibernia was] then fitting out for the Port of Havre, France.

By this time I had become quite a good Navigator, understood the use of the instruments, could readily make all the calculations & had a Sextant of my own, a present from Mr Jno. Garnett of New Brunswick, the editor of the ''Am. Nautical Almanac'' and the projector of the Loxodromic curve. He had a great fancy for nautical problems and through his teaching I became familiar with all the tables & solutions of the various formulae of navigation and the construction of charts, as well as the construction and use of instruments. The Sextant he gave me was taken apart and explained—put again together, the mode of balancing & adjusting the glasses, finding the error of the instrument & the best modes of using it in taking distances, so that before I put my foot on the deck of a vessel I felt capable of navigating & directing her course.

Capt Graham received me kindly & encouraged me in various ways,