Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/240

 might never meet again, either in this world or the next.

He was afterwards brought to a court martial, for repeated acts of drunkenness and cruelty, and was finally dismissed the service. In giving this detail of Captain G —— peculiarities, let it not be imagined, that even at that period such characters were common in the service. I have already said, that he was an unique. Impressment and the want of officers at the early part of the war, gave him an opportunity of becoming a lieutenant; he took the weak side of the admiral to obtain his next step, and obtained the command of a sloop, from repeated solicitation at the Admiralty, and by urging his claims of long servitude. The service had received serious injury by admitting men on the quarter-deck from before the mast; it occasioned there being two classes of officers in the navy—namely, those who had rank and connexions, and those who had entered by the "hawseholes," as they were described. The first were