The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jacob Faithful, by Captain Frederick Marryat

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Title: Jacob Faithful

Author: Captain Frederick Marryat

Release Date: May 21, 2007 [EBook #21549]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACOB FAITHFUL ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Jacob Faithful, by Captain Marryat.

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Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848.
He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to
writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are
among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still
in print.

Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his
stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he
never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary
genius.

"Jacob Faithful" was published in 1834, the fifth book to flow from
Marryat's pen. The story tells the life and adventures of a boy who was
born and brought up on a lighter (small river-barge) on the River
Thames as it flows through London. It gives an extremely interesting
contemporary picture of life in London and on the river in the early
part of the nineteenth century.

This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformatted
in 2003, and again in 2005.

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JACOB FAITHFUL, BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT.

CHAPTER ONE.

MY BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND FAMILY PRETENSIONS--UNFORTUNATELY I PROVE TO BE
A DETRIMENTAL OR YOUNGER SON, WHICH IS REMEDIED BY A TRIFLING ACCIDENT--
I HARDLY RECEIVE THE FIRST ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE FROM MY FATHER, WHEN THE
ELEMENTS CONSPIRE AGAINST ME, AND I AM LEFT AN ORPHAN.

Gentle reader, I was born upon the water--not upon the salt and angry
ocean, but upon the fresh and rapid-flowing river. It was in a floating
sort of box, called a lighter, and upon the river Thames, at low water,
when I first smelt the mud. This lighter was manned (an expression
amounting to bullism, if not const