In the fall of 1806 he sailed from New
York on the ship _Sterling_ bound for England with a freight of flour.
The voyage was a long and stormy one, and the boy, who was simply a
sailor before the mast, got a good taste of life at sea. He enjoyed it
thoroughly. When they reached England he went to London in his sailor's
clothes, and knocked about that great city much like any other jack on
shore. He made friends quickly, enjoyed any new adventure, and stored up
a great stock of stories to take home.

The boy enjoyed his voyage before the mast so much that when he returned
to New York he asked his father to get him a commission in the United
States navy. Mr. Cooper was able to do this, and James was soon after
sent as midshipman with a party of men to build a brig of sixteen guns
on Lake Ontario. It took them a winter to build the ship, and during
that time the party stayed at the tiny settlement of Oswego, a
collection of some twenty houses. All around lay the unbroken forest
stretching thirty or forty miles without a break. There was abundance of
game, many Indians, and a splendid chance to live the frontier life that
Cooper loved. He now knew the habits of the wild red men and whites, the
lore of the woods, the perils and joys of the sea, and as he helped to
build the gunboat he learned a thousand things that he was to turn to
splendid uses later.

The boy had now grown to manhood, and yet no sign of his real work had
appeared. He was not especially fond of books or history, his views of
the charm of a soldier's life were much those he had spoken to Captain
Kent at Otsego Hall. It seemed as though he were settled in the navy.

It is strange how chance determined the fate of young Cooper. About this
time his grandmother asked him to take her name, and for a while he
called himself Fenimore-Cooper. Then a little later he married, and his
wife did not like the idea of his leaving her on long sea voyages. He
seems to have been quite willing to give up the navy, and settle down at
Otsego Hall as lord of the manor after his father's fashion. He liked
the life of a country gentleman, and spent his time planting trees,
draining swamps, planning lawns, and cultivating flowers and fruits. By
the time he was thirty he had tried his hand at almost everything except
writing.

It happened that as Cooper was one day reading aloud to his wife from an
English novel he threw the book down, exclaiming, "Why, I believe I
could write