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Excerpt: "I was a very small midshipman in those days, and I belonged to a very small ship. In fact, correctly speaking, H.M.S. Planet was not a ship at all, only a ten-gun brig, and the guns mere pop-guns when compared with the big three-hundred pounders carried now-a-days. But, notwithstanding, I was proud of my uniform, proud of my dirk, and ready in a few months to enter the lists against any one venturing to say that the Planet was not the smartest cruiser in the West Coast of Africa squadron. When the news first came on board at Portsmouth, that our destination was 'the Coast' many faces grew a shade more pale at the thought of three years on that sickly station. My mother, who had come down to see the last of us, wept bitterly as I told her of our sailing orders. She possessed sufficient interest at the Admiralty even then to have effected my exchange into another ship, but she was a soldier's wife, and had a strong sense of duty, so when the vessel sailed, I sailed in her."