Although I had missed the guidance of a father, I, as seventh son, got a good training at the hands of my brothers during my holidays. These all had the sporting instinct strongly developed and were good comrades together, first-rate swimmers, footballers, oarsmen, etc. All were good at devising things that they could not afford to buy, even to building a boat.
We built our own huts, made our fishing, rabbit, and bird-trapping nets, and thus caught and cooked our own food to our hearts’ and stomachs’ content.
In all of this I, as junior, had to take my share of the work, especially that part of it which would naturally be delegated to a junior, such as gutting the fish and rabbits (a really filthy job!), some of the cooking, and very much of the washing up.
But it was all very good for me.
As money came in we were able to buy a collapsible boat, in which three of us, among other expeditions, made the journey from London up the Thames to practically its source, then with a portage over the hills we went down the Avon via Bristol, across the Severn, and up the Wye to our then small home in Wales. A fairly adventurous journey, especially when crossing seven miles of Severn in our cockle-shell, but at the same time a very educative one for me.
Eventually, when our money ran to it, we brothers became owners of a ten-ton cutter, built to my brother Warrington’s design, and in her we had the time of our lives, cruising round the coasts of Scotland and England at all seasons of the year. Many a scrape — in both senses of the word — we got into and got out of and thereby gained a lot of useful experiences.
Some of these I will deal with later, but from the educational point of view the discipline, the endurance of hardships and the facing of danger involved in this cruising, were points of lasting value in one’s training for life.
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