Note 6 — MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN HUGH CLAPPERTON, THE AFRICAN TRAVELLER.
Reading edition
M‘Diarmid’s account of this matter is to the following effect, namely, that at the age of seventeen Clapperton became cabin-boy to Captain Smith of the Postlethwaite of Maryport having been recommended to him by the late Mr. Jonathan Nelson of Port Annan; that after he had made several voyages across the Atlantic in that ship, he was detected at Liverpool in the act of smuggling a few pounds of rock salt, to please the landlady of a house which he frequented; that after he had pled his ignorance of the revenue laws in mitigation of the terrors of trial and imprisonment with which he was threatened, he consented to go on board the Tender. Sketches from Nature, page 325. The whole of this account shows that the circumstances both of his entrance upon a sea-faring life, and into the royal navy, are now altogether unknown; or at least involved in great uncertainty.