Plate 3 of 8 (with two additional plates):
Things get worse for Master Blockhead, now pictured in the foreground in the working dress of a sailor, exposed to the elements. The driving rain is making Master B walk miserably; he is drenched while his more experienced colleagues on deck wear greatcoats. One is steering the ship and another sits hunched holding a speaking gold coloured trumpet – an ironic reference, perhaps, to the trumpet of Fame that features on the frontispiece. The only other man is a black servant wearing a long white shirt and carrying a decanter filled with what may be wine. Over all, the scene is a bleak, unromantic vision of life on deck, a reality that was a far cry from Master B’s boyhood dreams.

Inscribed below the print, lines from ‘All’s Well’ from The British Fleet by Thomas Dibdin: ‘Or sailing on the midnight deep / When weary messmates soundly sleep / The careful Watch patroles the deck / To guard the Ship from foes or wreck – / And whilst his thoughts of homeward veer. &c. alls well’

Related to: BM Reg number 1891, 1117.26 'The Life of a Midshipman' by Captain Frederick Marryat, (1820) scene on deck at night.

Other versions of this image in the collection are: PAD4723, PAD0162, PAI5981, PAI6567, PAJ183.