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our anchor and the Tug took hold of us, and towed us up
the river Elbe and placed us along side of the wharf in the
City of Hamburg, where we got paid of after a voyage of fifteen
months. Well now that Captain got such a bad name for
cruelty to his men, by the sailors of Leith. But I must say that
I was never along with a better man, he was a very strict man
But I will say that any man that could do his work as a
sailor he was just along with the right man. And also made
an uneventful voyage of fifteen months, then booked our
passage for Leith in one of the Leith Steamers and arrived in
Leith Docks, and left for home. I was home two or three weeks
and was just wondering where I was going to fetch up next.
Anyhow I went down to the shipping office to see if there was
anything doing, and I found a crowd of Leith sailors standing
there and one of them got up and says, well boys there is a
full rigged ship called the Tinto laying in Granton a small
port about three miles from Leith, and she is bound to the West
Indies for a cargo of sugar and Rum. So we counted the lot and
found there was sixteen of us. So the spokesman says what
do you say if we march out to Granton and see the captain
if he wants a crew, so it did not take us long to decide. So
away we goes on the march for Granton for in those days there
was no conveyences to run you out as there is today. So we arr-
ived in Granton and by good luck the captain was on board
so the sixteen of us jumps on board and the mate called
the Captain, and he came out of the cabin and had a
look at us and asked for our discharges from the last
ship and he took them all and shipped every man of us
at the shipping office at Granton, and a day or two after we
sailed for Matanzes [Mantazas] Island of Cuba and we found that
we had shipped in a good old ship with a good captain
and officers. so we arrived at Matanzes in about two months
and in those days, the Island of Cuba belonged to Spain
anyhow we discharged her cargo of coal into lighters as we
layed at anchor in the bay, and the Spanish stevedore and
his gang of West Indies n------ loaded her with sugar and
Rum. we was altogether about two months in Matanzes