BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE LATE JOHN BARRETT, ESQ. CAPTAIN IN THE ROYAL NAVY

Summary

Again she plunges! hark! a second shock

Tears her strong bottom on the marble rock.

Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries,

The fated victims shuddering roll their eyes

In wild despair; while yet another stroke,

With deep convulsion, rends the solid oak;

'Till, like the mine, in whose infernal cell

The lurking demons of destruction dwell,

At length asunder torn, her frame divides,

And crashing spreads in ruins o'er the tides.

Falconer.

THE life of a Seaman is especially chequered with accidents. Fortune, who presides more or less in every profession, here rules with arbitrary sway. A concurrence of incidents sometimes elevates the unworthy; but in a seaman's life, replete with situations that call forth all the energies of man, there must be a relative degree of merit to acquire distinction. A desire of command is a natural ambition; but the candidate should possess the qualifications necessary to support it with dignity, in order to obtain respect. Frederick the Great used to say, that he never knew a great man whom fortune had not raised, and merit supported.

The biographical sketch we now present to our readers is of a man who, with a perfect knowledge of his profession, united in his character a real goodness of heart, with an enthusiastic courage; and whose whole life was a tissue of extraordinary embarrassments, terminated by a calamity borne with the cool fortitude of a Spartan.