Jack Corbett: Mariner

In 1849, Alfrederick Hatch, an asthmatic youth, was sent to sea by his father to "either kill or cure him". He signed onto a Liverpool packet as an apprentice seaman, in the company of the "roughest, dirtiest, swearingest, drinkingest men alive". Hatch probably would not have survived had he not been befriended by Jack Corbett, an illiterate who became his guardian and mentor. The story of their sailing days together is the centrepiece of this autobiographical narrative and its description of life aboard a sailing vessel in the mid-19th century.