A sailor-boy's log-book from Portsmouth to the Peiho

"A sailor-boy's log-book from Portsmouth to the Peiho" by Walter White is a naval memoir and travel narrative written in the mid-19th century. It presents a lower-deck view of Royal Navy life, following a boy seaman from training-ship drills through a long voyage to China and nearby waters, with candid notes on discipline, camaraderie, and encounters abroad. Told in a fresh, unvarnished voice lightly shaped by an editor, it mixes shipboard routine with glimpses of action and vivid sketches of ports and peoples.

The opening of the narrative frames it as an authentic “log” by a sailor who enlisted as a boy and served through China operations, with the editor promising minimal intervention and a frank lower-deck perspective. It then follows the lad’s entry at Portsmouth, medical passing, and months of instruction aboard the training-ship Illustrious—knots and hitches, boatwork, mast-head duty, cutlass and rifle drill, big-gun exercise, splicing, and compass and lead-line—before a testing cruise in the brig Sealark. Assigned to the corvette Highflyer, he recounts petty humiliations and hard lessons, then the voyage out with gunboats in tow: Spithead to Plymouth, across the Atlantic past Teneriffe and Rio, through the Line with rough Neptune rites, on to the Cape (with surf landings at Algoa Bay and a cherished foray ashore near Simon’s Bay), the Sunda Strait via Anjer, and Singapore, before reaching Hong-Kong. Finally he describes wreck-salvage at the Pratta Shoal, first impressions of Hong-Kong, the run up the Pearl River past the Bogue forts, a tense night at quarters, the bloodless capture of Chuenpee (yielding only a goat and a pot of rice), a failed chase of pirates, and an admiral’s inspection—ending with his restlessness at lying inactive in river anchorage.