Waterbiography Author:Robert C. Leslie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. I exhibit at the R. A.—Get married ; and moored for a time near London as an Artist—But gravitate toward the River at Greenwich—A Floating Dockya... more »rd there—I charter an old Boat—The Lower Thames in those Days —I make a Studio in a Boat—Too late for a Tide—Join Watermen's Boats in tow of a West Indiaman—Pleasures of Towing—Under the Bows of a Brig—Save my Tide— Cheating the Tide—Blackwall Point—Men ashore take an interest in my Boat—Discover why, just in time to save her Mast—Meet J. W. M. Turner early in Life—And in the R. A. later—The English Merchant Seaman of 1842 —I quote Shakespeare on Tides, but not taking his Advice, move my Family to Sidmouth—Regret of conscientious R. A. at this step—How I consoled myself for loss of his Friendship—Harry Conant and England's Rose —A Fisherman's Life on Sidmouth Beach—I build a Boat —A Rival Boat-builder. Soon after this trip to New York my name appeared in the Royal Academy catalogue as the painter of a picture called Morning at Sea. And three years later I exhibited a large picture, a deck scene with many figures, entitled, A Complaint from the Forecastle, suggested by Dana's wonderful book, Two Years before the Mast. I was I GET MARRIED. 47 now regularly moored in the London swim of artists, and known familiarly among them as Bob Leslie. But a far stronger link iu my ground-tackle was a young wife and home of our own. This, however, was at Blackheath, whence, as all Londoners know, a steep descent leads easily down to the Thames at Greenwich; following which, just below the Hospital, I fell in one day with an amphibious old naval architect, who, hermit-crab- like, had appropriated and roofed over the derelict hulk of a Margate hoy, on which he lived by tinkering up boats and barges, a better trade, as most ship...« less