There was a bridge across the Dee, and consequently a Bridge Street running at right angles to the High Street; and on the south side of the stream there were a few houses of more pretension, around which lay gardens and fields.

It was on this side of the town that the local aristocracy lived.

And who were the great people of this small town?
Not the younger branches of the county families that held hereditary state in their manor-houses on the wild bleak moors, that shut in Monkshaven almost as effectually on the land side as ever the waters did on the sea-board.

No; these old families kept aloof from the unsavoury yet adventurous trade which brought wealth to generation after generation of certain families in Monkshaven.
The magnates of Monkshaven were those who had the largest number of ships engaged in the whaling-trade.

Something like the following was the course of life with a Monkshaven lad of this class:--He was apprenticed as a sailor to one of the great ship-owners--to his own father, possibly--along with twenty other boys, or, it might be, even more.