They may chance, indeed, to be poulterers, cook's mates, or fit only to make sweepers of; personages who after a three years' station barely know the stem from the stern, and could no more steer the ship than they could take a lunar distance.

Officers, however, on first joining a ship, are very apt to be guilty of some injustice towards the people by judging of them too hastily from appearance alone.

We are insensibly so much prepossessed in favour of a fine, tall, good-looking sailor-lad, and prejudiced against a grizzled, crooked, little wretch, that if both happen to be brought before us for the same offence, we almost instinctively commit the injustice of condemning the ugly fellow, and acquitting the smart-looking one, before a tithe of the evidence has reached our ears.
Leaving these speculative questions, however, for the present, let us return to the divisions, which are arranged along the deck, not, as formerly, by sizes, but, in the proper way, by the watch-bill.

The forecastle-men, of course, come first, as they stand so in the lists by which they are mustered at night by the mate of the watch; then the foretop men, and so on to the gunners, after-guard, and waisters.
Each division is under charge of a lieutenant, who, as well as the midshipmen of his division, appears in full uniform.

The people are first mustered by the young gentlemen, and then carefully inspected by the officer of the division, who sees that every man is dressed according to order, and that he is otherwise in proper trim.