But these youths are generally let loose from the Naval College, or from school, or from mamma's apron-string; and unless they are looked after and encouraged, they are too volatile to pay a proper degree of attention to the duty which is going on.

After all, it does not require much ingenuity to arrange some employment for them, even at first, provided their numbers be not so great that they stand in one another's way.
Three or four youngsters, even though absolute novices, might always be kept well employed in a sloop-of-war, and perhaps twice that number in a frigate or line-of-battle ship fitting.

In peace time, however, it will happen that the crowd of young gentlemen is so great, and the disposition to learn so little diffused amongst them, that the first lieutenant is often glad to get rid of them altogether by letting them waste their time and money on shore.
The state in which the ship happens to be at the time she is commissioned, must decide, as I said before, the course to be followed in her equipment.

If she be already masted and alongside the hulk, and the ballast in, the officer will most likely wish to make some show in the way of rigging--for as yet the masts are naked to the girt-lines, or single ropes rove through blocks at the mast-head, by which first the men and then the shrouds are drawn up, and the eyes of the rigging placed over the mast-heads.

If there be only a few sailors on board, these can be employed to get off the furniture, that is, all the blocks, ready stropped in the rigging loft; and to draw the present use stores from the dockyard.