[Pioneers and Founders by Charlotte Mary Yonge]@TWC D-Link book
Pioneers and Founders

CHAPTER X
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ALLEN GARDINER, THE SAILOR MARTYR.
The biography we next have to turn to is not that of a founder, scarcely that of a pioneer, but rather of a brave guerilla, whose efforts were little availing because wanting in combination, and undirected, but who, nevertheless, has left behind him a heart-thrilling name won by unflinching self-devotion even unto death.
Allen Francis Gardiner, the fifth son of a Berkshire squire, was born in 1794.

He was a born sailor, and became a midshipman before the end of the great war of the French revolution; but the only naval action in which he was engaged was against the American vessel _Essex_, which was captured by his ship, the _Phoebe_, off Valparaiso.

Allen Gardiner had been carefully brought up by a good mother, but her death in his early youth cast him loose and left him without any influence to keep up serious impressions.

He drifted into carelessness and godlessness, though at times some old remembrance, roused by danger or by a comrade's death, would sting him sharply.


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