Journal of Voyages

This is a history book. In presenting the following Voyages to the public, I must inform my readers that I have had but a common school education, and am unaccustomed to composition. I can only tell my story in a plain straight forward way, not being able to ornament it with flowery language. My Voyages were all written by myself. I employed competent persons to copy the work from my manuscript, and they corrected the small inaccuracies that had escaped my observation. I thought, that although my book might contain many defects, if composed by myself, that it would still gain more than it lost, by being the production of the very person who had seen and taken part in the scenes he related, and could vouch for the truth of all he had witnessed. It is not given to the public as a specimen of the beautiful in style, but as the story of an old sea captain who had lived in one of the most eventful periods of our country's history; and one who had nearly arrived at his last anchorage. With this brief outline of my life, and this short explanation, I commit my little book, with confidence, to an indulgent public.