Jacob was born on a lighter on the Thames, the son of its master, and was orphaned young by a strange domestic disaster. Taken into a charity school and then apprenticed as a waterman, he grows up on the river among eccentric teachers, rough boatmen, a pretty and unreliable girl named Mary and the lively Beazeley family, before life carries him further afield.
One of Marryat’s most entertaining novels, a comic picaresque of the London river. Download the free EPUB.