"On Tuesday, Frederick Bodley, the master of a trading vessel lying in the basin was summoned to the Guildhall by the mother of a boy whom he had taken from Exeter as a ship-boy on his last voyage (but who had been left at Dover), for payment of a sum of money, as wages for one month and twenty-eight days, the period the lad was on board the ship, in order to get him home.
"It appeared that the defendant took the lad on board, having agreed to give him what he was worth at the conclusion of the voyage; but the youth was ill from sea-sickness all the while, it being his first trip out to sea. His shoes being worn out, he applied to the defendant to buy him a new pair; but he replied he had no money. It was not clear whether the boy absented himself from the ship at Dover, or was unable to continue on board.
"The Bench suggested that Bodley should give ten shillings to the mother; but this he refused, saying it was much more than the boy was worth, and the summons was enlarged until the boy came back, which the mother said should be next week, if she "distressed herself of the last thing to do it.""
As so often, I find myself wishing for more information than is given by the report (The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 2nd October, 1844). How old was this boy? What was his name? &c. Nevertheless I blog him as an example of ship's boys of the mid-Victorian age and of the notorious mistreatment of them by "cruel" skippers. There must have been responsible, even generous, masters of trading vessels but Frederick Bodley was clearly not one of them. By the sound of it he took this 'boy' to sea for two months and then stranded him in Dover with no money and no shoes to his feet and was not prepared to give the 'distressed' mother any help to recover her child. The Exeter magistrates seem not to have remonstrated with him!
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