It was in a house of such industry and mechanism that I was
brought up. As a youth, I was slow at my lessons; preferring to
watch and assist workmen when I had an opportunity of doing so,
even with the certainty of having a thrashing from the
schoolmaster for my neglect. Thus I got to know every workshop
and every workman in the town. At any rate I picked up a
smattering of a variety of trades, which afterwards proved of the
greatest use to me. The chief of these was wooden shipbuilding,
a branch of industry then extensively carried on by Messrs.
William and Robert Tindall, the former of whom resided in London;
he was one of the half-dozen great shipbuilders and owners who
founded "Lloyd's." Splendid East Indiamen, of some 1000 tons
burden, were then built at Scarborough; and scarcely a timber was
moulded, a plank bent, a spar lined off, or launching ship-ways
laid, without my being present to witness them. And thus, in
course of time, I was able to make for myself the neatest and
fastest of model yachts.
At that time, I attended the Grammar School. Of the rudiments
taught, I was fondest of drawing, geometry, and Euclid. Indeed,
I went twice through the first two books of the latter before I
was twelve years old. At this age I was sent to the Edinburgh
Academy, my eldest brother William being then a medical student
at the University.
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