Memoir written by Abraham Smith, with reminiscences of his early life and some vivid anecdotes from his career as a stoker in the Royal Navy between 1859 and 1880. Smith experienced fighting during the Anglo-Satsuma War and being shipwrecked in the sloop HMS RATTLER (1862) on the coast of Japan in 1868. Part of the memoir is devoted to the round-the-world expedition of the survey ship HMS CHALLENGER (1858) between 1872 and 1876. It ends with his appointment as a caretaker at Rochester Castle in Kent.