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Excerpt:- And now I must tell you here that my little dandy yacht the Spitfire was so brave, stanch, and stout a craft that, though I am no lover of the sea in its angry moods, and especially have no relish for such experiences as one is said to encounter, for instance, off Cape Horn, yet such was my confidence in her seaworthiness, I should have been quite willing to sail round the world in her had the necessity for so tedious an adventure arisen. She had been built as a smack, but was found too fast for trawling, and the owner offered her as a bargain. I purchased and reequipped her, little dreaming that she was one day to win me a wife. I improved her cabin accommodation, handsomely furnished her within, and caused her to be sheathed with yellow metal to the bends and to be embellished with gilt at the stern and quarters. She had a fine bold spring or rise of deck forward, with abundance of beam which warranted her for stability; but her submerged lines were extraordinarily fine, and I can not recollect the name of a pleasure-craft at that time which I should not have been willing to challenge whether for a fifty or a thousand mile race. She was rigged as a dandy a term that no reader, I hope, will want me to explain.