A MERRY CREW.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 584, 3 May 1876, Page 3

A MERRY CREW.

{Auckland Evening Star.) The merry seamen belonginging to H.M. ships Pearl and Sappho have created quite a sensation in Auckland, remindingspectatorsof the days when Nelson fought and Dibdin sung, days with which our grandfathers were familiar, Jack-ashore is always the same, in all weathers and all climates. The sailors to-day wished to feel themselves on horseback, after riding so long on the bosom of the waves, and on horseback were seven of them, to the infinite delight of old women and children, and the terror of the police. They trotted about and played all sorts of equestrian manoeuvres, which were as interesting, but not so safe, as Wilson’s circus riders. The fear entertained by many persons was that the sailors might dash through somebody’s window, or over somebody’s child. Fortunately, however, no accident of the kind occurred. The next feat was performed outside the Greymouth Hotel, and was Neptune’s dance, accompanied by Mother Carey’s band, which consisted of instruments and implements, viz, a tin whistle, a Jew’s harp, a pannikin with a stone in it, and a shovel. A number of sailors danced round this hideous music, and the landlord of the Greyhound peeped out with a sense of fear that the musicians and the dancers should pass the portals of his sanctum. One sailor passed round the hat, but this was condemned as unEnglish, and unworthy a child of Albion, for which Drake and Nelson had fought; besides in the opinion of one burly tar, it is too religious to be imitated by jolly tars. At this outburst of independent feeling, a shower of coppers fell at the feet of the men. The sailor with the shovel picked them up, and they were reserved for another purpose, as we shall see. The dance outside having closed, about thirty squeezed inside the Greyhound, and a ring was formed, and, after a Portsmouth wet around, one of the s dlors, a slim young fellow, danced the sailor’s hornpipe in the most graceful style ; indeed the pretty barmaid declared she had never, in all her glad life, beheld anything to surpass that hornpipe, and the man was treated to whatever he felt disposed to take. The pence was the next thing, and a group of tars gathered a school of youngsters on one side of Queen street, and started them racing for sixpences! and threepences, and a great amount of fun was created by their exercises. The men seem bent on amusing themselves, and we trust we shall have nothing more serious to chronicle in respect to their temporary visit to the city of Auckland.