You cannot learn how to tie knots properly from a book, though I hear that inland, people try to do so. The art is best learned from a salt-toughened old man with an attitude that is impartial to title, and with a finite amount of time to play with immature nobles who would learn the arts of the sea. If this man also has a mouth like a midden-heap, and with a mock leg made of wood, so much the better.

This is what I told my children and my nephews, when they asked to learn the ways of a ship; it is what my father told me, and his father told him when the same request was made.

This is what I murmur to my 23-day-old grandson, although he is sound asleep in my arms.

I stroke his dark head gently and finish with our family's traditional ending : But I would rather teach you myself.