ore than five centuries blessed the mariners of the port, and which
is now represented by alms-houses, so numerous, so large, so externally
beautiful, and so trimly kept as to be both morally and architecturally
among the noblest ornaments of the town. There is the Port of Hull
Society, with its chapel, its reading-rooms, its orphanage, its seaman's
mission, all most generously supported. There is that leaven of ancient
pride which also may be classed among the institutions of the place,
and which operates in giving to a population by no means wealthy a habit
of respectability, and a look for the most part well-to-do. But among
none of these will be found the institution to which we are about to
refer. The institution that we are to-day concerned to honour is
compact, is self-supporting, is eminently philanthropic, has done more
good with very limited means than any other, and is so much an object of
legitimate pride, that we have pleasure in making this unique
institution more generally known. A life-saving institution that has in
the course of a few brief years rescued about fifty people from
drowning, and that has done so without expectation of reward, deserves
to be named, and the name of this institution is simply that of a
comparatively poor man--John Ellerthorpe, dock gatekeeper, at the
entrance of the Humber Dock.'

Such was the strain in which the _Sheffield Daily Telegraph_, in a
Leader (March 17th, 1868), spoke of the character and doings of him whom
a grateful and admiring town entitled 'The Hero of the Humber.'

[Sidenote: HIS NATIVITY.]

He was born at Rawcliffe, a small village near Snaith, Yorkshire, in the
year 1806. His ancestors, as far as we can trace them, were all
connected with the sea-faring life. His father, John Ellerthorpe, owned
a 'Keel' which sailed between Rawcliffe and the large towns in the West
Riding of Yorkshire, and John often accompanied him during his voyages.
His mother was a woman of great practical sagacity and unquestionable
honesty and piety, and from her young John extended many of the high and
noble qualities which distinguished his career. Much of his childhood,
however, was passed at the 'Anchor' public house, Rawcliffe, kept by his
paternal grandmother, where he early became an adept swearer and a lover
of the pot, and for upwards of forty years--to use his own language--he
was 'a drunken blackard.'

When John was ten years of age his father removed to Hessle. About thi