210

(6) THE FORT OF HATTRASS " 216

(7) TRAVELLING ON THE GANGES " 236

(8) INDIAN TROOPS OF SHIPP'S DAY " 326

(9) GHAUT ON THE GANGES " 360

INTRODUCTION.

In reproducing the "Memoirs of the Extraordinary Military Career of John
Shipp" as a volume of the Adventure Series, it may be well to say a few
introductory words concerning the author and the book.

John Shipp was, he tells us, the second son of Thomas and Laetitia Shipp,
persons in humble circumstances in the little town of Saxmundham, in
Suffolk, and he adds that in the registers of the parish church will be
found a record of his birth on March 16, 1785. The latter statement is
incorrect. The church register records baptisms, not births, and a
careful search has shown that the only entry answering to the above is a
record of the _baptism_ of John, the child of Thomas and Laetitia Shipp,
at a date twelve months earlier--March 16, 1784. The error probably
explains the conflicting statements of the author's age which occur in
the course of the story.

Shipp's father was a soldier (a marine?), and his mother dying when he
was very young, he became an inmate of the parish poorhouse (there were
no Union workhouses in those days), whence he passed into the hands of a
neighbouring farmer, one of those savage taskmasters only too common in
the "good old times."[1] His deliverance came in unexpected fashion. In
the early years of the French Revolutionary War the supply of recruits
was far less certain than at a later stage. Partly as a recruiting
experiment, partly to relieve parishes of the burthen of pauper boys
between the ages of ten and sixteen who might be willing to enter for
(_un_limited) service in the army, three regiments of foot were ordered
to be completed to a thousand rank and file each by the enlisting of
boys of this description. One of the regiments was the 22nd (Cheshire)
Regiment of Foot, which half a century later won much fame under the
command of General Sir Charles Napier on the plains of Sind. The 22nd,
on return from the West Indies in 1795, had been ordered to Colchester,
to recruit; and a Muster Roll, now in the War Office, shows that John
Shipp was duly enlisted into that regiment on January 17, 1797.

Shipp appears to have been a bright, plucky, intelligent boy. Regimental
schools were not in those days; but