Genre:

Novel, Serial

Subjects:

Education, Schools, Navigation, Mathematics, Reading, Exploration, Hydrography

    Denis Duval, who is later to become an Admiral in the Royal Navy, explains that while he had trouble cramming 'crabbed Latin grammar into my puzzled brain' at school, he was 'more familiar' with 'arithmetic, logarithms, and mathematics' and ' took a pretty good place in our school with them, and ranked before many boys of greater age' (530). He also recounts, 'I was well advanced, too, in arithmetic and geometry; and Dampier's Voyages were as much my delight as those of Sinbad or my friends Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. I could pass a good examination in navigation and seamanship, and could give an account of the different sailings, working-tides, double-altitudes, and so forth' (528–29).

Reprinted:

Thackeray 1867