In 1859 at Lowestoft, Fitzgerald, as he wrote to Mrs.Browne, "used to wander about the shore at night longing for some fellow to accost me who might give some promise of filling up a very vacant place in my heart." It was then that he met "Posh" (Joseph Fletcher), a fisherman, 6 feet tall, said to be of the best Suffolk type, both in body and character.

Posh reminded Fitzgerald of his dead friend Browne; he made him captain of his lugger, and was thereafter devoted to him.

Posh was, said Fitzgerald, "a man of the finest Saxon type, with a complexion _vif, male et flamboyant_, blue eyes, a nose less than Roman, more than Greek, and strictly auburn hair that any woman might envy.

Further he was a man of simplicity; of soul, justice of thought, tenderness of nature, a gentleman of Nature's grandest type," in fact the "greatest man" Fitzgerald had ever met.

Posh was not, however, quite so absolutely perfect as this description suggests, and various misunderstandings arose in consequence between the two friends so unequal in culture and social traditions.