I do not say that they forget or neglect their friends; they merely put them by in safety for a time.

In fact, as the song says, a sailor's heart and soul have plenty to do "in every port," to keep fully up to the companionships which are present, without moping and moaning over the remembrance of friends at a distance, who, in like manner no doubt, unship us also, more or less, from their thoughts, if not from their memory, for the time being; and it is all right and proper that it should be so.
On the 5th of June we parted from our convoy, the China ships; and, alas! many a good dinner we lost by that separation.

Our course lay more to the left, or eastward, as we wished to look in at the Cape of Good Hope, while those great towering castles, the tea ships, could not afford time for play, but struck right down to the southward, in search of the westerly winds which were to sweep them half round the globe, and enable them to fetch the entrance of the China seas in time to save the monsoon to Canton.

Each ship sent a boat to us with letters for England, to be forwarded from the Cape.

This was probably their last chance for writing home; so that, after the accounts contained in these dispatches reached England, their friends would hear nothing of them till they presented themselves eighteen months afterwards.