The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: Part 3 Summary & Analysis

Franklin begins Part three with a note that he is beginning it from home (Philadelphia) in August 1788 and that many of his papers were lost during the war. Franklin begins to describe “a great and extensive project which he had conceived” by quoting a scrap of paper with his reading history in May of 1731. It details how “parties” are responsible for the great events of the world rather than singular individuals, and describes how parties form and dissolve.

The note concludes with the observations that a “United Party for Virtue” could bring into effect great good in the world. These notes were the inception of Franklin’s idea, which he added to from time to time. He lays out his religious creed (that there is a God and the best way to serve him is to do good to man) as the creed of the party. His idea was that the party would be open to young single men only at first, that they should both declare their assent to the creed and exercise themselves with a thirteen week virtue-cycle before joining.

Franklin says they should have been called “The Society for the Free and Easy,” but of course the party never came to be. What he gives in the Autobiography, he says, is as much as he can remember of it except that he shared the idea with two young men who liked it. Franklin reiterates his conviction “…that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind…”

In 1732, Franklin first published his almanac (Poor Richard’s Almanac) under the name Richard Saunders and continued it 25 years. He said he wanted it to be entertaining and useful, and it made him a lot of money. He filled it with proverbs to instruct the common people.

Franklin used his newspaper to instruct the people as well. He reprinted excerpts from Samuel Johnson’s Spectator and wrote several small, instructive pieces of his own. He refrained from printing any libel or gossip and refused to fill his paper with private altercations. Other printers, he remarks, were not so scrupulous.

In 1733, Franklin sent one of his workers to Charleston, South Carolina, where there was no printer. He gave the man a press and letters and entered into an agreement of partnership with a one third share of profits. The man kept poor accounts but when his Dutch widow took over (in Holland women were taught to manage accounts) the accounts grew clear and precise. He recommends learning mathematics for American women as it is more useful to them later in life than music or dancing.

Then in 1734 a talented Irish preacher named Hemphill arrived in Philadelphia. Franklin began to attend his sermons and hear him because his preaching was practical and moral, but orthodox Presbyterians disapproved of Hemphill. Franklin defended him and tried to raise a party in his favor when the orthodox party tried to have him officially banned from preaching. He wrote on Hemphill’s behalf.

It was soon discovered that Hemphill hadn’t written his sermons but rather had memorized the sermons of others. Many of Hemphill’s supporters then abandoned his cause, but Franklin continued with him, thinking it was better to receive good sermons composed by others rather than poor self-made ones. After he was defeated, Hemphill left the congregation and Franklin never joined in it after.

Franklin had begun studying languages in 1733, learning French, Italian, and Spanish. Then, returning to Latin and seeing he remembered more from his boyhood than he had thought, returned to its study and learned it as well. He recommends that Americans be educated in practical modern languages and then classic languages because, in his opinion, the learning of the former helps with learning the latter.

After being away from Boston ten years, Franklin returned to visit his relations. He called at Newport to see his brother James, the printer, and they forgave each other their former differences. James was in ill health and asked Franklin to see after his young son and widow if he should die. James did die and Franklin adopted the boy, thus, he says, making amends for the erratum of leaving his brother’s employ.

Franklin goes on to tell how he lost one of his young sons in 1736 to smallpox. The boy was four. He advises everyone with children to have them vaccinated and avoid his mistake.

In the meantime, the Junto had grown so popular its members wished to expand. New branches of the club were formed to prevent them exceeding their agreed upon membership of twelve. Five or six new branches succeeded under different names and were useful to the original members.

Franklin was chosen as clerk of the General Assembly in 1736 without opposition and again the next year despite one member’s making a speech against him in favor of another candidate. The position secured him the business of printing the votes and laws. He didn’t like that the man opposed him and became friends with him by asking the man to lend him a book. He had read somewhere that “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you have obliged.”

Colonel Spotswood the onetime governor of Virginia and then postmaster-general was dissatisfied with the accounting of his Philadelphian deputy in 1737 and offered the position to Franklin who accepted it. The position was a great advantage to Franklin in business.

After receiving the commission as postmaster in Philadelphia, Franklin began to turn his attention to public affairs. As usual, he thought it best to begin with small matters. He reformed the city watch (an early kind of police group). Previously, paying one’s way out of having to serve in the watch was very profitable to the constable in charge of it. Franklin changed the rate because it was too onerous on the poor.

In all, Franklin proposed “a more effectual watch, the hiring of proper men to serve constantly [rather than common citizens taking turns]… and levying a tax that should be proportion’d to the [person’s] property.” It was one of the first, if not the first, graduated income/property taxes put into effect in the colonies.

Next, Franklin proposed establishing the first company of firemen. Thirty men were found for the task of keeping leather buckets for water and strong bags and baskets in good order for removing goods from burning buildings. The company was to meet once a month to discuss its affairs. The utility of the institution was immediately obvious. Many more wanted to join the company, but Franklin advised them to form their own group.

At the time of his writing, “The Union Fire Company” that Franklin formed still existed, flourished and had since acquired fire-engines, ladders, fire-hooks and other useful implements. Between the founding of the company and Franklin’s writing the city never lost more than one or two houses to fire at a time.

In 1739, the travelling Irish preacher Reverend Whitefield came to Philadelphia, but soon found that he had no place to preach because the local preachers took a dislike to him. Multitudes attended his services, Franklin says, noting on the growing zealotry (religious fervor) in the colonies around that time. Franklin proposed building a meeting hall open to preachers of all faiths and the funds were soon raised.

Reverend Whitefield removed to Georgia where there were many orphans due to the hardships suffered by the people settling that colony for the first time. Whitefield proposed the project of building an orphanage there to Franklin, who resolved not to contribute because he thought that the orphanage should be built in Philadelphia and the orphans brought to it. After hearing Whitefield speak, however, he gave all the money in his pockets. Other members of the congregation were likewise moved.

Some people doubted Whitefield’s integrity, but Franklin thought him an upright man. They had a civil rather than religious friendship. Franklin tells an anecdote about the loudness and clarity of Whitefield’s voice, estimating and imagining that thirty thousand men could have heard and listened to him at once. Franklin notes that an itinerant (travelling) preacher has the advantage of getting to perform his sermons many times.

Franklin also notes that Whitefield’s writing and printing gave his enemies the advantage of attacking his points at their leisure. Franklin says Whitefield’s supporters would have been more numerous had he never written anything at all.

Franklin’s business was now growing continually and his circumstances became easier every day. He says money itself is prolific in nature. His Carolina partnership worked out, so he promoted other workmen and established them with printing-houses in other colonies. All his partnerships at this point were carried on and ended amicably after a pre-agreed term of six years.

Franklin says there were two things about living in Pennsylvania that troubled him: that there was no militia and no college. Therefore, in 1743, Franklin drew up a proposal to establish an academy. He thought the Reverend Mr. Peters would be a good man to oversee it. He had more success the next year in proposing a “Philosophical Society.”

Franklin thought it wise to establish a militia because Spain and France had recently gone to war with Britain. Franklin wrote a pamphlet in favor of starting one called “Strong Truth.” He called a meeting in the meeting house he’d had built, distributed copies of the pamphlet to all present and had them sign it (signing meant that they would be members of the militia). The enlisters soon amounted to 10,000 armed men divided in companies.

The officers of the Philadelphia company chose Franklin as their Colonel but he declined and suggested a Mr. Lawrence in his stead. He proposed a lottery to help with the cost of building a battery below the town. It was soon built. Colonel Lawrence, Franklin and some others went to New York to borrow cannons from Governor Clinton. He at first refused any, but as he grew more intoxicated through the evening he allowed them to borrow eighteen.

The Governor of Pennsylvania and council took Franklin into confidence. Franklin proposed a fast to ask God’s blessing in the establishment of their militia and in any future need for success. Franklin drafted the proclamation. The clergy now influenced the members of their sects to join the association.

It was difficult to establish a militia among the numerous Quakers because of their doctrine of passivity. Some men advised Franklin to step down from his position in the Assembly because the Quakers held a majority there, but Franklin refused, saying he would leave office only if voted out. He was chosen again unanimously the next election.

Franklin tells an anecdote that shed light on the feelings of the Quakers. In the fire company it was proposed that they should encourage the plan to build a battery by raising money amongst themselves. The next meeting only one of the twelve Quakers, who by their doctrine should have opposed spending money on military matters, showed up to vote against the proposal. The rest stayed away, thus abstaining from the vote and allowing the measure to pass.

One Mr. Logan wrote an address to the Quakers explaining his approval of defensive war. He bought sixty pounds in lottery tickets toward the battery from Franklin with the direction that any winning should be applied to that same expense. Logan told Franklin an anecdote about William Penn to the effect that Penn allowed a servant to defend his ship by not ordering him to go below deck. The Quakers supported necessary military matters frequently yet covertly, sometimes giving money simply “For the King’s Use” or for the buying of “grain” where grain was taken to mean gunpowder.

Franklin says the Quakers suffered many embarrassments for having once published as one of their principles that no war was lawful. Franklin tells an anecdote about the sect called the Dunkers and one of its founders, Michael Welfare, who told Franklin he would rather not publish the tenants of the Dunker faith because God might reveal yet undisclosed truths to them in time. Franklin calls this modesty in the sect “a singular instance in the history of mankind.”

Franklin goes back in his narrative to tell how he invented a stove for the better heating of rooms in 1742. He wrote and published an account of and description of the stove. Governor Thomas offered to give Franklin a patent for the stove, but he refused preferring that the public profit rather than himself. An ironmonger in London, however, patented it there and made a fortune by it.

Peace having been declared between Britain, Spain, and France, Franklin turned his thoughts back to establishing an academy. He published another pamphlet, this one called “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania” and set out on foot to raise the necessary subscriptions. He quickly raised a significant sum. He presented the academy as the idea of some public-spirited gentleman not himself in order to keep his neighbors from thinking it was a project of vanity.

The academy subscribers chose out of their number 24 trustees and appointed Mr. Francis, the attorney general, and Franklin to draw up the academy’s constitution. When it was done, the academy was started in 1749. The house built for it was soon found too small, so they reappointed the public meeting house as the new academy space with a stipulations that it still be open as a public space to preachers of any faith and that a free-school be opened for the instruction of poor children.

Franklin had to supervise the work that had to be done on the building, which he said he did cheerfully because he had recently taken on an able, industrious partner at the printing house named Mr. David Hall. The trustees of the academy were soon incorporated by a charter, more land was given from the proprietary governors, and the University of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) was officially established.

Governor Thomas put Franklin into the commission of the peace, the city chose him for council, and he was soon after made an alderman. Then the citizens at large chose him as burgess to represent them in Assembly. He was glad, at last, as burgess, to be able to take part in debates. He says his ambition was flattered by the promotions.

Franklin gradually withdrew from his position as justice of the peace because he felt he lacked the necessary knowledge of common law. When he took the seat in the House his son was appointed clerk.

The following year Governor Thomas called for members of the House to serve as commissioners of peace for the treaty being drawn with the Carlisle Indians. Franklin was commissioned and went with the speaker of the House. They forbade the Native Americans to drink until the treaty had been drawn. Afterward the Native Americans got very drunk, and apologized for their behavior the next day. Franklin notes how alcohol wreaked havoc among the Native American tribes.

In 1751, Dr. Thomas Bond, Franklin’s friend, had the idea to establish a public hospital in Philadelphia. He had difficulty getting subscriptions. Franklin helped by writing on the subject in the newspapers. Then Franklin proposed a measure in the house to match donations once a large sum was reached. The measure passed because members of the Assembly doubted Bond could raise so much. He succeeded and the hospital was built.

A Rev. Gilbert Tennent asked Franklin for help in getting subscriptions for a Presbyterian meeting house. Franklin refused because he did not want to place too many requests with his neighbors. He advised Tennent, in short, to ask everyone for money, including those he thought would give none. Tennent succeeded in raising enough.

Franklin notes that Philadelphia lacked paved streets, an inconvenience for everybody. At length, Franklin was successful in getting a number of streets near the market paved. It was difficult, even then, to keep the pavement clean, so Franklin had his neighbors pay in six pence a month to employ a man to haul off the mud. Eventually the people submitted to a tax to have all the streets paved. Franklin submitted the bill for it to the Assembly just before going to England in 1757.

Next, the people, following the example of a Mr. John Clifton who placed a streetlamp at his door, desired to have the streets lit by gas lamps at night. Franklin designed a superior model of lamp with four panes of glass and a vent at the bottom. Franklin says he was surprised that in London they did not adopt these vents in their lamps to keep them clean.

While he was inn London, Franklin had proposed to a Dr. Fothergill that the streets be swept when the dust on them was dry and manageable rather than when it had gathered into a thick mud. He proposed to have several men sweep the dust up in dry seasons, a proposal which he says was put into practice. Franklin says that though these civic matters may seem small and not worthy of relating, they are small only in particular and not as a whole. He gives a version of the “teach a man to fish” proverb but changes it to teaching a man to shave.

Franklin became joint postmaster-general in 1753. Franklin and his partner made improvements to the office, which, after a period of three years, made it very profitable to them and to the king in England, but, Franklin says, he was removed from office by a mistake of the ministers.

As postmaster-general Franklin had to take a trip to New England where the College of Cambridge (Harvard) presented him an honorary Master of Arts. He was given the honorary degree for his achievements with electricity.

In 1754 war with France seemed imminent and a congress of commissioners from different colonies was assembled at Albany to confer with the Native American chiefs of the Six Nations. James Hamilton sent Franklin and the speaker of the House Mr. Norris to join Thomas Penn and Secretary Peters as commissioners to act for Pennsylvania and give gifts to the Native American chiefs.

On his way to Albany Franklin drew a plan for the union of all the colonies under one government for the sake of defense. He laid the plan before the congress and it turned out other commissioners had drafted similar proposals. Franklin’s was preferred and recommended. It was sent to the Assemblies of the various colonies, but they did not adopt it because they thought there was a secret agenda behind it.

Therefore the Board of Trade did not approve Franklin’s plan and an alternative plan, where the governors would draw on the treasury of Great Britain for the expense of defense was adopted. The colonies would pay the expense later in the form of taxes. Once imposed after the French and Indian War, these taxes were one of the main causes of the American Revolution. Franklin says things might have been better for both the British and the colonists if his plan had been adopted, but adds that “history is full of the errors of states and princes.”

Franklin pauses to talk about the man who became governor of Pennsylvania after James Hamilton, Mr. Morris, a man constantly disputing with the Assembly and, therefore, Franklin, in civic matters, but also overwhelmingly friendly to Franklin in day to day life. Eventually, Mr. Morris got tired of his contests with the house, and, like his predecessor Hamilton, quit his office.

The disputes James Hamilton and Morris were having with the Assembly had to do with hereditary governors in Pennsylvania who refused to allow taxes to be passed unless their own estates were excused. The Assembly held out against this injustice, but Mr. Morris’s successor, Captain Denny, managed to force the Assembly to give way to it.

During Governor Morris’s term, war broke out with France (The French and Indian War). The government at Massachusetts Bay projected an attack upon a place called Grown Point and sent representatives to New York and Pennsylvania to solicit help. The solicitor in Pennsylvanian was a Mr. Quincy who applied to Franklin for help. Franklin managed to pass a bill offering him ten thousand pounds through the House, but the governor refused to ratify it unless a clause were inserted protecting the estates of proprietary governors.

Franklin managed to skirt the governor’s dissent by drawing the money from the Loan Office, which was fully under the Assembly’s power. Mr. Quincy went home to Massachusetts proud of his suit and ever afterward held Franklin in high esteem and friendship.

The British sent General Braddock to the colonies with two regiments of regular English troops for the war. He landed in Alexandria, Virginia and marched to Frederictown, Maryland where he waited on carriages. Franklin was sent to advise him on how best to procure them from the governors. He went with his son, William, to speak to the general at Frederictown.

Braddock’s men were only able to secure 25 wagons when they needed 150. Franklin said there were many in Pennsylvania and drafted the terms for which he felt the farmers would offer their wagons to the army. Franklin advertised these terms and was in part able to procure the necessary wagons by personally vouching that they would be paid for in full if they were lost or destroyed when farmer’s signed contracts lending them to the army.

When Franklin returned to Braddock’s camp, a Colonel Dunbar spoke to him of how the troops lacked the necessary stores for their long march toward French territory in the west. Franklin applied to a committee of the Assembly to send such items as his son (being more familiar with military life) thought that the troops would need. The Assembly applied the food and goods, twenty large parcels of sugar, cheese, butter, wine, coffee, rice and other necessities.

The parcels were very graciously received and General Braddock was very grateful to Franklin for supplying him the necessary wagons and continuing to help him until his defeat. Franklin calls Braddock a brave man, but reveals that he was probably a poor general: he underestimated the Native Americans that his troops would be fighting. Franklin tried to offer him counsel, but Braddock laughed him off.

Franklin tells how the Native Americans massacred Braddock’s troops after they crossed a river and were in one large mass. All the wagons, provisions, artillery and stores were left to the enemy after the army scattered and the men had fled. Franklin says that the news of Braddock’s defeat spooked Colonel Dunbar who fled with his army to Philadelphia. It was the first sign, Franklin says, that the Americans had been overestimating the “prowess of British regulars.”

Furthermore, the army had robbed the inhabitants during its marches through the country. Franklin contrasts this with the behavior of the Americans’ French allies during the Revolution. (The French behaved impeccably and occasioned no complaints.)

The French published some of General Braddock’s papers that had come into their hands which showed the hostile intentions of the British before the war and which contained some notes that spoke highly of Franklin and recommended him. But those recommendations, due to the failure of the campaign, were never of any use to him.

The only thing Franklin had asked Braddock was that he not enlist any more of the Americans’ bought servants and that he should discharge those who had been already enlisted. The general complied. Colonel Dunbar refused Franklin the same request. When the wagon-lenders heard about the loss of their wagons they all went to Franklin to claim payment for them. General Shirley saved Franklin from their lawsuits by setting up commissioners to examine the claims and order payment.

Men had come to Franklin in Philadelphia before Braddock’s defeat with a subscription paper for raising money for a celebratory firework display to be held after Braddock’s victory. Franklin of course urged prudence, and suggested they wait until the victory had been won.

Now Governor Morris redoubled his efforts to secure money from the Assembly for the defense of the province. The Assembly withheld because of the injustice of the proprietary governors not having to pay the tax, eventually the Assembly’s friends in Britain pressured the proprietary governors into paying the tax. Franklin was appointed to allocate the defense money, some sixty thousand pounds. Franklin proposed a bill to establish a voluntary militia and wrote a dialogue arguing for it.

Governor Morris applied to Franklin to take charge of Pennsylvania’s northwestern frontier, which was infested with the enemy. Franklin accepted the position, enlisted over five hundred men, took his son William as his aid-de-camp and set about constructing forts on the frontier.

Franklin and his troops left from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania which he found exceptionally well-prepared for defense even though the community there was supposedly pacifist. He says that “common sense, aided by present danger, will sometimes be too strong for whimsical opinions.”

Franklin sent men to build forts along the Minisink River and resolved to go himself to Gnadenhut where the Native Americans had already destroyed a fort and killed many inhabitants of the town. Before they left Bethlehem, eleven farmers came to Franklin asking for guns to get their cattle back from the Native Americans who had stolen them. He gave them the guns, but ten of them men were killed because their weapons failed to discharge in the rain.

At Gnadenhut, Franklin and his men built themselves huts and buried the dead. The next morning they planned and marked out their fort. It was finished in a week though the weather was so bad that every other day the men could not work. This, Franklin says, caused him to observe that when men were busily employed they were much better behaved and in better tempers. After the fort was finished the men set out in parties to scour the country where they observed how the Indians had dug holes to watch their progress and keep their fires concealed.

Franklin arranged with the chaplain of his company that he should preach before the men received their daily allotment of rum so that his preaching would be heard. Franklin soon received a letter from the governor asking him to come back to Philadelphia and attend the Assembly. Franklin returned after giving over command to one Colonel Clapham who was experienced at warring with the Native Americans.

While at Bethlehem, Franklin had learned more about the Moravians (the sect that had settled the country there). He asked about the Moravian marriages, if it were true that they were settled by lot rather than the free choice of the parties involved. It proved to be partially true in some circumstances and when he asked if this led to the parties sometimes being unhappy he was answered in the affirmative, but, it was added, they might also be unhappy if they decided for themselves—a point he could not deny.

When he returned to Philadelphia, Franklin found the war efforts to be coming along nicely. The officers of the militia there chose Franklin to be colonel of the regiment, and this time he accepted the position. However, he managed to offend the proprietor general when, undertaking a journey to Virginia, his men escorted him out of town with their sabers drawn—an honor which had not been paid the proprietor when he visited the province. Franklin said he was ignorant of the etiquette or would not have allowed it.

Governor Morris wanted to set up Franklin as a general, but Franklin refused, not thinking as highly of his military abilities as the governor.

Franklin pauses his narrative of the war to relate some of his scientific achievements. He says that he was shown some electric experiments in Boston in 1746 by a Scotsman. They were performed imperfectly but impressed Franklin. Back in Philadelphia, his library received a gift of a glass tube from a Mr. Collinson with some account of its use. He recreated the experiments he saw in Boston as well as some he heard account of from England and performed some new experiments of his own.

Franklin had more glass tubes made, and Philadelphia soon had several experimenters, the foremost being a man name Mr. Kinnersley, a neighbor whom Franklin encouraged to demonstrate experiments for a fee because he (Kinnersley) was out of business. Franklin wrote Mr. Collinson with accounts of the success of his experiments. Collinson read the reports to the Royal Society where they were not, at first, given much notice.

Franklin wrote a paper to the Royal Society on the sameness of lightning with electricity, but the paper was received with laughter there. Dr. Fothergill however got the papers printed in a small book. It took some time before the Count de Buffon, a famous European scientist, had the papers translated into French.

In France, the leading theoretician on electricity, Abbe Nollet, would not at first believe that an American had done such admirable work. Nollet wrote a volume of letters addressed to Franklin decrying Franklin’s work. Franklin decided against answering Nollet because, he says, his experiments could be reproduced and verified without the help of letters. Franklin’s book was translated into Italian, German, and Latin and its theories were “universally adopted” by the scientists in Europe.

Franklin’s book became famous when one of its proposed experiments, drawing lightning from the clouds, was performed by one M. de Lor for the king and court of France. Franklin says he won’t lengthen the Autobiography with accounts of the experiments or the one he later performed with a kite and key in Philadelphia because accounts can be found in the histories of electricity.

News of the success of Franklin’s experiments in France soon came back to the Royal Society in London, a summary of Franklin’s papers was published and the members of the academy made amends for the slight they had given him by making him a member of the Society and presenting him the gold medal of Sir Godfrey Copley for the year 1753.

Governor Denny presented Franklin with the medal at a special ceremony in Philadelphia, drew Franklin aside, and assured Franklin of his readiness to be of service to him. Franklin refused any monetary gifts and told Denny that he should put forward any of Denny’s proposals he felt to be for the good of the people and would do everything in his power to make his administration as easy as possible, but Denny renewed the same disputes as his predecessors. He and Franklin became good friends. Denny told Franklin that his old friend Ralph was still alive in England and esteemed one of the best political writers there.

The Assembly grew frustrated with the proprietaries and resolved to petition the king against them. They appointed Franklin as their agent to the king to present their petition. The Assembly had sent a bill to the governor granting sixty thousand pounds to the king, ten thousand of which was to be subjected to the orders of the then general, Lord Loudoun, but the governor refused to ratify the bill because of the interest of the proprietary governors.

Franklin made ready to travel to London and paid passage on a ship, but Lord Loudoun arrived at Philadelphia to arbitrate between the Assembly (Franklin) and Governor Denny. Lord Loudon sided with the governor, and Franklin encouraged the Assembly to draft another bill more amenable to the proprietary governors’ instructions. They did so and the governor ratified it. In the meantime, his ship had sailed with his things to London, which was a considerable loss to him.

Franklin, still wanting to make the journey, went to New York to catch another ship. He arrived in New York in April and it was almost June before he sailed, the ships were constantly delayed because they were waiting for Lord Loudoun’s letters. Eventually, though the general was constantly at his desk and seeming to be writing, he was removed from his office because the ministers in England never heard from him. Franklin’s ship was almost detained to take part in a siege on Loisburg that the general eventually and ineptly decided against.

Franklin says he wondered how such a man came to be entrusted with the affairs of a whole army. He says General Shirley who replaced Braddock would have done a much finer job than Loudoun, who was a disgrace to the nation. Franklin says he believes Shirley was glad to be relieved of the burden of commanding the army.

While waiting in New York, Franklin received the accounts for provisions, etc., which he had furnished Braddock. He was unable to receive payment, in part because of suspicions that he had used his position to line his own pockets, which he had not done. He was never paid.

Franklin’s captain on his ship boasted of the speed of the ship, but it proved to be dreadfully slow until they rearranged the cargo. The ship’s speed was measured at the rate of 13 knots (very fast at the time). Franklin says he shares the fact because he believes that ships could be made much faster if experiments were applied to hull shape and cargo distribution, that sailing could, in brief, be made more of a science.

Franklin tells of an incident that occurred when they were nearing their destination-port, Fallmouth. The watchman failed to see a lighthouse and they narrowly avoided shipwreck. Nonetheless, the event impressed Franklin with the utility of lighthouses so that he should encourage their building more in America. In the morning, they arrived at Fallmouth.