Unlike his new captain, George Murray, or the midshipman John Byron, he was no silk-stocking dandy. He didn’t have a baron as a father, or some powerful patron greasing his path to the quarterdeck. He might outrank Byron—and might serve as his guide on the ways of a man-of-war—but he was still considered socially inferior to him. Though there were instances of gunners becoming lieutenants or captains, they were rare, and Bulkeley was too blunt, too certain of himself, to flatter his superiors, which he deemed a “degenerate” practice.
