Richard Fidler

And I don't know how they reconnected.

I don't know how the brother knew where he was.

But by this stage, Dexter's been watching Wild West shows, you know, Barnum and all the fabulous lore of the Wild West.

Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, all of those shows.

He'd probably seen Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane in shows in New York.

and he was about to head off to the Wild West when his brother said to him, why don't you sign up on my ship, which he did.

So he goes back to sea.

Exactly, and this was the normal life of a sailor.

He commented in his memoirs that his first trip out, you know, he learnt more about sex than most men would learn in a lifetime...

He was not into sex and the drinking was very moderate.

He learnt very quickly the dangers of alcohol and he found various strategies that allowed him to be companionable around the men who were drinking hard.

So he would drink a little.

The sex he was exposed to kind of would make us smile a bit.

In Tacoma, in the US Pacific coast, he watched a show where there was a skit about Adam and Eve in Eden, probably in their Edenic innocence, and then followed by another skit of a Mormon leading his latest wife over the sleeping bodies of the seven other wives.

And, you know, that's about as daring as it got.

Saucy.

Yeah, saucy indeed.

Dexter.

Dexter's definitely had the opportunity to do more, but I think there's very little evidence of his early life's attitudes, but it would seem that he had ethical standards that he held to, even on his own.

While he was at sea, how was he working to improve his mind and his prospects?