The article reverts to the theme of Dickens's 'Uncommercial Traveller' essay, published in All the Year Round Vol. II (10 March 1860), and reprinted in volume editions of The Uncommercial Traveller under the title 'Poor Mercantile Jack.' In the earlier article, Dickens casts an imaginative and euphemistic gloss over the activities of the dockside 'crimps,' pimps, prostitutes and other 'vermin' who set traps for the honest Jack of the merchant navy when on shore leave. The present article is much more prosaic, but rehearses—presumably at Dickens's instigation—a similar series of points about the vulnerability of sailors to exploitation and vice rings, and again, shows little sympathy for those caught up in these processes.
