He was born at Bordeaux, in France, on the 21st of May, 1750, and was
the eldest of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of
that city. His life at home was a hard one. At the age of eight years,
he discovered that he was blind in one eye, and the mortification and
grief which this discovery caused him appear to have soured his entire
life. He afterward declared that his father treated him with
considerable neglect, and that, while his younger brothers were sent to
college, he was made to content himself with the barest rudiments of an
education, with merely a knowledge of reading and writing. When he was
quite young, his mother died, and, as his father soon married again,
the severity of a step-mother was added to his other troubles. When
about thirteen years of age, he left home, with his father's consent,
and began, as a cabin-boy, the life of a mariner. For nine years he
sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies, rising steadily from
his position of cabin-boy to that of mate. He improved his leisure time
at sea, until he was not only master of the art of navigation, but
generally well informed for a man in his station.
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