These cargoes come with what we call baggage. The stories are all set in the minor merchant marine, mostly up and down the Thames and sometimes across the channel, and most of them are about minor romantic entanglements or contests of pride among the sailors.
The details of living aboard would probably be interesting, but they're mostly taken for granted instead of described.
At Project Gutenberg: Many Cargoes
So wrote clew in Fiction (19th c.).