(Just to provide a bit of context -- I'm just starting out the series, didn't play 1-3.)

1) After going through the intro and tarot game and all that, I started near the town of Jhelom, which, after consulting a map, I find is on an island off the western coast. Since the first thing I ought to do seems to be visiting Lord British, this offered a bit of a dilemma -- how to get to Castle Britannia from this island? After a bit of messing around, I figured out that if I died from getting poisoned or getting in fights, I would resurrect near British himself, so that does provide a bit of a shortcut. But I didn't save that progress because I'm still wondering -- isn't there a more, say, dignified way of getting to the mainland?

2) I managed to wrap my head around the moongates, and got from Jhelom to Skara Brae. I talk to the first person I see, and am surprised to have found Shamino so quickly (I played a bit of U5 Lazarus a while back, so I had some idea of who he was). I figured well, he's a party member in the sequel, so if I talk to him and say "join" he'll probably join me, right? Naturally I was right, but was I supposed to hear from someone else "hey, go talk to that Shamino, he'd be interested in joining your party" or am I really supposed to just go up to everyone I meet and ask them if they want to join me?

Thanks in advance.

1) You always start at the town that corresponds to your virtue and class. Since you started in Jhelom your dominant virtue is valor and your class is fighter. Only bards start in Britain next to the castle of Lord British (for some reason I always become a bard when I answer the questions honestly). To get off the island your best legitimate way is waiting for a moongate to appear. You can also hope for a pirate ship to come by, then you can defeat the pirates and board the ship, but I don't know if pirate ships spawn at level 1 already.

Note however, that you don't have to speak to Lord British, he just tells you what's going on, but if you already know what you want to do you can just play the game.

2) Usually potential companions will say something like "I really want to go adventuring", which is a hint that they could join you, but you will never find someone saying "Shamino really would like to join you on your quest, you should talk to him". Keep in mind that you can't have the companion with the same class as you join the party and that your party size is limited by your level. Als, to beat the game you will need a full party in the final dungeon, or else you will be just thrown out at the end of it.

1) So, it's been awhile, but I'm thinking that you get a boat by going to the coast and waiting for a pirate ship to spawn. Kill the crew and it's yours. Then you can sail to the mainland. But hey, death fast travel within the first minutes of the game seems kind of convenient. I just wouldn't use it regularly.

2) IIRC, I'm thinking the companions themselves drop a hint that they could join you, if you dig deep enough. There might be someone who says, "talk to Shamino", but the game doesn't use variables to keep track of long term progress, (nothing like: the player has to do A before he's allowed to do B). So you can hire every companion before knowing a single thing about them, just after saying "hi", even though there may be dialog somewhere that drops a hint about them.

Oh I see the previous poster has a similar mind on the subject. When I think about not being able to hire the companion from your own class, do they still exist, or are they effectively dead? I forget.

They exist, they just won't join you, they will keep doing what they were doing. In Ultima V they will still act like they were your companions, even if you import a character over from Ultima IV.

Nice, thanks for the answers.

One other thing (more interface related) -- when I check out character stats, I can't figure out how to get that section to return to the normal party display where it shows you all your party members and their current HP. When I resume playing it just stays on whatever stats screen I last looked at (a particular character's full stats, the items list, whatever). Is there any way of resetting it to the party display screen?

Interesting -- that last part doesn't seem to happen for me. That's the part where it remains on whatever the last stats screen I looked at.
I'm using U4 Exult to run the game, rather than Dosbox; could that have anything to do with it?

xu4 tries to be as faithful to Ultima IV as possible, but it is not the same engine, and thus it is possible that they are different in that regard. I played Ultima IV in DOSBox, because xu4 doesn't really offer and advantages. You can get the improved graphics in DOSBox as well (see my sticky thread for information), and while the ability to mix several spells at once is really handy it doesn't really make that much of a difference. Other ports like Exult (Ultima VII) or Nuvie (Ultima VI) vastly improve their respective games a lot with better interfaces and more options.