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31924030898138THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT
SERVICEThe MEN
of the
ME RCHANT
SERVICE
Being
THE POLITY of the MERCANTILE
MARINE for ’LONGSHORE READERS
By
FRANK T. BULLEN, F.R.G.S.
Author of
“The Cruise of the ‘ Cachalot “The Log
of a Sea-waif,” “Idylls of the Sea,” etc.
forft
Frederick A.Stokes Company
Publishers
KCopyright, xgoo,
By Frederick A. Stokes Company.To
Rudyard Kipling
in grateful recognition of both his wonderful
genius and his great kindness
to
the Author.CONTENTS.
Chapter I.—The Rise of the Master (Ideal).
Magnitude of the Merchant Service—Ignorance of its Details
Ashore—Want of Information upon the Subject—Popu-
larity of Sea-Fiction and Unreliability of its Details—
“ Master ” or “ Captain ”—Cadet Ships—Their Value—
The Way Up, Ideal.............................i
Chapter II.—The Rise of the Master (Real)—
The Liner.
Apprentice Difficulties—Sketch of an Officer’s Progress—
Looking for a Ship—Classification of Masters—Range
between Atlantic “Liner" and Foreign-Going
Schooner—Enviable Position of the Master of a
“ Liner ”—Pilots’ Responsibility—Reliable Officers, but
the Master is Emperor ; All Responsibility Centres in
Him.................................................8
Chapter III.—The Master—Of a Tramp.
Tramp Masters—Less Pay, More Work—Hardships of
Tramps—Economical Owners—Anxious Considera-
tions and All-Round Qualifications—The Aristocracy of
Tramps—Shore Berths for Old Skippers—Black Sheep 17
Chapter IV.—The Master—Of a Sailing-Ship.
Sailing-Ships—Their Gradations—The Beauty of Seamanship
in Sunda Straits—Ship-Handling and Pluck—Devilish
Ships—Local Knowledge versus “ Book-Lamin’ ’’—
The Horn—“ Swansea-Men ”—A Glorious Old Skip-
per—Overdue Ships—Mediocrities	.	.	.	.25vi	CONTENTS.
Chapter V.—The Sailing-Ship Master—continued.
The Skipper’s Temptations—His Power over Young- Offi-
cers—Painting versus Sailorising, and the Result—Va-
rious Temperaments of Skippers—The Discipline of the
“ Yank " and of the “ Blue-Nose ”—Their Seamanship—
The “ Down Easter ”—The Yankee Clipper ; his Pas-
sion for Cleanliness and his Brutality—Elementary
Methods...................................35
Chapter VI.—The Master’s Qualities.
The Personal Equation—An Ideal Commander—Want of
Tact—-They Do these Things Better in “ Yanks ”—Good
to Have a Hobby—High Standard of Excellence—Diffi-
culties of the British Shipmaster with Respect to his
Crew—Unpalatable Truths—The Fear of God—Hon-
esty of Shipmasters—Incitements to Dishonesty .	. 44
Chapter VII.—The Master’s Duties.
A Glimpse of Navigation—The Unstable Compass—Dead
Reckoning—Pilotage Anxieties—The Shipmaster as
Trustee—As Lawyer—As Doctor—Rough and Ready
Surgery—A True Hero—The “ Malingerer ”	.	. 52
Chapter VIII.—The Master’s Duties—continued.
Voluntary Duties—Knowledge of Engineering, of Ship-Con-
struction, and of Natural History—The Danger of Drink
—A Drunkard or Two—A Memorable Voyage—The
Blue-Nose Skipper—His All-Round Excellence .	. 62
Chapter IX.—The Mate.
The Mate and his Duties—An Ancient and Honourable Title
-—His Range of Importance—A Long Step from Mate
to Master, Both in Position and Pay—Education of
British Officers—Examinations...................72
Chapter X.—The Mate’s Work—On a Steamer.
A Good Mate Precious above Rubies—Some Difficulties of the
Young Mate—Sensitiveness—Manager of a Large Busi-CONTENTS.
vii
ness—A Great Gulf between Tramp and “ Liner ’’ for the
Mate—Low Wages—Difficult Generalship—A Scanda-
lous Miscarriage of Justice—Again Better in the
“Yank"—Compensations......................81
Chapter XI.—The Mate’s Work-In a Sailing-
Ship.
Peculiarities of Status—The Excellence of the Sailing-Ship
Mate—“ Humouring " a Ship—Care of Her Aloft—The
Mate’s Right-Hand Man—Keeping Them To It—The
Joy of a Good Sailing-Ship—A Happy Mate—Keeping
the Log........................................go
Chapter XII.—The Mate of a Sailing-Ship—
continued.
Ideal Log-Book Literature—Ruffianly Mates, but Splendid
Seamen—A “ Nigger-Driver ”—The Mate as Cargo
Clerk and Warehouseman—His Temptations—An Ex-
ultant Hebrew—The Drink Question again—The
Mate’s Privileges..............................99
Chapter XIII.—The Second Mate—In Steam.
“ Hazing” a Second Mate—His Importance—His Assured Ex-
cellence in a “ Liner ”—Careful Selection—Really First
Lieutenant in a “ Liner,” but in the Tramp a Servant
of Servants Shall He Be—An Upper Housemaid—An
Anomalous Position—As a Stevedore—The Yankee
Second Mate....................................no
Chapter XIV.—The Second Mate—First Steps.
The Passing of the “ Board’’—Schoolboy Work—Theoretical
Navigation — Practical Seamanship —Colour-Blind-
ness—Queer Instruction—A Kindly Examiner—The
Astonishment of the Schoolmaster—Only Mate and
“ Bos’un -Second-Mate ”........................119CONTENTS.
viii
Chapter XV.—The Second Mate—Of a Sailing-
Ship.
The Difference Between Steam and Sail—A Kindly Skipper
for a Beginner—The Second Mate’s Position as Pupil
—The Seamy Side—Everybody's Dog—Again the Dif-
ference Between “ Lime-Juicer ” and “Yank”—The
Second Mate of the East Lothian—Oh, What a Sur-
prise !—The Value of Muscle—The Want of Discipline
in Our Ships...................................129
Chapter XVI.—The Third Mate.
Of Great Importance or None at All—A Suggestion from the
Navy—No Respect Due to Him—The Owner’s Pet—
The “ Poop Ornament ”—His Bringing Up—A Lost
Opportunity—The “ Bucko ” Third Mate of an Ameri-
can Ship—An Error in Judgment—Idlers .	.	. 140
Chapter XVII.—The Bos’un.
A Romantic Figure—Rough but Genuine—The Naval Bos’un
—The Working Foreman—Bos’un and “Lamps”
Combined—The Old-Time Bos’un—A Thorough
Sailor—A Queer Bos’un—A Broken-Down Bos’un—A
Brevet Bos’un................................... 149
Chapter XVIII.—The Carpenter.
His General Excellence and Unique Position—A Man of Many
Qualifications—All Carpenters in British North America
as in Finland—“ Chips ” and Sailor Too—An Indepen-
dent Member—Always Plenty of Work—The Whale-
ship Carpenter and Boat-Builder................159
Chapter XIX.—The Sailmaker.
An Occupation that is Passing—Its Fascination for Good Sail-
ors—The Art and Mystery of Sailmaking—The Yan-
kee Sailmaker—His Contempt for British Sails—Like
the Carpenter, the Sailmaker Always has Plenty to Do
—The Beauty of Sails ....... 169CONTENTS.
IX
Chapter XX.—The Steward—In Steam.
Wide Range of Status, but Always a Steward—Wonderful
Management—A Small Army to Control—Work Never
Done—The Tramp Steward—His Duties and Difficul-
ties—The “ Providore ”,	...... 178
Chapter XXI.—The Steward—Sailing-Ships.
The Passenger Sailing-Ship Almost Extinct—Consequently
Few Chief Stewards in Sail—The Responsible Steward
—The Captain’s Pet—Funny Little Ways—A Bitter
Experience—The Yankee Steward—His Onerous Post
—The Stewardess—My Friend’s Pathetic Story .	. 185
Chapter XXII.—The Cook—In Steam.
The Most Interesting Figure on Board Ship—A Chef Indeed
—Where Does He Come From?—Difficulties of Ship
Cookery Under the Best Conditions—Careful, Hard-
Working Men—Australian Cooks—“Black Sam” —
“ Humpy Bill”; His Tribulations and Triumphs—The
Cook of a Tramp...........................192
Chapter XXIII.—The Cook—Sailing-Ships.
His Materials—His Usual Qualifications—No Room for a
Good Cook—Good Sailing-Ships and Bad, from the
Food Point of View—Bad Food Wasteful as Well as
Dear—The Craving for Vegetables—The Cook’s Day’s
Work—So Different in Yankee Ships—Blue-Nose
Cookery—“ Cracker-Hash "—“ Duff ” .	.	.	. 202
Chapter XXIV.—The Sailing-Ship Cook—
continued.
Salt Junk—The Never-Satisfied Sailor—Pork and Pease—
Dirty Cooking—Abysmal Ignorance—A Lower Depth
—Bad Weather............................. 212X
CONTENTS.
Chapter XXV.—The Apprentice—Suggestions.
A Serious Matter—Want of Knowledge—The System of Ap-
prenticeship—Need for Revision—The Influx of Foreign
Officers—No Want of Aspirants Here—An Experience
of My Own—No-Premium Apprentices—Training-
Ships—The Housing of Sea-Apprentices—A Vexed
Question—-To Stop the Waste of Young Seamen—An
A.B. no Mere Labourer—A Good Example—A Model
Shipjor Apprentices—Training-Ships in America	. 220
Chapter XXVI.—The Apprentice—Some Facts
Concerning His Life.
The Average Boy’s Helplessness—The Need for Lessons in
Homely Things—An Unhappy Home—Waste of Outfit
—Need of Personal Supervision and Honest Treat-
ment—Apprentices Substituted for Sailors—Some In-
stances—All Depends Upon the Master—Wasted Years
—The Embryo Officer in the United States and Canada 231
Chapter XXVII.—The Apprentice—Some
Practical Information.
How to Get your Boy to Sea—Beware of the Apprenticeship
Broker—A Typical Instance—Some Hints as to Outfit
—A List of Necessaries—The Choice of a Ship—Per-
sonal Relations of Parents with Officers—Hints to
Apprentices Themselves........................241
Chapter XXVIII.—The Able Seaman (A.B.)—
General Qualifications.
The “ Common Sailor ”—His One-Sided View of Things—
His Difficulties—The Reading Sailor—Argumentative
Qualities—His Shyness Ashore—The Religious Sailor—
Misconception of His Duties—Hardships of Good Men
from the Shipment of Duffers—The Skilled A.B.—Some
of his Duties^—The “ Steamboat Sailor —One Instance 250CONTENTS.
xi
Chapter XXIX.—The Able Seaman—His
Routine.
Some Details Fixed—Others Varying Indefinitely According to
the Will of the Master—The Incidence of Watches—
Difference of Work in Steamships and Sailing-
Vessels—No Easy Times in American Ships—Keeping
Them “ At It ”—Wheel and Lookout—Steering—Sail-
ors and Labourers—The Need for Selection—The
Bully in the Fo’c’s’le—A Case in Point .	.	. 260
Chapter XXX.—The Able Seaman—His
Position.
Putting a Premium on Incompetency—The Steamship Partly
to Blame—Are We Getting Lazy ?—The Need for
a Naval Reserve—Why Does the Reserve Languish ?—
Not a Bad Life After All—Plenty of British Seamen
to be Got, but They Must Have Discipline .	.	. 273
Chapter XXXI.—The Ordinary Seaman (O.S.)
His Elimination—No System—Many Better than A.B.’s in the
Same Ship—A Typical Instance—An O.S.’s Duties—A
Piece of Technical Detail—Crossing a Royal Yard—■
His Position in the Fo’c's’le—A Servant of Servants
Shall He Be”—A Rough and Ready Way Out .	. 280
Chapter XXXII.—The Boy.
A Romantic Figure—Changed Conditions—The Bad Old
Days—Better Treatment Forward than Aft—The Un-
fair Change for a Boy from the Training-Ship to the
Trading-Ship — Cleanliness Barred—Bad Advice—
What to Do for Him—Running Away to Sea—An
Old-Time Shipping-Office—Small Ships, Bad and Good 291
Chapter XXXIII.—The Engineer.
Need for Literary Engineers—A Noble Calling—Its Perils
and its Pride—No Sea-Joys for the Engineer—A Nine-CONTENTS.
xii
teenth Century Hero—A Unique Profession—Produc-
ing a High-Grade Man—The Evolution of the Marine
Engineer—No Foreigners Allowed—The Engine-
Room Artificer (E.R.A.)—In Case of War—No Mere
Mechanic—The Blindness of the Admiralty with
Regard to the Engineer ...... 302
Chapter XXXIV.—The Fireman and Trimmer.
Why Do Men become Firemen—A Terrible Calling—Some of
His Duties—The Voice of Steam—Better Drunk—
Cleaning Fires—The Slavery of Civilisation—A Lower
Deep ?—Are We Nearing Finality .	.	.	.313
Chapter XXXV.—Conclusion.
Pertinent Questions—The Whole Truth—Does Magnanimity
Answer?—The Peril of the Alien—No Trade-Union
for Sailors—The Officer’s Chance—A Valuable Edu-
cational Factor—Our National Safeguard—Finis	. 324Preface
It has been repeatedly represented to me by disin-
terested friends that among the innumerable works
of both fact and fiction dealing with the sea there are
none telling in a comprehensive way what are the
conditions of life in the Merchant Service ; in other
words, that there is no work to which a parent yield-
ing to his son’s importunity to be allowed to go to
sea, and seeking to know something of the nature of
things on board of a merchant ship in detail, can turn
with the assurance that he may there find what he
needs. Nor can the youth, anxious to go to sea in
the Merchant Service, find any guidance, which will at
once be comprehensive and reliable, compacted into
one handy volume. And as these same friends have
done me the honour to suggest that I have the quali-
fications necessary for producing such a work, I have
not at all unwillingly acceded to their suggestions and
undertaken the task.
The recollection of many kindly criticisms on the
preface to the “ Log of a Sea Waif,” scolding me gOod-
naturedly for what it has pleased the critics to term
my exaggerated modesty, prevents me from sinning
now in that direction. I will merely say that I haveXIV
PREFACE.
done my best to justify my friends’ confidence in me,
and that I earnestly hope the book will not fall too
far short of their expectations.
The planning of such a work seems to be compara-
tively easy. The first thing that suggested itself was
the setting forth in a series of chapters the duties, re-
quired qualifications, difficulties, privileges, etc.,/of the
various members of a ship’s company.
A doubt has naturally arisen in my mind as to how
far it is justifiable to deal with sailing-ships in these
latter days. My own personal knowledge and predi-
lections are on the side of the “ wind-jammer,” and
consequently I feel the less inclined to deal with her
perfunctorily. I cannot, however, conceal from my-
self the fact that the passing of the sailing-ship is be-
ing greatly accelerated of late years, and that in all
probability another twenty years will witness her final
disappearance. On the other hand, I should not be
at all surprised to see a sudden recrudescence of sail-
ing-ship building. Considering the sailing-ship’s econ-
omy, her vast carrying capacity, the fact that her very
slowness as compared with the steamer is actually no
mean advantage in a great number of instances; viz.,
to quote one, where goods are bought in a low market
and are not required by the buyer for some months,
so that their shipment by a sailer actually saves ware-
house charges as well as freight, I cannot understand
why the sailer should be suffered to disappear.
Nevertheless, as engineering science advances, econ-
omies will doubtless be found possible in steamships
which will so greatly lessen their expenses as to make
the competition of sailers out of the question. ThePREFACE.
xv
opening of a Panama Canal, too, which will certainly
not be much longer delayed, will deal a tremendous
blow at the vast sailing trade around Cape Horn. It
seems indeed destined to be the final factor in the
elimination of the sailing-ship.
Meanwhile the white-winged fleets come and go in
far greater numbers than landsmen have any idea of,
and as nearly all authorities are agreed that, in spite
of the immense strides taken by steam navigation, the
sailing-ship is still the only school wherein to train a
thorough seafarer, she will certainly receive her full
meed of attention here.
Care has been taken to avoid as far as possible all
technical treatment of the subject. I have not as-
sumed the possession of too much nautical knowledge
on the part of my prospective readers,—not nearly as
much, for instance, as would be permissible in a work
of fiction. Having before me, too, the hope that sons
as well as parents will be able to read and enjoy as
well as thoroughly grasp the meaning of this book, I
have aimed at making it entertaining, giving a plenti-
ful supply of anecdotes, as well to illustrate as to
lighten what might easily become rather “ stodgy.”
Finally, I feel constrained to add that, even if my
friends are wrong and there are works with which they,
as well as myself, are not acquainted, better calculated
to serve the purpose for which this book is intended,
I have the temerity to believe that no apology is nec-
essary for its appearance. The overwhelming import-
ance of our over-sea commerce to Great Britain cannot
be too greatly emphasized, while the astounding igno-
rance of maritime matters manifested by British peo-XVI
PREFACE.
pie generally makes one gasp in amazement. Any
book, therefore, that does anything to popularise
knowledge of Mercantile Marine details cannot be su-
perfluous in this country, and should this present one
succeed in bringing home to our inland dwellers with
any clearness the conditions of life on board the ves-
sels upon whose regular advent depend our supplies
of daily food, I shall feel abundantly justified in issu-
ing it to my countrymen.
Dulwich, July, 1900.The Men of the Merchant Service.
CHAPTER i.
THE RISE OF THE MASTER (IDEAL).
Viewed from whatever standpoint we may choose,
it is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion than
that the British Mercantile Marine is not only the
greatest British industry, but that, for its overwhelming
importance and far-reaching effect upon mankind, it is
the most stupendous monument of human energy and
enterprise that the world has ever seen. Yet, with
that peculiar absence of pride in our own institutions,
that easy-going magnanimity which, in spite of what
not only foreign writers but many of our own authors
assert, is really the most distinctive characteristic of
the British race, we show but little appreciation of
this marvel of commercial genius and concentrated
effort. Dependent by our own action upon our ships
for food, we evince no alarm at the possibility of
disaster to these main arteries of our national life.
Go where you will, up and down this country of ours,
you will find scarcely any knowledge of the British
Merchant Service at all, except among people directly
engaged in the shipping business, or among a few earn-
est souls who think it is their duty to know something2 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
of the conditions under which their dear ones live.
The vast majority of people know of but one form of
seafaring, the Navy as they call it, par excellence, and if
a man tells them that he is a sailor they are disin-
clined to believe him unless he wear the familiar loose
blue clothing and gold-lettered cap of the man-o’-war’s
man.
But this is a trivial matter compared with the
ignorance of the great matters of life and death
wrapped up in our Mercantile Marine. That lads
eager to get out upon what has tacitly come to be re-
garded as our peculiar domain—the open sea—and
there uphold the traditions of the race, should not know
where to go for information concerning it that can be
relied upon, seems strange to-day. Stranger still is it
that, instead of all manner of facilities being given to
our own youths who wish to become seamen, all man-
ner of disheartening hindrances should be put in their
way. And what shall we say, in face of the almost
universal manifestation of malevolence towards us by
foreign powers in what they believe to be our hour of
tribulation, of a British Minister who from his high
position declares he sees no cause for alarm in the
prospect of our merchant ships being entirely manned
by foreigners. It is only one more proof that the
ignorance of our greatest industry is universal, that
from the highest class to the lowest our people have
grown to look upon this most important of our na-
tional assets, this indispensable bridging of the ocean
for the supply of our daily food, as something no
more needing our thoughtful attention than the recur-
rence of the seasons or the incidence of day and night.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 3
And yet books about the sea are usually popular.
In spite of the technicalities involved (usually wrong,
owing to the want of a first-hand acquaintance with
the subject) almost any sea-fiction will sell. So long
as the story be good, the plot workmanlike, the great
mass of the reading public will not criticise the
nautical technique from lack of ability; they take it
for granted, and learn nothing from it. Exceptions
may be gratefully remembered, especially Kipling,
whose nautical stories, like his engineering ones, have
no flaws. They might have been written by a man
who had spent his life upon the sea and had served in
all grades. In like manner did R. L. Stevenson grasp
detail in “The Wrecker” and “The Ebb-tide,” while
to read Morley Roberts’s work in this direction is to
sit again in the dim fo’c’s’le with the reek of the slush
lamp mingled with most pungent tobacco-smoke and
a dozen other unholy odours making your nostrils
tingle, while outside the sea voices murmur their
accompaniment to the long yarn being spun within.
There are others, but of them only one can be
here mentioned, that brilliant, wayward man of
splendid abilities and attainments, J. F. Keene. He
has gone and left no one to fill his place. Intolerant
of civilised life, he fled from it to the freedom of the
tramp or the fo’c’s’le scallawag and drank deep of the
cup of life as he loved it. But his books do not make
light reading. They are compounded of blood and
iron, and bitter as the brine that stained his manu-
script.
But this preliminary digression is keeping us from
consideration of the important character we have to4 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
become acquainted with,—the shipmaster, or captain
as he is, by courtesy only, usually styled. No com-
mander of a merchant vessel, no matter how magnifi-
cent she may be, is legally entitled to be called cap-
tain. That honourable title belongs only to the Royal
Navy. Mr. So-and-so, master of the ship So-and-so,
is all that the most experienced and highly-placed
merchant seaman may claim. And yet it may well be
doubted whether even the proudest captain of a ship
of war has more varied qualifications for his splendid
post than the ideal shipmaster. Difficulties that
never trouble the naval man meet his “ opposite
number ” in the merchant service at every turn, not to
be evaded but met and justified by success, or else loss
of appointment and the pinch of poverty follows
promptly.
The road to this eminent position is a plain and
simple one. In its most favourable traversing the
would-be master has parents who can afford to send
him direct from school to such a nautical training-
college as H.M.S. Worcester or H.M.S. Conway,—the
former a splendid vessel of the old wooden-wall
type, moored in the Thames off Greenhithe, and
commanded by a most able merchant seaman, David
Wilson-Barker, Esq., F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S., F.Z.S., etc.,
himself an alumnus of the Worcester; and the latter
a kindred vessel moored in the Mersey. Here the
aspirant is thoroughly taught the theory and prac-
tice of navigation in all its ramifications, while those
branches of study which he was pursuing at school
are carried on in a generous spirit. Seamanship, as far
as it can be taught on board of a stationary vessel,THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 5
takes naturally a most prominent place in the training
scheme, while naval architecture, languages, engineer-
ing, and nautical science all have their allotted place.
So useful to the average man are all the subjects
taught, that one is tempted to believe that no college
course in the country is more admirably calculated to
fit him for the battle of life whether he goes to sea or
not. Dull indeed must the youngster be who does not
emerge from the Worcester or the Conway, upon the com-
pletion of his three years, better calculated to make
his way in the world than any lad of the same age is
upon leaving a public school. The Board of Trade has
frankly recognised this by allowing the course on
board these training-ships to count as one year’s sea-
service in the required qualification for second mate.
That is to say, while the ordinary candidate for a
second mate’s certificate must produce either com-
pleted apprentice indentures for four years, or certifi-
cates of discharge for the same length of sea-service,
one year of which must have been served as an able
seaman, the old Worcester or Conway boy need only
produce a record of three years’ sea-service to en-
title him to enter as a candidate. Now, assuming
that the youngster has finished his training-ship course
with credit and been duly bound as an apprentice in a
fine sailing-ship belonging to a good firm, his way is
clear before him. Passing through his probationary
period undaunted by the none-too-easy life he has led,
he appears before the examiners of the Board of
Trade, and if he has only kept up the most cursory
acquaintance with the navigation he knew when he
left the training-vessel his “ passing ” is ridiculously6 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
easy. I do not propose to discuss here a much vexed
question, but will merely state that it has often been
proposed as a remedy for what has been considered
the too-low status of the shipmaster that the stan-
dard set by the Board of Trade should be periodically
raised until the amount of education required for suc-
cessfully passing it would enable those paying for it to
demand higher salaries and more honourable recog-
nition of their position. No doubt it would greatly
tend to lessen the numbers obtaining certificates of
competency, but, alas, there seems also no doubt that,
as things are at present, it would greatly increase the
number of alien officers in command of British ships.
Well, our young friend has his second mate’s certif-
icate, but unless he be exceptionally fortunate he will
have to make a voyage as third mate before he takes
up the position to which it entitles him. As third
mate in his old ship, or a similar one belonging to the
same company, he may be gradually permitted to keep
a watch, to stand on the quarter-deck in charge of a hun-
dred thousand pounds’worth of property and thirty or
forty lives. (Of course throughout I am speaking of
the sailing-ship, since she is as yet, in all but two or
three instances, the recognised medium for the begin-
ner.) Pursuing his career with care he reaches home
ready to take a ship as second mate, and if the firm he
serves is what it ought to be, no long time will elapse
before such a berth is ready for him. One twelve-
months’ voyage as second mate and he may again ap-
proach the examiners for his chief mate’s certificate.
Again he should find not the slightest difficulty in
passing, the additional qualifications required fromTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 7
him being quite simple. Should he be very lucky he
will get a berth now as chief officer, but even if he be
compelled to go another voyage as second he will be
permitted to pass the Board of Trade examination for
master on his return, providing he can show that he
has acted for two years as second mate. With his
master’s certificate in his possession it is only a ques-
tion of time until he stands in the proud position of
monarch of his little realm, and that time may be
greatly shortened in many cases if he happen to have
a comfortable sum of money to invest in the ship.
Should he desire to equip himself with all the cer-
tificates which the Board of Trade can grant, he will
proceed at once to undergo the examination for “ mas-
ter extra ; ” he will also “pass in steam,”—an examina-
tion most necessary for those masters who propose to
take command of steamships,—and he will also take an
examination in magnetism. Of all these extra ex-
aminations it may also be said that if our friend has
kept up his cadet training they will have no terrors
for him ; they are only difficult to those who find math-
ematics irksome and never practise more than they
are compelled to. Then of course they get rusty,
since the amount of mathematics really necessary to
keep a ship’s position accurately at sea is very small.
By the continual invention of clever mathematicians,
nautical astronomy has been reduced to mere expert-
ness in handling tables, and the indolent man will
avail himself of these aids to the fullest extent.CHAPTER II.
THE RISE OF THE MASTER (REAL)—THE LINER.
So far I am afraid that, in sketching out the possi-
ble rapid rise and progress from college to quarter-
deck, I have not been very amusing or enlightening.
The non-professional reader will be bewildered by the
swift passage of the young sailor through the various
grades without any elucidation of the “ how ” of each
process, while the professional seaman reading it will
smile sardonically and endeavour to recall any instances
within his knowledge of such an upward flight. Feel-
ing this, I hasten to explain that the foregoing is but
an impressionist sketch of an ideal condition of things,
and that such a smooth attainment of the object of
a young sailor’s ambition is of the very rarest occur-
rence. Moreover, it has to be remembered that only
the favoured few can have the advantage such as is
conferred by a Worcester or Conway training. The
great majority of youths who take to a sea life go
direct to their apprenticeship from school, go, too, in
vessels whose owners have but few ships and conse-
quently small facilities for advancing their apprentices
in the profession when once their indentures have ex-
pired. As I propose to deal with the apprentice in a
chapter devoted to him entirely, I must be careful not
to say too much now, so I will merely indicate the un-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 9
doubted fact that an apprenticeship to any firm of
shipowners, no matter what the excellence of the in-
dividual apprentice may be, carries with it no guaran-
tee of employment after the apprenticeship is over.
In this, as in many other respects, the sea is unlike any
other profession. In a large engineering firm, for in-
stance, it would be considered a waste of good mater-
ial to discharge apprentices when out of their time
unless they had proved themselves hopelessly incom-
petent. But it is not possible for a firm owning, say,
four ships, and carrying six apprentices in each of them,
to find employment for those apprentices when they
are fit to assume the position of officers. The four
masters are not at all likely to resign their berths fre-
quently,—masters of ships in an employ such as I am
now speaking of usually retaining their commands for
many years. They block the flow of promotion, never
very rapid, so that it is no infrequent thing to see the
same set of three officers—master, mate and second
mate—in one ship for several long voyages.
What, then, is the young newly-passed officer to do
when, with his creamy new certificate in his pocket, he
finds nothing before him in his old firm but a voyage
before the mast as an able seaman ? Well, if his folks
have any acquaintances among shipowners,—in other
words, any influence in that direction,—now is the time
to use it. Or, if they have any money to invest, they
will not find it difficult to purchase a certain amount
of interest, which should and generally does result in
their son getting an opening for employment. But if
neither of these levers are available the aspirant is al-
most certainly in for a bad time. Probably the bestio THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
course for him will be to put his pride in his pocket
and take a berth before the mast, always keeping his
eyes open, when abroad, for an opportunity of slipping
into a vacant second mate’s berth, where he will get
the rough edges worn off his newness and become ac-
customed to command. In the meantime he must
keep carefully in touch with his old firm, so that should
he be on hand when there is a vacancy he may not
miss it. His great object, of course, will be to get a
footing in a good firm owning many ships where pro-
motion is fairly rapid for the smart officer. Of course
he will hunger and thirst after a steamer, but unless he
makes up his mind to go in the lowest class of tramps
and plod painfully onward at very low wages for a
long time, he had better stick to sailing-ships until he
gets his master's certificate.
This for reasons which will appear later on. Into
this stage of the officer’s upward progress the element
of chance or coincidence enters so largely that it is im-
possible to do more than generalise as to the probable
time which will elapse before he reaches the goal of his
desire. But there is one feature in such a career as I
am now attempting to sketch that has not its counter-)
part, so far as I know, in any other form of employment
whatever. It is in the seeking fora berth. I know of
no more depressing occupation than that of a capable
seaman looking for a ship as officer. It does not
greatly matter whether he wanders round the docks
or goes to the owner’s offices, he is made to feel like
a mendicant, and on board most ships he is also made
to feel like a supplanter when he asks for employment.
To go aboard of a likely-looking ship seeking a berth,THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE, n
say as mate, and to meet the present holder of the
office, is the usual experience—and a most awkward
one it is.
Here the pushful man will score heavily. Putting
all diffidence in his pocket he will broach his message
boldly, disregarding the frowning face of the gentle-
man in charge, who naturally looks upon him as a foe.
But the shy, reserved man (and both these qualities
are very common among seamen) will stammer and
beat about the bush, conceal the true nature of his
errand, and retire awkwardly in considerable confu-
sion. Having obtained a berth, however, it will gen-
erally rest with himself how far he will be able to
raise himself by its means. True, there are many
things, which will be treated fully under the different
headings of the various officers, which by no fault of
his own may hinder and dishearten him, but the un-
attached officer must not allow them to daunt him.
He must persevere, keeping his weather eye lifting
for every opportunity of advancement, and especially
perfecting himself in all the complicated details of his
profession, in anticipation of the day when, a full-
blown shipmaster, he will be where his longings have
led him.
It may be asked : “ But what has all this to do with
the master himself, his duties, his position, etc. ? ”
The question is quite reasonable, and I feel the full
force of it, but there is a strong temptation to antici-
pate the succeeding chapters when one remembers the
passage over the generally thorny way leading up to
the chief position on board ship. However I will do
my best to avoid further digression and proceed ati2 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
once to give, to the best of my ability, a sketch of that
much envied individual’s privileges and responsibilities.
The first difficulty that presents itself is classification.
For although the Board of Trade certificate of “ mas-
ter ” qualifies its possessor to take command of the
most splendid liner, it is absolutely essential to the
assumption of chief charge of a tiny schooner engaged
in foreign trade. Yet it must be obvious that be-
tween these two positions there is a great gulf fixed.
Not in qualification, for there is really no reason why
the holders thereof should not change places at any
time. In many cases it is accident alone that deter-
mines whether a man shall be master of a liner or of a
clumsy little brig lumbering painfully across to the
West Indies. In spite of this fact one cannot expect
that the grand gentleman who commands such a mag-
nificent ship as the Teutonic or Campania, for instance,
should be able to refrain from looking down upon his
brother master of the Susan brigantine of 200 tons
register. To the liner-master’s credit, be it said, he
does not show nearly the same hauteur toward his less
fortunate fellow that he might reasonably be expected
to do. That sort of view of their respective positions
is usually taken by people ashore, who know just
enough of the conditions to enable them to make such
a tactical mistake.
The master of a great liner is in a really enviable
position. Not, perhaps, as regards his earnings in solid
cash, for it still remains to the discredit of British sea-
faring that its most highly-placed officers are far
worse paid than men greatly their inferiors engaged in
business ashore. But in power, in importance in theTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 13
eyes of his fellow-men, in comfort, he is far before
them. His are the responsibilities; upon him rests
the reputation of the ship among the people who pay
the piper,—the passengers ; but beyond that his life is
rightly looked upon by his less fortunate brethren as
one long holiday. No laborious keeping of accounts
for him ; no worrying about freights or scanty pas-
senger lists; no anxious study of weather charts or
calculation of course to be pursued in reference to
the time of year and consequent prevalent winds.
At the appointed time for sailing he comes upon the
bridge and greets most cordially or nods most frigidly
to the pilot, according to his temperament. That
individual, one of the elect of his fine calling, is paid
by the company for his exclusive services, and it is
his duty to see the monster ship safely through the
intricacies of the river-mouth out into free and open
waters. The master’s presence on the bridge is a
matter of form, necessary, however, because, by some
queer twist of maritime law, although ships going
foreign are compelled to take a pilot, who is respon-
sible for her safe conduct out to certain limits, the
master’s responsibility is always alive. Should the
pilot lose the ship, and the master not be on deck,
the latter would be held equally to blame, although at
what precise time his intervention would be permis-
sible is left delightfully ambiguous.
The pilotage limit is reached, and the pilot gets into
his own place on board of his own cutter. The voyage
is begun. Now is the master lord indeed, but such
a ship as this will have at least six officers, of whom
most likely all will hold certificates as “ master extra.”i4 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
Each of these in their turn take charge of the ship un-
der the master’s orders, subject to certain regulations
peculiar to the different companies, and the least
tribute that can be paid to them is that every one of
them is probably fully as competent to command the
ship as is the master himself. It is etiquette, how-
ever, for him to remain on the bridge while the vessel
is in waters that may by any stretch of nautical terms
be called narrow, although he does not interfere in
any way, if he be a gentleman, with the handling of
the ship. The navigating officer (usually the second
officer) works assiduously at nautical astronomy, cal-
culating the position, the error of the compass, etc.,
continually ; but his work is checked by the master
and the other officers who work the main details in-
dependently of him.
No ships afloat are navigated with more jealous care
than these ; no ships can show a more splendid record
of actual correctness in working; and it needs a strong
personality indeed on the part of the master to avoid
laxity. Having so fine a set of subordinate officers,
why should he trouble himself? The love of holding
the reins, jealousy of the slightest encroachment upon
his prerogatives, will usually keep him from this, but
the temptations to enjoy the charmingly varied society
in the midst of which he moves as king is certainly
very great. All honour to these capable gentlemen
that so few of them succumb to it. Whenever stress
of weather demands their presence on the high and lofty
bridge ( “ Mount Misery the wise it call ” ), they will
be found there, cheery and confident, with apparently
no sense of weight of responsibility upon them, al-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 15
though they might well be excused if their brows
were permanently furrowed with anxious thought.
To know that upon you rests the charge of two thou-
sand souls, to say nothing of from half to three-quar-
ters of a million pounds’ worth of property being
hurled over the howling sea at the rate of twenty-five
miles an hour, is surely enough to give even the most
jovial heart pause. Yet these splendid men conceal
with great ease any appearance of worry, and behave
as though they had nothing more serious on their
mind than the making of an Atlantic passage pleasant
to their guests.
The master of a ship cannot enjoy that peculiar re-
pose common to every other member of his crew.
Deeply as they may feel the weight of their special
responsibility while on watch, the moment they are
relieved the relief is complete. No matter how black
the outlook, it is the other fellow’s business now. The
relieved one goes to his bunk, and, divesting himself
of his clothing, passes into dreamland as free from
care as if in some cosy bed ashore. Not one vestige of
his late anxieties troubles him. They will come on
again all too soon ; meanwhile he will get as much
sleep into the allotted hours as possible, and nothing
short of a summons from his commanding officer shall
disturb that calm. The poor skipper, on the other
hand, has no such relief. He must cultivate confi-
dence in his officers, or want of rest will soon make an
old, worn-out man of him ; but, in any case, he must
be always ready to assume full responsibility. I have
often wondered how the masters of swift Atlantic
liners can keep up their spirits as they do, knowingi6 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
what a number of derelicts there are lurking about the
Atlantic. I suppose they say to themselves that, re-
membering the wideness of the sea, there are an infin-
ity of chances against their striking against any one of
those awful shifting dangers, numerous though they
be. And they must cultivate a habit of refusing to
contemplate possible disasters that are by no means
inevitable, else would they soon become unfit for their
position.
It must not be forgotten that they are in the last
resort also responsible for the performance of the tre-
mendous giants below, the steam engines that thrust
the vast fabric through the seas at such headlong
speed. But, unlike their brethren in the Navy, they
do not think lightly of the engineer. They recognise
to the full his wonderful ability and trustworthiness,
and I think I am well within the mark in saying that
no department of the ship’s management gives them
less anxiety than the most important of all, the engine
and boiler rooms. For it is impossible to conceive of
even a second-rate engineer rising to be in command
of a liner’s engine-room. There is a process of weed-
ing-out in action there that is very efficient, so that
while it is conceivable that, by a combination of
favourable circumstances and highly placed influence,
a duffer might come to command a fine ship, the same
thing could not happen in the engineering department.CHAPTER III.
THE MASTER—OF A TRAMP.
FROM the liner to the tramp is by no means the
great step that might be imagined. Indeed, so fine
are the gradations in the quality and positions of
steamships that it is impossible to draw a hard-and-
fast line anywhere. For even among tramp steamers
undoubted there are many shades of difference until
we reach the very lowest class of all, run on principles
despised by all shipowners of repute. The hierarchy
of merchant shipping, the great floating palaces be-
longing to such concerns as the P. & O., the Cunard, the
White Star, and the British India steamship com-
panies—to mention only a few, and without any
invidious idea of selection—fall easily into a class
by themselves, association with which in almost any
capacity confers a sort of brevet rank upon a seaman.
But once they are left, and the lines entered upon to
whom cargo is the one thing needful and passengers are
merely incidental, we get a new order of things entirely.
First of all a great reduction of speed, for the sake of
economy in running, and consequent upon this a cor-
responding reduction of staff, both on deck and in the
engine-room. Yet in the highest class of cargo-carriers
and the lowest class of ocean-going passenger ships
the master’s position is still a proud one. His vessel is18 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
often of immense size, carrying up to ten thousand
tons of freight, and, especially if she be one of the hand-
maidens of a great company owning swift passenger
ships as well, his salary will be fairly good, though
probably fifty per cent below that of his more fortu-
nate fellows in the liner pure and simple. Also his
work will be increased. For there is no difference at
sea in the old axiom that the less a man does, the more
money he gets for it. Still, where he is in a regu-
lar trade, as in the highest class of cargo ships he will
be, his clerical work connected with the ship’s earn-
ings will be almost nil, although he may not carry a
purser to do the interior accounts of the ship, or such
matters as wages, bills, etc.
It may truly be said that the master of a first-class
cargo steamer is in much better case than his brother
in some small lines of passenger steamers that could be
named. He is better paid, better housed, and has far
less worry. Some of those small passenger steamers
going (for steam vessels) long voyages are run so
economically that the master has hard work to keep
up any sort of appearance at all. I know, myself, of
one firm, which shall be nameless, whose advertise-
ments for passengers were most persistent and allur-
ing, who thought it not shameful to pay their masters
^12 a month, at the same time insisting that they
should invest at least £250 in the company. Cases
like these are very disheartening to the striving sea-
man. For where the master’s wages are kept so low
other economies are conducted in proportion. Such
a vessel, say of 1,500 tons register, would carry at most
three mates and eight seamen. The latter would beTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
i9
mostly foreigners, the work for such a small comple-
ment being so hard that home-born men worth their
salt fight shy of them. And the officers’ wages, un-
fixed as the men’s are, would also be cut down deplor-
ably low. Still, even in such a ship as this, the mas-
ter’s clerical work is very small. Agents of the
company at each port await the vessel’s regular arri-
val and see to it that she departs on scheduled time,
cargo or no cargo, so that the master has no carking
care as to how the ship is paying, no responsibility be-
yond the navigation and management of the ship her-
self. He has, of course, to consider his passengers,
with no buffer between him and their often querulous
complaints and constant questionings, such as his ex-
alted brethren in the big liners have in their purser.
He is usually a man who has been passed over in the
race, and while his ability is of the highest order he
feels naturally shelved upon a very much lower ledge
of his profession than he once hoped to reach.
In command of these small passenger-carrying, ocean-
going steamers are to be found some of the very best
of our merchant skippers, whose worth and merit are
so great that their reward strikes one as most shock-
ingly inadequate.
Beneath these comes the tramp proper. It has just
dawned upon me in time that, often as I have used the
word, I have not yet given any definition of it for the
benefit of those who I hope will read this book princi-
pally—shore people. A “ tramp ” steamer, then, is a
vessel of large cargo-carrying capacity and low power
of engines, built upon the most economical principles,
and run likewise. She goes wherever freight is to be20 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
had, although usually built for certain trades, and this
is in itself a sore point with underwriters, who complain
bitterly that they are often led to insure a certain type
of vessel on the understanding that she will be trading
in such waters as the Mediterranean and the Baltic, but
presently find her braving the tremendous seas of the
Atlantic. The best type of tramp is built and owned
in Northeast English ports, where the highest ship-
building science is brought to bear upon the construc-
tion of cargo-carriers that shall be at once cheap,
roomy, economical, and seaworthy. And it must be
said that many firms up there, by careful attention to
tramp building and owning, have made tremendous
strides in the direction of safety for the ships and even
comfort for the crews, although of the latter there can
never be very much in a tramp. The lowest type of
tramp, on the other hand, is one that is built to sell to
the first bidder, built so as to pass Lloyd’s surveyor,
but without one single item in her equipment that
can be dispensed with. Such vessels as these merit
all the hard words that have been said of them. Very
slow, very unhandy, with dens for the crew to live in,
and upper works of the commonest material, they are
always coming to grief. They are mostly owned by
single-ship companies, of which the shareholders are
generally people knowing absolutely nothing of ship-
ping matters, who have been induced by speciously
worded circulars, issued by some deeply interested
manager, to invest their scanty capital in these dubi-
ous enterprises.
The master of such a ship as this may well feel that
his lot is hard. With wages cut down to a point thatTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 21
could only attract a man upon his last legs financially,
the manager always endeavours to get some invest-
ment, however small, out of the unfortunate master,
to give him an interest in the ship. The food and
stores supplied are of such bad quality as to make the
life very much harder than it need be (in any case it
is hard enough), while the number of men carried in
proportion to the vessel’s tonnage is appallingly small.
Yet the master’s work is far more onerous than in bet-
ter ships. In addition to the necessity he is under of
nursing his ungainly, low-powered vessel in heavy weath-
er, he is always being sent to fresh places, entailing
upon him the acquisition of an immense amount of lo-
cal knowledge. The purchase of coal in far-away ports,
with all the vicissitudes of price to which that indis-
pensable commodity is subject, makes his hair grey
and his face wrinkled before he comes to middle age.
If he carries a good supply of coal for fear of a rise in
price, at his next port he may have to shut out cargo ;
if he neglects to do so, expecting to be able to buy
well, and be disappointed in his expectations, he is held
responsible. Low freights make him unhappy, al-
though he is powerless to alter economic conditions,
for his first duty is to make his ship pay. Worst of
all his troubles are repairs. Such vessels as these are
peculiarly prone to damage from their cheap construc-
tion, yet any expense incurred abroad for repairs is
looked upon as almost a crime. Then there is the ne-
cessity laid upon him for the most careful watching of
the freight-markets. Although he may secure a good
freight on one passage, he may, upon reaching his port,
find that freights there are either unpayably low or22 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
non-obtainable. And his spirits fall, because he knows
how such an experience will lower his average earn-
ings for the voyage.
The qualifications that such a master need have are,
although nominally the same as in any other branch
of his trade, immensely varied. And it may be taken
for granted that a successful tramp skipper is always a
good all-round man, something of a diplomat, of a law-
yer, of an accountant, of a merchant,—all these qualities
superadded to his ability to handle his vessel at sea in
all weathers, contend with crews of the smallest and of
the lowest kind of men, who are as far removed from
the popular idea of what a sailor is as day is from, night.
But such men are of inestimable value to the com-
merce of the country. They seldom forget that their
first duty is to their employers, nor allow the thought
of their hard, laborious position to tempt them into
neglect of it. Poor fellows, the penalty for want of
success is not easy to bear, even though they may be
in no way to blame.
These, of course, are the lowest kinds of tramps.
But there is an aristocracy among tramp steamers
owned by wealthy firms of high reputation, both for
well and carefully built cargo-carriers and generous
treatment of their faithful servants. Although these
ships also go wherever cargo is to be found on
which a paying freight can be had, yet the conditions
under which the officers serve are very much better.
They are not harassed, either, by the fear of making a
loss upon the voyage, since such firms will have their
correspondents in most ports who make freight ar-
rangements for the skippers. Between owners andTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 23
masters in this class of vessel often subsist the most
firm friendships, men growing grey in one employ and
feeling always that their faithful service is fully appre-
ciated. Of course the pay is not high, but the tenure
is good, and there is always the chance of picking up
a tow, a fellow-tramp with broken shaft or something
of a like disabling nature. And this may mean a
small fortune,—often does so, since the skipper never
fails to take a most substantial share of the total re-
ward. Besides, there is a prospect, too, that a well-
known skipper may, before he is worn out with sea-
service, get a comfortable berth as harbour-master, or
dock-master, or ship’s husband, or any of the congenial
employments for which experienced shipmasters are
so eminently fitted. Pilotage, too, may come their way,
although this can hardly be looked upon as comfort-
able retirement after a hard life at sea. But what-
ever they get as a sort of retiring berth, they may
truly be said to have earned it. Unfortunately many
of them must leave the sea with advancing years, hav-
ing nothing to support them but such scanty savings
as they have been able to put by. And as the days
when skippers were able to amass fortunes have long
passed away, these hard-working seamen are often
hardly bestead in their old age,—far more hardly than
any one knowing their long period of command, but
ignorant of their pay, could possibly imagine.
In leaving the steamer-skipper for him of the wind-
jammer, as sailing-vessels are contemptuously termed
by steamer-sailors, a few words may suffice for the
ungracious task of dealing with the black sheep. As
in all other professions, of course among steamship24 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
masters there are drunken blackguards who in some
mysterious way manage to get and keep command.
But the proportion is very small. There is hardly any
room for them. The conditions of service are too
onerous, the necessity for constant care and fore-
thought is too great to admit of many worthless men
being in command. Especially is this the case in the
Northeast ports, where every man’s goings-on are
known and discussed, as villagers dissect one another’s
business in remote inland hamlets. No, taking them
“by and large,” to use a time-honoured sea phrase, the
tramp skippers need not fear comparison with any
class of public servants in this country, while for the
importance of the duties they fulfil they are certainly
second to none.CHAPTER IV.
THE MASTER—OF A SAILING-SHIP.
So great is the difference in duties to be performed
by masters of sailing-ships from those of masters of
steamers that they are almost like members of another
profession. The range, too, in status is exceedingly
extensive. Between the man in command of, say, a
small brigantine “ going foreign,” and the commander
of the four-masted steel clipper carrying 5,000 tons of
cargo to and from the Colonies, there is not only a
great gulf of status, but a large number of gradations.
Yet it will readily be admitted by all shipmasters that
the position of master of even a fifth-rate steamship
marks a step upward from the same position on board
of the finest sailing-ship afloat. And almost any ship-
master is glad to step down from the exalted pinnacle
he may have occupied for years as master of a splendid
“wind-jammer” and take a very subordinate position
say as second, third, or even fourth officer in a liner
as a means of rising to the coveted post of commander
of such a ship.
But perhaps we have had enough of steamers for a
little while. For my part I shall be only too glad to quit
that portion of my subject for the far more congenial
one of the “wind-jammer,” as she is contemptuously
called by steamer-men. It is essential, in order to
success as a master here, that a man shall be a sailor,26 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
that is, in the original sense of handling ships, a fine
art demanding high skill and courage as well as con-
stant practice. A good master nurses his ship under
sail with never-ceasing care. If he be ably seconded
by his officers his labour is of course greatly lightened,
but even then, if a smart passage is to be made, the
master must never relax his vigilance,—never, that is,
in the sense of allowing his officers to feel that the
game is in their hands entirely. To explain this for
the benefit of my shore-readers let me give a common-
place instance. I was an “ able seaman ” on board a
fine ship homeward bound from Manila to London.
We were commanded by an elderly, taciturn gentleman,
whose appearance was as unlike that of the typical
sailor as could well be imagined. Yet every man on
board knew him to be a consummate shiphandler and
cool withal, so that when, on the outward passage,
we were tacking under a heavy press of sail to get
through the Sunda Straits, and in weathering a point
of Thwart-the-Way Island actually touched it with our
bilge, the seamed old face never blenched, never lost
its sphinx-like mask of serene watchfulness.
We did not know, though, until we had reached the
eastern entrance to Sunda Straits again on the pas-
sage home, how excellent his seamanship really was.
In company with a dozen other ships, most of which
had gained upon us, we were becalmed in that dan-
gerous vicinity when night fell. Darkness had shut
down, such a darkness as makes it necessary for the
sailor to know the running-gear intuitively—to de-
velop some other sense to serve him in lieu of sight.
Amidst a guttural growling of thunder which wasTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 27
almost continuous, and a flickering glare of lightning
that was bewildering, it began to rain. Not steadily,
but as if high overhead were passing a series of
nimbus clouds that were letting fall their contents in
intermittent lumps. And from all quarters succes-
sively came light puffs of wind, never steady for more
than ten minutes at a time. We had all the lighter
sails made fast in case of a sudden heavy squall and
for greater facility of working the ship.
Then, for the whole of that Egyptian night, mak-
ing a bewildering tangle of courses that was enough
to whiten a mathematician’s hair to ravel out, we
toiled at the braces under the master’s direct orders.
We had watch and watch, but he was on duty all night.
Standing by the compass, watchful and alert in spite
of his seventy years, he utilised every favourable cats-
paw, manoeuvred against the unfavourable ones, remem-
bering the possibilities of the unknowable currents
beneath, and keeping before his mental vision a picture
of the contour of that rugged coast.
When morning dawned he had his reward. For we
were almost through the Straits, with the first kiss
of the southeast trade wind saluting us, and the
broad bosom of the Indian Ocean lying invitingly be-
fore us under a canopy of stainless blue. And of our
comrades of the previous day only one could be seen,
just discerned so far astern that she was only a speck
on the horizon. To grasp the significance of such a
piece of seamanship it is necessary to remember that
in a square-rigged ship the swinging of the great yards
is not a momentary affair like the slipping over of a
schooner’s fore-and-aft sails. Time and much labour28 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
are required. Moreover, the closest attention is neces-
sary in order to utilise intermittent wind-breaths, as
these were, for a big ship with little motion obeys her
helm but slowly, and soon loses, if she be caught
aback,—that is, gets the wind on the wrong side of her
sails,—what little “ way ” or forward motion she has, a
loss that she is loth to make good.
Again, in a sailing-ship, native courage in the mas-
ter counts immensely. No amount of experience will
atone for a want of this quality. Some men are so
prudent—in other words, so lacking in courage—that
they will shorten sail at the first premonition of bad
weather, instead of reducing canvas as the weight
of wind makes it impossible for the ship to carry
it with safety. Of course there are circumstances
where such prudence is absolutely necessary, as in the
case of ships which do not carry sufficient men, or whose
crews are of such poor quality that they are hardly
competent to handle the sails in fine weather; also
when the equipment of the ship has been so shame-
fully starved that the carrying of sail in anything like
a breeze is bound to end in wholesale loss. And this
matter of prudence in carrying sail has its dangerous
side also. Many a dreadful storm has been endured
by a ship that she would have escaped altogether had
she kept up her speed ; many a ship has been overtaken
by a following sea, and left almost derelict by its on-
slaught, that would have gallantly outraced it had she
not been made helpless by the clipping of her broad
wings.
Of course, when it is remembered how great is a
ship’s individuality, how immensely circumstancesTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 29
vary, even the least knowing of us will have small
difficulty in understanding the impossibility of laying
down hard-and-fast lines. Every master must needs
work out his own salvation in these matters, learn by
experience, and keep on learning, happy if he can find
a ship whose ways are ways of pleasantness, and which
has not either been built with or acquired some devil-
ish habit of sea-spite that makes her an abode of mis-
ery to her crew, and the command of her a martyrdom
to her master. Such ships abound, possessed by every
vice known to seafarers, yet presenting in dock, when
newly “ got up,” an appearance of smartness and
seaworthiness that is deceitful to the last degree.
Such a ship it was once my evil hap to light upon in
London, bound for New Zealand. Everyone of my
shipmates were ecstatic in their praises of her beauty;
none doubted that she would be as comfortable as she
was lovely. But oh, the awakening from our pleasant
dream ! Barely had we cleared the Channel when,
meeting the full vigour of the Atlantic swell, she be-
gan her antics. There was no dry place on board of her
anywhere, except under the hatches among the cargo.
For she had not all the vices of a ship : she was well
and staunchly built and did not leak. But in finest
weather, almost in calm, she invited the sea on board,
while in bad weather she was like a half-tide rock, con-
tinually awash.
There were five passengers, and I warrant that none
of them could ever forget that passage of 117 days,
because the after part of the ship was even worse
than the fore part. A massive structure of. timber, like
the palisading of a block-house, was built across the.30 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
front of the cabin for its protection. She, however,
thought nothing of sweeping away the whole erection
and flooding the handsome staterooms with a foaming
torrent of salt water. Never shall I forget the sight
of the podgy skipper, like some unlively porpoise gam-
bolling about the saloon, swimming and scrabbling in
water up to his waist in chase of his sextant, which,
secure in its box, was gleefully careering about at
every roll of the ship. That skipper was both smart
and plucky, but his command must have aged him at
treble the ordinary speed. When he carried on sail
until the masts bent like fishing-rods and the stitch-
holes in the sails became elongated so that they looked
like columns of shining oats placed horizontally, instead
of keeping ahead of the sea she took it over in appal-
ling masses, both sides and astern at once. And when
it became suicidal to run her any longer and we hove
her to,—that is to say, reduced sail to a mere speck
and turned her head as near to the wind and sea as it
would go,—she acted as viciously as any buck-jumping
horse. No one on board ever found their sea-legs, as
the saying is, for it needed inch-long spikes or huge
sucking-discs on the feet to keep on one’s legs at all.
Then there is the needed acquaintance with the
best routes at given times of the year,—the ability
to direct the course so as to find the minimum of
calms with the maximum of favourable winds. This
is a prime quality in a successful shipmaster and it
cannot be learned from weather-books or weather-
charts. I came home once from Australia, second
mate of a magnificent ship whose sailing qualities were
of the highest order, her crew ample in number, herTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 31
equipment beyond criticism. The master was a
learned man, but his experience of sailing-ships was of
the slightest. He had all the weather-charts obtain-
able, he studied them continually, and faithfully fol-
lowed their guidance. In the result we made a four
and a half months’ passage home, while a smaller ship
not nearly so smart, sailing from the same port three
weeks after our departure, arrived in London nearly
four weeks ahead of us. But her master had been
sailing ships between England and Australia for many
years, all the while accumulating first-hand knowledge
of the conditions obtaining over all those seas he tra-
versed, learning by experience the weather signs and
all the grammar of the language that the ocean speaks
in to its intimate friends. This knowledge it is that
constitutes the fine flower of seamanship as it was
(and is still in ships that depend upon sail only), but
which will soon be looked upon as a lost art, as the
sailing-ship is gradually pushed aside by that wonder-
ful outcome of engineering science, the steamship.
How great a factor in the making of a successful
p assage under sail this personal acquaintance with the
route pursued is, may be easily assessed from a super-
ficial- study of the ways of the Swansea copper-ore
traders. These are—or rather I ought to say were—
smart barquentines which sail—or sailed—from Swan-
sea, bound round Cape Horn from east to west, for the
purpose of bringing home ore to the world-renowned
smelting-works of Wales. Their masters were not in
any sense of the words fine gentlemen, their calling
hardly admitted of the cultivation of the graces of
life, but such was their knowledge of this, the most32 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
arduous piece of navigation in the whole world, that
their passages were made with almost steamer-like
regularity. Only seamen themselves could give to
these perfect mariners all the praise that was their
due. For all sailors know, either by experience or re-
pute, how cruelly hard are the conditions attached to
forcing a passage around that awful promontory that
reaches down almost to the Antarctic Circle, deep into
the chosen habitation of the fiercest and most persis-
tent gales that rage around the planet. Here for
weeks on end you shall feel the weight of an unfalter-
ing westerly gale, with all its accompaniments of snow
and sleet and darkness. One would say that the at-
tempt to get round the Horn from east to west in the
teeth of such prevalent conditions was madness, espe-
cially when the long record of disaster attendant upon
these attempts is known. Many a case is on record
where fine ships, after weeks of abortive struggle to
get to the westward round Cape Horn, have at last
given up the fight, put the helm hard up and fled be-
fore the inexorable westerly gale right round the
world to reach such a port as San Francisco, for in-
stance.
Yet these little Swansea-men came and went from
year to year with the utmost regularity, their skippers
having learned by experience how to out-manoeuvre
even the terrible monarch of the southern sea. No
doubt it was a hard life, but it was exultant, trium-
phant. These men knew how good their seamanship
was, how exact their weather-lore, and they troubled
meteorological charts not at all.
So, too, with the navigation of the Bay of Bengal.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 33
While not so severe in any sense as that of Cape
Horn, it is difficult, teasing, and calling for constant
watchfulness. Men who only go that way occasion-
ally will make a good passage of say from eighty to a
hundred days on one voyage, and then, with the
same ship a year or two after, make a passage that
causes the owner to gnash his teeth as he cons the
portage bill. But to the men who used to sail there
regularly, how nearly an exact science did their navi-
gation of that baffling bay become. One especially
comes to my mind,—Thomas Potts, of Messrs. Brockle-
bank’s famous old East India line. .Dozens of that
old worthy’s log-books have passed through my hands,
with their fair unblotted entries of business-like pro-
cedure from day to day. And so regular seemed the
rate of sailing that I once took the trouble to compile
an average of his passages out and between Liverpool
and Calcutta for six years, and I found it to be eighty-
five days,—a perfectly marvellous achievement in the
eyes of a seaman.
Of course such splendid work as this presupposes a
speedy ship. While it is perfectly true that seaman-
ship and diligence on the part of the master can do
great things in the way of passage-making even with a
sluggish vessel, yet it is heart-breaking work. And
when, tired of the never-ending struggle against ad-
verse circumstances, the master becomes listless and
slack in his attentions, the result in such a vessel is
that she becomes overdue, and underwriters gamble
feverishly on the prospects of her non-arrival. Such
vessels are still to be met with in goodly numbers,—
not all obsolete ships either. One, for instance, that34 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
I have in mind at the present moment, a huge steel
ship not a dozen years old, whose last few passages
have been the cause of immense sums changing hands
among underwriters, owing to her being continually
overdue. Another smart-looking barque that I saw
in Auckland, New Zealand, once, was actually eight
months on the passage from Liverpool thither, having
apparently been taken into regions of almost perpetual
calm, whence it was a miracle that she ever emerged.
Between these two extremes of swiftness and slow-
ness come all the host of mediocrities making passages
of average length, speedy enough to prevent owners
from grumbling, yet not sufficiently smart to call for
any praise. As in all other professions, these are the
vast majority, and the masters who thus quietly per-
form their duty without hope of honourable mention
are none the less worthy because they do not, cannot
do anything that shall cause their names to be re-
membered among seamen as the dite of the pro-
fession.CHAPTER V.
THE SAILING-SHIP MASTER—continued
Hitherto I have endeavoured to pass lightly over
the sailing-ship master’s work in making passages,
only showing the superior side of these responsible
men’s characters. But if I were to go no farther in
this direction, many masters would rightly feel much
aggrieved. They would not feel satisfied that the
public should imagine that they were all alike excel-
lent, and that the training and experience necessary
for the command of a ship always succeeded in turn-
ing out a man who was really fit for the post he is
called upon to occupy. Besides, the picture would
be a false one. Far too many masters, having once
obtained command, instead of utilising their extended
opportunities of showing their fitness for such a post,
just settle down on their lees and become indolent,
careless, and consequently worthless. It must be
granted that the temptation is great to a man not
naturally energetic. Once freed from the oversight
and control of his owners or their agents, and out
upon the sea, he is in the position of an almost abso-
lute monarch. His officers are anxious to gain his
good word, since upon it depends their future.
This statement needs some explanation. By a rule
of the Board of Trade every officer coming up for
examination in order to take a certificate of a higher36 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
grade must produce written testimonials from the
master he has served with. Wanting these he is not
allowed to enter for the examination at all. Now as,
by the common law, no master is bound to give his
servant a character, it follows that a shipmaster need
only withhold that essential scrap of paper from an
aspiring officer to put an effectual bar to his rising
any higher. I do not profess to criticise the wisdom
of this enactment; I merely state the facts as they are.
As an instance of how this power is regarded by
shipmasters, I may mention that, recently writing
upon the subject in the press, I received an indignant
letter from a shipmaster, who said that if all ship-
masters did their duty far fewer officers would obtain
certificates than do now ; also that no good officer need
fear such treatment at the hands of any shipmaster,
—a manifest absurdity, since among shipmasters,
as amongst all other classes of men, there must be
both bad and good, and the temptation to use arbitrary
power like that is far too great to be resisted by a
bad man.
But to return. Having, then, this potent lever in
his grasp, this guarantee for the good behaviour of
his officers, the indolent master may, if he will, leave
everything to them except just the obtaining of the
ship’s position each day. Even that it has been my
lot to see neglected by a shipmaster. Of course he
will occasionally potter about and find fault, if he be,
as well as indolent, of a small, mean character. Such
a master is a sore trial to both officers and crew.
Asked for instructions as to what he wishes done, he
will reply that he does not expect his officers toTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 37
need to be shown their work, and that he would pre-
fer to have men about him who did not want dry-
nursing. Which, being translated, means that he
wants his officers to do things on their own initiative,
so that he can at any time, if in want of a little recrea-
tion, find it in quarrelling with them for doing that
which they deemed to be right.
For instance, I was once mate of a barque. While
lying in Noumea, failing any instructions from the mas-
ter, I decided to set up all the rigging, which was so
slack as to be dangerous supposing that we encoun-
tered any bad weather. The work was well under
way when the master came on deck from his cabin,
where he had been dozing all the morning, and, seeing
what was going on, called out loudly: “Here, Mr.
Bullcn, just stop that, will you? That can be done
any time. I want the ship painted outside.” Far too
well in hand to make any remark, and really rather
glad to get a definite order, I had the gear unrove and
put away, and soon we were in the thick of painting.
We did not get another opportunity to tighten up
that rigging before we left one of the northern ports
of the island deep loaded with copper ore. We were
hardly outside the harbour, bound to Newcastle,
N. S. W., when it came on to blow, the vessel rolled
tremendously, the rigging worked slacker and slacker,
and in the middle watch that night she rolled her
three masts over the side. Then, of course, I was
blamed for not having had the rigging set up.
Then there is the indolent skipper who leaves every-
thing to the mate and never finds fault either. Ami-
able, but lazy, he spends most of his time in sleep.38 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
He scarcely looks at a book, does not meditate, but
leads a sort of fungus life, indulging in a perpetual
kief, or cessation of all the nobler faculties. Natu-
rally young officers like that kind of skipper, since
they have a perfectly free hand, but they despise him
and in their inmost heart they know that such a ship is
very little good to them. And in times of emergency
or danger, when naturally every one on board looks to
the head for leadership, it is disconcerting, to say the
least, to find him altogether wanting in initiative,
either in energy or resource. Of course this is not
saying that many masters will not be found who are
fussy and meddlesome to the most irritating degree
when the weather is fine and the ship is on the high
seas, who, when danger looms near and the master’s
good qualities should shine brightest, are but broken
reeds. One master, whom I liked very much, a really
good man, but without backbone, was looked upon
by all hands with good-natured toleration as a sort of
benevolent old female, who, if he did keep himself in
evidence pretty much all the time, did not interfere to
any great extent. But there came a day, when we
were running the easting down (bound to Calcutta),
that we were overtaken by a really heavy gale. All
our energies were needed to get sail off the deeply
laden ship, for she was wallowing dangerously and
was not speedy enough to keep ahead of the sea.
While we were thus striving with all our powers under
the smart mate’s direction, the skipper, swathed in
many clothes, clung desperately to the weather mizzen
rigging, a pitiful picture of fear, his legs bending un-
der him all ways, and his grey beard beslavered withTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 39
the foam of fright. A more abject specimen of a
coward I never saw. All hands noted his behaviour,
and from that day forward he was treated with utter
contempt. His authority was a thing of naught, and
the discipline of the ship (never very rigid in the mer-
chant service) was entirely gone. At last the men
refused to obey a most necessary order, simply be-
cause it necessitated work in their watch below. The
offence was flagrant, involving as it did the possible
loss of the ship and all hands. He summoned the re-
calcitrant watch aft and reasoned with them. They
merely gibed at and taunted him with cowardice and
uselessness in reply. When we arrived at Calcutta he
had them up before the shipping-master for punish-
ment, and that worthy fined them two days’ pay, at
which they laughed hugely.
Now such a scene as that would be unthinkable on
board of either an American ship or a “Blue-Nose”
(British North American vessel). There the traditions
are all on the side of stern discipline, which is not
based upon law, but upon force. The foremast hand,
whoever he may be, that signs in an American ship,
realises at once that it is dangerous to play any tricks
with his superior officers, because, although he does
not reason it out, he feels that it would be useless to
invoke the law to protect him against the certain con-
sequences of shirking work, insolence, or laziness.
And this leads me naturally to a consideration of
the American skipper, that is to say, the skipper of
the sailing-ship, the man who, by dint of seamanship
alone, has risen from the lowliest position to command.
No better sailors ever lived than the masters of Amer-40 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
ican ships, and it should never be forgotten, when the
statistics of our marvellous mercantile marine are stud-
ied, that not so many years ago the American merchant
navy was more than equal to our own. Not only so,
but the shore population was also so deeply tinged with
the maritime spirit, that nautical terms were a part
of the common speech of those who had never even
seen the sea. It is hardly fair to use the past tense, be-
cause this is largely the case now,—so much so that a
book bristling with nautical phrases will be read in
America by both sexes with perfect ease from their
familiarity with nautical terminology.
What sailor is there worth his salt who does not
cherish proudly the remembrance of those magnificent
“ down-East ” clipper ships and their wonderful pas-
sages to and from the Far East and San Francisco?
Their doings have passed into proverbs,—the runs they
made from day to day, the mountainous press of can-
vas they carried,—and the smartness of their crews.
Many of them were built by “ rule of thumb ” and
were sailed also much in the same way, for their offi-
cers prided themselves far more upon their knowledge
of sailorising than mathematics ; but they flew over
the wide sea at a speed that our clumsier wooden ves-
sels could not begin to compete with. In them the
master was looked upon almost as a demigod. No
man-o’-war’s man to-day regards even an admiral with
such awe as did the foremast hand of an American
packet ship or China clipper the saturnine, deep-browed
man who in spotless raiment and with an Olympian air
strode up and down the weather side of his immaculate
quarter-deck. And a man who had once made a voy-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 41
age before the mast in such a flyer as the Sovereign
of the Seas or the Dreadnought was wont to brag of
it loudly ever after. It conferred a sort of brevet
rank upon an A. B. that he had successfully survived
all the hardships of such a voyage.
The watchwords on board these ships were “ Good
food and hard work.” No cook dare venture on board
of them unless he could justify his title, and unless
he were clean enough to satisfy those hawk-eyed offi-
cers he had better never have been born than have
ventured under the Stars and Stripes as cook. I have
myself seen a Yankee skipper go into the galley, and,
taking up the first saucepan to hand from the rack,
wipe it out with a snowy handkerchief brought clean
from his drawer on purpose. And if it showed a
smear upon inspection there was at once a sound of
revelry in that galley. Another one had a pleasant
habit of going around the panelling of the saloon and
staterooms, poking his handkerchief into the mould-
ings with a piece of pointed stick and examining it
most carefully afterwards for any mark of dust. This,
of course, was carrying the Yankee officers’ passion for
cleanliness to an absurd length, but it may safely be
said that nowhere on the sea was freedom from dirt
maintained at so high a level as it was on board the
now almost extinct American clipper ships.
These masters fought their way up to command by
sheer merit and force of character, allied to physical
prowess, dauntless courage, and, it must be said in the
majority of cases, ruthless cruelty. Laws for the pro-
tection of the common seaman undoubtedly existed,
but it was an unheard of thing for them to be enforced,42 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
and many dark stories are current of men being done
to death by incessant brutality, whose murderers,
whether officers or master, quietly slipped ashore in
the pilot cutter upon reaching the offing of their home
port. Then if such an unlikely thing happened as the
dead man’s shipmates taking the master of his slaying
before the authorities it was hopeless to attempt the
murderer’s arrest.
But brutal and reckless as Yankee masters undoubt-
edly were, the fact remains that they were unap-
proachable for seamanship and speedy passages. They
skimmed the cream off the Far Eastern trade, and, ow-
ing to the generosity with which they were treated by
their owners, took no long time to amass comfortable
fortunes. The knell of their supremacy was sounded,
however, when Britain took to building iron ships.
Even before that time, so well had the lessons taught
by these dashing Yankee shipmasters and born ship-
builders been learned, that some of our firms had been
able to build wooden ships that could hold their own
in the swiftest ocean race. Then came the day of the
composite ships (wooden planking with iron frame)—
the famous tea clippers of fo’c’s’le story, built by such
firms as Hall of Aberdeen, and Steel of Greenock,
against which no Yankee clipper had any chance what-
ever. And when the iron ship appeared in her turn, in
spite of the immense difficulty of keeping the hull
under water free from encumbrance of weeds and bar-
nacles, she at once sptang into premier place.
This, however., is a part of my subject that belongs to
another place in the book. It is necessary to mention
it here in passing because it is one of the prime reasonsTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 43
for the rapid decay and disappearance of a body of
men whose seamanship was peerless, men who carried
the Stars and Stripes triumphantly overall the seas of
the world. It must not be supposed, either, that Amer-
ican skippers were uneducated men. Many of them
were, of course, but the proportion was far less than
existed in our own service. Navigation as taught in
the seaports of the United States on the lines of Bow-
ditch was no mere perfunctory business, and although
there were no compulsory certificates of competency
necessary in those days there was a good deal of proper
pride in mathematical attainment which those who
employed officers of ships did their best to foster.
And if there was a goodly sprinkling of men among
them who did not care so long as they could “ fudge ”
their position out in the most rudimentary way by
means of an old wooden quadrant or hog-yoke, a ten-
cent almanac, and the barest acquaintance with a set of
nautical tables, why so there was and so there is now
among our own people, even with compulsory certifi-
cates granted by a vigilant Board of Trade.CHAPTER VI.
THE MASTER’S QUALITIES.
If, as is highly improbable, the average landsman
ever thinks anything about the duties of a shipmas-
ter, it would be most interesting to know what he im-
agines them to be. Most intelligent men and women
know that the primary duty of a shipmaster is to take
his vessel across the trackless ocean to her destined
port and return again as speedily as possible. So far
so good, but beyond this first reason for a shipmaster’s
existence there are a host of other duties in all of
which he is supposed to be more or less proficient.
And there are certain qualities which he must also
possess. Failing them, he may be perfect in science,
full of energy, and faultless in seamanship, but as a
commander he is naught. Of these the ability to com-
mand stands unquestionably first. No doubt this
qu-ality is hard to define, but the possession or the
want of it makes all the difference between a comfort-
able and a miserable ship. One man will seldom, dur-
ing a whole voyage, raise his voice loud enough to be
heard by any one except the individual to whom he is
speaking; the calmness and placidity of his demeanour
will be amazing ; yet in some mysterious way every one
on board is made to feel that the master holds the reins
of power with no slack or unready hand, that to dis-The men OF the merchant service. 45
obey one of his orders would be a most dangerous ex-
periment, and that he knows everything that is going
on fore and aft.
Such a man, fulfilling this perfect attribute of com-
mand, I once had the pleasure to serve under, an
elderly, prosaic-looking figure who used to come on
deck shortly after daybreak every morning with a
moth-eaten Bombay-made dressing-gown flung over
his pyjamas, a mangy old fez upon his head, and his
bare feet thrust into sloppy slippers. Thus attired he
would pace rapidly up and down the poop for the
space of half-an-hour, taking his constitutional, a
most mirth-provoking figure. Yet no one ever laughed
either behind his back on deck or in the privacy of the
fo’c’s’le. When he spoke it was in a velvet voice, but
the man spoken to invariably took an attitude of pro-
found respect on the instant. He was old and feeble,
and our crew numbered among them some rowdies,
but from England to China and back again that old
gentleman’s commanding personality kept the ship in
a quiet state of discipline which was as perfect as it
was rare.
On the other hand I have seen a most stately figure
of a man, with a voice like a thunder-peal, unable to
obtain respect from his crew, because in the mer-
chant service, as I am never tired of reiterating, re-
spect cannot be enforced ; it must come spontaneously,
a tribute to the personality of the officer to whom it is
due, or it does not come at all. And then that ship is
in a bad way. Another quality which is only second
in importance to the one just mentioned is self-con-
trol. Since the shipmaster has no one above him in46 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
his little realm, it is highly important to his whole
well-being as well as to the comfort of the ship that he
should command himself. However irritated he may
feel at a mistake on the part of one of his officers, he
should be able to conceal it before his crew. And here
the Americans have shown British officers a good ex-
ample. So long as an officer remains an officer on
board of American vessels, so long is he upheld by all
the authority of the master. There is no sneering
comment upon his movements indulged in before the
crew, no tacit information conveyed to those keen-
witted fellows that the hapless mate—first, second, or
third as the case may be—has lost the confidence and
respect of his commander, and that consequently there
is little or no danger in their treating him disrespect-
fully. Perhaps this is one of the hardest lessons that
a shipmaster has to learn, especially in a sailing-ship.
For three or perhaps four or even five months, sole
monarch of his small kingdom, anxious to make a
smart passage and often sadly hampered by adverse
winds and calms, it is no easy thing for a naturally
hasty man to discipline himself in such wise as to win
the maximum amount of obedience and deference
from those around him. Happy man if he have a
hobby of some kind—a thirst for learning, a taste for
natural history, anything that will exercise the powers
of his mind and keep him from the moral dry-rot that
always sets in where men are at the top of things, amen-
able to no authority but their own, and without any
definite object whereon they may work and feed that
appetite for labour, whether mental or physical, pos-
sessed by every healthy human organism.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 47
Patience, perseverance, and a sense of justice are
also indicated, as they are, of course, in the leaders in
every business or profession, yet to an even greater
degree at sea than anywhere else. For where you
can neither get rid of your men nor afford to lose their
services by punishing them, only the highest expres-
sion of these qualities is of any avail. It may perhaps
be thought impossible that, except in the rarest in-
stances, such a combination of excellences should be
found in any one man. But that impression is not a
true one. I am not exaggerating in the least when I
say that but for the possession of these qualities in
an extraordinary degree by masters our mercantile
marine would never have risen to its present splendid
height in spite of so many hampering disabilities un-
felt by masters of ships under other flags. To
take one aspect only, the disciplinary. I have slightly
indicated the manner in which discipline is maintained
in American ships; namely, by the employment of vio-
lence which is forbidden by law yet is invariably winked
at. In the ships of every other nation but the Eng-
lish-speaking ones the merchant seaman is not only a na-
tive of the country to which his ship belongs, but he is
never free from the environment of Naval law—the
same law, that is, which obtains on board of a warship.
For every seaman there is a man-o’-war’s man, bound
to put in so much actual service in a vessel of war
and, as such, under the articles of war. So that diso-
bedience to orders, insolence, or malingering (sham-
ming sickness) are exceedingly expensive practices for
the sailor to indulge in, the penalties being not only
heavy but their infliction certain.48 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
In a British ship, on the other hand, a master may
unwittingly ship a crew of scoundrels who have made
up their minds to do as little as they can as badly as
possible, to refuse the most ordinary forms of respect
to their officers, and to either desert or go to gaol at
the first port, not because their ship is a bad one, but
just by way of a change. And if the master or offi-
cers, worried beyond endurance, take the law in their
own hands, their punishment and subsequent ruin is
almost certain to ensue promptly. The rascals who
have made the ship a hell afloat, confident in the ten-
derness of British law and its severity toward all
forms of oppression, pursue their rejoicing way, and if
brought to court may be fined a trifle of wages,
which, as they set no value upon money, does not
punish them in the least.
Some decent foremast hands may feel that I am
here unduly severe upon the rank and file; that hav-
ing been an officer, and, besides, left the sea for good,
I have, like so many others, turned against my old
shipmates. But they would be utterly mistaken. It
is the merest platitude to say that every decent man’s
interest lies in having his eyes wide open to the faults
of the class he wishes to benefit. The most of my
sea-service was spent in a ship’s forecastle, and I can
assure my readers that I have never since felt more
shame and disgust at the behaviour of some of my
watchmates than I did then. I cannot for my life see
why the foremast hand should not be as self respect-
ing, amenable to reason, and competent, as any good
workman ashore. Sea life is not brutalising in itself ;
it is ennobling, and it is a strange return for the bene-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 49
fits that a life at sea confers upon those who live it
that so many of them should gratuitously become
brutish. Of course there is more excuse for the unfor-
tunate slaves of steam, the firemen and trimmers.
Yet even they can, and do in many instances, rise
superior to their hard surroundings and show an ex-
ample to men in positions where every comfort of life
is enjoyed.
Another quality which shipmasters should possess,
but whose necessity will be hotly debated by many,
is that of being a God-fearing man. Some people will
say that this embraces all the rest. That it should do
so is undeniable; that it does do so is, unhappily, sel-
dom the case. It is a great pity that in so many
otherwise estimable men the spirit of godliness should
be accompanied by a weakening of their power to
command men. They become afraid lest their neces-
sary acts for the preservation of discipline should be
misconstrued into a violation of the principles which
they profess. And this often results in their Christian
virtues being taken advantage of by unscrupulous
subordinates, so that the ship’s condition becomes
worse, not better, for the fact of a man being in com-
mand who is anxious to love his neighbour as himself.
Needless to say, perhaps, that such a condition of
things is altogether opposed to the true spirit of
Christianity, which does not approve of allowing one’s
subordinates to break rules and defy rulers. This,
however, is far too large a question to be more than
glanced at here, especially as it is so hotly debated by
many excellent seamen, who hold that the practice ofSo THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
the Christian religion in the merchant service is an
impossibility.
A master should be honest. Eyes will open wide
at this, no doubt, since all men should be honest, but it
must not be forgotten that all men are not so liable to
temptations to be dishonest in a perfectly safe way (as
far as the law goes) as a shipmaster is. The ports of the
world are thronged with scoundrels who tempt ship-
masters to betray their trust in a variety of ways* By
bribery, the most common form of corruption, they
are led into cheating the owner and the crew,—into
downright robbery. There is the temptation to rob
the crew, a perfectly safe operation, and one that can
be excused by its perpetrators on the ground that, as
Jack will only squander his money upon the vilest
forms of debauchery when he gets paid off, a good
percentage of it will be much better in their pockets
than his. It may be done in a variety of ways, from
the ostensible payment of “ blood money ” to a San
Francisco boarding-master or crimp, which is deducted
from the seaman’s wages and shared by the skipper
and his ally, to the commoner form of collusion with
bumboatmen, tailors, etc., whereby the sailor is over-
charged for everything he buys aboard, in order that a
heavy percentage of his spendings may go into the
master’s pocket. Of course Jack is not compelled to
spend anything, but it is unfair that he should be
mulcted 25 per cent on such innocent outlays as for
soft bread, eggs, fruit, or clothing. In these latter
days the temptations to dishonesty in respect of such
larger operations as chartering, towage, etc., are greatly
lessened by the multiplication of appointed agenciesTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 51
of the owner’s abroad, but they still exist, and the
sailing-ship master especially is often tempted to be
dishonest in out-of-the-way ports of the world, temp-
tations which, for his own sake, he should sternly re-
fuse to countenance.CHAPTER VII.
THE MASTER’S DUTIES.
As pointed out at the beginning of the last chapter,
the primary duty of a shipmaster is to get his ship
from port to port in the speediest and safest manner
possible. And it may not be amiss to indicate here, in
the briefest and most popular way, the broad princi-
ples upon which this is done. I wish to disarm criti-
cism by experts by disclaiming any intention of giving
more than an idea of the process by which vessels are
taken across the trackless ocean to those who do not
know and are daunted by a mathematical treatise.
Every school-child that has reached the third stan-
dard knows that the globe is represented as criss-
crossed by a large number of lines running from pole
to pole,—that is, from north to south ; and right round
the globe in the opposite direction cutting the others
at right angles, or from east to west. The up-and-
down ones, from pole to pole, are meridians of longi-
tude ; the crosswise ones are parallels of latitude.
Now, since these are all numbered as degrees, the
space between them being one degree,—the latitudes
from the equator to the poles on either side of it as
i°to 90°, and the meridians from Greenwich to its
opposite point on the other side of the world 1" to
i8ou,—it follows that if a seafarer can ascertain at theTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 53
same time what particular degree of latitude and
longitude he is in, a glance at his chart or sea-map
shows him the position of his ship. This operation
(finding the latitude and longitude) is performed in a
variety of ways, but the simplest, and consequently
the most universally used at sea, is by measuring the
sun’s height above the horizon at noon for the latitude,
and about three hours before or after noon for the
longitude. This is done, by means of a pretty instru-
ment called a sextant, with the greatest ease and
speed. At noon, the moment the sun reaches his
highest point for the day, it is twelve o’clock, and a
calculation, made in one minute, shows exactly how
far the ship is north or south of the equator. The
observations for longitude take a little longer. From
the sun’s height at the moment of observation is cal-
culated the exact time at the ship, and as a chronom-
eter, which every ship carries, shows the exact time
at Greenwich, the difference between the two ex-
presses in hours and minutes (easily convertible into
degrees and miles) the distance east or west of Green-
wich, the prime meridian of longitude, for every
degree (60 miles) is equal to four minutes of time.
Having found the latitude and longitude, the master
makes a little dot upon the chart at the exact point
where the lines of latitude and longitude which he is
on cross one another, and sees as plainly as if he were
standing at a well-known street-crossing where he is.
From the position thus obtained he shapes his course
in the direction best calculated to reach his destina-
tion ; that is, if the way in which the wind is blowing
will allow him to do so (in a sailing-ship). This is54 the men of the merchant service.
done by bringing the desired point of the compass in
a line with a mark drawn upon the side of the round
box in which the compass swings, which mark really
represents the ship’s head. And if, as is popularly
supposed, the compass needle always pointed true to
the north, navigation would be very simple. But
alas, this instrument is full of vagaries. Apart alto-
gether from such harassing complications as the
attraction of the iron in the ship produces, there is the
variation of the compass itself from the north, which
changes continually as the vessel goes on her way.
Then there is bad steering, and, worse still, the effect
of unknown currents which sweep the ship away in
some direction which cannot be calculated until after
it has occurred. The speed of the ship is known by
the use of a beautiful instrument called a patent log,
which, towed behind the ship, registers her rate of
progress with an accuracy unobtainable by any cyclom-
eter. Where, for economical reasons, the patent
log is not used, the mariner must rely upon a primi-
tive instrument called a “logship,” which, being used
once every hour or two hours, cannot, however good
it may be, give such true results as the patent log,
which records every foot of the distance travelled.
When, however, the heavenly bodies, which are
always faithful and reliable, are obscured by bad
weather, and the master has to depend upon a posi-
tion obtained by a calculation of the course made by
compass and the distance run by log, he may well be
uneasy if he be in difficult waters near land. For the
compass can only be corrected by the aid of the sun,
moon, or stars when at sea, and if they are invisible itTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 55
may be a very unsafe guide, although an indispensable
one. Roughly, these are the principles upon which a
ship is navigated, modifications and extensions of
which go to make up the perfect navigator. And no
matter how perfect a navigator a master may be, he
will always, if he be wise, see that the officers work
out the ship’s position independently, so that a com-
parison may be made between the various workings
and any errors detected.
This business of navigating the ship in deep waters
is, however, always looked upon by masters as the
lightest part of all their duties, although I have been
shipmate with masters who had grown too lazy to
attend even to that, leaving it to the mate. When
the ship comes to the tortuous passages of, say, the
East Indian Archipelago, or threads the mazy ways of
the West Indian islands, the master has an opportu-
nity to show what metal he is made of. On reaching
the vicinity of our own dangerous coasts in the long
stormy or foggy nights of winter his anxieties become
great. Steamship masters have here a tremendous ad-
vantage over their brethren in sailing-ships, whose best
intentions are often frustrated, their best seamanship
rendered of none effect, by the perverseness of the
wind. This is especially the case near home, where the
sea-traffic is great and the appalling danger of collision
is added to the perils of rocks, quicksands, and der-
elicts. These are but few and feeble words wherein
to outline the responsibilities of a shipmaster for the
safe conduct of his vessel, responsibilities which weigh
so heavily upon some men that for several days and
nights together they are unable to take the rest their56 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
bodies imperiously demand ; but they may serve to in-
dicate them to the sympathetic reader. And when
the exceedingly small percentage of casualties are
taken into consideration, all will surely admit that the
standard of ability among this splendid body of men
is satisfactorily high.
The shipmaster’s duty as a trustee of an enormous
amount of valuable property, and, in a passenger ship,
of valuable lives, is a most important one. While he
must see to it that there is no delay in their convey-
ance to their destination, he must remember that
safety is the first consideration. Recklessness is really
unpardonable, and must sooner or later end in his ruin.
He represents not only his owners, but the owners of
his cargo and the underwriters who insure that cargo.
He.should be thoroughly well up in those sections of
maritime laws—and they are many:—which affect the
traffic ; know how to deal with grasping brokers in for-
eign ports into which he may be driven by distress;
and be able to make good bargains and keep accurate
accounts, since none but the finest passenger steamers
carry pursers and clerks to take these onerous duties
off his hands. In passenger ships he must see that
his charges are made comfortable, bear with their of-
ten unreasonable complaints, be courteous and genial,
and generally exert himself to make his ship—and
consequently the line to which she belongs—popular,
since “popularity” spells “dividends.”
In cargo ships he must be something of a doctor,
for on a long passage there will certainly*be many ail-
ments among his crew, and probably some fractures.
Ignorance of how to deal with these means a terribleTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 57
amount of misery to the hapless sufferer lying groan-
ing for assistance which is not forthcoming. The
present generation of shipmasters is greatly in ad-
vance of what smattering of leechcraft was possessed
by their predecessors, but even now there is a plentiful
lack of this most humane and necessary knowledge.
One would hardly now expect to find a shipmaster so
ignorant as he of whom the story runs that, finding that
a supposed ailment called for a dose out of No. 7
bottle, he made up the draught out of Nos. 4 and 3,
upon discovering that No. 7 was empty! Or such a
rough customer as the skipper of whom it is told in
ships’ forecastles that, when it was reported to him
that a man had broken his leg, replied : “ Oh, give
him a bucket of salts.” But in one vessel where I
was a foremast hand, several of us caught severe colds
upon coming into a lonely New Zealand port where no
doctor was to be obtained. The skipper diagnosed
our complaint as bronchitis, and exhibited tartar
emetic with peculiar and painful results.
Still it cannot be denied that among the old schools
there were some wonderfully skilful, if rough, surgeons,
men of iron, who, if need arose, could and did practise
the art upon their own bodies under circumstances of
suffering that might well have reduced the stoutest
frame to piteous helplessness. Such a case, for in-
stance, was that of Captain Samuels of the Dread-
nought American packet-ship. I have not his book
by me, so must quote from memory, but the picture
he drew was so vivid that I do not think any one could
forget its essential details. He relates how, in one of
his passages from New York to England, he was mid-58 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
way across the Atlantic when, during a very heavy gale,
a sea was shipped which dashed him against the bul-
warks with such force that one of his legs was broken
above the knee. It was a compound fracture, and al-
though such attention as was possible under his direc-
tion was given him at once, in a few days he recognised
the necessity of having the leg cut off. Mortification
had set in. His mate was absolutely unable to attempt
the job from sheer physical incapacity, although in
other respects a most able, strenuous man. So the
sufferer in superhuman fashion rose to the occasion and
performed the operation upon himself, and successfully,
too, for when, a few days after, the vessel arrived at the
Azores, there was nothing left for a surgeon to do.
Another anecdote, this time from the log of a whale-
ship, the Union, of Nantucket, Captain Gardiner, who,
while pursuing his calling off the west coast of South
America, was injured by a sperm whale which flung its
jaw upward and across the boat, catching the captain
by the head and shoulders. The blow did not sweep
him overboard, but laid his scalp back from his skull;
broke his right jaw, tearing out five teeth ; broke his
left arm and shoulder-blade ; and crushed the hand on
the same side between the whale’s jaw and the gun-
wale of the boat. In this deplorable state he was
carried on board his ship. His young officers, natur-
ally bewildered by the appearance of his broken body,
did not know what to do for him. They may well
have been excused for considering his case hopeless.
His brave spirit, however, did not recognise defeat. He
gave directions, mostly by signs, for the preparation
of bandages and splints, and instructed his willing butTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 59
ignorant helpers in the way of using them. When all
had been done that he wished or could think of, he
ordered the vessel to be taken into port and, al-
though apparently at the point of death, he lay on
deck in a commanding position and piloted his ship
in. A Spanish surgeon was brought on board, who, as
soon as he saw the sufferer, advised sending for a
priest, as the case was hopeless. This advice was lost
upon the valiant Yankee, who sent a messenger a dis-
tance of thirty miles for another doctor—a German.
This gentleman hastened down to the ship, dressed
the skipper’s wounds, and had him transported on an
improvised ambulance, slung between two mules, up to
the healthy highlands of the interior. In six months’
time he was fit to resume command of his ship, which
meanwhile had made a most successful cruise under
the mate. His left hand, unhappily, had been so badly
mangled that it was hardly more than a stump, the
two first fingers being so twisted in the palm that he
was afterwards always obliged to wear a thick mitten
to keep them from being entangled in a lance-warp
while he was lancing a whale. This good man was for
a quarter of a century master of a whaler and lived to
be nearly ninety years old.
So prolific is the source whence these anecdotes
are drawn that I am embarrassed where to choose.
However, I cannot help thinking that for a fitting
close to this subject it would hardly be possible to
select a story more thrilling than the following.
During a whale hunt the line kinked, and dragged
a man, entangled by one arm and one leg, deep
under the sea. He was released by the imprisoned6o THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
members giving way under the frightful strain. Rising
to the surface and floating there unconscious, he was
picked up and taken on board the ship. There it was
found that a portion of the hand, including four fin-
gers, had been torn away, while a foot was twisted off
at the ankle, leaving only the lacerated stump with its
tangle of sinews hanging loosely. From the knee
downward the muscles had been dragged away by the
line, leaving the almost bare bone with just a veil of
tendons and leaking blood-vessels, so that it appeared
as if the poor wretch had only been saved from drown-
ing to die more cruelly, unless some one should have the
nerve to perform so radical an operation. No surgical
instruments were on board. But Captain James Hunt-
ling was not the man to allow any one to perish with-
out a great effort on his part to save them. He had a
carving knife, a hand-saw, and a fish-hook. The injury
was so great and the poor fellow’s cries so heart-rend-
ing that several of the crew fainted while attempting
to help the skipper, while others became sick. So,
unaided, the skipper lashed his patient to the carpen-
ter’s bench, cut off what remained of the leg, and
dressed the mangled hand. Then, making for the
Sandwich Islands, he put the man in ajhospital, where
he recovered, and, returning to America, passed the
rest of his days in comfort as a small shopkeeper.
There is one more reason why it is so necessary for
the master of a ship to have some medical knowledge,
and this has a humorous side in many cases. It is that
he may be able to detect that curse of a ship’s com-
pany, the “ malingerer.” Often he is by no means
easy to “bowl out,” being, like most lazy people, ofTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 61
considerable inventive genius. And although a hu-
mane man would much rather be imposed upon a
dozen times than send a suffering man to work while
unfit once, it is intensely galling to find that a scala-
wag with absolutely nothing the matter with him but
a constitutional aversion to work has been indulging
himself at the expense of his already hard-pressed
shipmates for a week or two. A little practical know-
ledge of medicine will in most cases obviate this and
enable the shipmaster to give the loafer a dose that,
while it will do him no harm, will make him so uncom-
fortable that work will be a relief. But I find that
the recapitulation of the master’s duties demands an-
other chapter.CHAPTER VIII.
THE MASTER’S DUTIES—continued.
WHILE we have thus lightly run over such duties of
the master of a merchant ship as are imperatively de-
manded of him by his position, it must not be lost
sight of that there are many things that he should be
and know that, while not compulsory, are most neces-
sary, and no master who is really attached to his pro-
fession will neglect them. For instance, the Board of
Trade has a voluntary examination in “steam ” which
is based upon some of the most elementary facts con-
nected with running marine engines. A master may
pass in steam or he may not, as he pleases, and it is
doubtful whether many owners are influenced in their
choice of a master to command one of their ships by
the fact that his certificate is endorsed “ passed in
steam.” Yet it should be obvious to all that for a
master of a steamship, however small, to be ignorant
of at least the broad principles of marine engineering
must be a terrible defect. He should certainly be able,
in the event of his engineers dying or becoming in-
capacitated, of taking charge of the obedient monsters
below and running his ship, if not to her destination,
to some port where the need could be supplied. And
in any case he should know well under what conditions
those engines do their work, that he may be the bet-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 63
ter able to appreciate his engineer’s reports, and for
other reasons which need not be stated. Any lack of
this knowledge on the part of a steamship master is
the more to be deprecated because he has such splen-
did opportunities and such ample time for learning.
Another subject which is not compulsory, but which
it is very necessary that the shipmaster should have
more than a nodding acquaintance with, is ship-con-
struction. Studied in books it looks formidable
enough to any one but a student of the subject and an
excellent mathematician, but a few visits to a ship-
building yard intelligently made, and the things seen
there carefully noted, would be of inestimable service.
Allied to this is the vast subject of magnetism which
so intimately concerns every shipmaster in these days
of steel, when the compass, poor thing, is hard put to
it to remember the location of the magnetic pole at all,
so sorely is it beset by diverting influences above, be-
low, and around. But for a fair list of the things
that all shipmasters should know, and might, from their
abundance of leisure (in sailing-ships especially), so
pleasantly and easily acquire, reference should be
made to a book which I remember as a bantling, but
which has now grown to most portly proportions,
—“ Wrinkles ” by Squire T. S. Lecky. Within the
boards of this splendid book Mr. Lecky has gathered
a stupendous amount of information which he imparts
in the most delightful manner. For many years he
commanded one of Messrs. Holt’s steamships running
between Liverpool and South America, so that his
practical knowledge is as extensive as need be, while
his theoretical learning is not only great but sound.64 the men OF THR merchant SERVICE.
This book has been the hobby of his life, and it may
truly be said that any shipmaster who will read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest it, will be perfectly equipped
for one of the most onerous of all professions if he
only has the power of putting his learning to practical
use. I have never seen, spoken to, or had a letter from
Mr. Lecky in my life, so that what I say is perfectly
unbiased by any personal consideration. Mr. Lecky
is a magnificent example of what the merchant ship-
master may make of his opportunities for study if he
be so inclined.
There are also branches of study—such as the most
fascinating one of marine natural history—which can
be pursued nowhere else so well as at sea in a sailing-
ship. With a little aptitude for drawing, a camera, and
a microscope, the shipmaster might not only pass his
plenteous spare time most pleasantly, but accumulate
a store of the most valuable material whereon the
savants ashore might exercise their stock of wisdom.
And the study of languages, too,—how necessary for a.
man who, if he speak but his own tongue, must of
necessity be often severely handicapped in the race
with foreigners, who usually speak two or three, to
say nothing of the ease with which a man may be
imposed upon in a foreign port who is obliged to
transact his business by the aid of an interpreter.
But the time is probably fast approaching when the
knowledge of one other language at least besides
his own will be made compulsory for the British ship-
master, so that I will say no more about the mat-
ter here except that unless greater efforts are put
forward by seagoing youths in this most valuableTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 65
direction they will find it harder than ever to compete
with the constantly increasing numbers of foreigners
who are pressing into the afterguard of our mercantile
marine.
And now for the least pleasant portion of this sec-
tion of my subject, the question of drunkenness. For
the reasons already quoted this vice is one to which
the shipmaster is continually being tempted. Being,
when at sea, a law unto himself, he may, if he will,
become a steady tippler, gradually sinking lower and
lower into the hopeless drunkard. If he have any
tendency that way there is only one thing for him to
do,—to become a total abstainer from intoxicants.
Sad is it to say, on the testimony of many such men,
that such a virtuous resolve is often detrimental to
a man’s chances of doing his business in foreign ports,
where that business is only carried on over drink. I
know that by some good people ashore this statement
will be pooh-poohed, but it is nevertheless true, and
the hindrance it puts in the way of the teetotaler
doing justice to himself and his employer is very real.
Many a smart skipper has been thus ruined, having
laid the foundation of drunken habits in ports where
the first questions and the last to be put to him were :
“ Well, Cap’n, what are you going to have, or what are
you goin' to stand ? ”
Again we may take comfort in the thought that
sobriety is the rule among shipmasters of to-day, and
not the exception, as it once was. I speak feelingly,
having suffered many things at the hands of drunken
skippers. Vividly do I remember on my last voyage
as mate, on the first night in the Channel outward66 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
bound, my skipper saying to me confidentially : “ I al-
ways live on brandy while we’re in the Channel,” and
the sick feeling that I experienced at his rerriark. Let
me hasten to add that he was wrongly accusing him-
self, being at the time half-seas-over and exaggerating,
as he was wont at such a time. He certainly did
drink, and very much more than was good for him,
but his tippling never gave or made any trouble.
What made his remark so terrible to me was that two
voyages before I had been mate of a brig with a man
who, from the day that I joined her until the day,
nearly four months afterward, when I refused to stay
on board any longer, never drew a sober breath. I
may perhaps be excused for dwelling a little upon the
plain facts of this short sea-experience of mine, which,
in the words of Mr. Justice Day, who heard some of
it recapitulated and proved in the Court of Queen’s
Bench, “surpassed the wildest flights of imagination.”
Sordid, certainly, yet not without a certain romantic
outcome.
The vessel, whose name I suppress, was the property
of a hard-working man in one of our northern sea-
ports who had toiled and saved until he became her
owner. At the time when I joined her as mate she
had been absent from her first port of departure in
England for nearly two years. During that period
she had visited many ports, in each of which the
master had abandoned himself to drunkenness, spend-
ing recklessly every penny upon which he could lay
his hands, and ignoring all the owner’s complaining
letters. Five different mates had been engaged, had
sickened of their position, and had left. At last myTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 67
turn came, and, all unknowing what awaited me, I went
on board. I found the poor old vessel most shame-
fully neglected, the crew looking woe-begone and dis-
heartened, and the only officer, the second mate, firmly
determined to work no more. I took charge and did
what I could, going ashore persistently for such in-
structions as I needed, but ever finding my commander
in a state of maudlin drunkenness. After a few days
the vessel was loaded and made as ready for sea as
her condition rendered possible. I duly informed the
master, who had never even seen the vessel since I
joined, of our readiness to proceed, but he was of
opinion there was no hurry. So day after day slipped
by for three weeks, until the consignee of the cargo
wired from New Brunswick protesting so vigorously
that the shipper took steps to expedite our departure.
He told the fuddled skipper that unless he went to
sea forthwith I should be ordered to leave without
him, the shipper taking all responsibility. This ulti-
matum aroused him sufficiently to get him on board,
and to sea we went. But he immediately sought his
berth and continued his spirituous exercises, varied
by attacks of delirium tremens, while alone, and un-
aided except by the weary crew, I endeavoured to
navigate the clumsy vessel down the Nova Scotian
coast in midwinter.' To add to my troubles, the
chronometer was hopelessly out of order, having been,
I believe, tampered with by the mutinous second mate.
How many hairbreadth escapes from destruction we
had in that stormy passage of three weeks I have no
space to tell in detail, but at last we obtained a pilot
who brought us safely into the harbour of St. John,68 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
N. B., in a night of inky blackness and drenching rain,
and there left us entangled amidst a motley crowd of
coasters. Next day we were extricated and laid by a
wharf, when to my astonishment my worthy comman-
der appeared and went ashore ; his first public appear-
ance since coming on board in Cape Breton. That
night, when the vessel had settled down upon the mud
by reason of the great fall of the tide, so that her tops
were nearly level with the wharf-edge, the skipper re-
turned, and, avoiding the lighted gangway carefully
placed for him, walked over the unprotected side of
the wharf and fell fifty feet. He passed between the
vessel’s side and the piles of the wharf without touch-
ing, and entered the mud feet first with a force that
buried him to his armpits. His cries aroused us and
we rescued him, actually unhurt but nearly sober.
Again he disappeared from our midst, having now a
good excuse—shock to the system! Having dis-
charged the cargo and taken in ballast according to
instructions from the consignee, I again danced attend-
ance upon him at his hotel until he at last decided to
make a move and came on board attended by a most
finished rascal of a ’longshore-man who had apparently
been his drinking crony all the time he had been
ashore, and who was now—save the mark !—coming
with us to our next port to stow the cargo of lumber
we were to take home.
We towed across the Bay of Fundy to Parrsboro’ in
charge of a pilot, the skipper and his friend both shut
in the skipper’s stateroom below, drinking. When we
arrived I was in serious difficulty as to a berth, because
the master was so drunk I could get no instructions.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 69
But after a while I succeeded in finding a berth, where
we lay quietly all night. In the morning early my
skipper sent for a sleigh and again departed to a
hotel, where he remained until the vessel was loaded.
I frequently saw him in bed and protested with all my
power against the shameful way in which the quon-
dam stevedore was stowing the cargo, but all my re-
monstrances were unheeded. At last the cargo was
complete, including a deckload six feet high, and the
vessel was so unstable (“crank,” as we call it) that she
would hardly stand up at the wharf.
Then I sought the skipper for a final interview, tell-
ing him that, having regard to the condition of the
ship, his own continued drunkenness, and to the fact
that I was the only officer on board (the second mate
having obtained his discharge in St. John), I wanted
to leave the ship. I felt that it would only be tempt-
ing Fate to undertake a North Atlantic passage in mid-
winter in such a vessel under such circumstances.
Moreover I warned him that in my estimation he did
not intend that the vessel should reach home, hoping
by shipwreck to wipe out the effects of his two years’
drunkenness and dishonesty. Of course he laughed
at me and bade me go to hell. I then took the only
course open to me there ; I left the ship, writing a let-
ter to the owner in which I detailed matters. Two
days afterwards a tugboat was engaged and the brig
was towed back to St. John, where I heard that an-
other fortnight’s spree was consummated. Another
mate was engaged and she sailed for home. Four
days after, in a gale with frost, fog, and snow, she was
run ashore on the coast of Maine, becoming a total70 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
wreck and destroying four of her crew,—not, of course,
including the skipper.
Yet this man had the effrontery to sue the owner,
upon his return to England, for his wages for the
whole voyage. Not only so, but he would certainly
have won his case but that the owner succeeded in
discovering me. My evidence was final, supported as
it was by the entries in the log-book, which, unfortu-
nately for the skipper, was saved from the wreck.
Before closing my remarks upon the master, which,
lengthy as they are, only skirt the subject, I would
like to pay a well-deserved tribute to that splendid body
of master-mariners commanding the great mercan-
tile marine of our North-American Colonies. Many—
nay, most of them—have risen to command their
ships in the teeth of great disabilities and drawbacks.
They have little polish, but a great deal of capacity,
for the “Blue-Nose,” as the British North-American
seaman is called by all other English-speaking mari-
ners, is a born seaman as well as a born shipbuilder.
In only one other part of the world—Scandinavia—
is it possible to find men who are capable of building
a ship, farming and timber-felling between whiles ;
then, when the hull is finished, rigging her and load-
ing her with their own produce, and sailing her to any
part of the world. These qualities seem indigenous to
the soil of the coast of British North America and the
northeastern shores of the United States. But it is
to be noted that the final extinction of this splendid
industry is near at hand. Iron and steel and steam
have compelled those sturdy seamen of the North to
give up their beloved and stately wooden ships,—allTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 71
but a few that are holding on almost despairingly
against the steadily rising tide.
Yet when all has been said for the “ Blue-Nose ”
master that ought to be said, it must not be forgotten
that his reputation for humane dealing with his crews
is far worse than that of the Yankee. He has learned
the American lesson of how to enforce discipline with-
out law,—in defiance of law, in fact,—and learned it so
well that any old sailor will tell you that a “ Blue-Nose”
is the hardest of all ships to sail in. Perhaps this is
hardly to be wondered at when the motley character
of the crews they are obliged to carry is remembered,
their own spare population only sufficing to supply
them with officers. That their high courage and stern
resolution to be master in fact as well as name often
leads them into deplorable excesses of cruelty cannot
be denied truthfully. And yet it may be doubted
whether a good seaman would not rather sail in a ship
under stern discipline, even if it were enforced by an
occasional broken head, than be one of a crew who
were permitted to act and speal^.as their fancy listed,
to the misery of all on board, as is undoubtedly the
case in so many of our British ships.CHAPTER IX.
THE MATE.
Naturally, perhaps, seeing that most of my own
sea service as an officer was spent in this capacity, I
come to the consideration of the mate’s position with
very cordial feelings. A little shamefacedly, too, for
I remember an admirable little book which used to
have (and may have now for what I know) a good sale
among mercantile marine officers in embryo. It was
called “ The Mate and his Duties” and was written
entirely for the use of the profession, so that it would
not be appreciated by shore people at all. To us it
was of great use, although few young officers reading
it for the first time could help a feeling of despair
stealing over them as they studied those counsels of
perfection. It did not seem possible that any one
man should be sufficient for all these things. So we
tried to forget the whole duties of a mate and con-
centrated our ideas upon the present duty to be per-
formed, trusting that we might rise to each occasion
as it presented itself.
But, to begin at the beginning, let us take the title
“ The Mate.” It is a word of simple origin, easy of
derivation, and ancient enough to make it honourable,
and therefore it is a matter for congratulation that the
Board of Trade has seen fit to retain its use instead ofTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 73
the more modern and finical “ first officer.” It is used
almost always on board ship without any prefix, as
needing no distinctive mark like the other mates ; as,
second mate, bo’sun’s mate, cook’s mate, etc. The
mate is the chief executive officer, the companion of
the master, who should, except when all hands are on
deck, issue all his orders through the mate as a matter
of etiquette. Upon the mate devolves the working of
the ship, and her command upon the death or incapa-
city of the master, to whom he comes next in import-
ance on board. Perhaps in this latter respect I ought
to except steamers, where the chief engineer is a man
of great weight and is apparently bound to be of
greater weight in the near future. Yet, although the
chief engineer's pay be so much larger than that of
the mate, and his importance so great, there is one
aspect of their relative positions which cannot, to my
mind, be ignored in considering this vexed question of
precedence. It is that at all times the engineer, who
is below, must obey the orders of the officer, who is
above, immediately, unquestioningly, under severest
penalties, as is only fitting, seeing that any slackness,
not to say disobedience, might result in a terrible
calamity, such as running down another ship.
Let us, however, pass this matter by for the present,
since it must be dealt with when speaking of the
engineer later on. Again it must be noted, as in the
case of the master, that there is a vast range of differ-
ence among mates, from he who manages a monster like
the Oceanic down to the mate of a footy little brigan-
tine “ going foreign.” Yet in the eyes of the Board
of Trade they are both equal; the same certificate is re-74 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
quired of both. As a matter of detail, however, it
will be found that not only the mate, but the long list
of j unior officers, in such a ship as the Oceanic, will
have passed the examination for master at least, most
of them for “ master extra,” and many of them, as
hinted at in a previous chapter, will have commanded
magnificent sailing-ships. But it is almost ludicrous
to see how, in a sailor's eyes, the fact that a man is in
command—of no matter what—will weigh, as far as his
importance goes, against the man who is not. There
cannot be much doubt as to which occupies the most
important position, the mate of an ocean liner like the
Campania, or the master of a sailing-vessel of, say,
some 500 tons, creeping wearily about the world wher-
ever it may be found possible to secure a bit of cargo.
But—and it is a mighty big “ but ”—one is, in nautical
phrase, Captain Brown and the other is only Mr. Jones
—and there is an end of discussion.
Apart, however, from sentimental consideration
there are many reasons why the grades of mates
should be held so different. For instance, the master
of one ship, however small, if only he be gentlemanly
and accustomed to command, will find little or no dif-
ficulty in springing suddenly to the command of
another ship no matter how large, because the minor
details are attended to by his subordinates, who are
usually competent men, and he, being at the head of
the position, can calmly observe matters without letting
any one see that he is strange to such a giddy height.
Not so the mate. If it were possible to transfer, say, a
mate of a schooner into the position of mate of a 3,000-
ton sailing-ship without much previous training, heTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 75
would be lost. His new duties would overwhelm him.
As well expect a small tradesman who has been grub-
bing away in a little suburban shop on a turnover of
£4 a week to suddenly assume charge of one of the
largest departments at Whiteley’s or the Army and
Navy Stores. For the mate does not merely command
the ship during the master’s absence or act as the mas-
ter’s mouthpiece. It is his to see that orders given are
carried out and to hold the proper person responsible
for neglect.
But perhaps we are getting along too fast. To re-
turn then for a moment to a consideration of how the
mate attains his position, that last rung but one on the
ladder of promotion which, alas, is separated by so
wide a gulf from the next one above. It is hardly nec-
essary again to go over the various steps which have
been already mentioned in the case of the master, ex-
cept in the most cursory manner. First, usually, but
not compulsorily, the serving of a term of apprentice-
ship fixed at four years by law, the last year of which
is counted as the service of “ able seaman.” Or, as the
rules merely specify that the candidate for a second
mate’s certificate shall have been four years at sea, one
year of which he was an able seaman, he may have
simply entered as boy and gone on to “ ordinary sea-
man ” and then to “A. B.” This course is the one adopt-
ed in American and Canadian ships, where apprentice-
ships are unknown, but there the candidate is usually
in far better case than any apprentice in a British ship,
because he is sure to be put on board by some one
whom the master is anxious to please, or, more prob-
ably, he is a friend or relative of one of the officers76 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
themselves, in which case, although his designation
may be humble enough, he will live in the cabin and
have his profession thoroughly burnt into him, a proc-
ess which he will in no wise be able to escape.
Our mate, however, having served his allotted time
and received the essential recommendation from his
last commander, makes his way to a navigation school ;
not that he, unless he be a hopeless idiot, has waited
until now to be taught navigation, but in order that
his knowledge may be suitably arranged for produc-
tion at the right time and in the accepted fashion.
Some young would-be officers are foolish enough to im-
agine that the master of a navigation school can also
help them in their seamanship, but with lamentable re-
sults, for the navigation is in cut-and-dried exercises
which any ordinarily capable scholar may learn with lit-
tle difficulty, since all of them may be satisfactorily
done without the slightest knowledge of the higher
mathematics. There are thousands of mercantile
marine officers holding certificates,—good men, too,—
who could not work a problem in trigonometry without
the tables to save their lives, and to whom Euclid
is a sealed book, for clever men have long been at work
simplifying navigation problems until their execution
is just a matter of simple arithmetic and acquaintance
with a set of nautical tables. This state of things
gives rise to much controversy among those who are
interested in mercantile marine officers. Some say
that every officer should make a point of knowing, not
merely how to work his problems, but why certain
tables are used; in other words, that he should not
merely work by rule of thumb, but be a competentTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 77
mathematician. Then, these gentlemen add, he would
be able to command not only higher wages but more
consideration from his employers, besides being better
able to compete with the carefully-educated foreigner.
Others contend that the business already laid upon
merchant officers is fully as great as they ought to
bear, and that, supposing they had learned the math-
ematical theory of navigation, they would still in
practice use the rule of thumb method. Not feeling
at all capable of deciding between these two con-
testants I merely present their views, contenting my-
self with the passing remark that, supposing a man to
be a good seaman, it cannot be to his detriment to
make himself as proficient in the mathematical theory
of navigation as his capacity will enable him. But
with regard to seamanship matters are totally differ-
ent. Here there can be no difference of opinion.
Seamanship—that is, handling of a ship under all cir-
cumstances of weather, the fitting and keeping in
repair of her masts, rigging, sails, etc., and the stowage
of her cargo—cannot be learned from books. The
unhappy neophyte who has scrambled through his
apprenticeship without attempting to learn the busi-
ness, and comes at the last moment to his crammer
for assistance, is in evil case when standing before the
keen-eyed old shipmaster who is to examine him.
He tries to recall book answers to questions that are
not in the books.
Even the “ Rule of the Road,” that most essential
part of all a seaman’s education, though it be found in
a set of iron-bound articles, is apt to vanish entirely
away from a man who has only studied it in book78 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
form. When the examiner hands him a model, and,
telling him to imagine himself in command of her,
places other models at various angles to her course and
asks him what he would do, he will, if his knowledge
be theoretical, surely find it depart from him in his
sore need and leave him dumb and witless. And so it
will be with all the various branches of seamanship.
The ordeal of a viva voce examination is too great
for any mere theorist to come through successfully.
And failure means not only a forfeiture of fees, but a
compulsory going to sea again for six months before
the next presentation for questioning. The naviga-
tion, on the other hand, is considered so much less im-
portant that failure to pass that part of the examina-
tion only carries with it forfeiture of fees and a space
of three months before appearing again, during which
time the candidate may remain on shore at school.
Let us suppose, however, that our young aspirant
has so well prepared himself that he has gone flying
through his first examination, emerging a full-fledged
second mate. In that case, as already remarked, much
will depend upon his position with regard to influen-
tial friends among shipowners or vacancies in the firm
with which he has served his apprenticeship. So
many are the difficulties, so varied are the conditions
under which the young officer works his way upward,
that it is impossible to speak definitely as to the length
of time that will elapse before he again approaches
the dread tribunal for another inquisition as to his
qualifications for the post of “ first mate.” Since I
left the sea there have been several modifications in
this matter. One of the most important, made cer-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 79
tainly as a concession to the needs of officers in steam-
ships, is that a man with two years’ service as second
mate, having in the meantime passed his first mate’s
examination, may pass his examination for master al-
though he has never served as first mate. This, in
view of the almost invariable rule in steamships that a
man must have a certificate of higher grade than the
one he intends to serve in, is no more than bare justice.
And much as we who have been through the grinding
of the sailing-ship mill may gird at it, there can be
little doubt that before very long it will be found im-
possible to insist upon the candidate having served his
time in sailing-ships. The sailing-ship has not gone
yet, by a very long way, as one visit to the docks will
show any one who cares to inquire, but the day of her
extinction is within measurable distance. If once the
Panama or other inter-oceanic canal connecting the At-
lantic with the Pacific becomes an accomplished fact,
sailing-ships will be worth old-iron price and no more.
To return to our candidate. Let it be granted that
he has been so well supported in his application for
employment as second mate that while yet the ink is
tacky upon his certificate he has got a berth for a
round voyage lasting a year. Upon his return he
again looks up his old schoolmaster and gets coached
for another visit to the examiners. This second or-
deal should be comparatively easy, for while there
is very little navigation added to what he has already
done in the examination for second mate, he ought,
by this time, to have perfect confidence in his ability to
answer any question put to him about seamanship,
since he has had practice in ship-handling. In my own8o THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
case I can only say that “ passing ” for mate was a
mere bagatelle as compared with passing for second
mate. And as soon as he hears the blessed words
“ Where will you have your certificate sent ? ”—which
is the formula used by the examiner to intimate that
he has passed, he feels now that his course is clear, he
has entered the charmed circle and become that much-
envied individual, a full-blown “ first mate.”CHAPTER X.
THE MATE’S WORK—ON A STEAMER.
Happy indeed is the master who finds a good mate,
but happier still is the mate who has the joy of serv-
ing under a master who, while never neglecting his
own duties, is not forever fussing about finding fault
with the way in which work is being carried on,—a
master who will treat his mate as his right-hand man,
not only trusting him, but confiding in him. And even
while finding out whether he be worthy of trust, such
a master will make his observations in an unostenta-
tious manner, most careful that no one may suspect
that the mate is being weighed in the balance of his
mind. Whether a man makes a success or a failure
as mate, and, consequently, as master, supposing
that he ever reach that coveted position, is more
largely due to the treatment he receives at the hands
of his first master than is generally admitted. Every-
where, unfortunately, are to be found men who, while
indignantly repudiating any description of themselves
as persecutors, are yet saturated with the idea that
it is necessary to treat the beginner who comes under
their control with studied harshness; to comment
upon his slightest mistakes—not due to ignorance, but
to a nervous anxiety to do his best—as if they were
indisputable proofs of his being a fool; to find out
his tender spots and probe them, so that the hot flush82 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
of shame rises and the tongue is almost bitten
through in the endeavour to restrain the furious reply
that would be fatal; and more than all, and worse than
all, to comment upon a beginner’s shortcomings
openly before the men and boys over whom that
beginner is placed in authority, thereby laying him
open to the covert sneer, the insolent retort, and
slackly performed obedience. Such treatment is
diabolical cruelty to a highly strung, sensitive man,
no matter how expert, how clever he may be. That
upon first entering a new position he will make mis-
takes is an axiom, for, as has often been said most
truly, the man who makes no mistakes makes nothing.
Especially is this so when one realises that he then
for the first time feels the burden of responsibility,—
feels it with a keenness that use will presently dull
the edge of,—and knows that swiftness of decision
and readiness in action must be joined to accuracy of
knowledge and fertility of resource. To the man who
is not sensitive, yet not dull, these early experiences
are not nearly so full of painful incidents; but the
majority of modern officers still bear about with
them the scars of their early memories when their ears
caught the faintest whisper of disparagement, their
eyes saw every shade of expression that flitted across
the skipper’s face, and they were continually torturing
themselves with questions as to whether or how they
had failed to come up to the mark.
But to return to the actual duties of the mate.
Undoubtedly his prime duty is that of an overseer,
the manager of the business wherein the skipper
occupies the position of chairman of the board ofTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 83
directors. In the great liners, while the foregoing
still holds true, it must necessarily be modified some-
what. There are in these splendid vessels many
officials who, nominally responsible to the mate for
all they do, really report direct to heads ashore.
Still, for all practical purposes, the mate is the centre
around which all the working interests of the ship,
outside the engineer’s province, revolve. He it is
who sees that the routine of duty goes steadily forward
without any slackness or neglect, who must know the
condition of the ship (again as distinguished from
the engineer’s department and the chief steward’s
domain), and who must see that her condition is first
class and is kept so. Of course in such a ship as the
Lucania, for instance, the work of the mate resolves
itself more and more into generalship. He has such
an army of subordinates, each of whom is charged
with some particular duty and responsibility to the
mate for its being carried out, that he does not need
to be forever seeing for himself that the work is being
done. In such a ship the mate keeps no watch. He
is on duty all day and sleeps in all night, although he
would doubtless say that he was really always on
duty, and that the fact of his not keeping a particular
watch means only that he gets much less rest than if
he did. But one thing may be taken as undeniable,
the mate of a liner occupies a position of tremendous
responsibility and honour. He is the real commander
of the ship, the master being, like the captain of a
man-o’-war, a sort of “ veiled prophet ” with whom
the crew and junior officers seldom come in contact
except in extra bad weather or on entering and leaving84 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
harbour. Yet—and here comes the curious pinch—
between the mate’s salary and the master’s, how great
a gulf is fixed ! It seems such an anomaly that a
man who really bears the whole burden of the ship’s
working—who can be, and who is, called to account by
the master when anything goes wrong, and who is
generally well into middle age before he gets com-
mand himself—should be so poorly paid as compared
with the master. It works out roughly like this:
A friend of my own was second officer of a liner for
four years. In his pre-steamer days he had been
master of a large sailing-ship, so that he was getting
on in years. Then, as he began to fear that he was
fixed in that subordinate position, he suddenly suc-
ceeded to the mate, who obtained a command else-
where. For one year only he was mate ; then, on the
master’s retirement, he obtained the command. We
will not enquire what powerful influences were at work
to push him on so suddenly. The net result was that in
one year his income was nearly trebled, his salary as
mate being only ,£3 per month more than his salary
as second mate. It does not appear easy to explain
why—since the mate may at any moment be called
upon to become master—it should be considered ne-
cessary to have so serious a difference between their
salaries. But it explains the statement that is often
truly made that, unless a man has a private income, he
must not only be very economical to live upon his pay
while he is an officer in a swagger line, but he must
forego all idea of getting married. That is, if he wishes
his wife and children to get enough to eat.
The next step down the scale of ships is a long one.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. g5
From the mate of a liner to the mate of a cargo
steamer ior tramp is indeed a fall, and not only in
status, but in decreased pay and increased work. For
in the liner, as I have before noted, there are not only
numerous officers, below the position of mate, to re-
lieve him of onerous duties such as tallying of cargo,
charge of stores, etc., but he is practically relieved from
any necessity of looking after these subordinates, as
they are controlled from the offices ashore. In the
cargo steamer, on the contrary, it is the mate who
must look after the shipment of cargo, examine bills
of lading, and, indeed, do the tallying as well. More-
over, since the number of mates in most cases is
rigidly limited to three and often to two, he must
take his watch on the bridge, must work up the posi-
tion of the ship, look after the compasses with all
their heart-breaking divagations, attend personally to
the care of the ship in cleansing, etc., and last, but by
no means least, keep in order the motley crew. And for
this his pay is sometimes—nay, frequently—so small
that mention of it excites disbelief among responsible
persons ashore who know nothing of shipping matters.
I have myself been offered five guineas a month to go
mate of a steamer bound to the Baltic for timber,—a
steamer of 2,000 tons burden. I would have gone, too,
but that a German stepped down before me and
agreed to have the five shillings a month knocked off.
Perhaps the tramp mate’s lot is harder than that of most
other sea-officers, in that his work is never done, his
responsibilities are very heavy, and his pay is so small
that he must forego the delights of wife and children
if he has only that pay to live upon. Yet these men86 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
form the marrow of our merchant service, and should
certainly not be treated shabbily. How their work
is done let owners and shippers declare, who know full
well that, while the master gets all the credit that his
position entitles him to, the mate, working silently
but strenuously in the background, must wait for any
recognition until he has at last emerged from his ob-
scurity into the coveted post of master. Not so, how-
ever, in the case of disaster to his ship. No amount
of theory as to the master bearing the whole respon-
sibility will avail to save the unhappy mate from the
most severe punishment that can fall upon a merchant
officer,—suspension or cancelling of his certificate if any
leather-headed court of enquiry choose to bring him
in to blame in any way. I do not mean to speak evil
of dignitaries, God knows, but the proceedings of some
of these courts—abroad especially—are sufficient to
make angels weep. We all know the rest of that wise
quotation. In ships of this kind the mate’s lot is sel-
dom a happy one; it may easily be made intolerable
if the master be not kindly disposed toward him, or
so blind to his obvious duties as to neglect or refuse
to give him all the weight of his own authority in the
event of any trouble arising.
I said “in the event of any trouble arising.” Well,
to tell the truth, trouble in a foreign port—especially
where the ship lies alongside a wharf—is the tramp
mate’s'normal environment. Not only has he the en-
tire conduct of the ship’s business on board, as distin-
guished from that which the skipper performs on
shore, but he must see to it that the work goes on.
Each one of his crew will probably be devoting all hisTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 87
energy to the endeavour to do as little as possible and
to getting drunk. The motley crowd that are work-
ing the cargo work only under steady stress of compul-
sion. If receiving cargo the second mate must keep an
eye on the stowage, so that he cannot assist his supe-
rior on deck, and there are the innumerable horde of
touts of one sort and another to keep at bay. Every-
one else will be complaining of the heat or something ;
the mate must bear all such personal inconveniences
without noticing them, and keep the ball rolling stead-
ily as well. And, as if these things were not sufficient,
he must compete with whatever personal abuse or vio-
lence a drunken seaman chooses to offer him, his only
remedy being to report the offender to the master—
when he can get hold of him. Should he defend his
own life, take a deadly weapon and use it, he is guilty of
manslaughter and is sent to herd with criminals for
years.
This is by no means vague generalisation. The par-
ticular instance that excites my whole-hearted indig-
nation is the case of the mate of the Lanarkshire.
Threatened all day by a negro seaman, who, instead of
working, was oscillating between the ship and a grog-
shop, and filling up the intervals by using the foulest
abuse to his long-suffering officer, against whom he
made the most sanguinary threats, the latter, naturally
alarmed, loaded his revolver and carried it in his
pocket. Then, when in the gloom of the evening he
suddenly realised that the fellow was making for him
with murderous knife uplifted, he fired and killed
him. Surely if ever there was a case of justifiable
homicide this was. Yet, to the lasting injury of our88 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
merchant service and the indelible shame of our laws,
this hapless gentleman was sentenced to two years’
imprisonment, and as I write he is undergoing this
shameful sentence for doing what was his obvious
duty. To have failed to do it would not only have
been to have lost his own life, but to have put a
premium upon murdering others.
In the American mercantile marine such a thing
would be inconceivable. In the first place the man
would never have been allowed to wander backward
and forward at his own sweet will, and, had he made
a threat to murder, there is no doubt whatever that he
would at once have been physically incapacitated from
carrying it out. Had he, without threatening, at-
tempted murder, there is also no doubt that he would
have been instantly shot dead, and the officer acting
in any of the ways hinted at above would have been
held to have done not one jot more than his obvious
duty. As to even bringing him to trial—the idea would
have been scouted as absurd.
Nevertheless it is certain that such a training as the
mate of a tramp steamer gets is admirably calculated
to bring out all a man’s sterling qualities,—patient
persistence in the face of difficulties, ability to deal
with refractory races by diplomacy rather than by
force, orderly marshalling of thought (absolutely ne-
cessary where so many things must be kept going
at one time), and certainly endurance of hardships.
This is no easy way of getting through the world. It
makes a man thankful for small mercies, as, for in-
stance, when, after a harassing time with all the worries
of harbour, the mate heaves a sigh of relief uponTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 89
mounting the bridge to keep watch through four
hours of a dark, dirty night. With keen eyes smart-
ing under the incessant pelting of driving rain and
spray, he peers over the edge of the weather-cloth into
the blackness ahead, heeding not at all the “ bucking
beam-sea roll ” or the thumpity-thump-thump of the
untiring engines below him. Now he can send his
thoughts a-roaming. Such tender musings as of love
and home and rest may be admitted while the almost
invisible blackness of the hull beneath him is thrust
into the hungry expanse of darkness ahead, the only
sure point being beneath the tiny circle of light in the
binnacle. Here we will leave him, steady, resource-
ful, and alert, not without an affectionate remembrance
of all his fellows at their posts on all the seas at this
present, worthy members of the worthiest of all com-
mercial enterprises, the merchant service.CHAPTER XI.
THE MATE’S WORK—IN A SAILING-SHIP. -
There is no small difficulty, I find, in presenting
for landward folk the various gradations of officers in
the merchant service. As far as ability in their pro-
fession is concerned there can be no question at all
that the mate of a sailing-ship is far before the mate
of a steamer, only the mate of a steamer is so much
better paid as a rule that he naturally regards his
status as much higher than that of the mate of a
“wind-jammer.” But here enters another complica-
tion. It is necessary for the steamer-mate to have
been a sailing-ship mate first. It has hardly been
admitted yet by those in authority that any man is
fit for an officer’s position in steam until he has served
in sail. There alone, they consider, does a man develop
the true characteristics of the sailor,—his all-round
ability for dealing with unforeseen contingencies as
they arise, his resourcefulness and skill in dealing with
the wise old sea by the aid of the wind.
This view still obtains among naval authorities,
where it is considered indispensable for the young
sailor to become expert at sail-handling before he goes
to his life work on board of a vessel where sails would
be as great an absurdity as means to her propulsion
as oars. One cannot help feeling that this idea isTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 91
indefensible, since the man-o’-war sailor of to-day is
before anything a trained artillerist, a man of me-
chanics, almost an engineer, in that he is always deal-
ing with engineering appliances of so much complexity
that every hour at his disposal in his preparatory time
is all too brief for the acquirement of such knowledge
as he must have if he would be worth his salt. But
in merchant steamers, except big liners, the case is
different. In very many cases the knowledge of how
to handle sails and rig jury-masts means the safety of
the ship. Therefore it seems only wise and proper to
insist upon the would-be steamship officer learning
thoroughly the art and mystery of sail-handling before
quitting the embryo stage for that of a full-blown
steamship mate.
It is impossible, however, to help feeling that in all
respects except the single one of pay it is a decided
descent in dignity from the poop of a sailing-ship to
the bridge of a steamer. Handling the former effi-
ciently is a fine art, a mystery full of grace and deep
dexterity. Many a man—fairly successful in his call-
ing, too—never learns to get the best out of a sailing-
ship that is in her; never, in short, is anything but a
novice at the higher seamanship. In fact I really
believe that the highest type of sailor—using the word
in its original sense—is born, not made. I have been
shipmates with men who seemed instinctively and by
rules of their own to fathom all the secrets of their
ships, to get just what they wanted without apparent
effort. Put them on board a vessel with a bad name
for unhandiness, apparently possessing some inherent
defect that puzzled and exasperated beyond measure92 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
every man who had hitherto essayed to work her.
Under the delicate instinctive handling of these
born sailors her ingrained clumsiness disappeared, she
became docile and handy, and presently the gratified
officer would remark nonchalantly : “ I don’t see any-
thing wrong with her.” Men like these seem able to
overcome such radical faults as the misplacing of
masts, bad trim (that is to say, a vessel being, through
careless loading, too much tilted by the head or
the stern), or awkwardness of build, producing bad
steering, etc. Seldom can they impart these gifts to
others, because they are not exercised by rule but
by instinct. In precisely the same way you shall get
a man who is a good sailor in all respects but one,—
he can’t steer,—and another who is good for nothing
else. In some mysterious way an ideal steersman (of
a sailing-ship) holds communication with a vessel her-
self; little subtle touches are conveyed to him through
the wheel-spokes, so that he knows in the blackest
night, with even the binnacle (or compass-box) in
darkness, exactly what she requires of him.
Now the mate of a sailing-ship is placed in the
most favourable position imaginable for cultivating
such a science as ship-handling undoubtedly is. Un-
like his compeer of a steamship, his first care is of his
vessel’s propelling machinery. That towering fabric
of sails and cordage which appears to a landsman’s
eye such a mass of intricate entanglement requires his
unceasing attention. His sight should be, and usually
is, as keen as a hawk’s, able to note, even from the deck,
anything that goes wrong. He must nurse his ship
tenderly, especially aloft, bearing in mind before allTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 93
things the homely adage of the stitch in time. No
loose ends, frayed seizings, or chafed running gear (as
the ropes are called which are hauled upon, in distinc-
tion from those which are tightened and remain station-
ary) must be neglected, since such neglect may be fatal
and in any case must be expensive. Of course in large
ships, according to the universal rule, his labours are
somewhat lightened, since he will have a boatswain
whose chief duty is to keep things in order under the
mate’s supervision, and who must keep careful watch
over things aloft and report to his superior. But
where no boatswain is carried the mate must see to
things himself.
The practice varies slightly in different ships ac-
cording to the idiosyncrasy of the master, but per-
haps the ideal relation between master and mate is
where the master, in consultation with the mate,
keeps in touch with everything that is going on, never
interfering in public with the everyday work of the
ship. To use a homely simile, the master should be
like the lady of the house and the mate the house-
keeper. I think this will appeal to ladies, who know
that while nothing is more beneficial in a great house-
hold than the knowledge by all that the mistress
knows everything that is going on, so nothing is more
fatal to the efficient working of such a household than
the incessant fussy interference of the mistress with
individual servants behind the housekeeper’s back.
The self-respecting and competent housekeeper would
leave, of course, but the mate cannot. He must en-
dure as best he can.
Naturally this theory of non-interference presup-94 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
poses that the mate is up to his work. Where he is
not it becomes essential to every one’s well-being
that the master should take the direction of things
out of his incompetent hands. But no one would be
more ready than masters themselves to admit that
such drastic measures are rarely necessary. The in-
competent mate rarely reaches the position, or, reach-
ing it by favouring accident, long retains it.
First, then, the mate of a sailing-ship must keep his
charge in order aloft; next he must see that every
working hour of every day is fully occupied. There
is no more certain proof of something being wrong
with the mate than the sight of men standing about
waiting for a job. The men are quickest at noticing
this. Not that they love to be kept at work, but it is
so generally accepted as an axiom that there is al-
ways work to be done on board ship that they pounce
upon any unusual lapse of the kind on the part of a
mate as proof that they have a duffer to deal with.
He must see that she is kept clean, for cleanliness at
sea is as indispensable as is order and regularity. Even
here it will sometimes be found that although the men
are kept pottering around continually the ship never
looks smart, owing to a lack of method on the mate’s
part. I have been in a ship twenty years old that
looked as if she were on her first voyage, not a rope-
yarn out of place, not a streak of rust on the bulwarks,
no unsightly stains on masts and yards, or dirty cor-
ners. And I have sailed in another on her second
voyage that looked as if she had been lying up in
dock with only a doddering old shipkeeper in charge
of her for months ; weather-worn, dilapidated, and mis-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 95
erable, and everybody on board discontented, because
such a ship works hard. Whenever a ship is carefully
looked after you may be sure that the ropes run
cheerily through the blocks with a merry rattle, and
the great sails go up or the massy yards swing to and
fro easily. But in a neglected ship those blocks will
be found with their pins rusted in their sheaves (the
wooden wheels upon which the ropes travel), moving
reluctantly, so that it is often the work of one man to
pull a loose rope through them. And that means a
great deal of hard swearing upon the part of the men,
who are thus laden far beyond what there is any ne-
cessity for.
So far from this part of a mate’s duties being irk-
some or wearying, it will usually be found that it is
the most joyous part of an active seaman’s, career.
Given a well-found ship, so that it is possible to do
justice to her up-keep; two or three men among the
crew who can “ sailorise ” (that is, work with rope and
wire as required); and a master who will let them do
their work without public interference,—a mate may
be, and often is, as happy as any man ought to be in
this world. Consider how many delights he has.
A big sailing-ship to a man like that is just a hobby on
a large scale, a beautiful thing for whose welfare he
has the most solicitous regard. An “ Irish pendant ”
(a ragged end of yarn fluttering aloft) makes him
feel as badly as would the sight of one of his children
walking in the park with torn stockings and shoes
down at heel make a gentleman ashore. An accident
such as the blowing away of a sail or the snapping of a
spar gives him no such pang, because he has a stern96 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
joy in putting forth his skill and proving in how short
a time he can restore his pride to her trim appearance
again.
I have a very vivid recollection of an old mate with
whom I sailed when I was a boy, who was an almost
perfect type of the man I mean. I have no idea how
long he had been in the ship, but I know that he
struck me as being a perfectly contented man, to whom
his work itself—not the result of it—was the pas-
sion of his life. We were bound from London to the
West Indies and enjoyed the usual fine weather after
entering the tropics,—so fine that as far as handling
went the old barky might safely be left to herself,
except for steering. One morning at eight bells
(8 A. M.) the mate appeared on deck with a radiant
face. The forthcoming watch, as they slouched one
by one into the sunshine from their darksome cavern,
tightening their belts or giving a final touch to their
simple toilet, muttered one to the other: “ Looks as
if he’d got something extry-special on hand this mor-
nin’. More nigger-driving, ” etc. But it was only the
orthodox growl. They did not look displeased. The
next minute the mate was amongst them, his orders
flying like hail, and in half an hour the look of the ves-
sel was entirely changed. He had persuaded the
master to allow him to shorten all the standing rigging,
—which was of rope, not wire, as is universally the
case now. For such a crew it was a tremendous task ;
but it was pure sailorising, such as a man could take
an interest in ; and the younger members of the crew
would have an opportunity of actually seeing done
what they had hitherto only heard talked about,—suchTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 97
operations as turning in deadeyes, rebolstering lower
rigging, etc. All hands took matters so well—being
really infected by the mate’s amazing energy—that
they forgot to growl at being kept on deck in their
watch below in the afternoon.
But the joy of the mate was something to wonder
at. He was untiring. Clad only in a blue shirt, trou-
sers, slippers, and a mangy old cap, he was ubiquitous,
teaching, toiling, superintending, riding his hobby at
full gallop. And when at last the day’s work was
ended and we boys were putting away tar and grease-
pots, gathering shakings, and sweeping decks, he sat
perched upon a hencoop on the weather side of the
poop, smoking in perfect peace, beaming benignantly
upon all his surroundings with the air of a man who
was at the summit of earthly desires. Nor did his brow
become clouded over again until we reached port and
the worry of tallying out the cargo devolved upon him.
The second important duty that devolves upon the
mate of a sailing-ship is that of navigating the ship
independently of the master, so that they may mutu-
ally check each other. There may possibly be some
of my fellow seamen who dissent from this, some
masters who feel that it touches their dignity to be
found out in an error by the mate, but I do not think
any argument is needed to prove that they are entirely
in the wrong. I have known skippers who would not
allow the mate to assist in the navigating of the ship
at all so far as nautical astronomy went. Such a master
could not prevent the mate from keeping the dead
reckoning, but the latter was dependent upon the
master entirely for the ship’s position by celestial98 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
observation for entry in the log. This was utterly
wrong and foolish, as well as illegal, but when a man
is so much a monarch he is apt to act so some-
times. In a well-conducted ship the skipper and the
mate assist each other with all observations where
assistance is necessary, but they work up the results
entirely apart and compare them. If any error arises
it is thus almost certain to be discovered, and no prop-
erly-minded skipper should feel any umbrage at being
bowled out in a blunder by his mate, as will almost
certainly happen now and then. When all the obser-
vations are worked up to noon, and the dead reckoning
completed, the mate enters up all the details demanded
by law in his log-book, that veracious record of day-to-
day proceedings which it is the mate’s duty to keep
recorded each day. There are few better tests of a
mate’s quality than the appearance of his log-book.
Some men, while they write neatly and keep the book
clean, will give for all remarks, wherever it is possible :
“ As yesterday. Wind steady, weather fine. So ends
this twenty-four hours.” They fill up just as few of the
ruled spaces as they dare, put down the rate per hour
by guess-work, and altogether ignore the purpose for
which a log-book is ordered to be kept. Others will
neglect the book’s appearance, too, until it is hardly
fit to be seen, while as for information it may truth-
fully be said that what little is given would have better
been suppressed. But I have seen log-books that
were invaluable, giving a most interesting account of
the voyage in plain and simple language, while the
appearance of every page was perfect.CHAPTER XII.
THE MATE OF A SAILING-SHIP—continued.
Finding that this log-book business takes me far-
ther than I anticipated, I judged it best to break
off the last chapter somewhat abruptly, since the
average reader is not partial to long chapters and I
have rigidly limited mine to five pages of manu-
script.
A log-book is popularly supposed to be (and cer-
tainly should be) an absolutely truthful record of day-
to-day happenings of the ship’s progress and of the
weather conditions, and while there is no room for
literary ability there is no doubt that ideal log-book
keeping is a fine art. In the small space at disposal
to state succinctly what has occurred, rigidly exclud-
ing the irrelevant, but carefully noting everything that
is of importance for owners, underwriters, or lawyers
to know,—this is an accomplishment by no means
general and one that might be more carefully culti-
vated than it is. For it is only stating the baldest fact
to declare that no day passes at sea wherein there is
nothing worthy of record. The loss to literature and
science through the lamentable habit of scamping log-
book remarks has been incalculable, while the loss to
the individuals themselves is equally incapable of as-
sessment. Remembering how splendid a training it is
for any one to record, as he roams about the world, allioo THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
that he possibly can that he sees of interest, one must
be filled with regret that this practice is so seldom
carried on. If it were, the mate’s log-book would be
a mine wherein might be found much fine gold—there
is no room for dross. And the habit, growing by
what it fed upon, would soon compel an ardent ob-
server to keep a private log-book where he could enter
those things for which the ship’s log-book afforded no
room, and the result would be educational and refin-
ing in the highest degree.
I have seen log-books like this. One I remember
even now with the keenest delight, kept by the third
mate of a large ship in which I made a voyage before
the mast from London to China and back. This
gentleman, besides writing a very neat hand, was an
artist, and wherever it was possible he decorated his
book with little sketches. Landscapes especially at-
tracted him, of course, but passing ships, birds, por-
poises, fish, deck scenes, fronds of fucus or gulf-weed
were all utilised and the result was a book beyond
price. As he did a little everyday there was no sense
of labour attached to it, yet the finished work gave
the impression of a stupendous amount of work hav-
ing been spent upon the result. I do not know what
became of that young man, but I am prepared to hear
that if he lived he rose to the top of his profession in
a very short time. For, as might have been expected,
he was no less keen about his duties than he was in
his observations and in his efforts to record them.
He loved the sea and all that belonged to it, and in
return for that love the sea was to him an untiring
teacher as well as a faithful friend.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE, ioi
Another gentleman I know always carried a camera
with him and ornamented his log-book with well-de-
veloped snap-shot photographs, in this way interpret-
ing his keen remarks upon things in a wonderful way,
although his book lacked the artistic grace and finish
of the other. Perhaps it may be said that, looking at
this matter from a literary point of view as well as
from that of a sailor who has forsaken the sea, I am
laying too much stress upon it, and that after all it is
the sailor-man that is wanted in a mate and not a
bookworm. Such a way of putting the matter is, I
maintain, manifestly unfair. I admit that a man may
be super-excellent in all that pertains to the working
of his ship and yet be unable to keep a log as it should
be kept, but on the other hand I am sure that it will
be seldom found that a mate who keeps a good log is
a bad sailor-man. The efficient officer will not be less
but more efficient if to his capacity for work he
brings the seeing eye and the imaginative brain. And
like all other mental or physical faculties, this faculty
of observation will improve continually by being ex-
ercised, and add to the stature of the inner man, mak-
ing him more complete. Besides, how immensely it
will add to his enjoyment of life. His ideas will be
enlarged, his capacity for enjoyment will widen, and in-
stead of being, as so many otherwise good seamen are,
discontented with his lot and looking forward anx-
iously to the time when he shall look his last upon the
solemn wideness of the sea, he will find his days all too
short for the full appreciation of the pleasures that will
crowd into them.
There is of course another side to the question, andio2 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
it applies almost exclusively to the fine seamen that
are reared in America and the British North American
colonies. Strangely enough these splendid men do not
profit as they might be expected to do by the facili-
ties for education provided in their go-ahead country.
It would seem as if they thought that it was necessary
fora man of action to coarsen himself; to become, I
say it without any intention of giving offence, more or
less of a ruffian. The quiet, firm authority which
marks the native-born gentleman does not appeal to
them. The ideal Yankee or “Blue-Nose” mate is a
splendid seaman with a voice of brass and a fist of
iron. When work is afoot he may be heard all over
the ship, and it is impossible to conceive of him being
a silent, reserved, and thoughtful man. In the prac-
tice of seamanship this plan seems to work well. I
shall never forget, while lying in Hong Kong harbour,
a fine American ship, the Colorado, coming in one
evening. We had done work for the day and were
smoking the after-supper pipe on the forecastle head.
Therefore we were keenly observant of the doings of
the new-comer, and with that minute admiration of
smartness possessed by all seamen, even the laziest,
we watched her. She came grandly up to her moor-
ings close to us, amidst a very hurricane of roaring
orders, and presently was securely moored. Then in-
stead of furling sails and coiling up ropes, as would
have been the case with an English ship, the crew be-
gan to strip the yards of the sails and stop up the
running-gear. The mate was ubiquitous. His tre-
mendous tones reverberated over the quiet harbour in-
cessantly, weighted by the weird profanity affected byTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 103
American seamen. The men flew from spar to spar,
sails descended magically, were seized, stopped up, and
stowed away immediately. Before it was quite dark
the ship was in as complete harbour trim as if she had
been anchored a week, and even the few sea-marks
upon her outside had been carefully removed. Then,
and not till then, were the hard-driven crew permitted
to seek the forecastle and rest from their labours. And
although every one of our crew was loud in con-
demnation of the “infernal nigger-drivin’,’’ as they
called it, they did not withhold their admiration of the
consummate smartness of the whole business, and
added in chorus : “Yes, but y’ sh’d see th’ grub them
fellows hev got ter go below ter. When a man gits
’nough t’ eat 'ee don’ mind workin’.” It is conceivable
that the splendid officer who thus made things fly
could hardly write his own name, since it is the good
sailor-man an American skipper looks for, not a gentle-
man. More than that, I’m afraid the more “ bucko ”
he is the better from the skipper’s point of view. To
be quiet and reserved is decidedly against him. I was
once in an American ship where the skipper was old—
too old to go to sea really, although he had no doubt
been a smart man in his day. He shipped a mate in
London who was an Englishman and had commanded
some first-rate English ships. As far as I can remem-
ber he was a good seaman, although a little rusty
from having been long in command. But he certainly
was a gentleman, and he had not been on board a
week before the “old man ” hated him with an inten-
sity of fervour that was almost comical to see, simply
because he could not roar, neither could he kick. Iio4 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
heard the “ old man ” say to him one day ; “ See here,
Mr. Small, I hain’t no use fer a man as mate of my
ship that creeps aroun’ ’s if he wuz dum 'n paralytic.
For God’s sake try an’ hustle them squarheds some, ’r
we shain’t git t’ Melbun this fall.” Yet the ship was
well handled,—no thanks, I am bound to say, to the
mate’s quietness, but to the traditions of the American
merchant service which have been followed and im-
proved upon by the “ Blue-Nose ” and may be summed
up in the following words of the Yankee mate to his
crew: “ When I say ‘walk,’ I want ye t’ run ; w’en I
say ‘ run ’ I want ye t’ fly.” Expressive also are the
typical words of the mate of the lumber-carrying ship
to his crew: “ Here, knock off work and carry deals.”
To their prayer for a little rest he says in tones of
bitterest scorn : “ Rest !—rest when you’re dead.”
But enough, perhaps, of this ruthless side of smart
men’s characters. Let us return to the mate’s duties
again. He is responsible for the due shipment and
delivery of the cargo. In a vessel where his whole
time may be given up to the duty of tallying (count-
ing) it in, this is all very well, but when, as often hap-
pens, he has many other duties to attend to simulta-
neously, and must therefore trust to others, he often
finds himself in difficulties. I speak feelingly, having
once loaded Government stores in London for Zanzi-
bar, and, being unable to watch both hatches at once,
I was obliged to delegate the tallying forward to
some one else. When I came to sign the bill of lad-
ing I found a serious discrepancy. My assistant re-
ported having taken in six dozen ash oars, but I
found that the bill of lading specified eight dozen.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 105
Now these oars had all been stowed away as they
were shipped, so that to get at them again meant much
work. The officials stuck to their bill of course, and I
wasn’t sure. So I signed the bill “ in dispute ” and
bore about with me, all the passage out, the dread of
being called upon to pay for two dozen oars at about
eight shillings apiece, or about two months’ wages.
As soon as I arrived at Zanzibar I went to the ship’s
steward of H.M.S. London, to whom the goods were
consigned, and asked him to tell me how many oars he
wanted from me. He replied “ Six dozen,” and I was
happy. Yet those bills of lading had been signed and
countersigned at Deptford by at least six different
officials, each of whom had left it to “ the other fellow.”
Yes, the care of cargo, often of vast value, is doubt-
less one of the most responsible of all the duties of a
mate. At the same time it is one which he performs
with wonderful accuracy and satisfaction to all con-
cerned on the whole, especially when it is considered
under what varied conditions the work must be done:
in open roadsteads, on storm-beaten shores, in foreign
harbours, pestered by all the motley crew who in
mysterious ways make a living out of ships and must
of necessity come to the mate first; in ports where,
in addition to keeping an overseeing eye upon the
never-ceasing work of the ship, he is worried by his
crew continually dodging ashore, getting drunk, and
returning abusive. And the lower down the scale of
ships his position is, the harder his work must neces-
sarily be, since he can get less help while his responsi-
bility remains the same.
All the ship’s stores are also under his charge, and itio6 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
is his duty to so husband them that they shall last the
voyage, yet see that their expenditure is conducted
on such lines as to produce the best effects. And if
he succeeds in this onerous duty he may have the su-
preme satisfaction of hearing the ship’s-husband say,
when he comes on board upon the ship’s arrival
home : “ Good day, Mr. Brown, your ship looks very
well,” which naturally makes him feel that his labour
has not been all in vain, especially if, as has been my
own experience, he himself has contributed not only
mind but muscle to the desired result.
He has many temptations. Interested touts will
come aboard, veiling their real intentions under a mask
of bonhomie, and invite him to dissipations ashore; will
offer him money out of pure affection for him, of
course, but with a suggestion that he shall hold their
axes to the grindstone. And if he be strictly honest
he will often find that his honesty must not only be its
own reward, but in many cases that it will be a serious
loss to him.
I have never been able to get over an experience I
had in Rotterdam. I came home mate of a barque
from Mexico with a cargo of mahogany. Unfortun-
ately I had joined the ship in Barbadoes, finding that
the skipper and the bo’sun (we carried no second
mate) were on exceedingly intimate terms. Anxious
to please and looking forward to passing for master I
said nothing about this queer state of things, not even
when the skipper and bo’sun went off day after day
shooting, leaving me to get the cargo in, keep things
going generally, and between whiles hunt along the
beaches for derelict logs, saw them up, and bring theTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 107
pieces on board for broken stowage. Owing to my
placable disposition, and partly, I suppose, to my
cowardly fears of a “row,” there was peace on board
throughout the voyage. We duly arrived in Rotter-
dam and were boarded by a gang of touts after
“shakings,” tailors’ orders, etc. One Jewish gentle-
man was specially attentive to me, knowing that we
carried an enormous number of pieces of mahogany
which were the perquisites of the officers. He wanted
to buy them, and while he did not wish to bias me in
any way he was anxious to give me a five-pound note
as a proof of his regard. I refused it, from what I now
feel to have been a mistaken sense of duty. The
cargo was discharged, my importunate Jewish friend
bought the broken stowage at his own price, and then
came to me exultant, saying: “You vas fery foolish
mans. If you haf dake my vife pounts you vas do
nodings wrong. Now / haf my vife pounts unt you
haf nodings.” He spoke more truly than he knew, for
my skipper divided the proceeds with the bo’sun and
gave me “ nodings,” although I had toiled early and
late to procure the wood. I have often since tried
to console myself with the thought that I did the
right thing, but I cannot help an uneasy feeling
stealing over me that after all I was somewhat of a
fool.
Upon another occasion, when mate of a brig that
had been fitted with wire rigging in Santos, Brazil,
shortly before I joined her, I was much pestered in
St. John, N. B., by junkmen coming on board wishing
to buy the old rope rigging. It was a mystery to me
how they got to know of its presence there, but theyio8 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
certainly came swarming around like sea-birds to a
dead whale. One man was especially persistent, and at
last, in a sort of desperation, said : “ Look-a-heah, Mr.
Mate, I’ll give a hundred dollars for that junk, an ef
ye c’n get the skipper to take that I’ll give you
another thutty fur y’rself.” I refused with some
roughness and ordered the fellow ashore. My feel-
ings may be imagined when the next day my gentle-
man appeared triumphantly flourishing an order from
the skipper to let him have the rigging, which he had
purchased for seventy-five dollars! Knowing my
commander’s unquenchable thirst, he had laid his plans
accordingly, and, after a carouse at the groggery where
the skipper was putting up, had induced him to sell
the stuff for what was certainly no more than half its
value. And even that poor yield never reached the
owners’ pocket, nor any part thereof.
But the great temptation is drink. It assails the
mate in every harbour, and by not yielding to it,
while he is taking the only really safe course, he cuts
himself off effectually from any society at all. Some
fortunate mates find friends in port who can and do
invite them to spend their scanty leisure in the midst
of pleasant family life ashore. But they are few.
The majority of mates must for a season learn to
rely upon themselves for society, to be happy al-
though alone, and to find companionship in books
and self-culture. It will be remembered that I am
now speaking of sailing-ships. In steamers the case
is very different. The mate can associate with the
engineers, and does do so, in cargo ships ; in passengerTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 109
vessels he gets rather more company than he wants or
is good for him.
And now I must part company with the mate, re-
luctantly and with many a backward glance over the
long line of fine fellows under whom it has been my
privilege to serve. Of all the different positions on
board ship I know of none that is so favourable to the
formation of fine characters, none that a man can
hold with greater dignity and benefit to himself. He
has a scope for his energies that is practically denied
to the master, and where he has the good fortune to
serve under a man who has not forgotten the days
when he himself was mate, and treats his immediate
coadjutor as his mate, there is no reason why he should
not be perfectly happy. I know that it was the
happiest time of my own sea life.CHAPTER XIII.
THE SECOND MATE-—IN STEAM.
Upon approaching this portion of my subject I am
somewhat alarmed at the prospect before me. For in
all that I set down in this book I strive to be per-
fectly truthful, not only according to the light of my
own experience but in compiling the traditions of the
service as they have become known to me. In doing
this I am quite well aware that many whose opinions
I value will be offended—it is but natural that they
should be. We often invite criticism from our friends
and really think that we desire to be told the truth
about ourselves, and so long as the truth is pleasant
we enjoy hearing it so much ; but when our weaknesses
come up for review, however gently, we seldom
succeed in keeping our tempers, even though we know
full well we should be grateful. In what has gone
before I hope I have not trodden too heavily upon
any of my friends’ pet corns, but in what is now to
come I fear that some heartburnings will be unavoid-
ably produced, because the second mate has to pass
through that most unpleasant time, common to nearly
all professions, when those above him feel it somehow
to be their duty to snub, annoy, and discourage him
with a view perhaps to stiffening his moral fibre. Yet
the impression produced is usually that of a time ofTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE, m
misery such as we would not go through again for a
great deal.
But here again there is a great range of status. Be-
tween the second mate of a large passenger steamer,
who is usually a man of large experience, holding a
master’s certificate and having occupied many superior
positions before, and the second mate of a small sailing-
ship making his first appearance on the quarter-deck
in charge, is all the difference imaginable. The one is
a most important officer, usually the navigating officer
of the ship and principal watch-keeper. His pay is
equal to that of many a master of a splendid sailing-
ship, and his superiors would no more dream of insulting
or bullying him than they would think of flouting
the chief engineer. They are perfectly well aware of
the fact that before he reached such a post as that he
must have proved himself a competent man. The
poor fellow, however, who for the first time mounts
the quarter-deck, the ink scarcely dry upon his certifi-
cate, may, and very probably will, have reason before
long to wish that he had been content to remain in the
obscurity of the forecastle. According to the bent of
mind possessed by his commander and, in a less degree,
the mate of his ship, so will he be. In some cases it
will turn out that no amount of kindness and help
given by his superiors is of any avail. The neophyte is
no good. In some mysterious manner he has managed
to satisfy the examiners at an outport where rules are
not so rigidly maintained as they are, say, in Liverpool
or London. So he has a certificate, but he is a dunder-
head without resources, untrustworthy, not able even
to keep awake in his watch on deck, and ignorant of112 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
the first principles of his calling. Much may be ex-
cused in a skipper who finds that he dare not trust his
second mate in charge of the watch except in a dead
calm, who, coming on deck to have a glance around,
will discover that his junior officer, instead of being
acutely anxious to justify his elevation to command, is
lolling on a hencoop asleep, while the vessel, with
yards untrimmed, is wasting the wind, and the man at
the wheel is making mental notes for future reference.
Under such exasperating conditions—especially if
the master has had no voice in the selection of this
young officer, but has been compelled to receive him be-
cause he was sent on board by the owners—it is hardly
to be wondered at if, his indignation getting the better
of him, his remarks are calculated to make the offender
very unhappy. Such an occurrence, however, is, for the
reason I have already given, impossible in a fine pas-
senger steamer. So carefully are the officers chosen,
so rigidly is their previous experience insisted upon,
that only those who have proved their trustworthiness
are allowed upon the bridge at all to take charge of
the ship. And of them the second mate is the prin-
cipal. It is, I believe, customary in most lines of pas-
senger steamers—I know it is the practice in some—
to keep a list of officers employed, and every accession
to their ranks, no matter how high his previous qualifi-
cations may have been, must go in at the bottom.
And it is no earthly use attempting to get one’s name
upon that list unless one’s record is a good one.
Then, when appointed to a ship, she will be the least
important of the fleet, and the recruit commences his
upward climb, his career carefully watched every stepTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 113
of the way and its incidents recorded. By this means
it is assured, as far as is humanly possible, that by the
time the officer takes command he is the very best man
for the position that care and forethought can procure.
And how wonderfully is this carefulness justified !
Analyse the records of our great passenger lines and
see, despite the dangers of the seas, the high speed,
and absolute necessity for punctuality, the almost in-
visible percentage of disasters occurring. It is a truly
wonderful proof of the value of our merchant officers.
The second mate, then, of a liner, has attained unto
an exalted and honourable position. He may, it is
true, be a long time yet before he gets command, but
he has soared far above the contemptuous estimate in
lower circles of a second mate’s position. Beneath
him are quite an army of juniors. I well remember
the awe I felt when some years ago, fortified by a
letter from a gentleman to whom I had been intro-
duced, I went to the stately offices of the P. & O
Company in Leadenhall Street. I had a first mate’s
certificate, and, being unmarried, felt that I could take
a very subordinate position for the privilege of getting
my foot upon the ladder of such a company. But my
hopes were dashed at the outset by Captain Angove,
the marine superintendent, who said that while my
papers were all they could wish I must have some ex-
perience in steam (which I had not). If I could again
come before them with six months’ experience as an
officer of a steamer, no matter how small, they could
put me on their list and I should enter as—sixth su-
pernumerary mate of such a ship as the Rome or Car-
thage, which were then new! My heart sank within114 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
me. I had never imagined a ship with seven or eight
mates before, and, disregarding the positive evidence
before my eyes of the rapidity (comparative) of pro-
motion as shown by the commanding presence of
several masters who were then in the office, I gave up
the idea, feeling that life was not long enough. Pro-
motion by seniority is a good rule when it is tempered
by careful watchfulness of the candidates, and I do not
believe that it is anywhere more wisely used than it is
in our great steamship lines. When once the candidate
has passed the preliminary stages of his novitiate and
has entered the service of a great line, he has only to
do his duty, and in due time he will, if he lives, cer-
tainly arrive at one of the most coveted positions
known to seamen, that of master of a great steam-
ship.
But this is, perhaps, straying from the second mate
too far. Indeed, there is little more to say of his most
enviable and onerous position in this type of ship.
The very fact of his being navigating officer speaks
for itself, for the navigating of a ship that is flying
over the sea at a speed little less than that of one of
the Metropolitan trains for £ week at a time is of it-
self a great task, and the man to whom it is en-
trusted holds a position the honour and responsibility
of which cannot be lightly esteemed. When, in addi-
tion to this, he is known as the first of that fine band
who take it in turns to handle the vessel by day and
night upon the exalted bridge, and, going into harbour,
has charge of the after part of the deck, while in port
he is responsible for what goes on in the hold with re-
spect to the stowage of the cargo, I am sure it will beTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 115
conceded that his position is one that can only be held
by a good man. His comforts are many, quite com-
pensating him for the hardship of watch-keeping. He
has plenty of society, for besides the number of junior
officers and engineers, association with whom is as free
and unrestricted as it is among the commissioned offi-
cers of a man-o’-war, and for the same reason the
equality of status, though not of rank, there are the pas-
sengers. And although his pay is not large his treat-
ment is so good that many a man ashore with far
higher pay might well envy him. He has the very
best of food, and accommodation as good in fact as he
could obtain at a high price in a first-class hotel. On
all of which accounts if he isn’t happy he'ought to be.
But as with the master and mate, so with the second
mate, when once we step down from the great liners to
the smaller passenger ships. More work, fewer com-
forts, much less pay. No crowd of junior officers or
great crews amply sufficient to do all that there is to
be done. Still, even here, there are many advantages,
and a second mate, remembering that he is working
his way upward, has little to complain of. It is the
same in the biggest cargo steamers, tramps of the
highest type. In fact, some of these are, for the offi-
cers, the most comfortable ships afloat, and the pay
does not differ much from that given in the liners
proper. They are the plums of the profession, and as
such, according to the universal law, seldom attaina-
able by the friendless young man struggling by his
own merits to climb from the forecastle to the quarter-
deck.
When we have left these splendid specimens of ma-116 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
rine architecture and come to the tramp proper, we
begin to wonder how it is that second mates persevere
at all. They have a thankless task. The manning of
these vessels is on such a meagre scale that the second
mate will usually have to work harder than any of
the crew. That, of course, is no evil in itself, but it
becomes an evil because it lessens the respect in which
an officer is held by his watch, generally composed of
men who are never inclined to be over-respectful.
Many and many a large tramp to-day is steadily bor-
ing her way through opposing seas, outward or home-
ward, on a voyage of several thousands of miles, where
the watch on deck will consist of the second mate and
three men. The second mate’s orders are never to
leave the bridge upon any pretext unless relieved by
an officer. Well, besides himself there are only the
master and mate. The first he dare not call to relieve
him ; the second, having his own watch to keep in his
turn, must not be .disturbed. Yet there is much work
to be done. Cleaning ship principally, but also setting
and taking in sail. I know there is a prevalent idea
ashore, very naturally, that steamships never carry any
sails unless they break down. But that is quite
wrong. The few sails that a tramp steamer carries are
set whenever the wind is favourable or it is imagined
that they will help in the slightest degree. And who
is to set them ? One man is at the wheel, for no one
has yet been clever enough to invent a ship that will
steer herself. One man should be on the lookout night
and day, but where is the tramp steamer that can
afford such extravagance as that ? At night he will be
at his post, of course, and the remainder of the watchTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 117
—one man—will be resting. If a sail is to be set or
taken in, what is to be done ? According to the law
the second mate should refuse to quit his post on the
bridge, and, since it is absurd to suppose that one man
could accomplish such a task as setting a sail, he would
leave it unset. Such independent behaviour would,
however, certainly result in his services being dis-
pensed with at the earliest possible moment. So the
practice is for the second mate to come off the bridge,
and the man to be called off the lookout ; and the trio,
having left the ship plunging blindly along over the
gloomy sea, at dire peril to herself and any other ves-
sel that may be near, do their best to accomplish their
task in as short a time as is possible.
In the day no pretence of a lookout is kept from
the forecastle, and during the second mate’s watch
the bridge is usually vacant also, unless the master
choose to remain up there while the second mate,
with his two grubby assistants, scrubs and polishes
about the deck like any overworked housemaid. The-
oretically, of course, this menial occupation is no part
of his duty. Moreover, in the event of any accident
occurring, he is certain to be severely censured, if not
deprived of his certificate, for being off the bridge
during his watch on deck. And it will not avail him
in the least to declare that it would be impossible for
him to keep the bridge and do what was expected of
him as well. As before stated, should he refuse to do
work about the deck with the men, and insist upon
obeying the law, he would certainly lose his berth at the
end of the voyage. Therefore in practice he trusts
to luck and does the only thing open to him if heI IS THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
would keep his berth; that is, risks the lives of all
hands and the safety of the ship continually. It is said
of the second mate that he doesn’t get his hands out of
the tar-bucket by becoming a second mate. That is
only partially true, as I have shown, but it is abso-
lutely true to say that no tramp second mate can hope
to keep his hands out of the paint-pot or the soogee-
moogee bucket or off the coal-shovel. He may be
called Mr. Brown, second officer of the S. S. Albacore,
but he is nothing else than a maid of all work on a
trifle more than an able seaman’s wages.
In harbour he has the holds to look after. Here,
perhaps, he is slightly better off than his harassed su-
perior on deck whose distractions I have endeavoured
to sketch briefly in preceding chapters, because he
has only one thing to attend to. But he also has often
“ a gaudy time,” as the Americans say, with native
stevedores, whose one aim in life is to do nothing, or,
failing that, to do as little as possible wrongly. And
he, knowing how essential it is for the safety of the ship
that her cargo shall be properly stowed, has many
anxieties, unless he quite neglects his duty and dozes
peacefully, trusting to luck that things will somehow
come all right.CHAPTER XIV.
THE SECOND MATE—FIRST STEPS.
Ever since I began to write upon this subject I
have been sorely tempted to try and explain to shore
readers what it is that the Board of Trade requires of
a man who presents himself before them as a candi-
date for a second mate’s certificate. I have hitherto
been deterred by the fear of being too technical, and
yet I cannot help feeling that I ought to try. That
feeling has grown so strong that I can no longer help
making the attempt, knowing that every reader has
his remedy if he finds that the subject bores him—he
can skip the matter altogether. This seems to be the
proper place to make the explanation if it is to be
made, since it is the first certificate that a merchant
seaman is called upon to take; the threshold, as it were,
of his career as an officer.
May I without suspicion of egotism take a specific
case, the one best known to me, my own. I had been at
sea more than double the required time (four years) be-
fore I made any serious attempt to prepare for the ex-
amination. When I began my arithmetic was very
shaky, and of mathematics I was entirely innocent. My
first step was to procure a handbook to the examina-
tions wherein all the problems were carefully worked
out step by step. A Norie’s “ Epitome of Navigation,”i2o THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
which contains all the necessary tables, and a blank
book, comprised my educational outfit. I was at the
time before the mast in a comfortable iron barque sail-
ing from New Zealand to Oregon and thence home.
We were a happy crew, young and lively, and the fore-
castle was, to put it mildly, not an ideal study. But
the racket going on around me while I was wrestling
with the unfamiliar mental exercises did me good
in one direction—it helped me to concentrate my
thoughts. I began at the very beginning with decimal
arithmetic and worked at that until it led me naturally
to the use of logarithms. Then I began to get inter-
ested and the work was really a pleasure. Whenever
I came to a dead wall I went and asked the mate for
an explanation, and he, an amiable little Jerseyman,
always did his best to enlighten me. My progress
was slow, but fairly satisfactory, and when I shipped
for my next voyage before the mast to China I felt
fairly certain that on my return I should be able to
face the examiners without any dread of the result.
At that time the progamme on the navigation side
was as follows for second mate :	Multiplication by
logarithms, division by logarithms, the day’s work.
This latter was really a formidable task to me from
its length and complication, and it must have been so
to many others, since I was told that there were more
failures in it than in any other part of the examina-
tion. The day’s work is the summing up of all the
various courses made and distances run by a ship
from one noon to another, so as to find where she has
arrived after all her zigzagging about. In the ex-
ample set the ship is always supposed to be at start-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 121
ing within sight of some point of land whose position
is known. A bearing of this is taken by compass, and
this, with the distance she is off, is known as the depar-
ture course and distance. The operation is technically
termed “ taking her departure,” one of the very few
purely nautical phrases which have passed into com-
mon use in this country. Then follow six other courses,
all differing fairly widely, such courses as a sailing-
ship might be supposed to make with foul winds of
varying strength. Lastly comes a current stated to be
setting, say, S.S.E., twenty-two miles in the twenty-four
hours. This is called the current course. The varia-
tion of the compass is given, which will be the same for
all the courses; deviation of the compass is given, which
is different for every course ; and leeway is occasion-
ally given, which is another disturbing element in
calculating a true course. So that each of the eight
courses must be carefully calculated and then the
mean of the whole obtained. It is then a simple
problem to find at what point she has arrived, which
must be done within one mile of a correct result.
Then the problem of how to find the ship’s latitude
by a meridian altitude of the sun (very simple), the
time of high water at any given place, a longitude by
chronometer, etc. Definitions of terms used in navi-
gation come next, which must be written out more as
a test of penmanship and spelling than anything else,
an exercise on the sextant showing the candidate’s
ability to adjust as well as use it, and the navigation
examination is over. As I think I said before, it
should present no difficulty to any intelligent school-
boy at the age of fifteen, while many would be able to122 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
do all the problems by trigonometry instead of by the
rule-of-thumb method almost universally employed.
For, as the candidate may do the work in whatever
way he is accustomed to, it follows that the great
majority do it in what to them is the easiest way ; that
is, by the use of such tabular matter as is necessary,
and very easy to learn.
But, once the school work is over, the candidate’s
real trial begins. Now he finds the value of having
attended to his business while at sea, and the futility
of cramming up seamanship from manuals written for
the purpose, for the examiners are all old captains
and the examination is viva voce. In my own case I
followed the usual routine. As soon as I came home I
went to a navigation school, or crammer’s, and paid my
fee, not imagining that I should learn anything, but
expecting to have what I did know marshalled in the
most useful order. I afterwards found that I need not
have spent my money. I can honestly declare that in
my case, at any rate, I got no good whatever. Indeed,
I got a certain amount of harm, which, however, did
no damage beyond making a bit of fun, as it happened.
One of the last things my crammer did was to test
my sight for colour-blindness. It was the first I had
ever heard of such a thing, and when he held up
various squares of coloured glass between me and the
light I named them promptly according to their
shades, having a very keen and acute eye for colour.
To my petrified amazement he suddenly slammed the
glass into the box he was holding and said:	“You
are absolutely colour-blind. Whatever do you mean
by inventing all those names for these glasses?THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 123
There are only two colours here, red and green; the
others are white and black.” I promptly selected a
glaring gamboge glass and asked him what that was.
He said green. A bright purple puzzled him for a
moment, but was then cheerfully pronounced green
also. Secretly I felt sure there was a blunder some-
where, but I had long learned not to argue with those
in authority, so I said resignedly :	“ Well, I suppose
I must take my chance.” But I confess I felt very
uncomfortable. Then he brought out an amazing
diagram of his own invention for teaching the “ rule
of the road.” I had seen the thing before, but care-
fully avoided having anything to do with it. I felt
sure that I knew the rule of the road in actual
practice as well as all the articles by heart and
the late Thomas Gray’s admirable rhymes, and I
didn’t propose being worried by any old diagrams.
However he insisted, so with a sigh I submitted,
and before ten minutes he solemnly assured me that
I was a hopeless ass to think of going before the ex-
aminers at all; that I didn’t know the first little
thing about the rule of the road, which was the
most important part of the examination, and that my
only hope was to go home and sweat it up. As if
any man could learn the rule of the road for prac-
tical use out of a book ashore. I didn’t say any-
thing, but as soon as I got outside I dismissed him
and all his discomforting remarks from my mind en-
tirely, amusing myself in various ways unconnected
with either navigation or seamanship until bed-
time.
In the morning I went straight to the Board of124 THE men of the merchant service.
Trade office, opposite the Mint, and paid my fee, which
is the first step. From thence I was sent into a room
where sat a gentleman with a boxful of slips of coloured
glass before him. He began at once to test my eye-
sight, and a cold shudder ran through me as I realised
that if my sight was wrong my career would be per-
manently stopped. And I could not help reflecting
how shameful a thing it was to allow a man to enter a
profession without applying so radical a test as to his
fitness for it until just as he was about to step up the
ladder of promotion. Yet this wickedness still goes
on. You may send your son to sea, paying large
money for his apprenticeship and doing all that lies in
your power to make him fit for any post, only to find
out when he has reached manhood that he is colour-
blind and of course cannot be allowed to go any
farther. It would be so easy to enforce a rule that no
one should become a sailor at all who was colour-
blind. Well, bearing in mind what my crammer had
told me, I began describing the various shades the
examiner held up before me as red or green according
as I judged them to be nearest to one or the other.
I thought he looked queerly at me, but he said noth-
ing until I called a vivid magenta red. Then he said :
“ I have never met a more perfect case of colour-
blindness than yours.” In despair I implored him to
listen to me a moment while I told him of my lesson.
His face darkened, and turning to the box again he
held up a slip saying : “ Tell me just what you think
this colour is without reference to Mr. So-and-So.” I
did, and all was peace. My sight was pronounced
perfect.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 125
Thence I went into the navigation room feeling
better, and did very well until I came to the third
paper, which, on taking it up to the examiner, was
pronounced wrong. I stood still, not knowing what
to do. He said nothing until I asked: “Have I
failed then, sir?” “If you can’t get it right you
have,” he replied. I needed no second hint, return-
ing joyfully to my table and going over it again until
I had discovered the error. I was now sure of passing
this portion of the examination, because I had care-
fully trained myself to find errors in examples I had
brought to a wrong result, instead of just letting them
go and beginning another one. But I had no more
trouble. The rest of that part of the “ exam.” passed
without a hitch, and I light-heartedly bounded off.
I was immediately recalled, however, and told that I
must go on with the seamanship now. I had been
under the impression that two days were always
allowed. But I was wrong.
Feeling rather sick I was ushered in before a very
handsome old gentleman who was courtesy itself,
Captain John Steele. Noticing that I was nervous he
said a few pleasant words on ordinary topics just to
put me at my ease, and then quietly, without any
parade, asked me how I would begin to stow a cargo
of beer in casks. Question after question followed
without any particular sequence, but in such a manner
that it must have been impossible for a book-instructed
sailor to have answered them. Then he came to the
rule of the road. Handing me one model of a ship
he took two others himself, and, bidding me con-
sider myself at the helm of the ship I was holding, he126 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
began to manipulate his models and ask questions.
At the expiration of ten minutes he was good enough
to say that he had rarely come across any one with a
clearer knowledge of this most important part of an
officer’s education. In thanking him I could not help
telling him of my experience with the schoolmaster’s
diagram, at which he laughed heartily. Thence-
forward the examination proceeded smoothly to its
close, which was considerably before the expiration of
the time allowed for doing the navigation part only.
With my blessed slip of blue paper in my pocket,
which I should exchange for my certificate as soon as
the latter was prepared, I returned to the school to
tell the crammer my good news. As soon as he saw
me come in he asked: “ Have you got through your
navigation?” “Yes,” I replied. “That’s good,”
said he; “now you must just hammer away at the
rule of the road to-night as long as ever you can.
If you do you may squeeze through.” I answered
carelessly that I didn’t think I could do much good
like that. “ Oh, well,” he snapped, “ do as you like, of
course. Only don’t blame me for your failure.” For
all answer I handed him the order for my certificate.
As compared with some examinations I know the
above appears a very trivial business, and yet I am
firmly persuaded that as far as the seamanship goes
nothing could be more searching and complete. The
navigation part is no doubt very easy, even the extra
master’s examination presenting no serious difficulty
to a well-educated lad. That part may be learned—
often is learned—without the learner possessing any
knowledge of the sea at all. But the other, especiallyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 127
for master, with its searching questions into maritime
legal matters, knowledge of the coasts, added to the
intricacies of ship-handling under all circumstances
of peril, is, I should say, perfect for its purpose and
such as no mere theorist can hdpe to pass. It may be
true—I express no opinion—what I have been told
about the laxity of examiners in some outports allow-
ing duffers to slip through, but that is certainly not
the fault of the examination as arranged.
And now I must apologise for having taken up so
much space over this portion of my subject and pro-
ceed to discuss the second mate’s position in sailing-
ships. Before opening a fresh chapter, however, to
which the importance of the matter fairly entitles it, I
should like to say that there is an intermediate cer-
tificate which may be taken, of a higher grade than
second mate, which is for use in small sailing-ships
which are not compelled to carry three certificated
officers. It is called “ only mate ” 2nd is rarely used.
Its possession entitles a man to act as mate of a ship
of a certain size trading to any part of the world.
When an only mate is carried, there will also be a
second mate, but he need not be a certificated man.
In practice he is usually a first-class seaman without
any knowledge of navigation in the arithmetical sense,
although I have been in two vessels as mate where my
coadjutor in each case was a Russian Finn of fine mathe-
matical qualifications, who had never troubled to take
an English certificate nor ever practised his knowledge,
confining himself solely to such practical seamanship
as required doing and also acting as carpenter and sail-
makpr. Both these men were perfect treasures, but128 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
only found scope for their varied abilities in small
ships, where a man must be a Jack of all trades.
Such men may also be found in the “ down East ”
ports of the United States and in British North
America, seamen in the truest and fullest sense of the
word, and I trust it may be long ere the advance of
steam leaves them without occupation.CHAPTER XV.
THE SECOND MATE—OF A SAILING-SHIP.
It may be taken for granted by the uninitiated that
there is almost as much difference to the beginner be-
tween taking charge of a steamer and a sailing-ship as
there is between wheeling a perambulator and driving
a four-in-hand. In fact I do not know but that I should
be justified in saying that there is more. The young
officer of a steamer has only to forget what gigantic
forces he is controlling, be perfect in the rule of the
road, and he may go on serenely. But a new second
mate who has never in his life trimmed a sail to the
changing wind, who has never had to exercise his judg-
ment as to the taking in or making sail, whose know-
ledge in fact is as yet all theory, does not, as a rule,
have a very good time when he is first compelled to put
his theory to practical use. I was very fortunate. I
joined my first ship as second mate in Port Lyttleton,
New Zealand,-—the Bulwark, of 1,300 tons, belonging
to Messrs. Shaw, Savill, & Co. Hermaster was an eld-
erly gentleman named Seator, one of the most lovable
of men and withal a first-rate seaman. He received me
as if I had been a veteran instead of a man coming
straight from the fo’c’s’le. And the mate, who was also
elderly, was kind in a quiet way. I was then barely
twenty-one years of age. My first assumption of re-130 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
sponsibility took place when the ship was lying out in
the bay ready to sail. The mate had unfortunately
had a severe fall which confined him to his berth,
and the master was ashore. At about io P. M. the
wind had increased to a gale, and anxious watching
had assured me that the ship was dragging her anchor.
Therefore I took upon myself to let go a second
anchor. Just as I did so the master arrived and
seemed gratified that I had acted so promptly. We
left the next morning, and I very proudly took the
mate’s usual place on the forecastle while getting
under way. Never once did the master interfere
with me in the conduct of the work, his apparent con-
fidence in me giving me such confidence in myself
that I felt as if I could not make a mistake. And
when night came the good old man, on going below
and leaving me in charge, said: “If you want me,
don’t hesitate to call me at once. But don’t call me
if you can help it, as I am very tired, and besides I
want you to feel free to do your own work.”
Under such cheery and sensible treatment I natur-
ally developed rapidly, as any man not absolutely
worthless would have done. Yet I am sure that had
I met on this, my first venture, with the skipper I
was unfortunate enough to serve under two voyages
after, I should have been completely spoiled at the out-
set. I have, however, alluded to this matter before and
gladly drop a very disagreeable subject.
The first duty of the second mate is to work his watch
under the orders of the mate or the skipper. With
regard to what I may call the secular work of the ship,
repairs to rigging, cleaning, painting, etc., it is eti-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 131
quette for the second mate to receive all his instruc-
tions from the mate. But with regard to the working
of the ship, setting or taking in sail, the second mate,
being in charge of his watch while the mate is below,
must receive any orders that may be given from the
skipper direct. Really, the starboard watch, which is
always presided over by the second mate, is the mas-
ter's watch, which the second mate keeps for him, and
while it would be a decided slight to the mate for the
master to come on deck during his (the mate’s) watch
and begin giving orders over his head, as it were, there
is nothing of the kind involved in the master’s doing
so while the second mate is on watch. It is a usual
practice in sailing-ships when any large evolution is to
be performed, such as tacking or wearing ship (that is,
turning her round in the first case against the wind,
in the second, away from the wind), all hands shorten-
ing sail, getting under way, or coming to an anchor,
for the master to take charge. Then the mate goes
forward, the second mate remains aft, and all gen-
eral orders are issued by the master. I was, however,
second mate of one fine ship where the master merely
issued his order to tack or wear ship, as the case
might be, to the officer of the watch, whether myself
or the mate, and take no further part in the matter
himself. This was very nice indeed for me, for it
gave me practice. Up to that time I had never had an
opportunity of putting a ship about, and although I
knew very well how to do it there is nothing like prac-
tice. And some men are never better than bunglers
at this beautiful evolution.
Whether he is respected by his watch, as an officeri32 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
should be, depends of course upon himself in the first
instance. Sailors are always keen to take advantage
of a second mate, who they regard as “ everybody’s
dog,” and if he have not a masterful air allied to a
thorough knowledge of his duties their behaviour to-
ward him will very soon degenerate into downright
insolence, especially at night when the sails require
trimming. They know as well as he does that it is
essential that he shall have this done immediately it
becomes necessary, and if he hesitates to do it from
any fear of their grumbling, they will never do any-
thing without a rumbling accompaniment of cursing,
and he will soon find himself in hot water with the
skipper for neglecting his most obvious duty. But if,
on the other hand, he be ever so smart and willing and
the skipper be continually finding fault with him be-
fore the men, or taking work out of his hands, he will
need all his patience to save himself from becoming
utterly discouraged. In very few ships will he be al-
lowed to do any navigation. Never once in the whole
course of my experience did I see a second mate
“ taking the sun,” and in consequence, unless he be
careful to practise in his watch below, he will find his
_ navigation soon growing rusty.
In large ships where a boatswain is carried his posi-
tion is peculiar. For the boatswain, being on deck all
day, gets his orders from the mate, and the second
mate has no business to interfere with him unless the
yards want trimming or sail is to be made. And as in
very few large ships is it the practice for the second
mate to stick to the quarter-deck and attend solely to
the handling of the ship by day as well as by night, heTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 133
is often at a loss what to do. He cannot work under
the boatswain ; he cannot work with him, because there
would be a conflict of jurisdiction ; he must find some
little job of his own. Where there is no boatswain
this awkwardness does not arise. Here the second
mate must carry on the work in his watch, and he will
be thought all the more of if he be a good sailor-man.
He will have to work as hard as, generally harder
than, the crew, but that will do him no harm, rather
good. For sailorising is interesting work. Few sail-
ors (who can do it) ever growl at being put to a job of
splicing or kindred work. They feel it a dignity, and
if you want to make a sailor quite happy and con-
tented, the envy of all his shipmates, put him on sail-
making. He will never give any trouble, never shirk
his work, and will seldom have any objection to
working overtime.
So much for the second mate’s duties while at sea.
It will at once be seen that the best place for a second
mate to get a thorough grip of his profession is in a
small sailing-ship, although he will of course only look
upon such a position as a stepping-stone to something
bigger and better as soon as possible.
In harbour his duties are very clearly defined.
Whenever any cargo is being dealt with, his place is
in the hold, unless, indeed, it be such a cargo as coal.
He is held responsible for the careful stowage and
careful discharge of cargo. In the majority of ports
there are professional stevedores who have made the
placing the cargo in ships’ holds their business and
understand it thoroughly. These are always engaged
where they can be got, for obvious reasons, chiefi34 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
among which are the facts that good stowage makes a
ship hold more, and that, especially with certain car-
goes, bad, careless stowage renders a ship unsea-
worthy. But they always require careful watching,
because there are certain fundamental details which
they will neglect in almost all cases unless there be
some one on the watch. Moreover there are many
things in a general cargo, for instance, that are easy to
pilfer, and this necessitates a close watch being kept.
Where no stevedores are to be obtained, the second
mate is expected to be competent to stow the ship.
And he then becomes, if he have thoroughly mastered
the details of the work, quite an important personage,
with nearly all hands under his command. Yet it must
be said that a young second mate suddenly called upon
to stow a ship would be very unfairly handicapped.
His knowledge of the business would almost certainly
be theoretical, and to be suddenly expected to put it
into practice in an extensive manner, with perhaps
twenty men under his orders, would be a severe strain.
It would not be lessened, either, by the consciousness
that most likely several of the men under his command
would have had considerable practice and would be
by no means backward in their criticisms upon the
young officer’s movements.
Herein lies the essential difference between second
mates in English ships and those in American and
Canadian vessels. Here in the majority of cases the
second mate is a youngster, gentlemanly, well-edu-
cated, but unpractised. In handling, neither ships nor
men has he had any extended experience. He is re-
ally still at school, and he will often be made to feel theTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 135
truth of that statement very acutely. But in the Yan-
kee or “ Blue-Nose ” ship the second mate will be gen-
erally found a large man with horny fist and hairy chest,
a voice of thunder and a will of iron. Long and arduous
service at sea has raised him no higher than this, for
he thinks scornfully of “ book-larnin’,” but he is a
sailor of the very best type. As old seamen are wont
to say : “ Every hair of his head’s a rope-yarn an’
every drop of his blood Stockholm tar.” He never
has any trouble with his men, for he will probably be-
gin the voyage by knocking a few of them down on
the first shadowy appearance of insubordination,
which thereafter never dares to show its head. Woe
unto the sleepy man who at the cry of “ Lee fore-brace ”
in the middle watch should heave himself slowly up
from some comfortable corner and grunt loud enough
to be heard “------and------the lee fore-brace an’ the
ship an’ everybody aboard of her.” But such a thing
on board of a “ Yank ” or a “ Blue-Nose ” is unthink-
able. In the first place the unemployed members
of the watch on deck would be well in evidence near
the break of the poop, marching up and down to keep
themselves awake, if, indeed, they were not at work
scraping woodwork bright, and on an order being
given they would spring without other remark than a
repetition of the order cheerfully. No, the second
mate does not suffer from insubordinate men there.
One of my earliest recollections of the prowess of a
second mate was in Bombay on board of that ill-fated
ship, sunk the other day by the ironclad Sanspareil,
the East Lothian. Her second mate, one of the
ordinary mild, callow, just-out-of-hisrapprenticeship136 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
type, had been discharged, and the skipper had
shipped a fresh one ashore who had been for some
time in Nova Scotia ships. He was a splendid speci-
men of a seaman, not too tall, but finely proportioned
and of a very pleasant face. The first morning he
was on board we were washing decks under the boat-
swain’s direction. Mr. Eaton, the new second mate,
was having a look round the ship and strayed for-
ward where two men were passing water out of the
big wash-deck tub. As Mr. Eaton passed, one of
them, carelessly slinging a bucket toward the other,*
dropped it, cutting the deck badly with its edge.
With a glance at the new officer he burst out into
furious cursing at the other man for not catching it,
and wound up with a few remarks about the ship and
all on board, as the custom is in such exercises. Mr.
Eaton turned quietly to him and said:	“ If you
don’t shut that foul head up, I’ll shut it for you.”
The man, a huge New York nondescript, stared
aghast for a moment, and then, deceived by Mr.
Eaton’s pleasant look, strode up to him, swearing hor-
ribly, and threatening to cut his liver out, among
other pleasant things. For all answer the second
mate leapt at him, seizing him by the throat and
waist-band, and next moment he was flying over
the rail into the sea. Turning swiftly, Mr. Eaton
was just in time to catch the other man in mid-rush
at him with a squarely planted blow on the chin which
landed him, a clucking heap, in the scuppers. But by
this time the other men had seen the fray and rushed
forward shouting “ Kill him ” with many lurid ac-
companiments, The boatswain did not stir to inter-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 137
fere, and presently Eaton was the centre of a howling '
gang threatening his life. But he had armed himself
with a “ Norman,” a handy iron bar from the windlass,
and none of them dare face him with that terrible
weapon. The skipper and the mate came rushing for-
ward and, like sensible men, ranged themselves by the
side of the second mate. In two minutes the whole
tone of that ship was altered. It was never again ne-
cessary to resort to violence, for the men were re-
spectful and willing, whereas on the passage out the
"* unhappy second mate was afraid for his very life to
give an order at night for fear of the volley of abuse
to which he was invariably subjected by his watch.
So he neglected or rather put off things which he
should have done until the skipper could stand it no
longer and gave him a severe scolding, and at his
request discharged him in Bombay, a broken-spirited,
almost worthless young man.
I earnestly hope that it will not be supposed from
this that I love bullying or violence, or would advo-
cate it. But where there is no weight of force behind
an order, men will always be found to disobey or
neglect it, and in the British mercantile marine it will
often be found that a promising young officer’s career
is ruined just because he has once allowed a trucu-
lent bully to tell him to go to hell and has not
knocked that man down. Often and often my blood
has boiled, when I have been before the mast, to hear
the language used by my shipmates to the second
mate, who was only doing his duty in giving neces-
sary orders at night. Foremast hands will growl at
this, I know full well, but they know it is true. And138 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
it is a shameful thing that in ships where a man is
simply treated as a dog, knocked down and jumped
upon for half a word or even a wry look, the discipline
should be perfect, the work, far harder than in any
British ship, be smartly and willingly done, while
in our own ships, where such brutality is impossible
and the work is reasonable except in cases of emer-
gency, discipline is almost unknown and officers are
subjected to the foulest abuse by men who thus take
a mean advantage of our kindly laws.
I have dwelt upon this at so much length because
I do believe that it has a most distinct bearing upon
the most important question concerning our mercantile
marine of to-day. I allude to the matter of the em-
ployment of foreign seamen. Foreign seamen, es-
pecially Scandinavians, are not only biddable; they do
not growl and curse at every order given, or seize the
first opportunity to get drunk and neglect their work
in harbour. Occasionally a truculent Norseman will
be found, who will develop all the worst characteris-
tics of our own seamen, usually after a long service in
British ships. And he is then a bad man to deal with.
But insubordination in the absence of any means of
maintaining discipline is a peculiarly British failing.
There are no finer seamen in the world than British
seamen,—whether English, Irish, or Scotch does not
matter,—but they must have discipline. If any proof
of this be needed I have only to point to the person-
nel of the Navy. There are no aliens there. And for
smartness, for the ability to rise to the occasion and
do deeds at which even our enemies stand amazed,
they have no equals. Why ? because no breach ofTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 139
discipline can be made without its being swiftly fol-
lowed by its due punishment. At least that was
the reason. Now, I believe, a race of men-o’-wars’-
men have arisen who are capable of maintaining
discipline among themselves, having so high a pride
in their service that they do not need any disciplin-
ary restraint to keep them what they are—the finest
body of men in the world. A state of things exists
where for the pure joy of service the blue-jacket
yields ready implicit obedience to the youngest
wearer of the Queen’s uniform, even though the obey-
ing one may, and probably will, be so able a seaman
as to be capable of training in all the intricate duties
of a man-o’-war any officer on board. Loyal, earnest,
and fearless, the man-o’-war’s-man of to-day is the fine
flower of the sea, and if only it were possible to raise
up such a body in the merchant service no price
would be too high to pay for the benefits it would
confer upon Great Britain.
I have dwelt upon this subject more fully in this
chapter for the reason that I know there is more of
the spirit of insubordination in the second mate’s
watch than in the mate’s, because I feel sure that if
the second mate were only more thought of and more
loyally supported by masters and owners something
might be done to make our merchant sailors a more
decent lot all round. At least so it appears to me.CHAPTER XVI.
/
THE THIRD MATE.
We have now exhausted, as far as the present work
goes, the three official titles used in the merchant ser-
vice,—that is to say, with regard to the certificates
issued. Master, mate, and second mate are alone
recognised as responsible officers by the Board of
Trade. Yet with the growth of the steamship it has
become inevitable that more officers should be em-
ployed, and so, as I have pointed out before, in some
big ships you may have eight or more officers, of
whom only two have officially recognised titles. Not-
withstanding this, they will all be certificated men,
and some of them, perhaps all, will have passed
through all the grades before beginning at the bottom
of the ladder in the great company whose service has
attracted them. Thus in many cases it will be found
that the third mate of a fine steamship holds a certifi-
cate as “ master extra,” and is as good a seaman and
navigator as can be found anywhere. His duties are
responsible and important, for he keeps a watch, tak-
ing charge of the great ship alone. From what has
preceded this it will be seen that he must be emi-
nently fitted for such a responsible position, and not
only he, but the fourth or fifth mate likewise, with
neither of whom, however, do I propose to deal here.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 141
Their position being, as I have said, unofficial and ab-
normal, and their duties varying with the ship and
her peculiar service, it would be impossible for me to
deal with them extensively. But let no one imagine,
therefore, that they are to be ignored. True, their
pay is small, but their prospects are good. They are
in the direct line of succession to the hierarchy of the
sea, and in due time, failing accident, they will com-
mand one of those splendid leviathans that are the
pride and glory of ocean traffic.
Of these unofficially recognised officers the third
is the doyen. At any moment he may be called up
higher and become one of the great three. And no
one connected with great liners thinks lightly of him.
He holds an honourable post and leads a not at all
unpleasant life, always cheered by the prospect of im-
mediate promotion. He is very seldom called the
third “ mate,” but the third “ officer,” in the endeavour
to add, if possible, a more dignified air to his rather
common-place title. It almost seems a pity that these
great steamship lines do not have a system analogous
to that of the Navy, where, once a lieutenant has
passed his examinations, he is eligible for the highest
posts, his promotion being only a matter of time.
And once he takes his place as a lieutenant he is
on perfect equality, as regards rank, with all the
other lieutenants on board, with the sole exception of
Number 1, the first lieutenant. None is before or
greater than another. So I should think it might be
in a great liner, where all the officers will likely hold
the same certificate. Below the second or navigating
officer they might all rank alike as watch officers or142 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
some such title, and then- pay should be on the same
level as with the Naval lieutenants, where the only
difference is in small increases for special duties.
When we step down from the liner into the tramp
there is a woeful collapse. Of course only the very best
type of tramp and the largest will carry a third mate
at all, and he has no position worth talking about.
From what I have said in the foregoing pages about
the life of a second mate on board a tramp, some idea
will be gathered of what sort of a post a third mate
would hold in such a ship, where one is carried. It is
an even chance that he would not receive the poor
compliment of a handle to his name. Thus it comes
about that he is usually in evil case, without respect
from the crew, and generally looked upon as a “ loblolly
boy ” to the mate or a call-boy to the skipper when
going in or out of harbour, standing by to work the
engine-room telegraph when required. Yet he does
get some practice on the bridge at sea, where the mate
will use him for a relief at times, and, as he gets ex-
perience, allow him to take a watch in the day while
he (the mate) is busy elsewhere.
Nor is his position greatly different in a sailing-ship.
Of course only the largest sailing-ships will pretend to
carry a third mate, who is almost always the senior
apprentice in the last year of his time, or making
another voyage after his time is up, on an able sea-
man’s wages but with quarters aft. It may be stated
at once that he has no settled duties. He is always
attached to the mate’s watch and may be of consider-
able use to that hard-worked officer or a source of
much annoyance to him. Where (and I have per-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 143
sonally known such cases) he is a blockhead, but has
sufficient owne s’ interest to keep him in a post where
he is of no use, he will make the mate, so angry that
he will implore him to do whatever he likes as long as
he doesn’t get in the mate’s way. And he will prob-
ably then devote his energies to killing time, loung-
ing in the boys’ house, yawning, and generally exhib-
iting that sad spectacle, a young man wasting his life
and squandering opportunities that many a friendless
youngster would give all he possessed to obtain. The
men make a butt of him, except in harbour, where, as
he is usually well supplied with money by his fond
parents, they are full of compliments to him in ex-
change for sundry drinks or the price of them. He is
to be seen in all his glory, with a well-fitting uniform
on and his gilt-badged cap stuck right on the back of
his head, dawdling about the bars in Melbourne or
Sydney, or parading the streets with questionable lady
friends, who, when his back is turned, allude to him as
the “ poop ornament.”
Now I would not have it supposed for a moment
that I intend this to be a picture of the average third
mate. By no means. But this particular type of third
mate is very well known to most officers of fine sailing-
ships and as cordially detested. He is bred of careless
skippers and of influential friends and parents who
dote on him and supply him with far too much money.
There is, happily, a far more general type of third
mate who is thoroughly anxious to make himself fit
for the position he hopes presently to occupy. He is
not noticeable for being extra well dressed when at
sea, for he is too fond of having his fist in the tar-pot144 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
or manipulating a marline-spike to admit of his wear-
ing much finery. And in bad weather it is his pride
to be first aloft at shortening sail and if he can only
beat the smartest man forward in getting out to the
weather earing at reefing topsails or a course, he is
delighted beyond measure. Such a young mate, if he
has the master he deserves, will often find, on the
passage home, the mate’s watch handed over to him
entirely at night, the mate remaining on deck all day
and devoting all his energies to getting the ship as
spick and span as possible for going into dock. In
this way he gains just the experience he needs for
taking up his position as second mate when the op-
portunity arises, and he becomes an officer who can
not only tell a man to do a thing, but can show him
how to do it if he doesn’t know.
In a fine ship which I will not name there was a
third mate of the dandy type I have endeavoured to
portray on the preceding page. The master was a
gentleman who tried to have man-o’-war conditions on
board as far as possible, and consequently never inter-
fered with the work of the ship beyond consulting
with the mate. And'the mate, a splendid seaman of the
old school, was so disgusted with the third mate that
he allowed him to loaf away his time just as he chose.
He never reported him to the master for inefficiency,
but just ignored him. Upon the vessel’s arrival in
Adelaide the second mate received an offer to go
mate of another ship, and the master allowed him to
go. Now had Mr. Third Mate been any good he
would of course have stepped into the second mate’s
berth, but, as the mate said : “ He’s about as much fitTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. i4S
to be second mate of this ship as I am to be Prime
Minister of England.” I joined the ship in Adelaide
as second mate, being two years younger than the
third mate. But I was strongly recommended by my
old skipper, whose ship was laid up for sale, and I
obtained the post with ease. This so exasperated the
third mate that he actually dared to sulk in his cabin
and refused to even pretend to work on the passage
home. I cannot tell how it was that he was allowed
to do this, but it was even as I say, until, when we put
into Cape Town to land some passengers, the skipper
discharged him. He went ashore a disgraced man, who
stood no possible chance of getting a ship again as an
officer and probably went to the dogs entirely, all the
money that had been spent upon him entirely wasted.
In many of the large American and “Blue-Nose”
ships a third mate is carried, but he is of a different type
altogether. As these ships do not carry apprentices
they usually breed their officers up from lads who are
proteges of the master or mate. They come on board
young, and while they have an exceedingly good time
they are rigorously trained both in seamanship and
navigation. They are taught that the cardinal virtues
are smartness and cleanliness. So well is this training
pursued that I verily believe no smarter young men
are to be found anywhere, and while they are still
mere boys they are made third mates with full authority
and a handle to their name that no man dare refuse
to give them. They are expected to lead the way
whenever anything of importance is being done aloft,
and are encouraged to lift up their voices with no un-
certain sound in giving orders. What splendid men146 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
they do make to be sure. There are, it is true, many
foreigners in Yankee ships who have by sheer merit
risen to be officers, having first perforce become
citizens of the Great Republic, but for the beau ideal
of a smart sailing-ship officer commend me to the pure
American lad caught young and trained in a big ship.
One I have in my mind’s eye now, who was second
mate of the Pharos, of Boston,—tall and lithe, with a
clean-shaven, boyish face (he was just twenty), close,
black, curling hair, sparkling eyes, and a springy step.
We had a hard-bitten crew, shipped in London, and I
heard one of the hardest of them—an Englishman who
boasted that he had been in gaol over forty times—say,
as he caught sight of the second mate for the first
time : “ What a-----baby. Boys, we’re in for a soft
thing here.” But he was quite mistaken. Ten
minutes afterwards there was a melodious thundering
voice reverberating along the decks : “ Lay aft here
an’ rush this hawser forrard. Lively now.” And the
astonished crowd skipped aft, the gaol-bird at their
head, to find the clean-limbed “ baby ” looking quite
unlikely to bear trifling with. They recognised the
able man at once, and thenceforward there was never
any trouble. I never saw men work harder than his
watch did for him, or speak more highly of a man than
they did of this bright-faced youth who not only
knew his own work thoroughly but knew how to get
the last ounce out of the men under his command.
The only thing that puzzled me about him was the
almost abject reverence he had for the skipper, who
was an old man, but by no means one whom I should
have thought capable of commanding respect. ButTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 147
that grand young second mate always spoke to him
with bated breath, esteeming his lightest word as a
dread law, nor did he ever, even in jest, speak of him
but as one should speak of his sovereign.
The third mate of an American ship is, however,
often a man of mature age who takes the place that
would be taken in an English ship by the boatswain.
He is no mate’s loblolly boy. So far from that being
the case he often is the “ bucko ” of the ship, the
man who may be depended upon to leap, striking with
hands and feet, like an enraged tiger, into the midst of
a mutinous crew. He has often a lurid history and
can show you a network of scars, each one a palpable
reminder of some furious struggle in such lawless
ports as Callao or San Francisco. In fact he is the
fighting man of the ship and as such is treated with
due respect. But he has not seldom the defects of his
qualities, and though he may be depended upon to
drive his men till they drop, working harder than any
of them and cursing them all at the finish for a set of
weaklings, he sometimes gets out of hand himself.
Had it not been for the drink he would long ago have
been master, but he cannot resist its temptations, and
when, in port (never at sea, for American ships are
strictly teetotal), he gets a drop too much, he is far too
apt to start a fight for the pure frolic of the thing, and
his fighting is usually of the nature that ends in man-
slaughter. On the whole I am very glad that we do not
carry this kind of third mate in British ships, although
there have been times when I could have wished for
his aid for an hour. But his habit of kicking or strik-
ing with little or no provocation, his utter disregard148 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
for human life—either his own or anybody else’s—
and his incessant blasphemy, are hardly compensated
for by his tremendous courage, his magnificent sea-
manship, or his power of command. One feels that
he is out of place on board a peaceful merchantman ;
he should command a pirate or a privateer.
With this brief sketch of the third mate we must
leave the “ afterguard,” as the officers who live aft are
called on board ship, and come to the “ idlers ” or
petty officers. It is hard that they should be labelled
“ idlers,”* since they are usually the hardest working
men on board, but Jack only means that they do not
keep a watch at night.CHAPTER XVII.
THE “ BOS’UN.”
It is impossible to help regarding the Boatswain as
a great figure of romance. His title rings on the ear
like the voice of the sea. And although not one per-
son in ten thousand among our crowded populations
could give a definition of his position that would not
be a caricature, there are few—very few—who do not
feel a responsive thrill when the word is mentioned.
But I am compelled to take for granted that the
average man or woman has formed some hazy idea of
what a “ bos’un ” is like. For one thing it is certain
that to speak of a “ gentlemanly bos’un ” would be
considered as absurd as to speak of a “ fair negro.”
He is, of course, to the general, the beau-ideal of a
“ Jack Tar,”—a magnificent monster with a bull’s
voice, burned almost black by the tropical sun, with
eagle eyes forth-looking from a thicket of beard, and
great hairy arms whose innumerable devices of Indian
ink or gunpowder are almost hidden by a hirsute
covering that would shame an ape. Brave as a man
can be, he is terrible in his wrath, yet his heart is
tender as a little child’s and any tale of pity never
fails to empty his pockets. Now it has so often been
my ungrateful task to shatter old beliefs in the untrue
and impossible, that I am quite glad that no neces-
sity is laid upon me for doing so at this present.i5o THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
There are bos’uns to whom the above fancy descrip-
tion would apply precisely, only it would not be com-
plete. Other qualities, not so picturesque perhaps,
but far more useful, would have to be added to finish
the picture, and then you would have a man whose
superior it would be almost impossible to find in the
wide world.
In the Navy, the bos’un, upon rising to the full
height of that position, becomes, for picturesque pur-
poses, completely spoiled. He wears a frock coat, a
“ boiled ” shirt, and carries a sword. He is a warrant
officer at the head of his profession as far as concerns
any man who enters the service as a seaman. No
amount of ability, education, or conspicuous courage
can elevate him another step. But his mates, who
may go barefoot, who wear the characteristic and
eminently suitable rig of the blue-jacket, distinguished
only by devices upon their sleeves and a silver whistle
or pipe,—these are the typical bos'uns of the popular
fancy, the fine flower of the naval seamen.
As with all the rest of the officers, there are differ-
ences, not exactly in status, but in duties, between
bos’uns of the highest class of steamships and the
sailing-ships which are big enough to carry bos’uns
properly so called. But these differences are not
nearly so great as among the certificated officers, for
the bos’un, whatever his ship may be, is essentially
a foreman, a working-man who by reason of his su-
perior qualifications has risen above his fellow workers
and takes the oversight of them. It is his duty, not
to originate work, but to see it carried out. He is no
theorist, but a practical seaman of the best kind. InTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 151
steamers his seamanship is seldom called upon, but
his power of carrying on work is tested to the utmost.
And in case of a sudden emergency, such as the out-
break of fire, a breakdown of the engines, or falling in
with a helpless sister that requires a tow, the bos’un
is of the utmost importance. A good bos’un in a big
steamship is a treasure of great price, although he
does not command very high wages. He it is that
makes all the difference to the mate between a happy
life and one full of those minor worries that whiten
the hair and wrinkle the face.
It cannot need any argument to enforce this fact.
When the mate can call the bos’un to him and give his
orders secure in the knowledge that the work will
proceed without hitch or neglect, he may attend to
his other duties with an easy mind. The bos’un looks
to the mate, and to him alone, for his orders, and
would be indignant at interference by any officer of a
lower grade,—that is, supposing him to be, as usual, a
man fully competent. Where by some accident he
has slipped into the position without ability to com-
mand or knowledge to carry out, he will generally be
glad to curry favour with anybody, not merely with
the junior officers, but with the men under him—which
is fatal.
The bos’un’s position is not affected greatly by a
change from a liner into a big cargo steamer unless it
be in cases where, from mistaken notions of economy,
he is called bos’un and lamp-trimmer. This degrada-
tion of an ancient and honourable position is quite un-
fair to the man who in a moment of folly or being
hard-up accepts such a queerly-associated employment,152 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
For how can a sailor be expected to show due defer-
ence to a man, who, after all, is only “ Lamps ? ” In all
the steamers of the Australasian colonies a lad is
carried as lamp-trimmer, and his duties are confined to
that and to cleaning brass-work, both tasks that are
quite unfit for a man who is a leader and commander
of the crew, as a bos’un is. Small tramps, of course,
do not carry a bos’un. The duties which he should
perform fall upon the hapless officers, as aforesaid.
But if you would see the bos’un in his glory, go on
board of a large sailing-ship. There he has room and
scope for his talents, can show of what metal he is
made. Even the radical changes that have taken
place in the rigging of sailing-ships during the las-t
quarter of a century do not affect him much, except
in so far as undermanning has reduced the number of
men available to carry out his directions. I am old
enough to remember the stately ships of Messrs.
Green, or Wigram, or Devitt and Moore, coming into
Melbourne and Sydney with crews of more than double
what they would now carry if afloat. The bos’un and
his two mates were most prominent figures, while
their hoarse voices and the shrill scream of their pipes
resounded over the adjacent waters as the vessel came
up to her berth. Those grand old vessels are gone
and with them the fine complement of British sea-
men they used to carry, men who were so disciplined
that transference to a man-o’-war would have come as
the easiest and most natural thing in the world.
Yet it must not be supposed that the type of bos’un
they carried is yet extinct. Fortunately no, for he
would be a heavy loss indeed. He has grafted the oldTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 153
on to the new and may be found to-day aboard of the
great sailing-ships that still do a fair share of ocean
traffic, carrying on the work under the changed con-
ditions, even as his forerunners did. One of the
greatest changes made in modern sailing-ships has
been the substitution of wire rope for hemp. First of
all, wire was used for the standing rigging, that is, for
the great stays which support the masts. Then came
the invention of mild steel, and the discovery that
ropes made of mild-steel wire were sufficiently pliable
to be used for a great deal of the running gear,—that
is, ropes that had to run through blocks or pulleys.
Then it was found that instead of having a cumbrous
arrangement of stout ropes called lanyards to “ set up”
(tighten) the standing rigging, stout screws would
answer the purpose equally well. Thus, instead of
needing a large number of men, much complication
of tackles, and many hours’ time to “set up ” the rig-
ging, one man with a short iron bar to turn the screws
could do all that was required in about a couple of
hours. But this innovation, although it lessened
labour in one direction, did not make any difference
to the work of the ship aloft, where, on account of in-
creased sail area and the practice of carrying an addi-
tional mast, the work was more onerous than ever.
So the bos’un of to-day must, in addition to the
knowledge possessed by those of bygone days, be an
expert at handling wire rope,—that is, splicing the re-
fractory stuff. He cannot be content with simply
knowing how it should be done, but he must be pre-
pared to educate a crew such as he may very easily
find under him,—a crew whose only previous experi-154 THE men of the merchant service.
ence has been in steamers, and who hardly know one
end of a marline-spike from the other. He must be able
to keep a ship in thorough repair, going over the mast-
heads himself, and prying into every detail for little
defects which may bring disaster if not attended to in
time. And his mastery of ship’s work should be such
that it will be sufficient for the mate to say to him :
“ Bos’un, I want so and so done to-day ” and then
turn away completely easy in his mind because he
knows that the work will be done and done well.
I once had the misfortune to be shipmate with—I
was going to say a bad bos’un; but perhaps the
better description of him would be that he was not a
seaman at all, much less a bos’un. We used to call
him “the Curiosity,” abbreviated to “Curio.” He
said that he had been bos’un of the ill-fated La Plata.
That may have been so, because the vessel was lost
only two days after leaving port, although none of us
could in the least understand how he had been able to
obtain such a berth. At any rate, he managed to get
shipped with us in the Herat as bos’un, and as she was
a 1,300-ton sailing-ship there was a fair scope for his
abilities. We found him out on the first day, although,
as nearly all hands were suffering from the last drunk,
little notice was taken. But before we cleared the
Channel he was made of less account than one of
the boys. He was actually ignorant of how to do the
most trivial job. Even as a foremast hand he would
have had a bad time ; as a bos’un his sublime audacity
took our breath away. The officers were all good
men and were able to carry on the work easily enough,
leaving nothing to him but such matters as washingTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 155
decks or repeating their orders. Then he took to
coming into the fo’c’s’le and trying to curry favour
with the men by telling them of his varied experiences
ashore. By his own confession he had been a sales-
man at Mortlock’s in Oxford Street, a door-keeper at
a West End restaurant, something in the ring at a
circus, and other equally curious, out-of-the-way em-
ployments. His impudence, as well as a certain
bonhomie which, however out of place in a bos’un,
would have been admirable in any of the positions he
had occupied ashore, softened the crew toward him,
and really he did not have such a bad time.
Of course he was discharged as soon as we reached
Calcutta, the master informing him that he would not
carry him but for ballast, giving him a “ declines to
report ” discharge, which is equivalent to useless, but
paying him on the seamen’s wages scale. Three days
afterward he visited us, an overpowering swell of dis-
tingue appearance, and grandly informed us that he
was ringmaster in a great travelling circus. After
distributing orders lavishly and inviting all hands to
come ashore and drink at his expense, he left, and I
saw him no more, the most amazing bos’un I have
ever even heard of.
At the other end of the scale I place the bos’un of the
Harbinger, a man of not more than thirty, a giant in
stature and strength, and completely master of his
profession. Of all the,seamen I have ever ktiown he
was the most perfect specimen as far as rigging-work
and the handling of a ship’s company were concerned.
So splendid was his work that, in conversation with
him one day after watching him splice a two-inch wire156 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
grummet round the goose-neck of the spanker boom
with far greater ease than most men would have done
th\ same thing in rope, I asked him whether he had
not received some special instruction in handling wire.
He then told me that he was a Blackwall rigger;
that is, a man whose trade is rigging ships in harbour,
and that he only went to sea when he could find a ship
that suited him. That explained a great deal, but I
must admit that he was just as smart at handling sails
aloft in bad weather as he was at rigging-work proper,
so that I should say he never allowed himself to get
in the least rusty.
Other bos’uns I have known intimately by being
shipmates with them, good men as one would wish to
sail with, but never one that came quite up to this
paragon among sailormen. Some were perfect in all
their ways as far as “ sailorising ” was concerned, yet
could not get the work out of their men ; others were
good drivers, but were weak in their technical know-
ledge,—at least not quite so good at certain work as
some of the seamen under them. Others, again, were
lazy, and one especially do I remember, who, although
a splendid seaman, was so great a coward that he was
a byword fore and aft. He was an Alsatian from
Metz who had somehow got to sea, and, after serving
several years in British ships, had become bos’un, a
post for which his one defect eminently disqualified
him. And he never learned to talk intelligible Eng-
lish. Sailors can understand almost any jargon that
is spoken at sea under the guise of English, but this
man’s talk was too funny for anything. He would
come to the fo’c’s’le door as the watch was turning;THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 157
out and say: “ Now poys, gum lonk. Ve shrub und
shrabe mit sant unt racks alia now,” which, being inter-
preted, was : “ Now boys, come along. We’ll scrub
and scrape with sand and canvas to-day ! ” Poor
fellow, his abilities and long service deserved a better
fate than he met with at last. A couple of years after
I left the ship I met him in Old Gravel Lane hope-
lessly crippled by a fall from aloft on his last passage
home. He was hobbling off to the workhouse to try
and get in to be saved from starvation, for there is no
redress for the sailor who is maimed in the execution
of his duty.
As I have said in the previous chapter, bos’uns are
seldom carried in American ships, where the third
mate or second mate, as the case may be, will effi-
ciently perform a bos’un’s usual duties. But where
they are carried they will be found, like all the other
American officers of whom I have spoken, the best
seamen that can be found anywhere, but in general
conduct undoubtedly brutal to those under them. One
case of a “ brevet ” bos’un is, I believe, sufficiently
quaint to be noticed here. A friend of mine, a man of
rather small build, was second mate of a Nova Scotia
barque bound from New York to Hong Kong.
When the crew came on board,—eight of them,—he
saw with some trepidation that they were all huge
negroes, and he did not feel any too comfortable at
the prospect of keeping them in order if they should
turn out to be a rowdy lot. But, putting a bold face
on the matter he mustered them. As they trooped aft
he noticed that, big as they all were, one towered above
all the rest, a black giant. A bright idea struck him,IS8 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
and, as soon as they had answered to their names, he
turned to the monster and said:
“ Now, look here, bos’un, I want you t’ hurry up 'n
git these spars lashed.”
“ Aye, aye, sah! ” bellowed the delighted black
man ; “ I put de b’ys froo, sah ! ”
And put them through he did. There was never
any trouble from that day, the black bos’un doing his
work well just for the sake of the title with which he
had been so suddenly honoured.CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CARPENTER.
How shall I do fitting justice to the dignified, in-
valuable petty officer (warrant officer in the Navy)
whose title stands at the head of this chapter? The
honest journeyman ashore bearing the same title has
always had a peculiar fascination for me, whether
joiner or cabinet-maker. But he is no more to be
compared with the carpenter of a ship than is a hod-
carrier to be likened to an architect. It is not every
port that can produce ships’ carpenters. Any ship-
yard where work is specialised, as it is in many that I
could name, is fatal to the breeding of such men as
ships’ carpenters must be.
Like all the rest of the officers I have written of,
there is of course considerable difference in the duties
of a carpenter in steam and sail, a billet in the former
being much the easiest. In a fine passenger steam-
ship the carpenter's duties are mainly confined to see-
ing that certain gear is in working order, attending to
the shipping and unshipping of gangways, etc., but of
actual constructive work he seldom does any at all.
That, owing to the shortness of the voyages, is done
when the vessel reaches home, but it is essential thati6o THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
any needed repairs or alterations should be noted
during the voyage, and for this particular oversight a
carpenter is invaluable.
Any remarks such as have hitherto been made
about incompetent men may be safely left out when
considering the carpenter. I do not go so far as to
say that there is no such thing as an incompetent
ship’s carpenter, but I do declare that I never yet
met with or heard of one. He is the man who may
be relied upon to give less trouble than any other on
board of a ship. As to his position, it is unique.
He is a tradesman of the mysteries of whose craft
the sailor does not pretend to knowledge. But he is
usually an old salt of keen observation, able to crit-
icise sailor-work in all its branches, and with the proud
conviction that he is indispensable to the safety of
the ship,—a conviction that is based upon expert
knowledge of her constructional needs. The real
glory of a ship’s carpenter, however, does not shine
out in a steamer. It is in the sailing-ship that he
finds his opportunity for the display of those abili-
ties in which he is not to be approached by any other
man on board. I have often spoken in the highest
terms of admiration of the wonderful versatility of
Canadians, Down-Easters, and Finns, who seem to be
born with the power to use either marline-spike,
adze, plough, or sextant with equal facility. But
their carpentry, though sufficient for sea needs, is
rough. It is, as they would be the first to admit,
only to be used where poverty or pressure of circum-
stances forbid the employment of a man who has been
through the curriculum of the “ yards ” and hasTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 161
emerged ready to do all that a ship in her utmost
need can require at the hands of a man.
Perhaps the best ships’ carpenters known come from
Scotland. In all my experience I have only met with
one who did not, and he was one of the fine old school
that used to be bred forty years ago in Thames ship-
building yards. But on the Clyde and in Aberdeen
they breed a race of men as ships’ carpenters who are
silent, thoughtful, and strong,—men who study the
requirements of their ship as a great surgeon studies
his patients, and who never need telling what should
be done. And this is so recognised by masters that
it is popularly supposed on board ship that if the
chronometer went wrong the carpenter would be
called upon to put it right. For he is no mere spe-
cialist. A ship’s carpenter who was only a carpenter
would be of very little use on board a modern sailing-
ship. He must be also a blacksmith, a block and spar
maker, a joiner, a sailor, and a boat-builder. Of
course he must be a caulker. I should not mention
the latter were it not that in the minute subdivision
of labour that, for economical purposes, obtains almost
everywhere to-day, caulking (roughly, the stuffing of
seams between planking with oakum to keep out
water) has become a trade by itself.
The pumps are under the carpenter’s charge. He
knows not only how to fit their boxes and renew the
packing,—many sailors have that knowledge,—but he
can, in time of need, invent substitutes for leather and
by all sorts of devices make it possible to keep the
hold clear of water. Also he is responsible for the
due working and up-keep of the ironwork aloft. The162 the men of the merchant service.
great trusses and goose-necks upon which the massive
yards are balanced so that they swing from one side
to the other are his care: he visits them at regular
weekly intervals with oil-feeder and scraper, and with
minute scrutiny assures himself that there are no
flaws in them which may in a moment of stress extend
into breaks and let half the ship’s comp-any go howling
to leeward and be swallowed up in the hissing vortex
of white foam that surges hungrily upward. He at-
tends to the due working of iron blocks and sheaves,
and with critical eyes examines both masts and yards
for flaws. To do this it is necessary that he be able
to climb in any weather, since the gear is permanently
fixed aloft, and thither he must go to examine it.
But it is seldom that he is called upon to work aloft
unless he be an ardent seaman as well as a carpenter.
Some members of the honoured family of “ Chips ” I
have known who scorned to be left on deck when a
rising gale demanded the services of all hands to
shorten sail. They were as keen and eager to wrestle
with the mighty wings thundering at their confining
gear as any purely seafaring man that ever hung on to
a jackstay by his eyebrows or scorned to secure him-
self on a yard by thrusting his arm through a beclcet.
There was never any need to call them specially when
it was “ All hands ” ; they were always on deck with a
leap as if they had been waiting ready rigged for the
word, although, had one gone into their berths for
anything an instant before the cry was given, he
would have found them sleeping with the care-free
soundness of the sailor.
The bos’un, carpenter, sailraaker, and cook generallyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 163
live together in a compartment of the forward house
on deck. Formerly their berth was known as the
“ half-deck,” a survival of ancient days when they
were really berthed in a horrible dungeon that right-
fully bore the name. But now the title is often car-
ried by the berth set apart for the apprentices, and
the petty officers’ quarters are as often divided into
two,—one for the bos’un and carpenter and the other
for the sailmaker and cook. They are attended in the
simplest fashion by a boy, not at all as a servant, but
just to carry in their simple fare, wash their mess-
traps, and scrub out the berth. They may feed a
little better than the men, but not much, and the
manner of their table is practically the same,—the
“ table,” indeed, being often non-existent, as they eat
their meals in the good (?) old way, that is, with their
plates upon their knees or on a chest at their sides.
But the carpenter has, in addition to this home which
he shares with one or two others, a place of retreat
sacred to him alone, wherein no man has any right to
enter, save the master and mate,—and I am doubtful
about the mate. It is his “ shop.” Here is his
bench ; here he does such small work as comes under
the head of carpentering proper, or, on a long passage,
makes cabinets, writing-desks, or bookshelves for the
skipper. It is a temple of peace, fragrant with the
scent of new wood, with a sub-tone of pungent to-
bacco-smoke, for here the presiding genius may—and
does—smoke with no one to say him nay.
Unlike any other officer in the ship below the rank
of mate, “ Chips ” finds^his own work, unless, indeed,
the master may have some special piece of work thatx64 the men of the merchant service.
he wishes done. And even then it would probably
not be undertaken if Chips did not think it was feasi-
ble. Under ordinary circumstances the carpenter
goes on his own even way, no man interfering with
him, and few knowing what he is employed upon.
Once, when on the homeward-bound passage of a
long voyage, I asked our carpenter whether he was
not sometimes puzzled to know what to find to do.
It was a piece of daring on my part, for he was a dour
Aberdonian of middle age, so taciturn that his voice
was seldom heard, and with a grim expression on his
face that discouraged familiarity. But he had thawed
out a bit on this occasion, and told me several yarns,
so I ventured to put the question which had often
occurred to me.
“ Mahn,” he growled with lowering brow, “Ah cud
fine wurrk fur seven year, ’f we wuroot sae lang. Fat
due Ah fine tae dae, ye say? Did ye ever see ma
idle in wurrkin’ oors?”
I shook my head vigorously, feeling that I was on
exceedingly delicate ground.
“ Nah,” he muttered, “there’s nae lack o’ wurrk,
but there’s plenty wantin’ wull tae dae it. But Ah
niver hahd ta worry aboot siccan a thing in a’ ma life.”
I said no more, being no wiser than I was before,
but feeling that what he said was true.
On the other hand it may very well be that a ship’s
carpenter sometimes comes in for an overwhelming
pressure of work which taxes all his energies to cope
with. On one occasion in my own experience the
skipper of a big ship, as we then considered her,
bound from Liverpool to Bombay, brought with himTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 165
to sea a number of huge rough spars, bought cheaply,
I suppose. These he purposed to replace the yards
that were already doing duty aloft, and as soon as
opportunity offered the work was begun. It was a
tremendous task for one man to undertake, but our
Chips, although it was only his second voyage to sea,
was fully equal to the demand made upon his skill and
strength. More than that, he was able to train sun-
dry members of the crew in the handling of broad-axe
and rip-saw, so that they could take off his hands the
most laborious part of the work. During a calm that
persisted for eight weeks we practically shifted every
yard in the ship, working all day long and—shall I
say it?—sleeping all night. I will not go so far as to
say that the man at the wheel went to sleep, but I
dare not say that he did not, for no demand was made
upon his steering skill by the ship—she lay as nearly
motionless as a ship can lie upon the ocean.
It was on this voyage that I learned how wonder-
ful a tool in the hand of an expert is the adze. Chips
seemed to prefer it to all his other tools, and the way
he made it serve him was marvellous. I heard him
tell a story of how some braggart was boasting in the
yard of his skill with the adze, when an old carpenter
challenged him to take off a shaving under his foot,
staking his week’s wages that he, the challenger,
would take off the thinnest. The boaster tried and
succeeded in slitting the sole of his new boot, at which
there was much laughter. Then the veteran, taking
off his shoe and stocking, placed his naked foot upon
the plank, and, swinging his adze over his head,
brought it down with a whir. On removing his foot,166 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
a shaving no thicker than note-paper lay upon the
blade of the adze, the old man slyly saying: “ Ah
dinna keer fur reskin’a guid peyr o’butes in a ploy
laik this yin. But it’ll mebbe teach ye no to give way
tae ungodly boastin’ agin.” I have no difficulty in
believing the story, having seen the truly marvellous
way in which this (to a novice) awkward-looking but
ancient tool is handled by an expert shipwright.
That same carpenter mended the skipper’s wife’s
sewing-machine, and “ sorrted,” as he would say, the
same lady’s bracelet. In fact he was always being
called upon to do some job as far removed from car-
penter’s work as one could well imagine, and always
succeeded.
Carpenters in American ships are of course super-
excellent, but they are not so good at iron-work as a
Scotchman. For a Scotch carpenter seems equally at
home in handling wood or iron,—as a result, I sup-
pose, of the thorough training he receives while an
apprentice. But in wood-work, in extensive repairs
to a ship, the Yankee cannot be beaten. Indeed he
must needs be good, for otherwise he would almost
certainly find some of the officers who would offer to
teach him his trade. In British North American
ships a carpenter is not often carried, since nearly
every Blue-Nose sailor is a born worker in wood and
would consider the carrying of a carpenter a super-
fluous expense quite unwarranted by any ship needs
whatever.
Although not strictly within the purview of the
present work, I may be pardoned for paying a be-
lated tribute to the excellence of the American car-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 167
penters carried in whaleships. Their strong point
was in boat-building, and it was a marvel to see what
they could and did do with a batch of broken boats,
some of them indeed with hardly any vestige of a
boat remaining. Without any help, without rest for
a couple of days and n,ights, except for necessary
food, they would toil until they had again made it
possible for the pursuit of the whale to be under-
taken. And they had to work in such cramped quar-
ters, not free from the all-pervading greasiness of
trying-out, that how they managed to do anything at
all in workmanlike fashion was a mystery. One of
them that I knew was also an artist in ivory and
bone. He had a lathe of his own construction, and
by its aid he turned out such exquisite pieces of orna-
mental work that they would not have been put to
shame in any exhibition in the world.
These ships also carried another artisan,—the
cooper,—whose province it was to make casks, bar-
rels, tubs, buckets, piggins,—anything that could be
made with hoops and staves. Consequently utensils
that in other ships would have been of iron were, in
the whalers, made of wood, and I once heard our old
cooper declare that he’d undertake to make a lady a
pair of stays if he was favoured with the order. And
I have no doubt that he would have done so,—a pair
that would have lasted a lifetime. No one on board
would have had the slightest difficulty in believing
that, given a sufficient number of trees and a little
iron, these two worthies would, in case of our vessel’s
loss, have speedily constructed a ship in which we
might have sailed around the world.168 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
One more old carpenter I must mention, who, with
a broken leg and covered from head to foot with sup-
purating mosquito-bites, crawled from his bunk when
our vessel was found to be on shore in the middle of
the night. In this pitiable condition of body he imme-
diately began to caulk the only serviceable boat we
had, which, lying bottom upward upon the skids, had
got so impoverished by the sun that her seams were
gaping wide, rendering her absolutely useless. And
for over twenty hours thenceforward, without one
word of complaint, that heroic man laboured on until
all that he could do was done. He did not seem to
think that his accomplishment was in any way extraor-
dinary.
Perhaps the carpenters who read this may smile at
the presumption of a mere sailor in praising their
work, but I hope they will believe that I do but
express toward them the ordinary sentiments of their
shipmates of all grades.CHAPTER XIX.
THE SAILMAKER.
The position of this most useful man on board ship
will give me less trouble to deal with than any other
that I have either handled or shall handle, for the suf-
ficient reason that steam knows him not and has no
need of him. It is quite true that on board ships of
war the sailmaker is still in evidence, is still more
busily employed, but not in making sails. His work
is much simpler now. It consists of making deck-
cloths, awnings, mast and yard covers, and all the
varied canvas screens whereby alone it is possible for
so complicated a machine as the modern ship of war
to be kept in anything like cleanliness. People are
apt to enquire what can be found for so large a crew
to do as a man of war carries. They either forget or
do not know how defiling, how all-pervading, is the
grime from the funnels and the dust of the coal used.
As far as making work goes, it far more than com-
pensates for the disappearance of sail power. Even
with all the canvas protectors that are made and kept
in repair by the sailmaker and his crew, the dirt is so
persistent that one is tempted some time to cry de-
spairingly : “ All the protection we get from these
covers is so inadequate that it is more than counter-
balanced by the necessity for keeping them clean ; we
should be better off without them.”170 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
On board of the sailing-ship, however, going, as she
does, on voyages that sometimes extend- to two or
even three years before returning home again, the
sailmaker is indispensable. Not that even in ships
like these a sailmaker, as such, is always shipped.
Sailmaking has always exercised a certain fascination
upon seamen, and it will sometimes happen that a
master or mate will be so excellent at the business
that they will dispense with a sailmaker altogether,
relying upon finding among the crew some men suf-
ficiently expert to do the stitching as it should be
done, while they design, cut out, and fit. But where
it is any one else than the master who thus adds the
sailmaker's duties to his own, the practice is rather
dangerous. For there may be many things happen
which will cause the amateur sailmaker to declare
rather suddenly that he will have no more to do with
it, that he has quite enough of his own work to do,
and then the consequences may be awkward. Owing
to the tremendous stress of competition and the re-
sultant cutting down of crews, a far less number of
sailmakers are carried than used to be,—ships of 1,000
tons now being turned into barques, and all the com-
plement being reduced until it seems marvellous how
the vessel is handled at all. In craft of this size the
sailmaking must be done by the seamen, and with the
decrease in number of thorough seamen who along
with their other accomplishments are capable sail-sew-
ers (it would hardly be fair to call them sailmakers) the
problem of how to keep the vessel clothed aloft is not
an easy one to solve.
Possibly landsmen think very little about the mat-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 171
ter, but they may be assured that the making of a sail
is by no means what they might suppose,—say, as
easy as preparing a pair of sheets for a bed. There is
considerably more art required in cutting out a jib, for
instance, than there is in cutting out a suit of clothes.
In a properly equipped sail-loft ashore the various
measurements may be laid off upon the floor in chalk,
and then it is comparatively easy to cut the numerous
cloths of canvas out by simply laying them down.
There need be no calculation of angles, only allow-
ances made for “ roach,”—that is, curves at the edges
so planned that the sail shall set properly and not
hang like a wrinkled rag when hoisted. But to do
this on board ship in the same way is impossible, so
the sailmaker must make a tiny draft of the sail to
scale. From this he must calculate the length of
each cloth required, and if possible, what is more im-.
portant still, the number of cloths which the width of
the sail will take. For a cloth of canvas is only two
feet wide, and from this must be deducted the width
of the seam, which is usually about an inch and a
half, but varies a little according to individual fancy.
Then there are the angles to be calculated, and cer-
tain allowances made which only practice can estimate
so correctly as to ensure a well-fitting sail when fin-
ished.
Even with all the care imaginable in cutting, a bad
workman will spoil the set of a sail by not keeping
the right amount of stress upon each cloth as he
stitches. It would not be an easy task to cut out a
sail if the material were all in one piece; when it is
made up of a number of pieces, as it is, the work172 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
needs a master of the trade in order to produce a well-
finished article. And when it is remembered that
some sails will contain forty-five cloths of canvas, each
ten yards long,—canvas, too, that is stout enough for
the heaviest work for which sails are called upon,—it
ought to be seen that sailmaking has nothing in it of
the nature of unskilled labour at all. In fact, so
much skill is required for sailmaking, so much innate
ability, that it may be truly said of the perfect sail-
maker that, like the perfect tailor’s-cutter, he is born,
not made. Even then the dead hand of tradition
weighs heavily upon the sailmaker. Certain fashions
in sail-cutting exist in this country which are scouted
in America as being in the last degree clumsy. And
the Yankee sailmaker goes so far as to say that a
British sailmaker cannot cut a sail! This taunt does
really seem justified to an impartial observer when
looking at the difference between the sails of a British
and of an American ship when set side by side. I
have often seen a new set of sails hoisted on board a
British ship that looked more like a miscellaneous col-
lection of rags hung out to dry than the “ white
wings ” famous in song. And it was not till long
after, when a great deal of stretching and humouring
had taken place, that the sails came to look at all neat
and unwrinkled.
I don’t know whether it is justifiable in a work of
this kind to say so much about sails, but I feel that
since the popular imagination is so stimulated by a
sight of that most beautiful picture, a ship under full
sail, that it would hardly be fair to pass the subject
over perfunctorily, especially when it is so deeplyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 173
studied and argued on board ship. There is nothing
in a ship’s equipment that excites so much interest
among her crew as the sails. Every one on board
who has any claim to be called a sailor poses as a
critic when a new sail is set or when another ship
heaves in sight, and as many intelligent opinions may
then be heard as might be expected from a party of
trained workmen going through an exhibition of work
with which they were well acquainted.
It must not be supposed that sailmaking is merely
a matter of stitching together a certain number of
pieces of canvas of a certain shape. Far from that
being the case, the strength of the sail lies in its
borders. These are first “ tabled,”—that is, a broad
piece is turned over and stitched down all round the
sail. Then a tarred rope (technically “ bolt-rope ”) of
the very best make is carefully stretched, having a
number of turns taken out of it to prevent its cockling
up the sail when it is wet. It varies in thickness, not
only on each sail, but on different parts of the same
sail according to the strain that it may be expected to
bear. When duly prepared it is stitched on to the
tabling with several parts of stout twine (roping-
twine) well tarred. This work demands considerable
skill, for the canvas must be gathered up in the proc-
ess so that the strain shall come on the rope, yet not
so much as to leave wrinkles in the sail. And at in-
tervals small loops of rope (“ cringles ”) must be
worked on the rope, from which they stand out at
right angles. They have grooved iron rings fitted
into them, so that they will not be chafed through by
wear, and they serve to secure the sail by “ sheet,”174 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
“ tack,” or “ earing ” (although the earing cringles are
seldom iron-lined). Of late years the fine hemp bolt-
rope has been much discarded in favour of flexible
wire rope neatly covered with canvas and spunyarn to
prevent rust. This is stronger and more durable in
itself, but it makes the sail far more refractory to
handle and cannot be stitched on to the canvas, as of
old, by pushing the big needle in between the strands
of the rope. It has to be “ marled ” on, a method of
securing it that always looks clumsy and insecure.
But I fear that in all this I am straying far away
from the sailmaker himself. It may very reason-
ably be supposed that on leaving her home port a
ship would have a supply of sails sufficient to last her,
barring accident, for the voyage. That is really so in
all well-found ships. Two, and sometimes three, com-
plete suits of sails are carried: the best or newest
suit for seas where the stormiest weather may be ex-
pected ; the next best suit for general use ; and the
fine-weather suit for regions where light variable airs
are always found, and where it would be a great
waste of money to allow good canvas to bang itself
all to pieces against the masts as the vessel rolls idly
upon the sleepy swell. Now the sailmaker’s first
duty is to keep these sails in repair, and since they
have a great deal of wear it will usually be found that
he has not only quite sufficient to do himself, but
can find constant employment for some favoured sea-
man out of each watch at sewing seams. Generally
speaking, he is a man that has served his apprentice-
ship to the trade, although a good discharge from his
last ship where he has been engaged in a similar ca-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 175
pacity is all that a skipper looks for from him upon
engagement. Perhaps this is hardly correct, though,
as many skippers will ask, in addition, for a written
personal reference, regarding the official certificate of
discharge as a mere formality that signifies little con-
cerning the quality of the man. But this applies
generally to all seamen above the rank of A.B.
It will often be found, however, that a master who
is an observant man will have noted during the
voyage that one of his A.B.’s has shown a special
aptitude for sailmaking. Then at the end of the
voyage he will inform such a man that if he cares to
come next voyage as sailmaker he will employ him,—
of course at a lower wage than he would give a reg-
ular tradesman. In this way many seamen have
risen from the forecastle to be sailmakers. Very
good men they are too, but I never saw or heard of
one of them who had attained to the competency of
cutting and fitting new sails. Not that there is any
personal reason why they should not do so, but they
do not get sufficient practice. They are smart hands
with the “palm and needle ” and the “fid,”—that is
all. Of course regularly trained sailmakers are very
wrath at this method of cheating them of their priv-
ileges, as they consider it, but they are quite pow-
erless in the matter.
Sometimes, however, they have their revenge, as in
the case of a ship carrying an amateur “ sails ” (as the
sailmaker is called), that meets with a sudden squall
and “carriesaway ” all her sails. This term does not
mean that the sails are stripped entirely from the
yards, but that they are rent into ribbons, mere out-176 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
lines of sails. An enormous amount of sail construc-
tion as well as of repairing is thus thrown suddenly
upon the sailmaker, and every available stitcher on
board is then pressed into his service. Then, if he
be a regular tradesman, he is in his glory, but if a
promoted seaman he will usually be just a terrified
unit of the crew, badgered by the master and flouted
by the men. And the ship herself suffers accord-
ingly. It is false economy, saving at the most but a
few shillings a month, and should never be indulged
in. The sailmaker, poor man, useful though he may
be, is never very well paid, fifteen shillings or a
pound a month more than the A.B.’s wages being
about his maximum. And like the carpenter, al-
though not so indispensable, he is almost always a
good reliable man whom it is well to have on board a
ship in a position of some responsibility.
As with the bos’un, it will be found in American
and Canadian vessels that a sailmaker, as such, is
rarely carried. The business of sailmaking, like car-
pentry, is in those vessels tacitly considered to be a
part of the education of a thorough seaman and it
would be a rare thing to find one of them without
an expert amateur sailmaker among the officers. They
get some beautiful patterns to work from when leav-
ing home, and doubtless study them deeply, for in
spite of their habit of not carrying professional sail-
makers it is an unknown thing to meet one of them
anywhere with badly-fitting sails. I know of no
lovelier sight than a full-rigged American ship on a
bright day with a new suit of sails set to a good
beam wind. The canvas, being of cotton (ours isTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 177
made of flax unbleached), is dazzlingly white. Catch-
ing the glint of the sun, it gleams against the deep blue
of the sea or the lighter azure of the sky like the
wing of a mighty angel, so pure and clean that the eye
cannot bear more than a passing glance at it. Not a
thread is slack, not a curve untrue ; she has the very
poetry of motion induced by a gloriously beautiful
arrangement of wings that makes her look like
nothing earthly. Alas, that this splendid canvas
should, when wet, become like a plank for stiffness, so
that in the stormy Atlantic, when searching cold, howl-
ing gale, and drenching rain combine, and the hapless
sailors are strung aloft to furl those fiercely straining
wings, the task is too terrible for words. The naked
hands, torn and bleeding, cannot bend the stiffened
canvas, and in the fight many a broken sailor has gone
to the rest that was denied him in life.CHAPTER XX.
THE STEWARD—IN STEAM.
The consideration of this worthy official’s position
has flung me back again into all the difficulty of
differentiation from which my dealing with the sail-
maker was free. And more so, because of all the men
who serve in the mercantile marine there are none who
know such changes of fortune, such a range in value of
their position, as does the steward. From the chief
steward of an Atlantic liner to the cook-and-steward
of a small foreign-going brig, what a tremendous
distance there is. And yet, given push, a gentlemanly
appearance, and ability in organisation, there is really
no reason why the holder of the latter position should
not aspire to, and reach, the former, with all its
emoluments and the command over a couple of hun-
dred men. These hierarchs of the steward order are
really very closely allied to the managers of great
hotels. In fact, speaking from an outsider’s point of
view, I am inclined to think that a man who can
manage the domestic arrangements of a couple of
hundred people at sea—that is, in a floating hotel
which is quite cut off from any external source of
supply for a week or more—has a far greater task in
hand than any hotel manager ashore can have. Such
an official has naturally enormous weight in decidingTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 179
the question of a certain ship’s popularity. Her
master may be one of the most splendid and genial of
seamen, her officers the best of their kind ; but, after
all, if the creature comforts are not well looked after,
she gets branded as an uncomfortable ship. There-
fore the chief steward is in close touch with the office
ashore. He and the purser—an officer whom I have
left out of my list because he is really one of the shore
officials carried to sea for business purposes—are
really the autocrats of the passenger department.
Like every one else on board, they are under the
master’s command, but he has nothing else to do with
them. Carefully selected men as they are, they take
care that their part of the business shall not trouble
His Majesty. If he were troubled by them the chances
are that there would be changes in the personnel of
their department very soon.
Most people will need no argument to convince
them that the position of chief steward of a big liner
is a most lucrative post. It is also one whereof the
holder should be a man of good appearance and gen-
tlemanly manners. Yet—and I say this delicately,
because I would not for a great deal give pain to any
member of a most estimable body of men—every sea-
man, no matter how humble, feels toward them, no
matter how high, a certain disdainful sense of superior-
ity. He can never quite get rid of the feeling that
they are menials. I do not excuse or encourage such
a feeling, but that it exists is quite certain. Nor, in
spite of the rich prizes that are to be won in the busi-
ness, do you ever find parents who can afford to pay a
premium for their youngsters being apprenticed to180 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
the sea, contemplating their being made stewards.
For myself, I see no reason why the steward’s post
should not be considered as honourable as the master’s,
and certainly, taking the chances of promotion one
with the other, the prospects of fortune are far
brighter for the accomplished steward than they are
for the most valuable master to-day. But there is
among sailors a marked repugnance to the “ tip,” to
being expected to do body service to other people
unless in an emergency or as an act of charity, and
this feeling can by no means be explained away.
Below his high mightiness the chief steward in a
liner comes a host of subordinates in as many varying
grades as are to be found in a big hotel. Unto each
is allotted work which goes on like clockwork day and
night, in fair weather or foul. Efficient service in
your hotel means a great deal,—not only a great deal
of thought on the part of the management, but a great
deal of hard work and manual dexterity on the part
of those who actually do the work. And these toiling
ones are always expected to wear a smile, no matter
what their physical condition may be; must always be
ready to spring at your call and do for you whatever
you choose to desire. But what does such service as
this mean at sea ? When what the sailor calls a stiff
breeze is blowing, with “ a nasty bit of a cross sea on,”
and the big ship is writhing her way through the
green masses with a perfectly indescribable combina-
tion of pitches and rollings, the seasoned passengers
must have their meals in due order with all the usual
accompaniments ; the helpless ones must be waited
on. How is it done ? Only by the most loyal, eagerTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 181
subordination of self in the desire to please, backed
up, if you will, by a wish to get on, and tempered by
the prospect of a substantial tip by and by. What-
ever the motive, the work goes on with a regularity
that is so unostentatious that the passenger ceases to
wonder at it after a day or two and accepts it as he
does the unseen machinery below.
At the head of each department of bedroom stew-
ards, waiters, pantrymen, and what-not—I do not
know the designations—is a gentleman who is steadily
working his way to the top, climbing to the giddy
height where he may go about all day long in the
dress of a private gentleman and use only his brains,
not his hands, for the prosecution of his work. As in
all businesses, efficient devolution is the whole secret
of success. But let the work be devolved as much as
it may, every one beneath the “ chief ” has quite as
much as he can do by steadily working on with little
sleep, little rest, but abundant food. This is so in the
finest weather at sea and in harbour ; in bad weather
at sea, work is greatly added to, not only in quantity,
but in the difficulty of doing it. There is no mere
child’s play in the distribution of food alone, without
the arrangement of all the paraphernalia of the meal-
tables. And in the cleaning up afterward and carry-
ing away of china and glass, the washing and stacking
thereof in secure places while the decks dance beneath
the feet and every little bit of panelling complains,
there is very much severe toil, done no less thoroughly
because out of sight.
This ocean hotel service has grown to great dimen-
sions, but not without dragging into its toils a great182 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
many burden-bearers whose labours are essential to
the luxurious comfort of latter-day passengers. It is
to be hoped that those who enjoy this wonderful
attendance while crossing the great and wide sea do
at times give a thought to the human machinery ever
at work on their behalf ; for a little thought would
surely make them less intolerant of mistakes or seem-
ing neglect.
As we come down the scale of passenger steamers
and lengthen the voyages, the position of the stew-
ards gets worse, while their wages (that is to say,
their entire gains, which means wages and backsheesh)
get less. Their labours increase by reason of the
shortness of hands and lack of accommodation pro-
vided for them. They are not to be envied at all.
Yet they are a cheerful crowd and a respectable; for
any dereliction of duty or misbehaviour of any kind
means dismissal from the ship,—a serious matter
which often carries with it a great difficulty in finding
another.
Coming down still lower to the cargo-carrying
steamer, or “ tramp ” pure and simple, the stewards
have dwindled to one and a mess-room boy who waits
upon the engineers; and although the steward of a
tramp does not get much of a salary, his duties are
simple and his masters are few. Indeed he may be
said to have but one master, the skipper, if he be well
up to his work. With that proviso and civility, no
other officer in the ship will ever interfere with him.
Even here he is a most responsible man. Upon him
devolves the outlay of the consumable stores. They
are placed under his charge, and he is expected toTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 183
see them duly served out to all, keeping a record
of their going, so that he may be able at any time to
answer a question put to him by the master as to how
the ship is prepared for the next portion of her voy-
age. His part it is, too, to do battle with wily dhn-
bash or compradore in the far East, who will cheat not
only in quantity but in quality of stores on every
possible or even impossible occasion. Upon entering
ports abroad, one of these worthies or their prototypes
are always engaged to supply harbour-food, fresh
meat, vegetables, fruit, etc., and a good honest stew-
ard will make a tremendous difference to the comfort
and well-being of the ship’s company. A dishonest
one is of the devil, because bribes will be offered him
to wink at short weight and inferior quality, and he
will accept. Then there is discontent and often blame
cast upon the wrong shoulders.
His other duties consist in keeping the saloon and
the skipper’s berth clean (the officers must get their
berths cleaned by somebody else, usually a deck boy,
the steward being no body servant of theirs) and wait
at table. Where the cook is incompetent, the steward
will have in addition the duty thrown upon him of
preparing food for cooking. In fact some stewards
prefer to do this, considering that their pastry-making
cannot be excelled by anybody. But the practice is
by no means so common in steam as it is in sailing-
ships.
I can hardly close this portion of my subject with-
out an allusion to the curious principle that obtained
when I was sailing in intercolonial steamers, and may
still be in force for all I know to the contrary. It
was then usual for all the ship's provisions to be sup-184 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
plied by a speculator on shore, whom we called the
providore, at a fixed rate per head for every member
of the crew ; that is, so much per day for a sailor, a
fireman, an officer, a second-class or saloon passenger,
—the rate varying from one shilling to half-a-crown a
day. For this the providore supplied not only food
but also cooks and attendance. The chief stewards
were always supposed to be deeply interested in mak-
ing the scheme pay, but their peculiar position often
led to their being very unjustly abused. Any attempt
on their part to stop waste was almost certain to be
met by the accusation that they were stinting the
food in the interests of the providore, and naturally
they could look for no countenance from the master
or officers. And as the waste “ forrard ” was simply
abominable, they were always in more or less hot
water. Of course they could, and did, control the ex-
penditure of food aft and among the passengers, but
the crew did as they liked. I have seen a man go to
the galley for breakfast and receive a tin dish contain-
ing four or five pounds of chops and steaks for six
men. It is true that they were vilely cooked and
usually as tough as leather. The fellows would turn
the meat over, saying bad words the while, and pres-
ently one would say: “Well, this isn’t good enough
for me.” Then, taking the tin to a port, he would
cast its contents overboard and go calmly to the gal-
ley for more. And if he were refused he had only to
complain to the master, who would of course give no
sympathy to a “providore's man.” Enough food was
wasted on that ship to feed a large ship’s company
every day, and by men who had all known what it
meant to be very hungry.CHAPTER XXI.
THE STEWARD --SAILING-SHIPS.
THERE are even now a few sailing-ships which carry-
passengers, but in these no such luxury is to be ex-
pected as in steamers, for obvious reasons. Never-
theless a great deal of comfort may be got out of a
voyage in one of these grand flyers,—comfort of a
kind that, while it does not appeal to the passenger
pressed for time, is to the invalid a perfect god-send,
one of the most sumptuous rest cures in the world.
In such vessels the steward is a man of some import-
ance as well as skill, for he must do a great deal of
contriving in order that such food as may be carried
on a passage lasting perhaps for over a hundred days
without a break by calling at any port may not be-
come too monotonous for a landsman’s pampered ap-
petite. Livestock is carried,—poultry and sheep and
pigs,—and the steward is a good deal exercised about
the care of these useful passengers, although it is a
matter over which he has little control. He attends
to their feeding, but the cleaning of them and their
protection from the weather does not rest with him,
while it makes all the difference possible to their con-
dition. A bad feeling toward him by the crew may
often mean serious trouble in respect of his livestock-186 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
Or for other reasons trouble may be made. For in-
stance, in one ship wherein I was an ordinary seaman
there were two fine sets of coops on the forward house
which contained ducks and geese. Now geese at sea
are a great nuisance, owing to their noise and wake-
fulness. We had many passengers, and it was well
known among the crew that not one fragment of the
meat we carried alive would ever find its way to their
mouths, although the food supplied to the crew for-
ward was disgraceful to the last degree. Therefore,
after enduring the brutal cackling of the geese for a
few nights, some revengeful fellows climbed up to
their quarters in the darkness, armed with belaying-
pins, and, as the long necks were thrust out between
the bars to give vent to the strident song, one after
another received a blow which quieted them effectu-
ally. In the morning there was not one left alive.
The steward was inconsolable, but all efforts to find
out the perpetrators of the deed were in vain.
It is, however, rather late in the day, I fear, to talk
about stewards in passenger sailing-ships. Their
palmy days are over. But in the ordinary sailing
cargo-carrier they still flourish, a race apart and as
distinct from the steamship steward as can well be.
Their berth is by no means a bad one, assuming that
they know their duty and do it. There are many in-
stances where a steward has sailed so long in the same
ship as to be almost as much a part of her as the
mizzen-mast; a faithful servant of the owners and
a privileged member of the ship’s company, who is a
prime favourite with all on board. Occasionally a
master will make a favourite of the steward, allowingTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 18V
■**
him privileges which he denies to any of his officers.
This is exceedingly bad, leading to all sorts of trouble
on board with both men and officers. For it is too
much to expect that any man occupying such a posi-
tion and pampered in such a way should retain his re-
spect for those whose rightful claims to authority are
ignored by the head of affairs. I have in mind two
such cases.
In one of them the steward was undoubtedly a
clever man, who ran his department like clockwork,
and, although certainly petted overmuch by the
skipper, did not take the advantage that he might
have been expected to do,—at least, not until we ar-
rived in India, where he suddenly exhibited an amaz-
ing aptitude for getting drunk and keeping so for in-
tervals of about a week at a time. This led to com-
plications of various sorts, and to disagreeable scenes
in the cabin, where the skipper, when he was ex-
asperated beyond measure by the filthy behaviour of
his favourite, often went the length of rope’s-ending
him. But as the skipper expected his officers to
endure all the drunken abuse and neglect that the
steward was inclined to favour them with, and make
no demonstration, the whole thing ended in a fierce
fight between the master and the mate, much to the
edification of the crew, peace only being restored by
the discharge of the steward.
The other was in a big ship on which I was second
mate. I joined her in India, and on the first day of
my service was struck by the calm way in which the
steward bandied doubtful jokes with the first and third
mates. Myself he had not yet become sufficiently188 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
acquainted with. Not, of course, that there was any-
thing wrong or unpleasant in that of itself; it might,
I reasoned, be merely exercising the freedom of an
old servant who meant nothing like insolence. But I
could not help wondering very much at the way in
which that steward omitted to give the mate his title
of “ Sir,” or “ Mr. Evans.” I had never before heard
a chief mate called by his surname, all short, by any
inferior without a full measure of immediate trouble
ensuing. Yet this man did this amazing thing while
the mate made no objection. The master was not
at the table. Of course I said nothing, but I medi-
tated much, and at the earliest opportunity broached
the subject to the third mate, a very fine young of-
fier just out of his time in that ship, asking him what
I was to understand by it. His explanation was
that the steward—a gross, flabby man, by no means
smart or remarkable for ability in any way—was so
great a favourite with the skipper that he was al-
lowed to do practically whatever he chose. And this
was the more remarkable because the skipper was not
only part-owner, but a man who, as a rule, was very
sharp with his subordinates.
For a month I was very comfortable. The master
used to chat with me amicably during my dog, or
first, watches, and even went out of his way to com-
pliment me on the way I did my work, until in an
evil hour I offended the steward. It was in this wise.
He came to my room door in my watch below,
saying to the third mate as he came along past his
door:	“ Where’s that fellow Bullen ? ” And then
he flung my door open, crying:	“ Here, you, I wantTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 189
a cask o’ beef got up as soon as the devil ’ll let ye
after eight bells.” Now I maintain that if an officer
is to have any authority on board a ship, such lan-
guage from one of his subordinates cannot—must not—
be permitted at all. The man was not drunk ; he was
deliberately insolent because backed by a foolish
skipper. Of course I resented his words, receiving
more insolence, and then, instead of knocking him
endways, as I ought to have done, I went and re-
ported him to the master, who jeered at me and
warned me that I had better let his steward alone. I
tried to explain, but only succeeded in drawing abuse
from the skipper, and from that day forward my
life was utter torment, such misery as I have never
experienced on board ship before or since.
But such cases as these are by no means common.
The average sailing-ship steward of to-day is a quiet,
inoffensive man, who does his duty unostentatiously,
lives rather a solitary life (since the only person he can
associate with is the cook), and endeavours to serve
out the provisions to the men with perfect justice.
If the master carries his wife with him, the steward
may be very happy or very much the reverse,—he can
never plod along in the same easy, jog-trot way as is
usual when there is no woman on board. In Ameri-
can and Canadian vessels he is often a negro and
sometimes a Chinaman, but it may be taken for
granted that whatever countryman he may be he is
also a paragon, because the American skipper will have
nothing less than perfection in cleanliness and service.
That must be rendered him whether the steward be
white, black, or yellow, and he is ready to enforce itigo THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
by the rudest and readiest means to hand. Where-
fore it follows that he is served as probably no other
seafarers in the world are served.
But even here the officers are not personally
attended by the steward except when they ar-e at
meals. It is the commander who must needs have his
every wish anticipated, his linen kept spotlessly white,
and the woodwork, the adornment of his cabin, as
clean as—yea cleaner than—on the day they were
first fitted into place. Many of the old ships carried
stewardesses instead of stewards,—often the wife of
the cook; and although to some people such an
experiment might seem to be one of the extra-hazard-
ous kind, it was not so. The American is a wonder-
fully chivalrous man toward all women-folk, especially
when under his protection.
Stewardesses are of course carried in British steam-
ers ; in fact they must be, for attendance upon the
ladies. They are well treated by everybody on board
except their charges, but some of them can tell some
queer stories of endurance at the hands of these who
owe them so much comfort. These quiet, deft-
handed women, who balance themselves so featly roll
the ship never so heavily, could tell many strange
tales. Strange, is it not, in these days of reminiscence-
writing, how carefully they hold their peace? Once I
was shipmate with a lady passenger, one of the most
accomplished ladies that it has ever been my privilege
to speak to. She knew all that a woman should
know, and many things that good, useful men did not
know. And whatsoever she learned, that, if it seemed
good to her, she would put into practise. She wasTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 191
going out to a far country with a little capital to
prove to a sceptical world that a lady who could ride,
shoot, swim, and run a farm as well as play the piano,
sing, paint, and talk several languages could make her
way alone in a new world as well as any man. But
fortune was unkind to her, and she failed in those
days. Then she took a stewardess’s berth in a coasting
steamer that carried some hundreds of passengers
from port to port around one of the stormiest coasts
in the world. We met when she had been at this
occupation for some months, and she had aged ten
years in appearance. By her looks she was weary of
life, but she made no moan. Then in an awful gale
her ship went ashore on an outlying reef. There were
ninety female passengers on board whom she consid-
ered a sacred charge. That charge she fulfilled, see-
ing them all safely boated away while she retired to
her cabin and locked herself in to meet the death that
she had grown to look upon as a delivering friend.
I would not close this all too brief account of the
steward without again emphasising the fact of his
heavy claim to the consideration of all men. His
business is not a showy one, and Jack is far too fond
of hurling the opprobrious epithet, “ flunky,” at him ;
but there is a great deal of quiet heroism in his annals,
and in any case his work is just as important as any
other seafarer’s. For men must be fed and their food
taken care of. The doing of this with regularity,
cleanliness, and cheerfulness is the part of the stew-
ard, and how well he does it let all sailors testify.CHAPTER XXII.
THE COOK—IN STEAM.
In many respects the cook is the most interesting
figure on board ship. From him of the vast floating
hotel, a man of many attainments, an artist in foods,
who should, but does not, command as great a salary
as the chef of a first-class London hotel, down to the
miserable urchin who crouches low over his scarcely-
shielded pot on the open deck of a foreign-going barge,
ships’ cooks not only deserve our attention; they
command it, dumbly yet imperiously.
How are the cooks of first-class passenger steamers
trained ? Whence are obtained those able manipula-
tors of provisions who are always to be found on
board of excursion steamers (that are laid up half the
year) as soon as they commence running? What do
they do in the dead seasons, those magicians who, in
a space no larger than a reasonably-sized cupboard,
succeed in turning out a dinner of several courses for
five hundred people, no matter what the weather
may be? “ Magician ” is surely the word, if only for
the marvellous way in which every corner of cramped
space is utilised, every trick of the culinary art—
whereby the same thing is presented under two or
three totally different aspects and flavours; and roast-
ing, boiling, frying, and stewing go on apparently inTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 193
the same glowing chamber at the same moment—is
practised. These things amaze me, but, after all,
much of the work may be done ashore, or in the quiet
of the moorings before starting-time in the morning,
and pastry and cold side-dishes may be bought all
ready for table.
But none of these adjuncts are available for the
sea-going cook. His dinners, down to the smallest
item, must be prepared by himself and his subordi-
nates. It is true that in a liner the cook has a large
staff, and that his assistants are carefully selected for
their several duties, but he has not, as his far-better-
paid brother ashore has, the power of dismissing any
assistant summarily if that assistant be incompetent or
worse. That is, he has not such a power at the time
when it would be of use. In the day of battle, when
the great organisation of an Atlantic liner’s catering
is going on, he must use such men as he has ; they
cannot be exchanged for others. But how very strik-
ing is the moral to be drawn from such a state of
affairs. It is that, considering the excellence of the
work performed by these men, there must be a most
exalted standard of quality among them. And they
would seem to be a contented folk. We know, most
of us, that the great steamship companies have a
reputation for treating their servants generously,
but generously treated work-people are not always
the most contented. The cook and steward class in
these vessels must be contented, however, or we
should hear them, for they are by no means a feeble
folk. You will find them occupying comfortable
positions ashore while still in the prime of life, hav-i94 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
ing earned sufficient within a few years to enable
them to abandon the strenuous toil demanded of
them at sea. They have earned every penny they
have, and have not been compelled to “ carry the
banner ” in order to get more. And in strangest out-
of-the-way places of this wonderful England of ours
you will come across quiet, gentlemanly men who,
upon opportunity arising, will inform you that they
were cook of the steamship So-and-so, or steward of
such another one. They enjoyed the life, but pres-
ently, like sensible men, they felt the need of a wife
and home and children, and they therefore looked
about for something suitable ashore, found it, and
made room for a younger man.
No one, unless he belong to the cooking-staff, has
much opportunity afforded him for prying into the
galley on board a big passenger ship during working
hours. Those splendidly fitted hives of industry may
be viewed at other times, but then they reveal nothing
to the outsider. This exclusiveness is not malicious
or for fear of being found fault with. It is solely be-
cause there is no room for any but the workers, who
work indeed. Every inch of space is needed. Look
down through the hatch above, or peer in through
the ports, and you will be astounded at the way in
which the cooks are handling the food; how, in a
space where by all ordinary rules of cookery they
should not have room to move, they are turning out
with conjuror-like dexterity a state dinner of ever so
many courses for a couple of hundred saloon passen-
gers. And then contrast their surroundings, if your
previous experience enables you so to do, with theTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 195
palatial spaces of a grand hotel kitchen. Only you
must remember at the same time the gale raging over
the wide sea, and the complicated movements indulged
in by the ship as she strides over the tremendous
waves. So shall you acquire a respect for the sea-
cook that will endure all your days.
To compare great things with small, this mental pic-
ture brings before me by association the cooks in the
Australian coasting steamers. We have nothing like
the same lavish arrangements for cooks and stewards
on our own coasts, because our system is different.
Here the fare is exclusive of food. You may dine or
not as it suits your purse or your appetite. When
you dine, you pay. But in the Colonies the fare be-
tween ports includes sumptuous feeding arrangements
for the first-class passenger, while for the second-class
(there are no third-class or deck passengers as with us)
there are rough accommodations, but an unlimited
supply of excellent plain food. Australasia is truly
the land of plentiful eating. And the cooks,—well,
they are good, some of them super-excellent, and all
of them trained by hard experience to do much work
in a very small compass and with a tiny staff.
The cook of the Wonga Wonga stands out boldly in
my memory as one of the characteristic figures of my
sea-experience. A huge negro with a voice of thunder,
and an effervescing humour that made him a prime
favourite, he succeeded in his vocation where many a
better man might have failed. He was a fairly good
cook, but in his details of work he reminded me
strongly of the elderly negress in “ Uncle Tom’s
Cabin,” who dished up a dinner out of “ chaos and old196 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
night ” somewhere down below. Such an extraor-
dinary jumble of pastry-making, poultry-trimming,and
all the varied operations required in the preparation
of a dinner was surely never seen. And out from the
weird confusion of things Sam would burst, smeared with
blood and grease and dusty with flour, brandishing a
big knife and declaiming Shakespeare on the slightest
provocation. But in spite of the fact that the whole
preparation of a dinner for sometimes as many as five
hundred people, except peeling potatoes and the actual
cooking, devolved upon Sam alone, he was always up to
time. It was dangerous to come near him, though, as
that time drew near, for then he drew perilously near
being a howling maniac. Yet no sooner had the last
dish disappeared aft than Sam would sally forth from
the galley, his ebony countenance aglow with satisfac-
tion, and a big pipe in his mouth. Down anywhere he
would fling himself, ready to discuss any question in
the world, from the ruling of an empire to the winning
moves in a game of draughts. His successor, when
he got promoted to the City of Melbourne, was a far
better cook and a paragon of order and cleanliness,
but there wasn’t a man in the ship to say a good word
for him. He was a shy Englishman.
Then, dropping still lower, I have every reason to
remember the cook of the Helen M'Gregor, sweetest
of small passenger steamers had she been on the Lon-
don-Margate route, but a grisly terror when scaling
the steeps of the Southern Pacific waves in a “ south-
erly buster ” between Grafton and Sydney. She was
far too small for such an arduous service. Yet we
carried over a hundred passengers when full. All herTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 197
cooking was done in a caboose,—just such a square
box as may be seen on the deck of any old sailing
barque,—a cube of about eight feet clamped to the deck
by iron rods. There was no table within it, only a
locker seat running across it in front of the stove,
which contained coals. Two men could not pass be-
tween this locker and the stove without careful edg-
ing, unless one of them got burnt. Most of the im-
plements had permanent abiding-places on the stove,
but a few lived on racks above when not in use, and
when the skittish little ship was dancing they would
clatter down at intervals. Outside, in an angle be-
tween the back of the galley and the steam-chest, was
a movable board for pastry—and other things. Its
dimensions, with liberal measurement, may have been
two feet square—not another inch if I were bribed
to say so.
The presiding genius of this most primitive of ar-
rangements was a hunchback, a shrewd little Yankee
with a French face, who received £11 per month and
earned £$o. He had one assistant, a nondescript
man of indefinite age, who never wore an apron, and
whose duties were confined to peeling potatoes, stok-
ing the fire, plucking fowls, and washing up pots.
But these things he would do as long as there were
any of them to do, mechanically, even though, as was
frequently the case, the conditions all about us looked
as if another ten minutes would see us all at the bot-
tom of the sea. He earned £$ a month. But what
he lacked in ability or initiative was more than made
up by his chief. That man was a miracle. On that
two-foot slab he would make pastry of all kinds, pre-198 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
pare most elaborate dishes,—yes, although the salt
spray whistled around him, and on occasion an eddy
of the gale would flip a dish, with its contents, off
his board and far away to leeward. He would shout
an order to his acolyte for half a dozen fowls and a
bucket of boiling water. A few rapid motions of the
hands, and they were all gyrating in the scuppers,
while one after another he plunged them into the
steaming bucket and slithered the feathers off, fling-
ing each, as he did so, to his waiting henchman for the
minor picking. Thus I have seen him serve six fowls
at noon—at 12.35 they were being eaten. Ask me not
how, for the details are unpalatable.
But his great achievement was butchering in bad
weather,—butchering sheep. Stolid Joe would bring
the sacrifice along, mercurial Bill would seize it, stab
it, and, unaided, commence to rip off its hide imme-
diately. There, on the deck, outside his galley door,
the struggle would go on as if it were a fight to
the death, so great was the fury that little man
displayed. And it was one of the commonest of sights
to see, in the midst of the operation, a green comber
of a wave come hissing along, embracing carcase
and cook and sweeping them clean off in a di-
shevelled heap bang aft, up against the second-class
berths. Knife in one hand, half-skinned sheep
gripped by the other, he had no buffers wherewith to
ward off bruises, but he had a voice. And he used
it, not in canticles of praise. Yet punctually the meal
for which that sheep was being prepared would ap-
pear on the table. And it would not be an unsa
voury dinner either. The one thing that alwaysTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 199
seemed to dishearten him was the lifting, of a copper
or kettle that fitted into a hole on the stove top, clean
out of its fiery bed, by a vicious plunge of the vessel.
And as such an event was usually followed by a green
sea thundering over all, and flooding him and his
lieutenant clean out of the galley amid a smother of
steam, coal grit, and spoiled food, his temporary sub-
dual could not be wondered at.
But I must forbear. Mental pictures of that super-
excellent cook’s doings arise before me in almost in-
terminable succession, tempting me to forget the fact
that there were many others doing almost precisely
the same things, unsung, and unrewarded save by the
meagre pay they drew. Who, for instance, could
envy the cook of a “ weekly ” tramp,—a steamer, that
is, which making quite long voyages, has engaged
her crew at so much a week and find themselves.
Perhaps there are no cooks at sea who are more wor-
ried than these. For Jack, left to his own devices
for supplying himself with food, does some of the
queerest things that ever were or could be recorded.
And each individual expects his own mess to be as
carefully looked after as a whole saloon dinner. Nat-
ural, perhaps, on his part, but for the hapless cook
purgatorially inconvenient. I was once a passenger
from an Irish port to Liverpool in a weekly boat, and
in the grey of the dawn was waiting at the galley
door to buy a cup of coffee. Men came and went in-
cessantly, banging oven doors and flinging utensils
from side to side of the red-hot stove-top. The cook
was absent, engaged aft in some business or other.
Presently he appeared with a teapot and immediately200 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
snatched at a huge copper kettle which stood on the
stove in the middle, where the top plate was almost
transparent with heat. The kettle flew up in his
grasp, being empty.
“ Why, there’s nothin’ in it,” he screamed.
“ No,” replied a fireman who was groping in the
starboard oven. “ I tried it ten minutes ago, and it
was empty then.”
“ An’ you putt it back on that stove! ” said the
cook tragically.
“ ’ Course I did,” was the calm reply. “ Think I was
goin’ ter fill it ? ”
I really thought the cook would have died of sup-
pressed emotion before he found words wherein to
express himself; but his tongue was loosened pres-
ently, and then his remarks, if sulphurous, were fairly
comprehensive. The fireman only laughed.
What shall I say of the cook of the tramp pure and
simple? Only this, I am afraid, that while he has a
bitter, hard berth of it he gets little better pay than
his brother of the sailing-ship. One consolation he
has, and that not a little one,—he has more to cook,
and consequently he is, taken generally, a better
workman. For there is nothing tends to disgust a
man more—no matter of what trade he be—than the
being compelled to make bricks without straw. And
there can be no doubt that, hard as are the tramps in
many respects for their crews, the food is much better,
taking the average, than that provided in sailing-ships.
Having such a rough crowd to cater for, however,
does not tend to improve the quality of the cooks
carried in tramp steamers, A decent man hardlyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 201
cares to face the possibility of being violently as-
saulted, for no fault of his own, by members of a gang
of ruffians of every nation under heaven save his own
countrymen. And this is the state of affairs that any
man in such a position as a cook holds must be pre-
pared to face in most tramps. If he be fortunate
enough to get into one of the Northeastern coast
tramps owned by canny firms who like to have their
ships manned by their own people, and whose highest
ambition is to see efficiency combined with comfort
on board of them, he will be as well off as any sea-
cook, not an artist, can reasonably ask to be.CHAPTER XXIII.
THE COOK—SAILING-SHIPS.
It may perhaps have appeared strange to many
that, in dealing with the cook in the preceding
chapter, I have hardly mentioned anything about the
materials with which he is called upon to deal. Most
people have heard something about the badness of
food in the merchant service, and therefore it might
seem at first sight a great mistake to write a chapter
on the sea-cook and say nothing about the kind of
food he has to prepare. My excuse must be that in
the kind of ships with which I have been dealing the
food question rarely causes any trouble. In the finest
steamships I doubt very much whether the workers
are not fed quite as well as are any corresponding
class of toilers ashore. And even in the lowest tramps
there is not that general lack of decent food which
does press so hardly upon the seamen in sailing-ships.
For one reason, the steamship is never so long
away from port—unless she breaks down—as to give
the same excuse for carrying the kind of food con-
sidered necessary in sailing-ships. And in many, as I
have said, there is a system in vogue of paying the
men so much per week and permitting them to “ find ”
themselves,—a hateful system and one that can only
be indulged in by the authorities at the cost of muchTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 203
suffering and loss of efficiency by the improvident
men who are under it. How can a man do his work
who, without more forethought than a babe, comes to
sea for a fortnight’s passage with a few ship-biscuits
and a dozen salt herrings ? Without any of the minor
comforts, such as tea, coffee, cocoa, or sugar, he is in
misery all the time, beside being an unmitigated nui-
sance to those of his shipmates who have come pro-
vided with what they need. Then, when the vessel
arrives in port and such a man gets his pay, it is but
rarely that his bitter experience results in his being
more careful. He will have an extensive “drunk”
and again face the passage in a condition of starvation.
But in any case his behaviour does not affect the cook.
Therefore, to see what manner of man it is that
sailors have had to deal with their food in the ma-
jority of vessels up till the advent of the great pas-
senger steamers, and that is carried as a cook of to-
day in thousands of sailing-vessels, it is necessary to
take a trip in a vessel dependent upon sail-power for
propulsion,—a vessel wherein you may be a matter of
five or even six months at sea without making a call
anywhere for ever so short a time. It is perfectly
safe to say that even at the present day seven out of
ten sailing-ship cooks are only so styled by courtesy
or for want of a better name to give them. And this
is in despite of the well-meant and in most cases phil-
anthropic efforts that have recently been made to
train cooks for ship work. The good people who,
with the welfare of seamen at heart, take so much
pains in order that he shall have his food properly
prepared, are undoubtedly doing a good work for their204 THE men of the merchant service.
pupils, but the unhappy sailing-ship man seldom gets
the benefit from those educated cooks that their
teachers hope for. And this for the simple reason
that when once a ship’s cook has really learned
cookery he will use his utmost endeavours to get a
ship where there is something that requires skill in
cooking. So he gets into steam, and, once there, only
some dire misfortune will bring him back to a wind-
jammer again.
Yet, strangely enough, even the elementary skill re-
quired for cooking the staple food served out in the
great majority of sailing-ships to-day is generally
wanting. Surely it is only reasonable to expect a
man who engages to serve as cook of a ship to be able
to boil salt beef and pork, make pea-soup and bread,
and boil rice. Nothing more is required of him at sea
than this, for the better food carried for the cabin is
prepared by the steward, who will generally give an
eye to it also while cooking. But it is seldom that
you will find a sailing-ship cook who will or who can
do these things properly. As to taking a little trou-
ble to make this coarse food palatable by varying its
treatment, such cooks would be astounded—indignant
—at the revolutionary idea. And when, in port, the
fare is changed to fresh meat and vegetables, the only
thing that the cook seems capable of doing is to make
one kind of soup. That is usually good, but soon
becomes monotonous. As to roasting meat or cooking
potatoes nicely, such a thought is not to be enter-
tained, or, if the cook does try to do such a thing, the
meat is usually so hard as to be uneatable by any one
but a sailor or a savage.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 205
I am aware that these statements of mine will be
met with indignant denials in some quarters. I shall
be told that things have altered so much for the bet-
ter since my day (sixteen years ago) that I should
hardly recognise them. Unfortunately for the makers
of such remarks, I have taken pains to find out
whether this is really the case, ready and eager to re-
joice in the fact if it were a fact. But I have found to
my sorrow that among sailing-ships the improvement
is practically «z7. When I was going to sea there were
good-living ships, where plenty of preserved meats
were carried and the crews were treated periodically
to fresh messes; ships where abundance of potatoes,
turnips, and onions were put on board and served out
liberally to the crew forward as well as to the officers ;
where a regular allowance of butter and pickles was
made, and in cold weather oatmeal porridge was
served out for breakfast. And there were lines of
sailing-ships where a scale of provisions such as these
was drawn up on generous lines and incorporated in
the ship’s articles instead of the shameful Board of
Trade scale. There are such ships to-day, but their
proportion is no greater than it was then. And if any
will speak of official inspection of provisions in order
to ensure a high standard of quality, I would respect-
fully call their attention to the innumerable state-
ments made and uncontradicted, this present winter,
of the abominable condition of the food supplied, on
board many of the transports, to our troops on their
way to South Africa. Not that I believe such food
would find its way into the kids of the crews of those
transports in the ordinary course of things. No, but2o6 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
such food as that is, in the ordinary course of things,
carried by sailing-ships, the majority of them for the
supply of their foremast hands.
Now in these days such behaviour on the part of
those whose business it is to supply ships with food is
unpardonable, not only because it is cruel, but because
it is unbusiness like. It would be cheaper to supply
preserved fresh meat than salt, cheaper to vary the
food instead of giving hapless men the infernal monot-
ony of beef and duff, pork and pea-soup, every other
day for a matter of a hundred to a hundred and fifty
days on end. There is really no reason why every
ship afloat should not have a pound of butter per
week served out to each sailor, or why a sufficient
quantity of such easily kept vegetables as potatoes,
turnips, and onions should not form a regular portion
of a sailor’s dietary. It is also very well to talk of
the healthiness of sailors, but you will very seldom
find a hale deep-water sailor over fifty years of age.
Nor is this due to volcanic outbursts of intemperance
and other forms of vice while on shore. It is due to
privation of vegetables, and to the use of bad, highly-
salted meat as the only flesh food for long periods.
Dried peas can never make up for the want of fresh
vegetables, although apparently they are expected to
do so, even when flavoured by the boiling with them
of pork so salt that, if allowed to remain in the soup
for more than half an hour, the latter is rendered un-
eatable. And then many cooks are fond of an over-
dose of carbonate of soda in the soup, in order to en-
sure their peas bursting. No one ashore can have any
idea of the craving which seamen on long voyages feelTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 207
for fresh vegetables, the thought of them at times
being almost maddening.
It may be said—although, from the real importance
of the subject just touched upon in the few preceding
paragraphs, I sincerely hope it will not be—that I have
been making a purely gratuitous digression from my
text. At any rate, I will now drop the subject-mat-
ter of cookery, and proceed to deal with the cook him-
self as fairly as I may. Unfortunately my experience
has been so unhappy that it is rather difficult for me
to remember that there must be many good cooks in
sailing-ships, even if I have not had the good fortune
to be shipmates with them during my sailing-ship
voyages. However, I will do my best to be impartial.
In the first place, the routine of a cook's duties in a
sailing-ship is fairly fixed ; there is not much room for
variation. We will suppose that it is Monday morning
in the middle of a long passage. At four o'clock,
when the middle watch is relieved, the cook is called.
Going at once to his galley, he lights his fire with a
handful of tarry yarns and a little wood, and pops the
kettle on. Then a grating noise and a pleasant smell
is manifested ; he is grinding coffee. While the water
is boiling he will attend to the mixing of the sponge
set over night for bread or “ duff,” whichever it is his
custom to make out of the half-pound of flour which
every man is entitled to on that day of the week. At
two bells (five o’clock) he puts his head out of the
galley door and cries “ Coffee.” On the word, every
man of the watch on deck, except the steersman, brings
his pannikin to the galley door and receives a little
more than half a pint of—well, we’ll call it coffee, but208 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
really, when you come to think of it, the name is
somewhat misapplied. For the daily allowance is half
an ounce of green beans, which, by the time they are
roasted and ground, are hardly capable of yielding
sufficient caffeine to make a pint and a half of drink-
able infusion, or rather decoction, since the cook must
boil to get any flavour at all. But that is a detail.
At any rate, the liquid is hot, and it may be sweet, if
the drinker is economical with his twelve ounces of
sugar,—careful enough to make it last him the week.
This morning coffee is a great institution. How-
ever unsavoury it may be as a beverage, it is looked
forward to as no other meal of the day is, for it breaks
up the long and sleepy morning watch, it ushers in the
day, and its medicinal effects are undoubted. After
it has been drunk, the man at the wheel relieved for
his share, and a smoke indulged in, the cry of “ Wash
decks ” is heard, and the day’s work begins. The
cook’s duties are light. He has nothing to prepare
for the men’s breakfast—that is, in eight ships out of
ten—except another jorum of questionable coffee,
about a pint for each man. In most ships breakfast
for the men is the grimmest farce imaginable. A few
fragments of dry ship-biscuit and a pint of coffee can-
not by any stretch of courtesy be called a meal. A
little butter would go far to make it one; a few
potatoes, wherewith to make dry hash or lobscouse
with the few remaining fragments of meat left from
the two preceding meals, and an onion to flavour it
with, would cause the ship to be gratefully regafded
as a “good-living” packet. In American ships this
is the rule ; few, indeed, of them are to be foundTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 209
where a good breakfast is not provided for the men;
and, what is quite as important, the quality of the
bread (biscuit) supplied is usually superior to that
found in the cabins of British sailing-ships. Not so in
Canadian vessels. It is a profound mystery to me,
the way in which Canadian sailors—or, for the matter
of that, ’longshoremen in Canadian coast villages—
feed. The fattest of fat pork, potatoes, and salt cod
seem to be the staple food in the coasters, and as often
as not “ coffee ” is made with burnt bread and sweet-
ened with exceedingly dubious molasses.
Lying in a Nova Scotian harbour once, loading
lumber from a large schooner, I went on board at
breakfast-time. I found the skipper preparing break-
fast for all hands—-four of them. They did not mus-
ter a cook. He unearthed a mass of cold cooked
potatoes and a block of pale pink fat; got out a big
square tin, which he put on top of the hot stove ; and,
carving up the lump of fat into dice, sprinkled them
over the bottom of the pan. He then peeled his po-
tatoes and dropped them into the pan on top of the
hissing fat, stirring them round with his knife. As
soon as the mass was warm through, breakfast was
ready. The “ coffee ” was warmed up from the day
before, and its aroma was enough to kill a mosquito,
—I should think it would have made a fine disinfect-
ant. Yet in that splendid country, while there is no
want of the best food, there is a serious lack of cook-
ing ability. I stayed in a “ hotel ” in one coast village
for nearly two months one winter, whereat least thirty
always sat down to meals. Those meals never varied.
Fried blocks of meat, potatoes boiled in their skins,2io THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
soggy bread, and “ pies ” (a sort of stew of cranberries
or dried apples spread over a dough-covered plate and
indurated in an oven), always formed the menu.
Never a bit of green vegetable or any suggestion that
even the same kind of meat might be made just as
palatable, if not more so, by being treated in a differ-
ent way. I suppose these strong men look down with
a certain contempt upon any careful treatment of food
as being effeminate.
But to return to the British sailing-ship cook get-
ting ready for breakfast. As I have said, the men’s
repast does not burden him. He may have in the
oven a panful of “ cracker hash,” a mess of pounded
biscuit and chopped beef or pork, mixed with water,
and plentifully anointed with grease skimmed from
the cook’s coppers. This will have been got ready
over-night by the younger member of the forecastle
crowd. In many ships, however, this form of filling is
strictly forbidden; that is to say, the cook is not al-
lowed to have it in his oven, because it is well known
to be most unwholesome, producing various intestinal
disorders and covering the men with boils. But
the temptation to invent some means of distending the
craving stomach is great, so most men break up the
biscuit into their coffee and shovel it down soaked, to
the ruin of their digestions. Meanwhile the watch on
deck are getting a razor-keen edge on their appetites.
The strong pure air and the vigorous exercise of
thoroughly cleansing the decks with a flood of water
and much scrubbing from stem to stern is enough to
do this, even if it were not aided by an occasional ap-
petising whiff from the galley of frying bacon or cun-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 211
ning stew which is being got ready for the officers’
morning meal. Those who have been sleeping in the
crowded forecastle are naturally not so sharp set ; they
can do with a drink of coffee and a smoke. But
when, at eight bells (8 A. M.) the watch is relieved, and
those who have been at work all the morning come
below to the mockery that awaits them, there is much
bitterness and bad language.
No sooner has the cook cleared off the cabin break-
fast than he turns his attention to the “ duff ” 01-
bread. The former curious compound is peculiar to
British merchant sailing-ships. It is really boiled
bread. It is made like bread with hop yeast, but a
certain quantity of grease is mixed with it, and it is
not put into the bags dry like dough, but slack enough
to run. The bags are made of canvas, conical in
shape, to allow of the duff being turned out easily.
Before the mixture is poured into them, they are
dipped in hot water,—salt, of course ; you cannot af-
ford to use fresh at sea for such cooking purposes, ex-
cept in steamers where a condenser is always at work.
When the due amount is poured into each bag it is
loosely tied to admit of the duff rising, and plunged
into a boiling copper, whence, if all be well, it will
emerge at seven bells light and spongy. Usually a
modicum of molasses is provided, to give it some
flavour, but I have been in ships where even that
poor adjunct was wanting.CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SAILING-SHIP COOK—continued.
Having got the duff off his mind,—and allow me
to assure you that a sailing-ship cook’s reputation
hangs principally upon his ability to turn out a satis-
factory duff,—there is the beef. It has been soaking
in sea water since the previous evening, to mollify
in some measure its terrible salinity, and now the
cook removes it therefrom, unless, as often happens
in small ships, the steep-tub is the wash-deck tub also, in
which case the meat must be taken out at 6 A. M. in
order to allow the tub in which it has been soaking to
play its part in the cleansing of the ship. But that is
only a detail. If the cook be a clean man he will now
wash the meat carefully (it needs washing badly) before
putting it in the copper. But he may—and often
does—think that process not at all necessary ; it will
be clean enough by the time it is cooked. With the
duff bubbling fiercely, and the beef on the other side
of the stove keeping in tune with it, the men’s dinner
needs no more thought on the cook’s part except to
keep the fire going, so that he will be able to do a bit
of cleaning up if he have a weakness in that direction,
or he may sit and smoke and meditate. The steward
is preparing the cabin dinner aft in his pantry: a fruit
pie, some tasty combination of tinned meat and pota-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 213
toes, or even a fowl if they are carried. In any case,
as a rule the cook has only to see the food for the
cabin through the actual cooking.
At seven bells (twenty minutes past eleven ; the ten
minutes to the half-hour being allowed for the men to
turn out) some one—usually an ordinary seaman, or a
boy where boys are carried ; in other cases the “ cook
of the mess ”■—comes to the galley for the dinner. It
must be ready, and it almost invariably is. Any delay
is unpardonable, for there is only the “ chunk ” of beef
and the “ phallus ” of duff. Since they have probably
been fasting since the previous supper-time, except for
such few morsels as they have been able to get down
at breakfast or “ coffee-time,” the members of the aris-
ing watch are usually very sharp set, and the duff dis-
appears like magic. The beef, too, although there be
nothing to eat with it but the flinty biscuit, receives
considerable attention, but it is generally spared for
supper, as it is better cold—if the word “ better ” can
be used in connection with it at all.
But the men of the watch that has been working all
the forenoon on an empty stomach are ravenous. At
eight bells (noon) they come below and eat like starv-
ing men. If it were not for the filling “ whack ” of
duff, though, their hunger would soon be destroyed,
not satisfied. In some ships the cook is not allowed
to make duff, for the same reason that he is not allowed
to cook cracker-hash, and then the men’s principal
meal on flour days is a sad business. A roll of just-
made bread, seldom palatable, and a chunk of salt
beef, is not a fair meal for a hard-worked man under
such conditions. And in these days of cheap, good,214 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
and tasteful food ashore it is not to be wondered at
that seamen before the mast embrace the earliest op-
portunity available of quitting such positions and get-
ting work ashore, where even the convicts in our prisons
are far better fed. This is the more to be deplored
because it is so totally unnecessary. The difference
between a good-living ship and a bad one to the sailor
may be expressed in the simplest terms. It is not
true that the sailor is never satisfied. Men will speak
in the most grateful terms of a ship for years after-
ward on which, instead of the incessant salt meat, they
had a fresh mess three times a week, potatoes and onions
were served out occasionally, and butter and pickles
were given. And these things make a mighty small
difference to the total expenses of the voyage ; nay,
by slightly reducing the quantity of salt meat, the ex-
penditure might be kept almost, if not quite, at the
same level. And then good cooks would become the
rule.
American ships have earned their reputation for
good living solely on the strength of their bountiful
supply of potatoes, onions, and flour, their lavishness
in the matter of dried apples and cranberries, and
their high standard in the matter of cooks. And
Americans are not extravagant in business matters
either. They know how to run a ship economically
as well as any seafarers in the world, and they think it
is the most wasteful thing imaginable to starve a ship’s
company for the sake of a little attention to detail.
This is a vital principle with them. They will work
their crews to the last ounce, often in what cannot by
any stretch of courtesy be called necessary tasks. ITHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 215
have been with men who have actually known what it
is to be slung aloft scraping yards in a gale of wind at
night, but they said that when they got below there
was always a tasty meal ready for them, and any neg-
lect on the part of the cook would have resulted im-
mediately in his feeling the burden of severe suffering.
Once the dinner is over and the gear washed up,
the cook’s work is practically done for the day. He
may find a few minutes’ relaxation in “ burning cof-
fee,” as the sailors call it,—that is, roasting it in the
oven. But that is about all. He has nothing to pre-
pare for the men’s supper. He may have a little dry
hash to get ready for the cabin, but in many cases
the steward will do even that, so that there is really
no excuse for his being dirty. Yet unless the skipper
is a man who rigorously practises that most essential
part of a shipmaster’s daily round,—that is, goes all
over the ship every day,—a cook will often get so
dirty that it is a wonder the men are not poisoned.
And I am sorry to say that this condition is by no
means confined to negroes and Asiatics, who have the
worst reputation. I remember three cooks, each of
whom was my countryman, of whom I may say I do
not believe it would have been possible to have found
dirtier men.
Tuesday’s work is like Monday’s, except that, in-
stead of bread or duff, pea-soup is the staple. And
since ’board-ship pea-soup is simply peas boiled in
water with a piece of pork allowed to simmer with it
for about half-an-hour to give it flavour, one would
think that on pea-soup days, at any rate, the poor
sailor would be sure of getting his meal properly pre-216 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
pared. But if you asked a foremast hand how often
he gets good pea-soup, please look out for strong
language. He will most probably tell you—although
that would be exaggeration—that the only time the
pea-soup is good is when there’s a heavy sea on,
so that the tumbling about of the ship renders stirring
unnecessary ; otherwise it is almost sure to be burnt,
because the cook is too lazy to stir it. And therefore
it is often burnt. Now burnt pea-soup is perhaps one
degree worse than burnt oatmeal porridge, which it is
said a pig will refuse. Or it may be that the cook
cannot learn the secret of getting the peas to mash,
so that the soup is like yellowish water with a collec-
tion of yellow shot at the bottom, a food that would
disarrange the digestion of an ostrich.
Another thing that always seemed to me to be
radically wrong was the making of tea and coffee in
the same pot that was used for soup, and making
these infusions as if they were soups, serving them
out, too, like soup, by ladlefuls, stirring up the leaves
or grounds as if afraid of defrauding some critical
sailor of his due allowance. Surely it should not be
so difficult to utilise a kettle for making tea and cof-
fee. But these observances grow into the most con-
servative of customs, and it would be like suggesting
mutiny should some enterprising individual dare to
hint at a change. One cook with whom I was ship-
mate, a Maltese, perpetrated a piece of cookery that
I have never been able to forget. Some one had
caught a dolphin, and, instead of frying it (in the
oven) as usual, the cook boiled it, and indeed it was
very palatable. But the next morning at coffee-timeTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 217
the coffee was too funny for anything. We were not at
all dainty, but that mixture would not go down. So
one of our number, a sarcastic old Yankee, went to the
galley and said :
“ Hyar, cook, what in thunder hev ye ben im-
provin’ th’ coffee fur ? It may be all right, but I’ll
be dog-goned ef I kaint do better with it ez before.
I’ve gut used t’ it.”
So saying he held out his pannikin invitingly. The
cook took it, smelt it, tasted it, looked puzzled for a
second or two, and then said triumphantly:
“ Oah yez, I know. I boil him in de same pot I
boil the fish las’ night, ’n’ I don’ wash her out, see! ”
He was quite struck with his ingenuity in finding Lt
out,—and he wasn’t punched, either.
I mentioned the cook of the mess just now, but
that is a term applied solely to a man who takes his
turn with the others where there are no boys or ordi-
nary seamen in the fo’c’s’le to carry in the food, wash up
the plates, or clean the fo’c’s’le out and trim the lamp.
Now in an American ship the crew’s plates are washed
by the cook, who also keeps the tin dishes in which
their food is served to them as bright as silver. That,
again, is a point wherein an American ship’s cook
differs widely from his British confrere. Indeed it is
not too much to say that a cook who would be called
a very clean man in a British ship would be looked
upon as dirty on board of a Yankee, so high is the
American ship’s standard in matters of cleanliness.
Really I am half afraid to say what I have seen
done by cooks on board of British ships, the things
will seem so incredible to landsmen. But the subject213 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
is so important in its bearing upon the well-being of
the men that one hardly likes to leave it without tell-
ing all the truth. I have seen a cook who did not
know how to open a tin of meat, who tried to chop it
in half with an axe; who was too lazy and filthy to
wash the saucepans out, but wiped them out instead.
Another who made duff without yeast, and boiled it
in salt water without a bag,—a lump of dough that
was like a piece of grey india-rubber when it was served
up. Another who did not use a frying-pan for steaks
in harbour, but flung the chunks of meat upon the
top of the red-hot stove and unblushingly sent the
charred flesh into the fo’c’s’le for the men to eat.
But strangest thing of all,—a thing that puzzles me
to this day,—was the action of a crew in one vessel
where we were cursed with the queerest specimen of
an incapable for cook. We shipped a man in Ran-
goon as A.B. who was really a good cook, as ship-
cooks go, and as soon as he found how things were
he volunteered to teach that wretched food-spoiler his
duties in his (the seaman’s) own time. Then, wonder-
ful to relate, the very men who were suffering from
the vile messes the pseudo-cook was making turned
round upon that volunteer, saying that if they were
the cook, they wouldn’t allow no --------interloper to
meddle with their work, so they wouldn’t. Of course
this discouraged the reformer, and he desisted from
his laudable efforts with the result that we were in a
state of semi-starvation all the way home. Truly a
sailor is a strange being.
There is a lower depth still—impossible as it may
seem—in small vessels, where the galley dwindles to aTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 219
“ caboose,” a sort ot sooty cupboard on deck, too
small for the miserable youth who is both cook and
steward to get into. So he stands on deck, often
swathed in oilskins, his head in the grimy hole, with
the smoke from the stove nearly stifling him, doing
his “ cooking.” Does this state of things need any
comment? Fancy cooking under such conditions, if
you can. In bad weather, of course, the fire cannot
be kept alight, so that the crew must go without any
other comfort for their craving stomachs than biscuit
and cold water. A short meditation upon such con-
ditions of living should bring to many of us a sense
of shame for our complainings at food which, were it
ten times as bad, would be an unheard-of luxury to
the sailors on board some of our ships.
Let me conclude with one more reminiscence. In
a brig of which I was mate on the East African coast
we shipped two Zanzibar Arabs as cook and steward.
The skipper had his wife on board, and she, poor
woman, on the passage home, was in danger of being
starved to death. So the bos’un and myself took it
in turns to oversee those savages,—cannily too, for
they valued not their life one jot, and would as soon
have murdered us as look. Oh, how we suffered !
At last we reached St. Helena and got some fresh
beef and vegetables. I cooked a dinner of these
luxuries, and when it was brought into the cabin the
lady actually wept with delight at the prospect of
one decent meal.CHAPTER XXV.
THE APPRENTICE—SUGGESTIONS.
I MAY as well admit at the beginning of this chapter
that I approach it with a heavy sense of responsibility,
and for many reasons. I am exceedingly anxious
about the future of our merchant service, and the de-
cay of the apprentice system at sea is full of menace
for that future. Again I know that many dear friends
throughout the length and breadth of this land of ours
are looking with pathetic eagerness for some guidance
upon this subject. They want to gratify their son’s
inbred craving for a sea-life, but what are the pros-
pects. How will it affect their boys, supposing they
find, after a short acquaintance with the sea, that they
are not fit for it at all ?
In short, there are so many middle-class folks ready
to apprentice their boys in the merchant service if
that service is worth their attention as a probable life-
occupation, and they are so pathetically eager and
earnest to obtain reliable information and enlighten-
ment on their utter ignorance of all the details of a
nautical life, that it behoves all who have that informa-
tion to give it carefully, without bias, and intelligibly.
There is therefore no reason why they would withhold
it altogether from craven fear of being upbraided for
after-consequences of following the advice they have
given.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 221
With this in my mind I would say at the outset
that I believe the system of apprenticeship might be
revived with great advantage to the country and to
individuals, but it needs revision. As it exists at
present, its only effect is to flood the merchant service
with an enormous number of certificated men who
cannot get ships as officers, and who find the fo’c’s’le
society disgusting, having trained themselves to ex-
pect something better. Worse still, it will be found
to have unsettled many lads for any steady land occu-
pation, while completely disenchanting them as to the
fine life they expected at sea. It has just aroused in
these well-brought-up, home-keeping youths the nomad
instinct that is latent in every human breast, and, the
love of wandering once established, nothing short of
main force will make that man a settled citizen again
until he reaches middle age.
Apprenticeship is often spoken of as a means to the
laudable end of replenishing the British merchant ser-
vice with British seamen. But in its present form
such a suggestion about apprenticeship is utterly ab-
surd. Respectable people who have spent money
upon their sons’ education do not pay a heavy pre-
mium and apprentice him to a ship with the object of
his becoming an “ able seaman.” They expect him
to be an officer as soon as possible, and that is the
goal to which the lad looks forward. Now it must be
said at once, plainly and frankly, that the supply of
officers far exceeds the demand. The fact that, there
are many foreign officers in our merchant service does
not affect this statement at all. All that it means is
that as the pay of officers is a matter of individual222 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
bargaining, and not a fairly fixed quantity like that of
the seamen, there is always an opportunity for under-
selling. Let me give an instance. On my last voyage
I had been prowling about the docks, looking for a
ship, until I was in very low water indeed and glad of
almost anything. Yet, as I was married and had one
child, there was a minimum wage below which I could
not go without the prospect of my dear ones starving.
Receiving information that there was a brig in the St.
Katherine’s Dock wanting a mate, I hastened down to
her, finding the master a pleasant, genial man and
English. I told him my errand, showed my creden-
tials, and was asked what wages I wanted. I sug-
gested £6 lew. a month, feeling, as I did so, that I
might as well ask for the moon while I was about it.
We finally agreed upon £$ 155. a month, which made
my wife’s income while I was at sea about fourteen
shillings a week. But I went home light-hearted
enough in the feeling that I was no longer a dock-
slouching mendicant, and that something was sure for
at least twelve months.
The next morning, when I came on board to work,
the skipper told me that he had received an offer from
a German, fully certificated, to come as mate for £3 a
month, and one from an Englishman who said that as
he had money of his own, and only wanted to get his
time in for master, he would come for nothing. “ I
didn’t take the German,” said Captain-------, “ entirely
because I had given you my word, but because I hold
that it is a national crime to permit foreign officers to
have charge of our ships, apart altogether from the
shame of having them cut the already too scantyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 223
wages. And I didn’t take the other fellow because I
wanted a man to earn his wages, and I knew that lie
was likely to earn what he offered to go for—nothing.”
So I kept the berth, but, as the skipper truly re-
marked, had the owner known that he was paying
much more for my services than there was any neces-
sity for him to do, he would have been very angry.
My contention is that apprentices should be classi-
fied. If there were two grades established, one with
a view to making foremast hands and another for
training officers, I think much good might be done.
For instance, the poor lads who go in such charitable
training-ships as the Warspite and Chichester, the
Exmouth, Shaftesbury, and Cornwall, should not be
sent adrift as they are now, shipped as boys in what-
ever ship will take them, and discharged with the rest
of the crew on their return to the home port. It is
true that the authorities ruling the training-ships are
always ready to befriend these young sea-boys to a
certain extent when they return, but it should be re-
membered that there are always many fresh lads to be
disposed of, boys who have finished their training-
time and are waiting for a ship in which to begin
their sea-life. It is not always an easy task to pro-
vide ships for them, either, and therefore it is hardly
fair to expect the training-ship people to handicap them
by looking after the shipment of old boys as well. But
if those lads were apprenticed without premium at a
small wage increasing each year, and with the definite
object of making good foremast hands of them, I am
sure much good might be done. They would cer-
tainly be no worse off than any lad ashore who serves224 THE men of the merchant service.
his time as a mason, a carpenter, or a plumber. In the
vast majority of cases the horizon of such apprentices
is bounded by the prospect of becoming a good jour-
neyman, for which the demand is always greater than
the supply. If they develop habits of thrift, a faculty
of organisation, and power of command, the way is
open for them to become master, and in like manner
there would be nothing to prevent the non-premium
apprentice from rising higher than a mere “journey-
man " sailor, if I may thus use the expression, in the
fact that he had been apprenticed on a lower grade
than those intended for officers from the beginning.
The treatment of such apprentices would be no dif-
ferent to that in force now on board ship for “boys”
so called. They would probably live in the fo’c’s’le
among the men or with the petty officers. I know
that some people will raise an outcry against the idea
of boys being sent to live in the fo’c’s’le with the men,
but from experience I am sure that this would not be
detrimental to the boys at all. When a boy has spent
two or three years on board a training-ship (I do not
mean a training-college like the Worcester or Conway,
although I do not suppose that all the boys there are
unfledged angels), he has nothing to learn in the way
of evil in a ship’s fo’c’s’le. Please, my good friends
the officers in charge of these ships, don’t imagine
that I am casting any reflections upon you. You do
your best, but it is simply impossible for you to keep
such a crowd of young rascals as you have to deal
with like an ideal Sunday school. I have been ship-
mates with a great number of these boys, good, bad,
and indifferent, but in one respect their education wasThe men of the merchant service. 225
never wanting,—the knowledge of such evil as we do
not write about, and only hint at in conversation.
I have heard—of course I do not assert it—that
even our great public schools are not above suspicion
in these matters. At these are sons of gentle parents,
who have led a guarded life from childhood, the foul
innuendo and salacious gabble of the streets never
having reached their ears. So that if they, in the care-
fully guarded precincts of these homes of education,
acquire a knowledge of the grosser forms of evil, we
need not be surprised at the poor street boy who joins
the Arethusa or the Cornzvall being wiser than they
are. I have often seen a boy checked in a ship’s
fo’c’s’le for using an expression that was not—well,
fit for ears polite, although the man who checked him
was constantly in the habit of talking in that strain.
It is perfectly true that one occasionally finds a low-
minded beast of man’s age who will deliberately en-
courage a boy to swagger in foulness for his private
ear, but it is always in private ; such a practice would
never be tolerated in the midst of the watch. And
such loathsome company will always be open to the
boy, whoever he lives with on board.
No, it is not nearly so dangerous for boys to live
with the men in the open fo’c’s’le as it is for them to
live with one or two petty officers, or, worse still, by
themselves. The latter should never be allowed at
all: it is as bad as it can be. Living with the men,
they hear foul language continually: but they have
always heard it; most of them have long been.profi-
cient in its use ; and none of its shades of meaning are
lost on them. But they must not use it themselves226 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
now. They will not be ill-used,—that is, beaten,—be-
cause of that growing tenderness for the young which
is such a fine feature of our day, and one that has
been just as fully developed on board ship as it has
ashore. They must be civil and obliging, and, if will-
ing to learn, will always find some one willing to
teach. The fact of their being bound to serve for a
period of four years would operate powerfully against
that tendency—so fatal to the replenishment of our
merchant service with young British seamen—to quit
the sea after the first voyage or two and get some job,
requiring no skill, ashore. At present, when first the
training-ship boys go to sea, they are sure to find
some fellow who will lay before them a lurid picture
of the hopelessness of ever doing any good at sea.
He will continually din into the young ears the advice
to sweep a crossing, become a “ dung-puncher,”—any-
thing rather than lead such a dog's life as he says the
common seaman always endures. With what results
let the Registrar-General of Shipping and Seamen’s
Reports tell. According to them there is a constant
drain of young men out of the merchant service,—
lads who had served one, two, or three years, and con-
sequently the supply is cut off at its source.
Now this sad thing is distinctly traceable in my
mind to three great causes. The first is the want of
provision for keeping these lads a reasonable time at
sea by some binding agreement like apprenticeship
indentures. The second is the utter carelessness
manifested in the majority of cases about food and
accommodation. And the third is undermanning.
These last two do not in any way apply to the high-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 227
est class of liners, which is above reproach in these
matters. But it does apply to most of the ships we own
in Britain, and until the European standard of what
is due to a workman’s needs more closely approximates
to our own, either by our sinking to their level or by
their rising to ours, it will continue to operate in the
direction of displacing British subjects by aliens. I
do not believe that the question of wages enters into
it at all. Wages do affect the officers, who, as I have
before said, make their individual bargains ; but if a
crew of Scandinavians or a crew of Britons are
shipped before the mast, the wages paid will be the
same in both cases. And when you come to think of
it, foremast hands are not at all badly paid. When
the A.B. was a skilled mechanic and received £2 ior.
a month, while a carpenter, a joiner, or a mason was
getting £1 I5r. a week ashore, the former had some
ground of complaint; but when, as is the case now,
the majority of seamen before the mast—in steamers
at any rate—are really little more skilled than labourers,
£3 ioj. to £4 ioj. a month, with board and lodging,
is better pay than any of their fellows ashore are get-
ting. Sailing-ship A.B.’s deserve more, but they get
less than steamboat men, for some strange reason that
has always puzzled me.
It must not be supposed that I am advocating any-
thing revolutionary. What I propose with regard to
this second grade of apprentices is already in opera-
tion, owing to the far-sightedness and liberality of a
North-country firm, Messrs. Walter Runciman and
Co., of Newcastle. Of course they are steamship
owners,—tramp-owners if you will; but, as I have be-228 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
fore hinted, tramps hailing from the northeast coast
of England have good reputations. The canny
“ Geordie ” has made a specialty of tramp-owning,
and, backed as he is by a long course of most success-
ful experiences in all matters pertaining to the sea, he is
growing remarkably strong. The men of the “ Coaly
Tyne ” have the well-deserved reputation of being pio-
neers in several of our most notable reforms in shipping
matters. The mention of only two—Board of Trade
certificates and lifeboats—will give an idea of what
our hard-headed North-country folk are capable. Mr.
Walter Runciman says that his system of carrying
non-premium apprentices is most successful, and I am
sure that his word may be relied upon.
Then there is the premium-paying grade. A great
many alterations might be made in their behalf, to
the end that a parent who is put to the expense of out-
fit, premium, etc., may have something definite for his
money. It need hardly be said that if a boy is a born
“ duffer ” one can hardly expect any skipper or officer
to make him anything else, but there is a medium in
all things, and every sailor knows that there is no
trade in the world where the first duty to an appren-
tice is so much neglected as it is at sea. I can hon-
estly assert that I was never on board of but one ship
in my life where any attempt at all was made to
teach the apprentices their trade. That ship was the
Harbinger, before she was taken over by Lord Bras-
sey’s committee and made a special sea-training ship
for cadets. In my day she was just a fine merchant
ship belonging to Messrs. Anderson, Anderson & Co.,
and commanded by Lieut. Henry Y. Slader, R.N.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 229
He formulated stringent rules that every apprentice
on board should have a share in all sailorising that
was going on ; that, as far as lay in their power, these
young gentlemen should work the sails on the mizzen,
the smallest mast of the three ; that one apprentice
should always be on duty ©n the poop, so that he
might be in touch with the officer of the watch, who
was supposed to lose no opportunity of imparting to
him practical instruction in handling sails, trimming
yards, etc. In addition to all this, Captain Slader was
himself in the habit of taking these young.men through
a practical examination in navigation at stated inter-
vals, and inviting them to dine at the saloon table in
rotation on Sundays.
Now this treatment had its due effect in the build-
ing up of those apprentices into first-class seamen and
officers, as indeed it might have been expected to do.
Yet it was only on a par with common-sense workshop
treatment, and it was certainly no more than any pa-
rent who had paid a premium of £yo to ,£80 had a
right to expect. But even on board that fine ship the
lads were left entirely to themselves in their watch
below. They all lived together in the fore part of a
small after house, and unless the senior apprentice
happened to be a young man of fine forceful charac-
ter the tone of their “diggings ” could not help being
bad. Be it noted that among that splendid set of
youngsters, the midshipmen of the Royal Navy, there
is always to be found a sub-lieutenant who is respon-
sible for the behaviour of the gun-room, who rules it,
in fact, in despotic fashion. And the conditions there
are very different to what they are in the merchant230 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
service. The lads don’t sleep in the gun-room. They
are not herded together in one small apartment which
serves as bedroom, bathroom, dining-room, and sitting-
room.
In the United States the two great cities of Phila-
delphia and New York maintain, out of their public
funds, a fine vessel each,—the Saratoga and the St.
Mary s. These are sea-going ships especially set apart
for the training of men and officers for the mercantile
marine. The idea is distinctly a good and public-
spirited one, and might, one would think, be advanta-
geously copied in England. But I fear that such a
thing is too much to hope for, at least, not until our
shore-folks are aroused to the enormous importance of
our mercantile marine.
If only we could get one tenth as much interest
manifested in the gigantic business by means of which
we are all fed, as is shown in one great horse-race or
a dozen first-class cricket-matches I should feel hope-
ful. But I am afraid that is fartoo great a blessing to
expect.CHAPTER XXVI.
THE APPRENTICE—SOME FACTS CONCERNING
HIS LIFE.
PERHAPS it may be thought that in hammering away
at this point of the apprentices’ lodging-place I am
doing an unwise thing, as no alteration is likely to be
made; but I beg to say that I am speaking from
practical knowledge of the subject, allied to absolute
conviction that the worst possible thing you can do
with a boy fresh from school is to put him, with half a
dozen other lads about his own age, into a house with
no authority therein to keep them in order, save per-
haps one of themselves who has made a voyage_
Such a lad is usually to be found among them, and is
better than no one, for he has had some experience ;
but in cases where all the lads are new to the sea it is
absolutely shameful to cast them thus upon their own
resources. If the master made it his business to give
them a visit every day, things would not be so bad,
because presumably he would tell them what to do ;
but even then it must be remembered that there are
twenty-four hours in the day, and mischief may be
going on in every one of them.
To take the simplest matter, personal cleanliness.
How many lads are there to be found, I wonder, leav-
ing good homes such as the majority of sea-apprentices232 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
do leave, who have ever washed a shirt or a plate, made
a bed, or sewn on a button ? Not one in a thousand.
These things have always been done for them, and had
they decided upon going into any trade or profession
ashore would have still been done for them. To my
thinking it is one of the gravest defects of modern edu-
cation that it leaves a man so helpless when thrown
upon his own resources. I would have every lad, no
matter what his position in life, taught to do for him-
self those personal services which under settled con-
ditions of shore-life are done for him by the other sex.
He might never be called upon to exercise these abili-
ties, but what of that ?—the knowledge that he was
able to help himself could not fail to be of service to
him in any event.
The cadet ships do a great deal for sea-apprentices
in this respect. Not that they prepare a lad for the
utter reliance upon himself which will be suddenly
thrust upon him in almost any ship he joins, for parents
would object, but still it may be taken for granted
that a lad who has been through a Worcester or a
Conway course will not be nearly so helpless as one
who has come direct to sea from some quiet country
home. I was once on board a large barque as A.B.
where every apprentice (there were six) was on his
first voyage. £60 each had been paid as premium for
them, and an average of ,£35 each for their outfit.
They were nice boys, but one day, when we had been
a month at sea, I was invited into their house. And
the first thing I said to my host was : “ I wonder what
your poor mother would say if she could see this
place ! ” It smelt; that rank aroma which is the prod-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 233
uct of deficient ventilation, foul clothes, and stale
food caught me by the throat as I entered. The bunks
of those young gentlemen were like the bins in a rag-
dealer's shop ; their chests were little if any, better ;
and there was a thriving population of vermin of
various sorts. Not a plate, knife, fork, spoon, or mug
had been washed since our departure from London.
In short, the place was like the abode of a group of
savages who had suddenly been introduced to ’board-
ship life and given the habiliments and utensils of
civilisation to play with.
I made a few remarks to my young friend upon the
state of affairs, to which he replied with a shrug of his
shoulders:
“ Yes, it’s pretty bad I know ; but what can we do ?
Nobody ever comes in here, nobody seems to care
what we do when we’re below, as long as we’re out on
deck at eight bells. I’m sick of it. I’ve written a letter
to my father to tell him I’ve had enough of it already.
I didn’t know I was coming to sea to live like a pig,
and to be taught nothing but sweeping up decks and
cleaning out pigstys and water-closets.”
I had nothing to say to that, because I saw the full
force of his remarks myself. But I made him an offer
to wash his clothes for him for a pound of tobacco a
month, and I told him that I was sure the other fel-
lows would find plenty of chaps forward who wouldn’t
mind doing them the same service on the same terms.
But, as he said, how was he to know that he could get
such things done for him unless somebody told him ?
He wouldn’t have dared to ask anybody such a ques-
tion for fear of giving offence. Then he confided in234 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
I
me to the effect that during his period of seasickness
he had befouled a large quantity of clothing which,
becoming offensive, he had flung overboard under
cover of night, and that out of his expensive outfit he
was afraid he should have hardly enough left to carry
him home. He was quite astonished when I told him
that was no news to me. Over and over again I have
seen an apprentice come on board ship with an outfit
costing between ^30 and £40, who at the end of a
twelve months’ voyage had not had enough to dress
himself decently. And then the lad scarcely ever
looked decently clothed.
The fact of the matter is that one of the first neces-
sities of an apprentice at sea is a little personal super-
vision by the master or the mate. Some, esteeming it
their duty, give this supervision ; others, and these
the majority, look upon the hapless apprentices as a
rather troublesome and unhandy portion of the crew,
more bother than they are worth at any time, and cer-
tainly not entitled to any personal care. I do not un-
derstand what kind of mind a man must have who will
thus deliberately neglect the interests of a crowd of
youngsters committed to his charge, but there is the
fact. If any evidence to the truth of it were needed
there are hundreds of men scattered about the country
who have served the whole or a portion of their time,
and have then quitted the sea for good, who could and
would supply it.
So much for their private life. As to the prime pur-
pose for which they become apprentices, it may be
said roughly that they are more likely to learn their
profession in a ship where they are used dishonestlyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 235
than in one where they are treated with the contempt-
uous neglect which is so often their portion. By dis-
honest treatment I mean their being utilised to make
good the deficiency of a purposely reduced crew.
Again I draw upon personal reminiscences. I have
often seen the sons of well-to-do parents who had given
them a costly education, paid a heavy premium with
them, and provided them with a gorgeous outfit,
driven harder than any other item of the ship’s com-
pany. Now, I do not suggest that hard work is bad
for anybody who is otherwise well treated, but I do
assert with emphasis that to carry premium apprentices
and make them do what the men refuse, to make them
the lackeys of the men in fact, is scandalous dishonesty.
There is a certain amount of dirty labour to be per-
formed on board of every ship,—any one will see that
this must be so ; but that is no reason why the appren-
tices should be set to do it because of the short-hand-
edness of the men. Moreover, in properly manned
ships this is not allowed. Such work would naturally
fall to the lot of the lower grade of apprentice to
which I alluded in the last chapter, whose preparation
should be for an A.B.’s life. Some one must do it,
and, as it is generally boys’ work, boys are usually car-
ried to do it.
Still, where apprentices are thus served, it cannot be
denied that they do learn thoroughly the rougher part
of a sailor’s curriculum. They speedily become ex-
pert sail-handlers and helmsmen, because in that way
they can best replace men. “ Sailorising,” a compre-
hensive term which I am of necessity continuously
using, but am leaving the explanation of for a fitting236 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
occasion, they do not learn so readily, because they
are not allowed to watch a man at work unless they
are told off to assist him. The handling of a ship very
often remains a sealed book to them during the whole
of their apprenticeship, because, treated as they are,
they acquire the habit of mind which is characteristic
of the foremast hand,—that is, not to bother their
heads about anything except what they are told to
do. Besides, they are so hard-worked that they are
usually weary and disinclined to waste one minute of
their watch below in an endeavour to gather infor-
mation ; while in their watch on deck at night (a good
opportunity for learning many things) they will be try-
ing to do as they see the men do,—steal as much sleep
as possible.
In a word, they are just ship-boys, fed like the men,
worked harder than the men, but living apart from
the men in a little den of their own, where, unhindered,
they may sink into savagery. This is a lurid picture,
I admit, yet I dare not soften its details one iota. I
can only say that it is not universal. There are fortun-
ately a good number of ships in which conscientious
masters consider themselves in honour bound to act
toward their apprentices as honest guardians of their
best interests, who would no more think of allowing
them to be set cleaning out latrines, pigstys, and
fowl-coops, while the men were comfortably engaged
upon cleaner work, than they would think of putting
their own children to do it. But such treatment ought
to be made impossible. It should also be very dis-
tinctly laid down that no apprentice with whom a
premium is paid should be put to work cargo in tropi-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 237
cal ports. That is a task under which the strongest
European sailors often fail. Shovelling coal, guano, or
nitrate, for instance, with a temperature of over ioo°
in the shade in a ship’s hold, is an employment that
no boy on board ship should ever be subject to, much
less a lad whose parents have paid for him to be well
treated.
So curiously are some men constituted that I have
seen two lads from the Chichester, on board one vessel
in which I was A.B., much more carefully taken care
of than I ever saw apprentices but once. Those two
boys were not even allowed to grease down any of
the masts because it was their first voyage ; they were
never sent into any position of danger on any pretext
whatever ; they were taken in hand by the mate in
their watch below, educationally ; in fact they received
what I should call the ideal treatment for an apprentice.
Yet in my next vessel there were three apprentices,
two on their first voyage, with each of whom .£50 pre-
mium had been paid, whose treatment was so scandalous
that even the men cried out against it. I did not join
the ship until half the voyage was over, so I did not
witness their early training ; but while I was on board
they did all the greasing down and all the extra dirty
work of the ship, while for a season one was acting
cook (?) and another was acting steward. I am glad
to say that one of them had the nous to prevail upon
his widowed mother to write to the owner, upon the
ship’s arrival home, protesting against the most scan-
dalous treatment of her son. In this case the owner
was certainly not to blame, but that mother’s letter
had the effect of opening his eyes to what might238 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
be going on in his ships without his knowledge or
privity.
But in one most painful case which recently came
under my notice a boy was actually done to death
by overwork and neglect, both of which crimes against
him were abundantly proved, but went unpunished
owing to official shielding of the criminal. And
the broken-hearted mother was advised to let the
matter drop, as she could not possibly do any good,
and in any case she could not bring again her dead
to life!
From all this it may be gathered that I am of
opinion that the sea-apprentice system needs consider-
able overhauling. At present everything depends
upon the master. Where he is an energetic and
conscientious man the apprentice will doubtless be
thoroughly well looked after and will be taught his
profession, and his lot will compare favourably with
that of an apprentice in any other trade or profession
going. But such an important matter should not be
left to individual caprice at all. Certain rules for
the treatment of apprentices by the officers should be
laid down by the owners, and it should be insisted
upon that those rules shall be carried out. Ashore, if
a man binds his son to any profession, he is in con-
stant touch with him, able to ascertain whether he is
being taught, or just being used for an errand-boy or
odd-man, and if he be not satisfied his remedy is
always at hand. But once a lad has gone to sea he is
cut off from everybody who might help him ; he is at
the absolute mercy of the skipper; and it has not
seldom happened that he has run away in a foreign
port, to the terrible grief of his parents.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 239
It has long been the current remark concerning sea-
apprenticeship that it is the only apprenticeship in
the world where a lad is supposed to learn his profes-
sion without being taught, as if, in some mysterious
way, he could absorb practical knowledge without
ever having an opportunity to do any of those things
he is to be examined in presently. In no other trade
in the world would it be possible for a young man
who had spent four years at it to be so ignorant of its
working details as to require coaching in them when
going up for an examination. I have seen young
fellows at the “ crammers ” in London being taught
such elementary matters as sending up spars, bending
sails, etc., for the purpose of facing examiners ; but I
never heard of any of them “passing” until they had
learned it in the proper way, that is, by assisting in
the doing of such work at sea and taking careful note
of how it was done.
It is quite true that there are some youngsters who
will learn, no matter how great may be the difficulties
in their way. They belong to the class from which
spring all • our leading men in every profession,—
fellows whose thirst for knowledge and industry of
application is so great that, no matter where you put
them, they would speedily rise. But they are few.
The great majority need to be taught, to be spurred
on, to be scolded for laziness or inattention, to be
driven with a tight rein. Having all the thoughtless-
ness of youth, they need to be continually reminded
that its days are brief, and that very soon they will be
called upon to stand alone, to take a hand in the work-
ing of the world’s big machine, no longer boys, but men.24o THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
In the United States and Canada, as I have before
hinted, the apprenticeship system finds no favour.
It may be taken for granted that every youth carried
in those ships for the purpose of becoming an officer
has not only every facility afforded him of learning
his profession most thoroughly, but is compelled
either to learn or quit. Usually the master or mate
has a personal interest in him (it is seldom that more
than one is carried), and they spare no pains to teach
him all that they know themselves. He is well looked
after. No dingy berth shared only by other boys for
him; no hard and scanty fare differing in no respect
from that of the sailors—as in most British ships. Fie
lives in the cabin, eats at the cabin table, associates
with the officers, and breathes the air of authority.
Therefore it is no wonder that when he has grown old
enough to become an officer himself his promotion
comes perfectly natural to him ; he has had for it the
best preparation that could be given him. It may be
said, and with truth, that such a system would not
answer our heavy needs, even if a sufficient number of
masters could be found to give so careful an amount
of attention to aspirants as is here indicated. But
surely some middle course might be taken, more
closely approximating to the treatment of midshipmen
and naval cadets on board of a man-o’-war, but with-
out giving the youngsters the status of officer from
the outset. I believe, however, that a definitely-
drawn-up programme for the treatment of apprentices
by officers, such as I have hinted at in a preceding
paragraph, would answer all needs.CHAPTER XXVII.
THE APPRENTICE—SOME PRACTICAL INFORMATION.
And now, as a relief to all this gloom and vitupera-
tion, I wish to give parents and guardians a few prac-
tical hints as to the course they should pursue if their
sons or charges insist, as so many do, upon making
trial of a sea life. Perhaps it is hardly necessary, after
what I have already said, to repeat that the ideal prep-
aration for a lad who is destined to become an officer
is a preliminary training on board of either the Worces-
ter or the Conway. Here a lad will not only be
thoroughly grounded in navigation and such seaman-
ship as can be taught on board a stationary vessel, but
he will become familiar with life on shipboard, in it-
self no small item. And his general education will
not be neglected either. In fact, whether a lad is in-
tended for the sea or not, I know of no more profit-
able place for him to spend a couple of years than on
board H.M.S. Worcester or (although I have not the
same personal knowledge of the matter,) H.M.S.
Conway.
But there are many estimable people whose incomes
will not bear the modest strain put upon them by the
fees chargeable in these floating colleges,—a much
lower fee, by the way, than would be payable at any
public boarding-school of repute. It is as much as242 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
they can afford to pay a premium of, say, £60, and
provide the lad with an outfit. And this last word
brings me to a subject that I have often wished to en-
large upon for the benefit of parents sending their
sons to sea as apprentices in merchant ships. It is as-
sociated in my mind with a great deal of downright
robbery—heartless swindling. The Registrar Gen-
eral of Shipping does his best to warn parents and
guardians of the wiles of these landsharks who lurk in
our great shipping ports, ready to prey upon the un-
wary, but often his warning does not reach those for
whom it was intended. Therefore I would say : Be-
ware of all advertisements in the newspapers for sea-
apprentices. Remember that no shipowner of repute
needs to advertise for apprentices. If you go to a firm
like Messrs. Devitt & Moore, for instance, you will
probably almost certainly find that they have no va-
cancies ; that if you wish to enter your boy with them
you must put his name at the bottom of their list and
he must await his turn.
It will be found almost invariably that these adver-
tisements emanate from shady firms of outfitters or
shadier firms who are nothing at all but bloodsuckers,
■—people who can most assuredly do nothing for you
but that which with a very little trouble you could do
much better yourself, and who will mulct you in heavy
fees and commissions before you get out of their
clutches. And in addition be quite sure that you are
unlikely, through such agencies, to find a good ship for
your son. You may, but all the chances are dead
against it, because, as I have said, firms of repute do
not do business in that way. Moreover, in handingTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 243
yourself over to the apprenticeship-broker, or what-
ever he calls himself, you will surely be let in for a far
too heavy expenditure upon outfit than there is any
necessity for, and in addition you will surely get an
outfit that will not be worth carrying away. I well
remember one case in particular, of a young friend of
my own, whose outfit cost the modest sum of ^35-
It was bought from a great firm of outfitters in Lon-
dor that I dare not name for fear of the law of libel,
and would certainly have been dear at one third of
the money. Indeed I believe I should be justified in
saying that it would have been dear at any price, since
it was of the veriest shoddy throughout. When my
friend showed it to me, or, rather, what remained of it
after a month at sea, I was almost speechless with in-
dignation. I should say that such rubbish must be
specially manufactured for such purposes, since I can-
not imagine anybody ashore buying such stuff, A
pair of sea-boots to reach below the knee was among
this precious outfit. Their price was £2 5j. Now a
sailor can always get a really good pair of sea-boots
for £1 5w. ; a swagger pair of best make, with high
fronts to cover the knees, for^i 15^. The first time
my friend put his sea-boots on they naturally got wet,
and when he came below, four hours after, they hung
in graceful folds about his ankles. As to keeping out
water, you might just as well expect a sponge to keep
out water. They could be wrung like a piece of flannel.
In a word, they were absolutely worthless, and the
sale of them was a heartless fraud.
This outfit business requires only a little common
sense to be conducted economically. In the Navy a244 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
list of articles required for a naval cadet or midshipman
is supplied to him, and no deviation therefrom is per-
mitted. But no such hard-and-fast rule obtains in the
merchant service. Uniform, of course, is compulsory,
but beyond that the parent may use his own discre-
tion. In the matter of underclothing, for instance, it
may be taken for granted that what the lad already
possesses will answer excellently well. Flannels, too,
boating or cricketing, come in very useful; in fact,
any of his old clothes are good enough to work in. In
any case he should not have too large a stock, for,
however many clothes he may take with him, they
will certainly require washing before a long sea-passage
is over, and too great an accumulation of dirty clothes
is, for many reasons, undesirable. If I were asked to
draw up a list of the requirements of a lad on his first
voyage as apprentice in a southern-going ship, it
would be something like this :
A strongly-made chest, of three-quarter inch pine, dove-
tailed throughout, and without any iron about it ; the lid
and bottom very carefully fitted, should first be procured,
—such a chest as a working carpenter would be willing
to make for £1, but would cost at least double in a shop.
It should have a small mirror fitted inside the lid, but re-
movable, and also a tray dividing it into upper and lower
compartments. Above all, it should be perfectly water-
tight when closed. It should be painted black, with brass
drop-handles, and inch rising-pieces on the bottom.
Two suits of uniform clothing: one of fine blue cloth,
the other of good blue serge.
Six white and French piqu£ shirts for shore wear, with
collars and ties.
Three woollen and three cotton shirts (not necessarilyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 245
new, but such as the boy has been wearing at home or at
school).
Three thick and three thin vests.
Three thick and three thin pairs of pants.
Three pairs of heavy and three pairs of light socks.
Four pairs of working trousers (any old ones that the
boy has been wearing).
Three pairs of blue-jean overalls (dungaree).
Three blue-jean blouses.
Three coarse towels.
Several caps (old golf or cricketing caps are just the
thing).
A stout, wide-brimmed, straw hat for harbour use or in
the country.
One dozen coloured cotton pocket-handkerchiefs.
One pair of woollen mittens without finger-spaces.
Two pairs of suspenders.
A leather belt with a sheath attached for holding an
open knife. (Note : the above should never be worn
tightly for the purpose of keeping the trousers up. Such
a practice is a most frequent cause of rupture).
A horsehair mattress, cot size.
A full-sized feather pillow, with three stout slips.
Three coloured cot-blankets.
One pair of shore-going boots.
Two pairs of canvas shoes of very best quality.
Two pairs of working boots without any iron in their
soles.
One pair of sea-boots reaching to the knee, with either
sown or pegged soles ; preferably the latter.
A box of dubbin, also blacking, and a pair of very
small shoe-brushes.
A small clothes-brush, a tooth-brush, hair-brush, and
two combs.246 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
A housewife, well supplied with needles and thread,
(not cotton), mending-wool, scissors, and tweezers.
Three bars of good yellow soap.
One dozen boxes safety matches.
One plate, one basin, one quart pot, and one pint cup,—
all of block tin.
Knife, fork, and spoon.
One complete suit of good oilskins.
One pilot coat.
From this it will be seen that much of his old cloth-
ing will come in useful, but it should be remembered
that he will probably grow rapidly, so that he should
not be sent away with clothing that will presently be
of no use to him. If the supply be thought meagre, I
would suggest that a larger quantity would probably
only lead him to waste ; the above will be found quite
sufficient for all his needs, and he should never miss a
single opportunity of having his clothes washed, or,
better still, washing them himself. Provide him with
some good books, especially a copy each of the Bible,
Shakespeare, and some good book of poems. Lighter
reading may be supplied at discretion. He must have
an epitome of navigation and a blank book to work
examples in ; also plenty of writing-paper and en-
velopes to encourage him in writing home—a duty
that lads are prone to shirk. A pair of good bin-
oculars are very useful things to have, but not at all
necessary ; while a sextant, for the first couple of
voyages at any rate, had better be left at home. It
usually receives very rough treatment, and its use re-
quires little practice to make one perfect when the
time arrives that it becomes necessary.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 247
But I would strongly advise, in addition to this out-
fit, that a boy be provided with the ability to wash a
shirt, to sew a button on, and to keep his eating-uten-
sils clean. A few lessons in the kitchen before he
goes away will save him a world of trouble in this re-
spect, besides saving the parent a good deal of ex-
pense. I need say no more on this head, as I have
spoken very strongly about it before. Of course the
list I have given, although I consider it quite sufficient
for a twelve months’ voyage, represents the minimum.
Any additions may be made that are considered de-
sirable, but it can be taken for granted that to burden
a lad with the care of too much clothing at sea is to
invite him to fling some of it away on very small prov-
ocation.
Then, as to the choice of a ship :	It is here im-
possible to give any written advice. If parents
have no seafaring friends the matter is very dif-
ficult. There is really no recognised medium of com-
munication with shipowners for this purpose. This is
why one is so often tempted to reply to the specious
advertisements, since they seem to provide a royal
road out of the difficulty. A little—very little—
knowledge of shipping matters would enable parents
to select from the columns of the Mercantile Navy
List a good firm of sailing-ship owners; but, assuming
that they do not know that much, the next best thing
would be to apply to the shipping-master in any of
our large shipping centres. He would almost cer-
tainly forward a list of the best reputed shipping firms.
But the services of an old seafaring friend (not Naval)
would here be of great value, not only in the selection248 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
of a suitable firm, but in the little matters of advice to
the boy himself. There are many dangers which be-
set the path of the young sailor, especially in foreign
ports, against which a word of warning from the ini-
tiated is worth much fine gold. It is not fair to send
a gently-nurtured boy to sea unwarned of these things,
lest he learn of them by a bitter experience which
may cost him a lifetime of fruitless repentance.
Having found a ship and gone through the official
routine, it is always wise to try and enlist the sympa-
thies of the skipper and the mate. They have probably
heard it all before, but in spite of that it is pleasant
to be consulted, pleasant to feel that their importance
is recognised by any one ashore. And if you cannot
do much good you will at least do no harm by remind-
ing a skipper that you are entrusting him with one
of your most precious possessions.
As to the duties of the apprentice, they maybe dis-
missed in a very few words. His first duty is implicit
obedience. He has come to sea to learn, and he can
only learn by obeying. It is unlikely that he will
learn much on his first voyage besides familiarity with
his ship on deck and aloft by day or by night, and to
be of use in assisting to furl sails, etc. And this is no
trifle. He should remember, too, that it is not enough
to obey in a lazy, sulky manner; he must, if he would
ever be worth anything, cultivate smartness, the habit
of ready and cheerful obedience. He must not
slouch, he must spring; he must not sulk, he must
keep in evidence. Not merely for the sake of gaining
the good word of those in authority over him, but for
his own sake, because he is now laying the foundationTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 249
of his future career as an officer. The lazy, skulking,
slouching apprentice becomes the miserable, discon-
tented, and generally worthless seaman, if indeed he
ever becomes a seaman at all, which is in the highest
degree problematical. Let him never be afraid to ask
anybody for information, never ashamed to enquire
what he had better do, and especially, emphatically,
avoid becoming dirty in his personal habits because
he has not on board ship the conveniences of home.
Some day, perhaps, our fine sailing-ships will provide
a bathroom for lads and men, and water to wash with
more frequently than once a week; at present it must
be admitted that the way of personal cleanliness on
board a sailing-ship is hard.
And I earnestly hope that the few hints I have been
able to give may be of good practical service to many.CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ABLE SEAMAN (A.B.)—GENERAL QUALIFICATIONS.
And now we approach the discussion of the Able
Seaman, the man of the rank and file, the “common
sailor,” as he is sometimes contemptuously termed by
those who—God forgive them !—know absolutely
nothing of his uncommon trials, virtues, and tempta-
tions. It is most probable—nay, almost certain—that
for what I have written in the preceding pages the
“A.B.” will bear me little good will. He will most
likely set me down in his own mind as another merce-
nary scoundrel, paid by the owners to vilify the fo’c’s’le
man. When you come to look at the matter you will
see that it must be so. Such a one-sided view of
themselves is not confined to the sailor. It is rampant
among men who should be able to weigh questions
impartially,—intelligent workmen ashore of all kinds.
As a general rule they lay themselves open to the
charge of the grossest unfairness because they will
not abide the truth about themselves. One need not
use any names, because they will occur to all who
keep in touch with current event's,—names of men
who have been chosen from among their fellows for
their exceptional abilities, and empowered to represent
them in various councils; As long as such represent-
atives could see in capital no white, and in labour noTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 251
black, they were popular, cheered to the echo ; but as
soon as they learned the fundamental fact that there
are two sides to every question, and wisely endeav-
oured to use that knowledge, they were subjected to
much abuse and gross misrepresentation, and perhaps
the mildest suggestion made about them was that they
had been “ got at.”
But although the foremast hand finds it impossible
to be fair,—although he, taken collectively, regards all
owners as bloodsuckers, and all officers as traitors or
tyrants,—every one of his well-wishers (of whom I
claim to be one of the warmest) can, and do, find many
excuses for him. Please to consider his position. For
the great majority of his days he lives in the utmost
ignorance of what is going on in the world. He is
like the inhabitants of some undiscovered country,
whereinto none of the latter-day adjuncts of civilisa-
tion have penetrated. From year’s end to year’s end
he never reads a newspaper,—at least not until it is
long out of date. During his quiet voyaging from one
side of the world to the other, the whole political as-
pect of the planet may be changed, but he knows
nor recks nothing of it. Speak to him of the rise
and fall of governments, the strife of parties, the
hubbub of a general election, and he will look upon
you as one that talks in an unknown tongue. To
those of his class who read, supposing that they pos-
sess the right books, this aloofness from the world-
movement is all to the good; they can enter into the
spirit of the giants of literature as no other men can.
Bringing to the consideration of immense topics minds
unfettered and undisturbed by the petty squabbling252 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
and sordid tricks of politics, whether imperial or local,
they enjoy their reading as few other men do.
One of my chief delights, when I was before the
mast, was to sit on deck in the brilliant tropical moon-
light, or on a lotus-eating evening before the dark had
arrived, and read aloud to the assembled watch. I
had no inattentive listeners. Hardly breathing ex-
cept to keep their pipes aglow, they drank in every
syllable; their long acquaintance with all sorts of
hybrid variants of English enabling them to catch the
sense even if they were unable to grasp the full mean-
ing of the sonorous sentences. For I never would
read them rubbish,—or what I considered rubbish. I
carried with me for years three volumes of the Chandos
Classics, the Odyssey, the Hsneid, and Longfellow’s
works. Shakespeare I always had, and I should be
puzzled indeed to say which of the two—the Odyssey,
or Shakespeare—they relished most. They did not
favour discussion of the books read very much ; they
were content to enjoy. I grieve to say that their dis-
cussions were usually most trivial and unprofitable.
They would start an argument upon some question
about which none of them knew anything, and carry
it on with the utmost fierceness and heat, even unto
blows. Once I used to intervene with some reliable
information, but I found that when, in reply to the
query:	“ Who told you that ? ” I admitted that I
had learned it from books, I was thenceforward scouted
as a purveyor of second-hand information, and I
desisted.
It is a poor task bringing book-evidence to the aver-
age sailor. Marshal your authorities as you will, youTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 253
will be met with the stolid question :	“ How do you
know? You wasn't there ! ” etc., until you retire like
a man who in the dark has run head-first against a
stone wall. It is no good to argue with the average
sailor either. He lives in a little world of his own, its
horizon bounded by the blue sky and unbroken by any
vision of the movements of shore-dwellers except at
long intervals. Then, when those brief periods of
contact with landward folk arrive, he is like a boy
suddenly let loose from school. He forgets his sea-
troubles, his long confinement, in the strange sensation
of liberty. How can these men be expected to use
their freedom wisely. Their experience of it is so
limited, their ignorance of shore ways so pathetic,
that it would be surely a miracle to see them behave
themselves in reasonable fashion.
But one peculiarity that I have often noticed among
sailors is their preternatural suspicion allied to a blind
trustfulness: two opposite qualities meeting. Only,
with the perversity of poor human nature, they
exercise suspicion where they should be trustful, and
confidence where they should be most cautious. Any
scoundrel that lays himself out to cajole and cheat a
sailor is almost certain to succeed, while a phil-
anthropist aiming only at the seaman’s highest welfare
will find it a most difficult and disheartening task to gain
his confidence or even attention. And so it comes to
pass that, at seamen’s missions, or wherever anything
is being done for destitute sailors, the greatest care
has to be exercised, the wisest discrimination used, in
order that meals, etc., provided are not entirely monop.
olised by longshoremen, and the sailor be conspicuous254 the men of the merchant service.
by his absence. It must always be borne in mind
that the sailor is just a big child whose opportunities
for being understood by shore people are almost nil,
who cannot tell you what he wants, and whose life is
hidden from you. Herein is one of the greatest diffi-
culties confronting missions to seamen. They have
but a very short time to work upon any individual
sailor, only a few days wherein to teach him things
that shore people, when they do learn them at all,
often take years to acquire ; and then the exigencies
of his calling remove him from all those hallowed in-
fluences for perhaps four or five months on end. On
shore it is recognised by all the churches that if you
would do good it is not sufficient to preach godliness
to people ; you must provide for them the right kind
of society in lieu of that which they must abandon ;
you must nurse them through their period of babyhood
in grace until they are able to stand or walk or run in
the way of righteousness. But the poor sailor gets no
such nursing. Before he has scarcely awakened to the
fact that old things have passed away and all things
have become new, he is back again in the fo’c’s’le.
And now he is very lonely, because he knows that the
only things that are continually talked of are those
that should not be so much as named. His quietness
is taken for moroseness ; he gets nicknamed the “ queer
fellow ; ’’all sorts of influences are brought to bear upon
him, tending to push him back into the slough ; and if
he stand firm you may be very sure that he is a man in
the highest sense of that much-abused word.
I feel, however, that I must apologise for straying
into this side issue, which, although it is so importantTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 255
to me, hardly comes within the scope of the present
work. Perhaps I ought to have begun this chapter
with a definition of the “ able seaman’s ” position. It is
popularly supposed, even at sea, that the Able-Bodied
Seaman, a term whereof the initials “ A.B.” are the
recognised official contraction, is a man who can “ hand,
reef, and steer,” the first and second terms mean-
ing : (1), the furling of sails,—that is, rolling them up
and making them secure ; (2), the reducing of a sail’s
area by enfolding a portion of it and securing it by a
series of short pieces of rope sewn into a doubled or
trebled band of canvas across it, technically called
“ reef points ; ” while the third requires no explanation.
But while it is undoubtedly true that a seaman who can
do these things and no more cannot have his wages re-
duced for incompetency, it is absolutely certain that
an A.B.—on board a sailing-ship at any rate—who
could do nothing more would be looked upon as an
impostor, not only by the officers but by his ship-
mates. Yet there are an immense number of “ able sea-
men ” whose qualifications are hardly up to that primi-
tive standard. More than that, their number is increas-
ing. For in steamships the handling of sails is reduced
to a continually lessening minimum ; reefing is a van-
ished art; and as for steering,—well, steamships of any
importance carry quartermasters who do all the steer-
ing, receiving a few shillings a month extra pay there-
for. So that you shall often find a man occupying an
A.B.’s position who is really only an unskilled la-
bourer. Placed on board of a sailing-ship he would be
as helpless and useless as any landlubber, except that
he would not be seasick.256 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
An “able seaman,” properly so called, is a skilled
mechanic with great abilities. In the first place he is
able to splice hemp or wire rope,—work that requires
a considerable amount of technical skill, for splicing is
not by any means simply the joining of two pieces of
rope together in a certain way. There are many
kinds of splices : short splices, long splices, eye splices,
sailmakers’ splices, grummets, etc. And it is not suf-
ficient to be able to make a splice: it must be done
neatly, in workmanlike fashion, so that when it is
“ wormed,” “ parcelled,” and “ served ” it shall only
show as a smoothly graduated enlargement in the rope,
or, as in the case of a sailmakers’ long splice, be,
without any covering, hardly visible at all as a splice.
The A.B. must also be able to make all the various
“ seizings ” or securing of two parts of a rope together
by a neatly passed lashing of tarred cord or wire ;
make them, too, in any position aloft while the ship
is tumbling about, and not merely in a comfortable
corner on deck. He must know the right method of
“bending ” sails; that is of fastening them to yards
or stays for setting by “ robands ” and “ earings,” so
that they shall remain doing their work no matter
how severe the weather. He must understand the
technique of sending up or down yards and masts ; be
able to improvise lashings for the securing of sails
when carried away in a gale, or broken spars dangling
aloft like fractured limbs. He should know how to
handle a “ palm and needle ; ” that is, how to sew can-
vas for making or mending sails, and understand the
manipulation of “ purchases ” (pulleys and ropes), the
rigging °f derricks, and the distribution of strains.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 257
How to “ set up rigging,” “ rattle down,” and “ heave
the lead ” must be his accomplishments as a matter of
course.
Now all these queer-sounding names of duties that
the good A.B. must be able to perform would require a
vast amount of laborious explanation to make their
meaning and purpose clear to any landsman, and it is
doubtful whether one person in ten thousand would
take the trouble to master their details if an attempt
were made to give them. But I think that few will as-
sert that a man who can do all these things as they must
be done at sea can in any sense be classed as an un-
skilled man. And I must add that those I have men-
tioned are only the broad features, as it were. There
remains still an enormous number of smaller matters,
knowledge of which is expected of an A.B. But I must
admit that the class of able seamen which is capable of
answering to such a description as this is growing yearly
smaller and smaller. That of course is the fault of
steam. While sailing-ships endure there will always be
some of them: there must be; but they are not wanted
in steamships, and so the supply dwindles with the de-
mand. But it is a great pity, because these men are
capable of rising to the height of an emergency. They
have individuality and resource as well as technical
ability. And when, as so often happens, a steamer
gets into trouble at sea, breaks down, or is overtaken
by a gale against which her low power is helpless, the
need of skilled seamen is often sorely felt.
An old shipmate of my own was telling me the
other day of a case in point. He was one of the
A.B.’s in a large steamer called the Bengal outward258 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
bound to Japan. They were overtaken in the Bay of
Biscay by a tremendous gale, before which they
scudded with the huge square foresail set in order to
keep her ahead of the sea. (It was being overtaken
by such a sea that caused the awful loss of the
London.) But at last it became necessary to take in
that foresail and heave the ship to, it being unsafe to
run her any longer, especially as the sail might carry
away at any moment and the very evil they dreaded
come upon them instantly. So all hands were called
aft, eight of them, and the skipper said :	“ D’ye
think ye can take that foresail in, my lads?” At
which question they were amazed, for none of them
had ever heard such a question put before. After a
moment’s silence one fellow shouted:	“Take it in!
why ’course we can, sir. We c’d eat it.”
That comforted the old man, and he gave orders to
haul it up, at the same time manipulating the spanker
so that she came round cannily, head to sea, and did
not ship any heavy water. They furled sail without
any more difficulty than usual, but when they had
cleared up the gear the “ Old Man’s ” voice rang out
again: “Splice the main-brace.” Pelting aft at the
double they received each a glass of grog and the old
man’s heartfelt thanks. He told them that on the
previous voyage he had a crew of steamboat sailors
who in just such a night as that refused to go aloft ;
they were afraid. And he had to see not only the
sail blow away, but also a great deal of damage done
to his deck-gear, and at one time it looked as if the
vessel would be lost. So this voyage he had been
careful to select sailing-ship sailors, and the result hadTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 259
entirely justified him. “ Yes,” said one man, “that’s
all very well for you, sir. But how about our getting
a ship next voyage ? We shall be called steamboat
sailors now.” Of course the poor skipper had no
answer to that, but I have no doubt he felt the full
force of the remark. For therein lies the great dif-
ficulty. No skipper of a sailing-ship dare take steam-
boat men unless he has absolute proof that they know
the work on board a sailing-vessel, and even then he is
sure that a few months in steam rusts a sailor ; he is
not likely to be very smart getting aloft, or to be as
expert as a man in training when he gets there. More
than that, the steamboat sailor, being, as I have said,
almost invariably better fed than, he is in any sailing-
vessel, does not take at all kindly to a return to the
old miserable way of living, neither does he appreciate
being so long at sea. And all these things tend to as-
sist the influx of the foreign element which, flocking
into our sailing-ships, speedily overflows into steamers
and, having once obtained a secure foothold, never re-
turns to its own place again.CHAPTER XXIX.
THE ABLE SEAMAN—HIS ROUTINE.
Nautical routine, although in certain broad fea-
tures alike in all ships of all nations, varies almost in-
definitely in detail ; not merely in ships belonging to
different countries, but in ships of the same flag and of
the same character. And this is not only true of the
details of duties to be performed, but of the method
of rigging, sail-setting, etc. The master, having a free
hand, may and does use his own discretion as to how
and when he will have work done. There is no one to
gainsay him, although his fads will certainly be keenly
criticised in the fo’c’s’le. But where a certain routine
is fixed and universal there are no exceptions to its
rule,—as, for instance, the incidence of the watches.
The first thing to be done after a ship has cleared her
home port, outward bound, is to muster the crew by
their names. Then the mate and second mate face
the assembled seamen and draw each a man alter-
nately, the mate beginning, until each have a moiety.
If there is an odd man the mate gets him, unless some
private arrangement is come to between the two of-
ficers. The number of men under each officer is called
his watch, and for further convenience of definition
the mate’s is called the “port ” watch and the second
mate’s the “starboard ” watch, the left side of the shipTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 261
looking toward the bows being the port side, and the
right the starboard. Thus divided, the crew select
their bunks on the side of the forecastle answering to
their watches, and so they remain throughout the
voyage.
Now there is an unwritten sea-law which says that
“ the cap’n takes her out and the mate brings her
home,” which, being interpreted, only means that the
starboard watch has the eight hours out on the first
night of the outward passage, and the port watch the
first eight hours out on the homeward passage. But
this again needs explaining. A simple method of
dividing the twenty-four hours into watches would be
to have six of four hours each, but it would have the
demerit that the same men would be on watch for the
greater part of every night. So a simple plan was
long ago devised for the continual change of watches.
The day was indeed divided' into six watches of four
hours each ; but the last watch of each working day,
namely, that from 4 to 8 P. M., was subdivided into
two “ dog ” watches of two hours each. Nearly all the
pleasant memories of fo’c’s’le life cluster around the
second of these. From 4 to 6 P. M. (I speak of an ordi-
nary British ship) the watch on deck rounds up the
day’s work, puts things away, sweeps up decks, etc.,
preparing for the night. The men of the watch below
get their tea (“ supper ” it is called on shipboard),
and at four bells (6 p. M.) the members of the other
watch come below and get their evening meal. The
watch that has relieved them has now no work (unless
sail requires trimming), with the exception of the helms-
man, and when supper is finished all hands can and do262 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
foregather on deck or in the fo’c’s’le, according to the
state of the weather, and exchange yarns or read. All
smoke if they list. It is the time of day when all
hands meet, and it is looked forward to with a good
deal of interest in every ship where things are as
they should be. At eight bells (8 P. M.) the night be-
gins. The watch that has the eight hours out—that
is, the watch that cleared up decks from 4 to 6—be-
gins its vigil, which will last till midnight | the watch
below turns in.
In every decent ship the bell is struck every half
hour, increasing by single strokes: that is, 8.30 P. M.,
one bell; 9 o’clock, two bells ; and so on up till four
bells, when the helmsman and the lookout man are re-
lieved ; then five, six, seven bells sound until five
minutes to twelve, when “ little one bell ” is struck,
and the watch below is called, to be ready for appear-
ance at eight bells (midnight), when they are mustered
by the appearing officers. The watch coming below
then turns in, and the bells begin again and continue
until 4 A. M.,—eight bells again. Then the “eight
hours out ” men reappear, and at two bells (5 A. M.)
“Coffee” is called. At four bells “Wash decks” be-
gins, and with it the “ secular ” work as distinguished
from the mere handling of the ship’s sails, etc., steer-
ing, and lookout. At seven bells (7.20 A. M.,—really
7.30, the ten minutes being slipped in for “ coming
up,” as we say) the watch below is called for breakfast,
and at eight bells (8 A. M.) its members come on deck
ready for work, the retiring watch going to breakfast,
and afterwards to bunk or whatever they think fit un-
til seven bells (11.20 A. M.). Then they rise for dinner,THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 263
and at noon—which is made by the sun and never by
the clock unless the sun is obscured—they come on
deck for the afternoon’s work while the other watch
retires. With their coming below again at eight bells
(4 P. M.) the twenty-four hours’ day is completed.
And it will be found that at 8 P. M. the watch coming
on deck is the watch that on the previous night was at
that time turning in.
Now this routine of watch-keeping is universal, but
not so by any means the distribution of work. I have
just sketched the outlines of duty in a commonplace
sailing-ship or tramp steamer under the British flag.
But when we come to a smart liner or an American
ship this humdrum jog-trot round is shattered like a
bubble. In the former it is necessary for the comfort
of the passengers that their promenade decks shall be
clean and dry at an early hour ; therefore the deck-
scouring, paint-washing, etc., must be got through be-
fore the time at which work is usually commenced in
a non-passenger-carrying ship. I do not suppose that
any one can be so thoughtless as to wonder “ what on
earth the sailors find to do ” who has ever made a
passage across the Atlantic in a big liner. Such a
foolish question is often asked about ships in general,
but surely even the dullest must comprehend that the
splendid cleanliness and order on board those floating
hotels means a vast amount of work done while the
passengers are sleeping, since it is never obtruded upon
them in their waking hours. It must also occur to
the more thoughtful among them that the modern
sailors’ duties are largely made up of housemaids'
work. Yet, with so little opportunity for keeping up264 THE men of the merchant service.
his acquaintance with the higher duties of his calling,
he is expected to rise to the fullest heights of a
sailor’s duty at the first call. I submit that the meagre
drill he gets in boat-handling and fire-stations can
hardly be sufficient to keep him up to “ sailor pitch.”
In American sailing-ships, on the other hand, no
such easy-going precession of duties is allowed. The
first thing that a seaman learns when introduced to an
American ship is that his time belongs to the ship,—
that if he is allowed to have any for himself at all it is
a matter of grace, not of right. He must at all times
hold himself at the disposal of his officers, and what-
ever work they consider it necessary to undertake he
must, on the word being given, throw himself into it
as if it were a matter of life and death. Theoretically
this is the case in all ships, but it is nowhere carried
out as it is in American vessels. It is their tradition,
and they have a pride in its maintenance. What it
means to the sailor under the despotic rule of a bowel-
less master and iron-fisted officers it is impossible to
convey to any one who has not seen the process. It
sometimes happens in British ships that all hands will
be kept at work in the afternoons at sea, usually on
the passage home when the vessel is being thoroughly
overhauled and renovated ; but where this is done a
great deal of laxity is permitted at night. The watch
on deck during the hours of darkness, with the ex-
ception of the man at the wheel and one on the look-
out, are allowed to sleep unless the sails require
trimming, and even this very necessary work is per-
formed with a great deal of grumbling and bad lan-
guage. But in American ships it is often the proudTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 265
boast of a skipper that he keeps his men at work in
the watch on deck throughout the voyage, by day or
night, in gale or calm ; and as for an afternoon watch
below—absurd, makes men fat and lazy! No grum-
bling is permitted, no dilatoriness of movement, and
due attention to all these severe rules is enforced by
blows, and, if necessary, by shooting. It is the other
extreme of the scale. We are much too slack in our
discipline; the Americans, as a rule, are far too
severe. Of course there are exceptions on both sides,
but I speak of the rule.
Sailors often wonder whether landsmen realise what
it means for a ship to be always watched and tended
from the time she leaves port until she arrives at
her destination; whether, when coming on board a
ship in harbour, and looking curiously at the deserted
wheel aft, they appreciate the fact that for every min-
ute of perhaps five or six months there is a man at
that wheel, steering the ship over the trackless sea,
guided alone by the compass. This ceaseless care of
the vessel has always struck me as a very impressive
thing, especially where, as in an ordinary sailing-ship,
every man in the fo’c’s’le takes his turn, or “ trick,” as
it is called. At the commencement of the voyage the
men settle among themselves in an informal manner
the order in which they shall follow each other at the
wheel, and, subject to alterations in their number, this
order is preserved throughout the voyage. Some
curious terms are current among them about the
steering turns. For instance, when a man has neither
“ wheel ” nor lookout occurring in a watch, he sol-
emnly announces he is a “ farmer ” ; when it happens266 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
that his “ wheel ” occurs from four to six A. M. he
growls at the idea of his having the “ gravy-eye ”
wheel,—a coarse but most expressive designation for
that sleepiest of watches. This is the time when more
accidents occur through lack of watchfulness than any
other in the twenty-four hours.
His duty of steering varies greatly with the ship
and the man. Some vessels are beautifully docile, re-
sponsive to the lightest touch on the wheel, and actu-
ally sympathetic—I can use no other word—to a good
helmsman. I have been in vessels that one could al-
most steer blindfold by the feel of the wheel, where
the making of a serpentine course was a certain proof
that the helmsman was either a bungler or grossly
careless. It is popularly supposed that a ship is al-
ways steered by the apparent movement of the com-
pass, and this is fairly true of steamships, but it is
ridiculous When applied to sailing-ships. The com-
pass must be watched of course, but the man who
keeps his eye fixed upon it will soon find that not only
must he work like a slave, but that no amount of
wheel-twisting will keep his ship steady on her course.
He must watch the movement of the ship’s head
against the sky, the clouds, or the stars, for he can
then see instantly what amount of helm she requires,
whereas the compass does not tell him until too late,
or it is so lively that it is no guide at all, except that
its average swing from side to side of the point he is
told to steer by will be approximately the same. I
have often been steering a large iron ship running
before a heavy westerly gale in high southern lati-
tudes, when the compass has swung continuouslyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 267
round through its whole thirty-two points. Some
men get so bewildered by this that they are useless as
helmsmen. Others, again, when steering before a
heavy following sea, will lose their nerve. The
mighty waves thundering up astern, like ravening
monsters only to be satisfied by the overwhelming of
the vessel, are terrible to see, and a prudent officer
who notices the helmsman looking astern at such
times with a wild eye and a blanched face will have
him relieved at once, before that appalling disaster
“ broaching to ” takes place. This occurs when a ship
running dead before a gale of wind, with her yards
square, is suddenly caught a little on one side by a
furiously rushing wave and whirled around until her
sails get caught aback, the sea thunders over her
broadside, and she is in the greatest danger of being
dismasted, turned over, or smashed up altogether.
Many a ship posted as missing has thus been de-
stroyed ; she has disappeared from the face of the sea
in five minutes without giving any one on board the
slightest chance of life.
As far as the A.B.’s workaday duties are concerned,
the same rules that apply to other workmen ashore do
not apply for obvious reasons. If a carpenter, for in-
stance, were employed in the building of a house, and
it were found that he could only boil glue, sweep up
the shop, or turn a grindstone, he would be discharged
on the instant. But you cannot discharge a sailor un-
til his return home, unless he is willing to go, and, in
a foreign country, unless the consul is also willing to
allow him to be discharged. He may be absolutely
worthless from the seaman’s point of view, which, as I268 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
have shown, must be considered in relation to the
ship, whether a steamer or sailing-vessel; but unless
he is unable to steer it is almost impossible to reduce
his wages.
I well remember a case, years ago, tried before the
late Mr. Raffles, where the master of a ship had re-
duced one of his A.B.’s wages for the voyage by £1 a
month,—that is, to the level of an “ O. S.” (Ordinary
Seaman). There was no doubt whatever as to the
kind of man the quondam A.B. was. He had never
been to sea before that voyage, but some enterprising
boarding-master had supplied him with another man’s
discharge, rigged him up like a seafarer, and got him
shipped in a big southern-going sailing-ship as an able
seaman at £3 per month. But he had the wit to put
his case into the hands of a smart lawyer, who bullied
the master to the verge of desperation. Among other
things he said :
“ Did you have your ship’s decks washed, Mr.
Brown ? ”
“ Of course I did,” replied the sorely tried skipper.
“ Oh, you did. Was this man able to assist in
washing decks ? ”
“ Oh, well, I suppose he could do that."
“I don’t require any of your supposing, sir; could
he do his duty in this respect or could he not ? ” thun-
dered the counsel.
“ Yes, he could.”
“Thank you” (ironically). “Now, did you carry
any pigs? ”
“Yes,” answered the bewildered commander,
“ there was---”THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 269
“ That is sufficient. Kindly answer my questions
without comment. I suggest to you that those pigs
required their sty to be cleaned occasionally.”
“ Yes, and it---” said the skipper, getting redder
in the face as the lawyer stopped him again.
“ Could this man clean out the pig-sty,—yes or
no ? ”
“Yes, he could, but---”
“Answer my questions in a proper manner,” roared
the lawyer, and so on until, in triumphant tones, the
legal gentleman exclaimed:
“ Then I submit that you have no right at all to de-
duct one penny from my client’s miserable earnings
By your own admission he could perform all those
duties—very necessary duties—about which I have
questioned you. They had to be performed by some
one, and surely you do not expect to get the work of
your ship done for nothing,” etc.
In the result the man got his wages in full, and the
skipper went away in the belief that the law was a
dangerous thing to meddle with, even if you knew you
were right.
But every sailor worth his salt knows what it means
to get a few of these yokels foisted upon a ship. They
can be and they are put upon the dirty work, the un-
skilled labour, of which there is so much to be done ;
but, in addition to the fact that they cannot do even
that work in sailor fashion, all the work which they
cannot do at all falls upon their shipmates who can
This often means terrible overwork and suffering for
everybody on first leaving home, before “ useless ar-
ticles” have been taught their work aloft. I know of270 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
no more difficult position to be in than aloft on a top-
gallant yard, for instance, in a snowstorm in the Chan-
nel, with three other men, for the purpose of furling
the sail, and finding that two of them are not only use-
less but helplessly in the way. Poor wretches, they
are suffering too, no doubt, clinging to the yard in an
agony less they fall, sick with fright ; but the men
who must do their work are the ones deserving of pity.
They get neither pity nor pence for the extra work
they do.
Of all the injustice from which the sailor suffers I
know of none that he feels more keenly than this.
To be shipmates with half-a-dozen waisters who are
getting the same pay and treatment as himself, to be
overworked because they cannot do the first thing at
sailorising, and as likely as not obliged to keep very
quiet in the fo’c’s’le because of their being in the ma-
jority, is a bitter pill to swallow. One very unpleas-
ant recollection of my own is of a ship on which I was
an A.B. In my watch, besides myself, there was a
Swede, a very good man ; a little Frenchman from St.
Nazaire, who was also a smart sailor-man ; a Finn,
who knew how to do his work, but was so slow and
stupid that he was very little good ; another French-
man from the vicinity of Nice, who, strange to say,
was useless, and, in addition, knew only about half-a-
dozen words of English ; a big, brutal bully of a fellow,
who was a Briton, I grieve to confess, and one of the
basest sort; also a negro ordinary seaman. With such
a watch, those of us who could do what we were
asked had a very hard time of it, and, to make mattersTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 271
worse, the big Briton was, although as worthless an
animal as ever stepped on a ship’s deck, the “boss ”
of the fo’c’s’le. I was working hard for my certificate
and did not care to complain, until at last, in Hong
Kong, while the great loafer was quietly sitting in the
shade toying with the task of chipping the iron rust
off the cable, I was sent over with the negro to scrape
the ship’s side in the blazing sun. I went, feeling
very hardly done by ; but presently the fine dry dust
of coal tar which I scraped off the planks stuck to my
sweating face and began to blister it just as a mustard
plaster would have done.
Then I felt that under these conditions life was not
worth living, so I left my job and sought the mate.
I appealed to his sense of justice. “ Here is a man,”
I said, “who has not been able to do a single job of
sailor-work except take his trick at the wheel (and he’s
a gorgeous helmsman) since we left Cardiff. I, on the
other hand, have been continuously at work, splicing,
serving, sailorising in all its details, with never a com-
plaint of my work. Yet because this man is a trucu-
lent beast who growls blasphemously whenever he is
put on a job, he is allowed to carry things so pleas-
antly that he might as well be on a perpetual picnic.
Is it fair or just?” To the mate’s credit I record it
that the champion loafer was immediately sent over-
side to scrape, and I went below to poultice my blis-
tered visage. But even there he scored, for he quietly
shifted his stage under the counter, where he could
not be seen, and there sat in the shade and smoked
his pipe. Still the business did not suit him, and two
days after, to the delight of every one on board, he272 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
deserted. He had the assurance to comeback for his
kit ; but he was not allowed to come on board, so I
lowered it over the bows to him. He knew that the
skipper was too glad to be rid of him to prosecute.CHAPTER XXX.
THE ABLE SEAMAN—HIS POSITION.
FROM all of the foregoing it will doubtless be rightly-
assumed that the Able Seaman is in a most anomalous
position at the present time. He may be a skilled
mechanic, a man of energy, resource, and great abili-
ties, or he may be just an unskilled labourer with pre-
cisely the same pay and treatment as the best seaman
afloat of the same grade. This is a bad state of
things, but it is to be hoped that the system of con-
tinuous discharges now being introduced will make
some alteration for the better. The maritime nations
of Europe long ago recognised the importance of
having some definite record of a seaman’s service,
some means whereby it could be told at a glance
whether he was a sailor or not. So that each French,
German, or Italian sailor has a little book wherein is
entered what manner of man he is in appearance, and
the date of every shipping and discharge he has.ex-
perienced during his seafaring career. His behaviour
also is there set down, and visM by consul or ship-
ping-officer, as the case may be. Without this book
he can in no wise get a ship of his own country’s flag,
but he can, and does, ship in British vessels where the
rules are lax ; where a discharge may be bought from274 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
a brother seaman outward bound, and used with im-
punity ; where a man may be a worthless loafer, and
yet suffer no penalties for taking a job for which he
has no qualifications whatever. Let us hope that the
system of continuous discharges will be all to the
good.
But the prime cause of the lowering of the A.B.
and of the anomalies in his position is undoubtedly
the advent of the steamship. Blink the fact how we
may, it remains true that what is wanted in a steamer
is only a burly labourer who is able to steer. That is,
as long as all goes well. And the percentages of dis-
aster year by year are so small that no steamship-
owners need fear to take the risk of sending their ships
to sea without a sailor, properly so called, except the
officers on board. As I have said, matters are very
different in the sailing-ship. There the sailor must be
had, but the supply of British seamen dwindles so
fast that the foreigner from Scandinavia, from Ger-
many, from Italy, comes in ever-increasing numbers
for the sake of the higher pay and the easier life.
But if the influx of foreign seamen was only confined to
the sailing-fleet the situation would not be so perilous.
In one sense, of course, it will always be a danger as
long as sailing-ships are considered—and rightly so—
the only real training-places for seamen, because it
means that we are not raising any more seamen to fill
the places left vacant by death and by men leaving the
sea for shore life. But unfortunately foreign seamen
flock into the steamships as well, also in ever-increas-
ing numbers. This is not at all easy to understand in
the face of the facts that so little technical ability isTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 275
required of the A.B. in steamers, and that there are
so many unemployed men about our streets.
It may be that what is frequently said by our critics
at home and abroad is true : that Britons are getting
more and more loth to work at all; that when they
get a job their first care is not to see how they can
best satisfy their employer, but how little they can do
for their money. If this be so, it is a fatal mistake on
their part. It would be bad enough for themselves
personally if they had the monopoly of the world’s
labour markets; but, confronted with the down-trod-
den millions of Europe who will work till they sink
from exhaustion without a complaint, who learn our
language easily, and swarm into every opening that
presents itself, such behaviour on the part of our
workers is surely suicidal. This is especially true of
seamen, where no restrictions are placed upon the
number of foreigners employed, and when they can
always be obtained. If a shipmaster happens to have
had much trouble with a crew of his own countrymen
on a voyage, he is almost sure to look out that he has
foreigners next time. They are fully qualified—it is
the rarest possible thing to find a foreign sailor who
cannot do his work—and they will obey orders with-
out grumbling.
Personally I feel absolutely sure that the British
seaman properly so-called—I do not mean a ship-navvy
who couldn’t make a short splice or seize a ratline on
properly to save his life—is the finest in the world.
For endurance, for skill, for reliability in time of
danger, for resource in time of difficulty he has no
superior. But, alas for the truth, he is departing, and276 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
I fear it will be no long time before his place in the
merchant service will know him no more. What
British seamen are capable of may be seen in the
Navy, whose splendid handy-men are the envy of the
world. Is it too much to hope that by some better
method of training and treatment we might get just
as fine a body of men in the merchant service? Per-
haps it is, and yet—and yet there are those among us
who do dream such a dream as this. We think that
by means of a properly fostered and trained Naval
Reserve we might build up a magnificent body of
merchant seamen with characters to lose, men who
would take a pride in their position and be a real bul-
wark to the country.
But such a Reserve would require the whole-hearted
support of the Admiralty, not hardly-veiled enmity.
Every seafaring man with the best interest of his
country at heart knows full well how pitifully the
grand opportunity afforded by the institution of the
Royal Naval Reserve has been allowed to go to
waste. Perhaps some day before it is too late the
history of that Reserve will be written with inside
knowledge of all the facts, and an amazing document
it would make, though not more amazing than many
similar documents dealing with the non-understand-
able ways of the great departments that spend the
country’s money.
Theoretically the Royal Naval Reserve should be a
success. As far as the obtaining of officers is consid-
ered there is little doubt that it is a success, even
though merchant officers who seek to pass into the
Navy via the R.N.R. are known by the invidiousTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 277
sobriquet of “ the hungry half-hundred.” Great ship-
ping companies make it known that they wish their
officers to belong to the Reserve, and straightway the
thing is done. There is no compulsion ; the suggestion
is sufficient; and the retaining fee, being quite a nice
little sum per annum, is also an inducement. But the
numbers of the seamen in the Reserve do not in-
crease. Why ? There is a retaining fee of £6 per
annum; there is also a guinea a week pay during drill,
of which every member is supposed to put in six
weeks a year. Seeing what sailors are, one would
have thought that such a bait would have allured
them in large numbers. And yet there is only about
one-quarter of the number there should be. It is to
be hoped most devoutly that in the present agitation
about the Navy and its various shortcomings this will
not be forgotten, and that it will be fully recognised
that the only possible source of supply for the Navy
in case of war is the mercantile marine.
To secure such a supply it is imperative that the A.
B. shall be looked after and made to feel that he is a
man of some importance to the state ; that the good
men shall not be handicapped by wastrels ; that a man
shall earn the title of “ able seaman ” before he is per-
mitted to take it; and that every man shipping as A.
B. who has no qualifications for that honourable post
shall suffer for his misdeeds,—his fraudulent burden-
ing of his shipmates with work that he is unable to
perform. Then I believe that we should get in the
merchant service a good class of seamen, men who
would not say that the sea was a life only fit for dogs.
Under proper conditions, such as may even now be278 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
found, that statement is a libel. Speaking for myself
I can say with perfect candour that I have been as
happy in ships before the mast as any workman could
hope to be ashore. Where there is a good crew of
men who know their work and will do it, decent food
of good quality, and experienced officers ; a sailor be-
fore the mast may, and does, have a very good time,—
infinitely better than any journeyman ashore, with all
the worries attendant upon loss of employment, rent,
strikes, etc. Only get the sailor to see that his busi-
ness is a business that requires a trained man to make
any hand at it; that the door into it is closed against
the dock-walloper and the loafer; and that the same
consideration that is meted out to mechanics ashore is
accorded to him,—I am sure there would be a steady
increase in the number of British seamen in British
merchant ships, aided, of course, by the institution of
such a feeder as the non-premium apprenticeship I
have already spoken about would be.
I am quite sure that British seamen are to be got and
kept if the powers that be will only go the right way
to work, remembering that what is wanted is not so
much fresh legislation as a little more use of the legis-
lation already existing. Shipowners are not anxious
to carry foreign seamen, except perhaps in Eastern
trades, where Lascars and Chinese come in handy,
and even in those ships there will usually be found a
stiffening of most excellent white seamen, who are
usually British. No, the only question for the average
shipowner is : “ How, in the face of the fierce and un-
scrupulous competition against which I have to fight,
can I get my ships efficiently manned? ” He wantsTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 279
men to earn their pay, pay which is higher than that
of any other country except the United States and
Australia, and he does not at all concern himself about
the nationality of those men. He leaves them, very
properly, to those who will have to command them ; but
if masters of ships are made to believe that, no matter
how good the pay and provisions given, they can never
rely upon getting, in the first place, sailor-men of their
own race at all, and, in the second, men of their own
nationality who will work cheerfully for their pay with-
out a constant succession of worrying rows, it must not
be wondered at if they prefer the foreigner who comes
already broken in, trained in seamanship, polite, and
hard-working, no matter where he hails from.
In bidding farewell to the Able Seaman I again ear-
nestly express my full sympathy for and with him, and
trust that ere long I shall soon have the joy of seeing
A.B.’s of my own race again increasing in the British
merchant service.CHAPTER XXXI.
THE ORDINARY SEAMAN (O.S.).
In the days when the Able Seaman was properly
considered to be a man who had learned his trade and
would have been ashamed to ship as an A.B. unless
he were fully capable of doing any job of sailorising
that was given him, the Ordinary Seaman was quite
an institution. He was a young seaman who had been
through a time of considerable tribulation as a ship-
boy, but, having grown bigger and stronger, able to
take his trick at the wheel, and make himself felt in
furling sails, ventured to take a step up the ladder.
There was no specified manner in which this was to be
done. With that haphazard disregard of the seamen’s
best interests which has characterised our mercantile
marine for many generations, it was left to chance.
One would have thought that a recognised method
would have been for a boy to present himself before
certain properly-constituted authorities for an exami-
nation into his qualifications, and that, having satisfied
them that he was able to do all that an Ordinary Sea-
man should be capable of, would be granted a certifi-
cate to that effect.
Nothing of the sort. Sometimes a boy would make
friends with an officer who would report favourably
upon him to the master at the end of a voyage, andTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 201
then that master might, if he remembered it or felt so
disposed, give the boy an “ ordinary seaman’s ” “ dis-
charge.” Or, if he were a big fellow, the boy might
get a master to ship him as an ordinary seaman, even
though he had nothing but a boy’s discharge to show.
The whole business was as slipshod as it could well
be, for it depended entirely upon the caprice or kindli-
ness of the master granting it. There was just this in
its favour, that it recognised an able seaman as a
seaman who had been through the regular routine of
boy and ordinary seaman before he became an A.B.,
so that the presumption was entirely in favour of his
having learned his business. But, as I have shown in
the preceding pages with what perhaps might be
termed brutal clearness, that has all been changed.
Under present conditions you may occasionally find
an O.S. on board of a ship, but be very sure that if
you do he is having it drummed into him, every
watch, that he is a fool. “ Why,” he will be asked,
“ should you ship as an ordinary seaman when there’s
plenty of able seamen going that don’t know the
knightheads from the main-brace-bumpkin ? Don’t
be a fool. You might just as well have the other
pound or thirty shillings a month as them fellows that
ain’t half as good as you are! ” And presently he
thinks so, too, so that he makes up his mind that he’ll
never be an O.S. any more.
That determination is mightily strengthened jf he
happen to be on board of a ship where there are two
or three modern A.B.’s, wastrels who would be dear
if they came for nothing a month and found them-
selves. As, for instance, when I was an ordinary sea-282 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
man in a big ship going out to New Zealand. There
was never a job of work came my way that I didn’t do
as if it was going before a bench of examiners. I was
as nervous of blame and delighted at commendation
as if I had been striving for a valuable prize. But we
had among our A.B.’s four men (if I can call them so)
who were not worth a penny a day, and one black
night it was my hap to be oh the main-royal yard
with one of them for the purpose of furling the sail.
Had the weather been what it should at the furling of
this, the loftiest sail in the ship, I should not have so
much minded, but our redoubtable skipper was always
loth to waste one breath of a fair wind, and so he had
“ hung on ” until it looked as if the three huge masts
would have been blown clean out of her. Then all
hands were called in hot haste, royals, topgallant-sails,
and other topsails were lowered all at once, and a
pretty fine job it was with our crowd. However, as I
have said, I found myself up there on that giddy
height with all those vast sails battering far below me,
a gale of wind roaring against me, a sail before me
that was straining madly to tear itself away from its
confining gear, and a helpmate who was absolutely
paralysed with fear,—an “able seaman,” an’t please
you.
I did not know what was the matter with him.
Being on the weather side of the yard I was doing
my best to get the sail quiet, and although I wondered
greatly what had become of Johnnie I could not go
round and see. At last, after a hard struggle, I suc-
ceeded in getting the sail snug, only to find that there
were no gaskets on the yard. (“ Gaskets ” are smallTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 283
ropes used to wind around the sails and the yards, to
keep the sails fast when they are furled.) All there was
available for the securing of what I had gained was
the bunt-gasket, a little criss-crossed piece of plaited
spun yarn which is fitted to hold fast the centre or
bunt of the sail when it is furled, and a feeble thing at
the best, but such as it was I made use of it to the
best of my ability. Then, twisting my legs round the
royal backstay I slid down to the deck, rushed below
into the bos’un’s locker, and cut off several fathoms of
ratline-stuff (small rope). I must here admit that she
was a very slackly ruled ship : such a piece of impudence
by any seaman would never be allowed—because it
would not be necessary—on board of a properly man-
aged vessel.
Having secured my gaskets I hurried aloft and made
the sail fast. When the work was done, I discovered
Johnnie clinging like a bat to the extreme lee-end of
the yard. I shouted to him till I was hoarse, but he
made no sign, so I left him, for I did not care to run
the risk of putting two men’s weight upon the lift,
and moreover I was something scornful at that A.B.’s
behaviour. I went below and helped in the work that
was being done until the time came for us to go below,
and there was Johnnie the A.B. talking as boldly as
the rest, and ordering me to do this, that, and the
other. Then a little explanation ensued, and from
that night forward I took orders from him no more.
But I had learned something, and when the time came
I met the bos’un and put the question to him whether
he did not think I was as well worthy of an A.B.’s dis-
charge as some of the fellows who had been unable to284 the men of the merchant service.
do the work that I had undertaken. In the result I
got my coveted piece of paper and never sailed as
O.S. afterwards.
The precise definition of an “ ordinary seaman’s ”
duties has never been laid before me. But I fancy
that those three qualifications which are often spoken
of as the desiderata for an A.B. should more properly
be applied to the O.S.,—namely, that he should be able
to hand, reef, and steer. Once, and once only, was
any question raised with me, when I was an ordinary
seaman, about my qualification, and that was by a man
who was very sore indeed at having to pay £3 a month
for my services. I joined the vessel in Sydney, where
able seamen’s wages were at the time .£5 a month for
deep water, resisting all the skipper’s efforts to get me
for £2 ior. a month. This so annoyed him that he
tried in various ways to pick holes in my work, and at
last he declared that I could not steer (although I never
missed a trick during the whole voyage) and also that
I was not competent to “ cross a royal yard,” which
was fantastically untrue. I should very much like to
explain how this piece of work is done, but am almost
afraid, because of the inevitable use of technical terms.
Still, I feel that so far I have not worried my readers
much with sea language, and that perhaps some would
like to hear just a little bit of sailor-talk.
It must be understood that this piece of work is
one of the smallest of rigging manoeuvres that is per-
formed on board ship. By “ rigging manoeuvres ” I
mean work aloft which is not always being done or
undone, such as furling or setting sails. In fact, the
work aloft of a ship may be divided into three cate-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 285
gories, the temporary, the sub-permanent, and the
permanent. Under the heading of temporary work
comes the setting and furling of sails. Sub-permanent
work is the shifting of sails—heavy-weather canvas for
that carried in the doldrums and trades—and the
manipulation of studding-sail gear, although this
latter, except in old ships, rarely troubles sailors much
to-day.
But permanent work, by far the most important
and demanding the greatest amount of seamanship,
includes all the care of the standing rigging, the send-
ing up or down of masts and yards, and the thousand
and one repairs that are necessary in order that the
mazy fabric of a sailing-ship’s top-hamper may do its
work of propulsion in association with the wind. Of
all the heavier work of this kind—that is, shifting the
yards and masts—that of handling the royal and sky-
sail yards is the most frequently indulged in, for many
skippers commanding old ships dare not put too much
strain upon the lighter masts in heavy weather, and
they therefore make a rule of sending down the loftiest
yards when they bend their heavy-weather sails.
Now a royal yard in situ is a spar of, say, thirty-five
feet in length (varying of course with the size of the
ship), seven or eight inches in diameter in the slings
(the centre), and tapering at both ends, or yard arms,
to four inches or even less. By means of three (some-
times only one) encircling iron sling-bands in its centre,
it is attached to an iron leather-lined collar which goes
round the royal-mast and is called the “ parral.” It
is also suspended by a chain “ tye ” which leads
through a sheave-hole at the masthead and is con-286 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
nected on the after side to a purchase for hoisting the
yard, the whole tackle constituting the royal “ haul-
yards,” “ halliards,” or “ halyards,”—the latter for
choice.
From each yardarm to the masthead run pieces of
rope which are tight when the yard is lowered. They
are called “ lifts,” and are for the purpose of keeping
the yard horizontal and of sustaining the extra weight
put upon it by men who go upon it for any purpose.
Looped abaft the yard are the “ footropes,” upon
which the men stand when furling'or bending the sail ;
and attached to each yardarm are the “ braces ” for
the purpose of slinging the yard from one side to the
other. All this gear is for the yard alone. Then
there is the sail, with a rope running through a block
under both quarters of the yard, and down to the cor-
ners of the sail abaft all,—the “ clewlines ” ; while
from a block at the masthead another rope runs down
through a block or bulls-eye seized on to the tye close
down to the yard, and so—being forked before-all—to
the foot of the sail, where it is seized, one leg on
either side, to the foot. This is the “ buntline.” The
clewlines, buntlines, halyards, and braces are worked
from the deck, and constitute the “ running-gear ” of
the sail.
From the foregoing perfunctory description of the
gear attached to one of the lightest yards in the ship,
some slight idea may be gathered of the immense
combination of cordage required to work about thirty
sails, some, of course, with much more gear than a
royal. But my principal object in attempting to de-
scribe the gear of the royal yard was to show whatTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 287
used to be considered fair work for an ordinary sea-
man in “ crossing ” it. The running-gear was of course
already aloft; the standing gear and the sail were sent
up with the yard, which was swayed aloft by a long
rope running through the sheave-hole in the masthead
from which the halyards were temporarily unrove.
The youngster charged with the duty of crossing the
yard goes aloft as it is swayed up, guiding it clear of
the rigging as it jerkily ascends. Of course it is so
secured that it rises vertically, and the work of keep-
ing it clear of the rigging when the ship tumbles about
is by no means easy. And of course the higher it as-
cends the greater is the motion, until, when it is high
enough, it often taxes the utmost strength and skill of
the smartest youngster to deal with it. As the upper
yardarm reaches the topgallant-masthead he must put
on the brace and lift for that side and cast off the
“ yardarm-stop,” then, as speedily afterwards as pos-
sible, get the lower brace on, and the lift for that side
also secure. As soon as that is done, he can, by cast-
ing loose the quarter-stop, allow the yard to be lowered
in its proper horizontal position. It will now be sup-
ported by the lifts, so that he can fix the parral to the
mast, and, those on deck having steadied the braces
tight, the worst of his troubles are over.
He can now “come up” the yard rope by which
the yard has been hoisted, and, letting it run down on
deck, reeve the tye of the halyards in its place. Then
he must secure all the gear to the sail properly,—
sheets, clewlines, and buntlines; loose the sail; sing
out “ Sheet home the royal ”; “ light up ” the gear,
and, when the sail is set, “ stop ” it loosely with one288 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
turn of roping-twine, so that it will not chafe the sail
by being stretched tightly over it, and come down. If
he can do all that smartly and well in spite of the
ship’s uneasy motion, he is superior to two thirds of
the so-called “ able seamen ” of to-day.
In the absence of a boy the O.S. is also, in an Eng-
lish ship, the lackey of the watch. The law in this
respect is unwritten, and I have seen a sturdy young-
ster successfully appeal against it. There is really no
reason why an ordinary seaman should be compelled
to sweep up the fo’c’s’le after every meal; keep the
men’s plates, knives, and forks clean ; trim the lamp ;
make the cracker-hash, etc. But few indeed are the
fo’c’s’les where an ordinary seaman would be able to
claim exemption from such servitude. And if he did
get off from dancing attendance upon the men in his
watch below he would almost certainly be made to do
much of their legitimate work during the watch on
deck. For that is one of the worst features of British
ships—that owing to the peculiar want of discipline
which obtains so much work that should be fairly dis-
tributed falls upon those who are either indisposed to
grumble or are in a junior position.
For instance, in a sailing-ship, let us say, which
carries no boys or apprentices, but an ordinary sea-
man in each watch, that young man during his watch
on deck will certainly be expected to keep on the qui
vive. If he have the good fortune to be commanded
by a thoughtful officer he will probably be allowed to
take a regular trick at the wheel in spite of the grum-
bling of the men, many of whom will be no better than
he is, if as good. But in the great majority of casesTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 289
he must mount guard near the break of the poop dur-
ing his watch on deck at night, solely in order that
he may pass the word along to the sleeping men, or
do himself any job that he can manage without dis-
turbing them. When any work has to be done that
requires the whole watch, the O.S. will do the lion’s
share of it (I have often seen the whole watch
standing waiting for an ordinary seaman to do some-
thing because every one of them was too lazy to make
a start and the young officer did not care to risk a
row by sending any particular man), and when the
pulling and hauling is done, the last “ Belay ” or
“Well ” has been cried, the men all slouch off to their
corners and pipes or sleep again, leaving the O.S. to
go the round of the ship and coil up all the ropes.
Of course I am not quoting this as a great hard-
ship. I only mention it to show how peculiar are the
notions held by foremast hands of the duties of
boys and ordinary seamen. It was doubtless a very
good training for the latter, this being made to do
everything possible while the men looked on criticis-
ingly, but it was often carried to cruel lengths. I
have myself seen as well as experienced such treat-
ment of an ordinary seaman in a ship’s fo’c’s’le, at the
hands of men who certainly did not deserve to wield
any authority, as v.'as sufficient to make a lad wish
himself dead,—worse, remember, for the ordinary sea-
man than for the boy. What do you think of a fine
young man being compelled to wait for his food till
every one else in the fo’c’s’le is served, to find then
that of his poor allowance he had been robbed of
nearly half, and made to feel at all times that the29o THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
only object of his existence during his watch below
was to be the body-servant of eight or ten men, to pre-
serve before them a silent, respectful demeanour, and
to consider himself honoured if any of them addressed
him in any other than terms of opprobrium. Yet all
this might be changed—has often been changed—in a
moment. If one of the little kings, in a burst of mag-
nificent rage at some dereliction of duty on the part
of his slave,—the fo’c’s’le not swept clean or a plate
not washed quickly,—struck the O.S. a shameful
blow, and the latter had the grit to return it with
interest, following it up with a victory over his
aggressor, thenceforward that fo’s’c’le would not be a
bad place for the hitherto-put-upon junior. But under
the altered conditions of modern sea-service this fo’-
c’s’le etiquette is being swept away, and soon will have
as completely disappeared as the reluctance to sail on
Friday has before the necessities of steam.CHAPTER XXXII.
THE BOY.
At last we have arrived at the very bottom of the
social scale of 'board-ship life. The “ Boy,” as distin-
guished from the “ Cabin Boy,” has long posed as a
hero of romance in sea fiction. We all know that boy.
His marvellous deeds have inspired generations of
home-bred youths with an unquenchable thirst for the
sailor’s life, where to quote one of the most charming
of song-writers,—
“ We watch the waves that glide by our vessel’s stately side,
“ Or the wild sea-birds that follow through the air ;
“ Or we gather in a ring and with cheerful voices sing;
“ Oh, gaily goes the ship when the wind blows fair.1'
How many youngsters, lured by the mysterious air
of adventure pervading all things connected with the
sea, have run from comfortable homes, and, after
hardships innumerable, have compassed the goal of
their desire,—have found shipmasters willing to take
them to sea with him as “ boys.” And then; well,
happily, the young seafarer soon develops a wonder-
ful capacity for patient endurance of evils not to be
avoided, and, if of the true grit, in time looks back up-
on his probationary period of suffering as a training292 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
which he was glad to have endured. And the older
he grows the more complacently does he recall the
days when he learned to expect the blow first and
the explanation afterwards ; learned to eat what he
could get with an appetite like an ostrich; could
sleep in drenched clothing with a bare plank be-
neath him, and find all his consolation in the fact
that soon he would be able to look down upon a new-
comer with the lofty superiority of the full-blown
mariner.
At the risk of being thought tedious I must repeat
that for the ship-boy, as for boys everywhere else in
our favoured land, a brighter day has dawned. With-
in the memory of middle-aged men a boy on board a
ship was the butt, the vicarious sacrifice to all the ac-
cumulated ill-temper of the ship. To-day tales are
told of the treatment of boys in “ Geordie ” colliers
that are enough to make the flesh creep to hear. In
those days it was the privilege of every man on board
to ill-treat the boy, and if, as very often happened, the
poor little wretch died under it,—well, what of it ?—it
was only a boy. And the peculiar part of it all was
that the brutes who did these evil deeds prided them-
selves that their actions were right and proper. There
was only one way of training a boy,—with a rope’s-end
if it were handy ; if not, a fist or a boot would do,
but he must be beaten. One man whom I shall al-
ways remember—as smart a seaman as ever trod a
ship’s deck—beat me until there was not a square inch
of my small body unbruised. Scarcely a watch passed
that I did not receive some token of his interest in
my welfare, and on two occasions he kicked me withTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 293
such violence that with all the will in the world to
obey his orders I was perfectly helpless. My only
wonder is that he did not kill me.
Yet when I left the ship he bade me quite an affec-
tionate farewell, bidding me remember how hard he
had laboured for my benefit, that every blow he had
given me was solely aimed at making me more useful
and fitting me for my duties. At the time I felt that
he was lying, and that his treatment of me was dictated
by that savage lust for cruelty to an unresisting victim
that grows alarmingly with the yielding thereto, and
that had I only possessed the strength and courage to
retaliate he would speedily have altered his mind.
But now, I do not know. I feel that perhaps he may
have been sincere. Men were self-deceivers ever, and
there are few self-deceptions more common among
mankind than this—that cruelty is a splendid aid to
education. But here let me say that cruelty to boys
was far more common among the officers than the
men. If a boy was willing, respectful, and clean, it
was very seldom that he got beaten in the fo’c’s’le.
There was almost always a certain amount of public
spirit which made for justice where half a dozen of
even the roughest men were gathered together. I
have known one exception to this good rule,—have
experienced it in my own person,—where out of a
whole crew of eight there was not one man enough to
protest against the daily practice of cruelty to me.
More than that, they encouraged a big boy who was
getting the same pay as myself, but whose qualifica-
tions, except strength, were far inferior to mine, to
pummel me too. Such a gang I have never met be-294 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
fore or since, and I am very sure that the combination
is uncommon.
The majority of the boys going to sea to-day unap-
prenticed are drawn from the training-ships, those
good schools for the boy who is said to be unmanage-
able ashore. Coming from the wild and precarious
life of the streets into such a ship as the Warspite,
Arethusa, or Cornwall is such a revelation to a boy
that for a little while he feels as if the bottom had
fallen out of his world. For the anarchical condition,
tempered by a salutary dread of the policeman, under
which he has been living there is substituted law and
order, cleanliness and discipline; for regular short
commons and dog-like snatching of sleep comes good
food regularly eaten, regular sleep at set times, reg-
ular play, and a sound prospect of benefits—very real
indeed—for the patient worker in well-doing. Here
the boy is taught all the essentials of seafaring except
the actual going to sea, and in at least one instance
that practical want is supplied in that a small square-
rigged vessel is kept, which, with selected boys for a
crew, under the charge of experienced seamen, plies
up and down the river under sail. And it may truly
be said that a boy who has passed a couple of years
under such treatment as this is as well prepared for
becoming a good seaman as it is possible for a boy to
be.
But, strangely enough, the training is of very little
real service to the lads when they go to sea to earn
their living, for at once they find themselves under
such conditions as they never before dreamed of. In
place of the perfect discipline and stringent rules toTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 295
which they have been accustomed, they find the great-
est laxity prevailing. Rules are almost non-existent.
In the training-ship each of them had his work allotted
to him. When the signal was given he knew just
what to do and how to do it, and when it was done he
was done too. In the merchant ship the rigging is
different and the method is different; and, instead of
the boy’s having any set duties, he is at everybody’s
beck, and call and is given tasks to accomplish single-
handed that he has been taught to do man-of-war
fashion,—that is, with so many hands that the work
was done like magic, and in a few seconds a sail was
furled or set, or a mast was sent up or down.
The boy cannot now keep himself clean and smart-
looking. In the first place little time is allowed, and,
in the next, there is not much water (in sailing-ships).
No longer is it necessary that he should present him-
self at stated hours for inspection ; no longer is every
movement regulated as if by clockwork. He may be
as slovenly, as dirty, as he lists ; there is no one to en-
force the keeping of the good rules he has so long
been under, and that principally because those who
bear rule over him know that such enforcement is im-
possible.
Thus the carefully instilled habits of order, regu-
larity, and cleanliness are broken down at once, and
in place of the smartly-clad, well-set-up youth who
joined the ship there is presently seen a slouchy,
shifty-eyed gamin who is a profound student of the
art of “ dodging Pompey,” and who gets the well-de-
served character from his shipmates of being “ a
young sailor, but a d—d old soldier.” There is a296 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
greater evil, if possible, than this impending. It is
that all the careful training of the lad will presently
be of no avail whatever, because, mixing freely with
the crew, he is sedulously taught that the sea as a
profession or calling is played out.
“ Why, just look at it a minnit,” says his Mentor.
‘‘ You’ve never got no time to call yer own ” (which is
a lie, in an English ship at any rate); “yer every-
body’s dorg ; yer fed wuss’n a pig ; and what y’ got
t’look forrard ter?—t’die in the wukkus. ’Sides, 'n
Englishman don’t like ter be mucked up all the time
with a lot o’ foreigners in one of his country’s ships.
Why, they looks down on us now’s if we wus a d—d
lot of interlopers wot got no right to sail under our
own flag. An’after all, wot are yer? ’Never nothin’
but a dirty sailor all yer days. Nobody ’shore knows
nothin’ about yer, an’ don’ care neither. Y’ aint got
no vote ; y’ aint got no ’ome ; y’r jest a bit of wreckage.
Quit it, me son, an’ git a job ashore, where, if you’re a
bloomin’ scavenger, you’ve got yer pull on the vestry-
min 'cause you’ve got a vote, an’ if they don’t look
after your interests, w’y, out they goes,—see ? ”
This is the kind of pernicious stuff (all the more dan-
gerous because of its half-truths) that the boy is regaled
with, along with a great deal more that cannot be repro-
duced for reasons that need not be given ; and again I
say, without fear of being hauled over the coals for
repetition, it is quite sufficient to account for the fall-
ing off in the numbers of young British seamen. But
I feel certain that some such scheme as I have
sketched out in the Apprentice chapters would be
efficacious in preventing this wholesale waste of goodTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 297
material. From the lowest class of seamen up to the
second mate (except in the first-class liners) the evil to
be battled with is the lack of continuous employment.
It does not admit of the sailor acquiring any interest
in his ship. Moreover there is ev.er dangling before
his eyes the terror of being “ outward bound,” those
two fateful words that convey such a mountain of
meaning to every seafaring man. To be “ outward
bound ” means that he is ashore penniless, dependent
upon the kindness of a boarding-master for a little
food. To prowl about the docks, boarding ship after
ship in the remote chance of securing a berth, and to
meet with black looks everywhere ; to be told continu-
ally that he is a cumberer of the ground, a loafer, a
fellow that might, if he would, get a ship, but prefers
instead to hang around maritime liquor shops, keep-
ing a keen lookout for “homeward-bounders ” who
will treat him, instead of being, as he really is in
nearly every case, feverishly anxious to get back to
sea again,—these are some of the greatest drawbacks
to a deep-water sailor’s career.
And they tell with tremendous force against the
boy. Friendless and homeless in many cases, or with
parents so poor that they can do nothing to help him,
earning such small wages that he can hardly purchase
necessary clothing, much less pay for board and
lodging, and with all a boy’s natural carelessness, he
is sorely tempted to take the first job that comes
in his way and quit the sea altogether as a means of
livelihood. If he does so, even though the new
employment may only last for a few months, he will
hardly go to sea again. And no one, knowing the298 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
peculiar difficulties of his lot, will be able to blame
him.
I have often wished that it were possible to make
lads who at school chatter so glibly about " running
away to sea ” understand how impossible it is to do
any such thing nowadays, except, indeed, in such
vessels as are the last resort of the unfortunate.
Even after I had been at sea for a couple of years I
found it difficult to get a ship on account of the com-
petition of the training-ship lads, who, with their well-
replenished outfits and sturdy appearance, to say
nothing of the persistence of the agent charged with
the duty of getting them shipped, were readily accepted
by skippers to the exclusion of outsiders. The “ unfor-
tunate ” vessels of which I speak are those small sail-
ing craft which still drag out a precarious existence in
competition with steam. They may be seen in all
our smaller ports, often lying disconsolately upon
mud-banks at ebb-tide, or, looking woefully out of
place, at some wharf belonging to a seaside place like
Margate or Ramsgate. Oh, so dirty, so miserable they
look. They only carry such rough cargoes as it does
not pay to put in steam, and in consequence their
freight-earning capacity is very low. That, again, re-
acts upon the equipment. Worn-out gear, wretched
food, and not enough men or boys to do the heavy
work, they provide a hard school for the young sea-
man. In them may still be found lingering some of
the bad old traditions of half a century ago.
Yet among even these “poor relations” of the
sea may be found varieties of grade. The great ma-
jority of them are coasters; that is to say, they doTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 299
not leave the vicinity of our shores except for ports
just across the Channel. In these, though the condi-
tions of life are hard for a boy who usually does the
cooking (?) at an open stove on deck, the food, if
coarse, is much better than it is on vessels of the same
kind “ going deep water.” There no relief can be
found for months, while in the home trade it is but
a few days from port to port, so that the ill-used or
aggrieved youngster has but to step ashore and be off.
And under the peculiar slipshod method of engage-
ment and discharge in these vessels there is little
danger to the deserter.
In my day there used to be regular houses of call
for men and boys shipping in such vessels in London.
One public-house of the kind I knew well, having
when very young spent many a weary hour in its
dingy taproom waiting for a chance of shipment. To
it used to come burly skippers clad in pilot-cloth,
with blue jerseys in lieu of vests, and fur caps. They
first sought a stout, well-spoken man who was always
hanging about there from ten till six, and told him
their requirements. He knew what men and boys
were available and where to find them, in the taproom
or just at the door. He introduced master to man,
and the first preliminary was always to feel the appli-
cant’s hands. If they were horny enough to satisfy
the skipper that their possessor had not been too long
out of work, a few questions ensued relative to wages,
destination, etc. There was seldom any difficulty
raised by the sailors. Poor fellows, by the time they
got to waiting at the “ King’s Head ” or “ Arms ” they
were in no mood for haggling, and in this way wages3oo THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
were often cut down very low for men, while I have
seen boys going for five shillings a month. When the
bargain was made a handsel of a shilling was given to
the sailor. Whether he gave the agent anything I
never knew, for although I waited there a long time—
some three months off and on—I never got a ship or
a barge there. Of course the skipper paid something
to the agent, who looked fat and prosperous, but be-
yond the shillings I never saw any money change
hands. And that money was always spent forthwith
in the same manner: it was like performing a mystic
rite. Two pots of “ four” ale and two half-ounces of
shag were purchased at the bar, and all the waiting
hands, without being invited, stepped up and partook.
It looked so strange to me, I remember, for many of
the poor fellows looked as if a meal would have done
them so much more good.
There were never lacking participants either: no
matter if the taproom was quite deserted by candidates
when the bargain was concluded, the appearance of
the beer and tobacco always found them present,
drawn thither, I suppose, by some mysterious influ-
ence. Another peculiar thing about that place was
that men with money did not frequent it,—sailormen,
that is to say. It had its own customers among the
workers of Thames Street, but they never intruded
upon the apartments sacred to the shipping interest.
It was all very sordid and pitiful, a side path of
seafaring that must have lent itself to abuses
through which many a poor misguided lad got away
to sea and found no place for repentance until too
late. I have only mentioned it here because in speak-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 301
ing of the boy I am painfully reminded of the great
number of miserable little sea-drudges who are still to
be found in these vessels, leading the hardest of lives
and uncared for by any one. They are worthy of all
sympathy, being so helpless, so unable to raise them-
selves. Their environment is as bad as it can well be,
for, whether ashore or afloat, the company they are in
is usually of a very bad kind. Now and then, of
course, such a vessel will have a good steady seaman,
who has an interest in her, for a skipper. A man like
that will often carry his wife, and will endeavour to
keep a respectable crew with him voyage after voyage.
And as likely as not he will take an interest in the boy
and try to make something of him.
Here, as far as the sailor personnel of merchant ships
is concerned, my task ends. Several times during its
performance I have felt that perhaps I should have
done better to begin with the boy and end with the
skipper, as being the more natural way. But I hope
that what I have done, as well as the way in which it
has been done, will be acceptable to shore-folks, for
whom it is written. Sailors do not require any infor-
mation of the kind.
And now for a few words on behalf of the men of
iron who toil below.CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE ENGINEER.
THESE concluding chapters should be written by an
engineer. For no sailor, whatever his position may
have been, is fully competent to judge of the work
performed by the handlers of marine engines. Much
less is he able to appreciate the position of those toil-
ing helots of civilisation, the firemen and trimmers.
The benefits of steam are vast and undeniable, but it
is not good to forget that the service of steam to-day
means a truly awful burden of labour and risk laid
upon a large army of civilised men. I believe I shall
carry with me the assent of every one who knows any-
thing about the facts when I say that of all modern
occupations there is not one so terribly exhausting, so
full of peril, as that of the servants of the marine en-
gine at work. The marvel of marvels to me is that
men can be found to undertake the task so readily.
And if this be true of the merchant service, as I hold
it is,—plain unvarnished truth,—it is doubly true of
the same work—or what answers to the same descrip-
tion of work—in the Royal Navy. For there the
manifold complications of ship-propelling machinery
are immensely more intricate, the conditions under
which the men labour are far more arduous, and in
addition there is always the fighting risk superadded.
But I must not stray into the fighting line of en-THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 303
gineering: I have perhaps said more than enough on
that subject recently. Nevertheless I honestly believe
that I have only been able to put in the tamest and
most colourless way what I feel about these men.
When I say that such a chapter as this should be writ-
ten by an engineer, I mean that only an expert in
that wonderful profession can fully appreciate the
difficulties and dangers thereof. Outsiders may, as I
do, admire and wonder, but we cannot fully enter into
these things as an engineer can. The country badly
needs a writer on engineering matters who knows his
business thoroughly, and at the same time is able to
tell the people who don’t know what marine engineer-
ing means. No amount of sympathy and admiration
can make up for lack of expert knowledge, yet, as far
as it is possible, I feel constrained to draw the atten-
tion of my countrymen to the work of the men who,
far below the water-line, amid the clanging chorus of
their gigantic slaves, bend watchful brows to their
mighty task, who for the four hours of their watch on
deck (see how the sailor crops up!)—no, their watch
below at work.—know not one moment’s respite.
Vigilance unremitting is theirs; the price of effective
manipulation must be paid, for no Eastern Afrit was
ever more jealous of the power over him held by the
enunciator of the master-word than is the high-pres-
sure marine engine of the governance of the engineer.
The casual observer glancing down into the engine-
room of a seagoing steamer is apt to imagine that the
men who wait upon the engines have an easy time of
it. He is inclined to think that once the engines are
started—"Full speed ahead ” sounded—watch after304 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
watch need only sit and look at them doing their work.
Nothing could well be more false, while nothing is
more natural. For engineers, like the best of work-
men everywhere and of every sort, make no fuss about
their work. Quietly, without ostentation, they tend
their engines, their trained ears noting the faintest
change of tone in the uproar which sounds so chaotic
to the ear of the outsider. Every single part of those
engines, the amount of strain that it is bearing, the
need for nursing, lubricating, watching, that it has, is
in the mind of that quiet, nonchalant man who steps
cat-like into the thick of the flying steel cranks, and, ac-
commodating his movements to the swing of the
thrusting shafts, feels their temperature, the amount
of lubricant they are carrying, and regains his perfo-
rated platform with an air of indifference, as if he had
merely looked over the side from the deck instead of
having been on the most intimate terms with an un-
speakable form of death.
Perhaps the most noticeable feature about the
marine engineer in the merchant service is the high
respect in which he is held by every one. The mer-
chant seaman instinctively recognises in him a man
whose attainments are not merely theoretical but
eminently practical. Every merchant seaman realises
that with the engineer has arrived a new stamp of sea-
farer whose stern stress of duty cuts him off from
those enjoyments common to all seamen. For
him there is no meditative contemplation of the
glories of the tropical night, when in the midst of the
mighty solitudes of the untainted ocean man draws
near to the great heart of Nature, feels himself akinTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 305
to the stars and the wind and the waves ; no heart-
uplifting view of the apocalyptic splendours of the
dawn, when the grey shadow of night melts away
before the palpitating glow of the approaching sun ;
no speechless delight in the indescribable panorama
sweeping past when the swift ship skirts closely the
wonders of many shores. At such times the engineer
and his crew, deep in the bowels of the ship, are shut
in from all sights and sounds and perfumes save those
of the engine-room and stokehold, which are akin
to those of Tartarus. And when, through the black
night, the vessel plunges madly athwart the raging
seas, remorselessly driven against the combined forces
of wind and wave and current, the engineer works on,
all depending upon him. Then do his anxieties enor-
mously increase, as at one moment the whirling
blades of the propeller are buried deep beneath the
surface, and their thrust vibrates through every fibre
and rivet of the ship, and the next, by a downward
plunge of the vessel’s head, they are lifted into the
air, spinning madly with a frightful acceleration of
speed on their release from the element they have
been toiling in. Then see the engineer erect upon
his iron platform, facing his Titanic charges, throttle-
valve in hand, and steady eye fixed upon index
glasses, every sense on the alert, muscles tense to shut
off the supply of force sooner than the “governor”
can act, so that engines shall not be torn from their
foundations by the fearful strain imposed upon them
through the sudden taking away of their work while
the driving steam is still bursting in through main feed
and slide valves.3o6 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
No other engineering in the world can for one
moment compare in vital importance with this. The
conditions are so onerous, the complications are so
many, the need for watchfulness is so great, that a
new race of men has been bred to compete with them.
The engineer ashore may—and does—have all his re-
pairs done by other people : the engineer at sea must, in
the very nature of things, be not only the prince of
engine-drivers, whose care of his charge under the
most severe tests—not applied occasionally but con-
tinuously—is beyond all praise ; but he must be ready
at any moment, by day or night, to undertake the
most radical repairs. With improvised adjuncts he
must undertake on the instant to do such things with
masses of steel that if they were described would
sound impossible except to the large room and full
equipment of a first-class foundry ashore. Not only
so, but the work must be done under conditions of
heat, imperfect lighting, and cramped space that
render the duty enormously more difficult. Yes ; it
must be done, because if not—well, they have taken
away the steamship’s masts, so that the sailor, even
with the best ability and good will in the world, can
hardly get steerage way on the vessel by means of
sails, and then there is a great ship, perhaps with an
immense perishable cargo and a large number of
passengers, lying like a log upon the ocean, at the
mercy of currents that are most likely to be drifting
her away out of the track of ships into the ocean sol-
itudes that are to-day, owing to the method of follow-
ing beaten tracks which is so universally pursued,
more solitary than they have been for centuries.THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 307
The performance of duties like these call for the
highest qualities of mind and muscle ever possessed
by men. The forces dealt with are so terrific, the
dangers so great, that a weak man could not so much
as face them, much less perform the wonderful pieces
of work that are necessary in opposition to them. Oc-
casionally a curt paragraph appears in the shipping
papers conveying to underwriters and owners the
information that the steamship So-and-So, long over-
due, has arrived, her broken-down machinery having
been repaired by the engineer. Beneath that brief in-
timation lies a volume of tragic story, the dauntless
conflict of man with fire, steam, and steel, and his
final triumph over them. But these stories are never
told as they ought to be. Some day perhaps an en-
gineer writer will step forth and unfold to an admiring
world the Iliad of the engine-room. May I live to
read it.
For the evolution of a marine engineer it is first of
all necessary that he serve his apprenticeship in a
“ shop ” u'here marine engines are made. This is es-
sential, and a moment’s consideration will convince
any one that it must be so. Then, having mastered
all the details of engine construction, if the aspirant
has a desire for the sea, he will in some way, of which
I do not pretend to understand the details, obtain a
subordinate position in an engine-room of some sea-
going steamship. Here he will become conversant
with the duties expected of him as an engineer in
charge, and will moreover devote all his spare time to
scientific study in order that he may be fit to pass his
examination in theoretical engineering. And if he3o8 the men of the merchant service.
shows himself worthy of the position there will be little
doubt that, having passed the required examination
before the Board of Trade officials appointed for that
purpose, and received his second engineer’s certificate,
he will find little difficulty in getting a berth as ju-
nior engineer. His foot once upon the ladder the
ascent is easy. There is only one more examination
to pass compulsorily, that of chief engineer, although
there is, as in the seafaring branch, a voluntary exami-
nation which all self-respecting engineers will take,—
“ chief engineer extra.” Now he may rise to be chief
engineer of the Oceanic or the Luca?iia, with twenty
or thirty engineers under him and a whole host of
firemen and trimmers.
It would ill become a mere sailor like myself to say
anything about the polity of the engine-room, even if
I had ever been in a position to study it. No doubt
there are occasional hitches, instances of petty tyranny,
of jealousies, of hindrances to getting on, since, with
all their virtues, engineers are but human. But I do
not know. I know that except in the way of official
routine, such as the control of the engines from the
bridge, the officer of the watch has nothing to do with
the engineer at all. The chief engineer is responsible to
the master, and to him alone. Only the master can pun-
ish, and all cases of insubordination, etc., among the
“ black gang ” must be reported to him. The master
is in supreme command and knows quite well what is
due to the engineer. More, he seldom fails to grant
him his full due. But I should be sorry to sail in any
steamship where the officers took upon themselves to
meddle with engineering matters. There would beTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 309
much unpleasantness, from which the officers would
suffer most. In brief, the engineer’s importance is
recognised.
The engineers live in a little world of their own.
They have their mess-room, with a steward to wait
upon them, and the best food the ship can supply.
Their accommodation, too, is good ; and their pay,—
well, it varies much with the class of ship, but taken
all round it is much better than the officers. And
they are British to a man. I would not give much for
the peace of a foreign engineer who by any chance
found himself in a British ship’s engine-room. The
engineers, in this respect enjoy peculiar advantages.
Some people begrudge them their unique position in
the seafaring world and profess to see danger ahead
because of it. I do not. I confess that my feeling
with regard to the engineer is, that, remembering the
awful stress of his duties, the way in which he is not
only cut off from home delights like the sailor, but is
also debarred from participation in the real joys of the
sea, he deserves every advantage in pay, position, and
prospects that he can obtain.
The unique position he holds among seafarers of
which I speak is that he is in close touch with
powerful trade unions ashore. Since every engineer
must learn his business ashore before going to sea, he
becomes a member of the hierarchy of mechanical
workers. Let him go to sea for never so many years,
he must remember the workshop where he received
his training; he has numbers of associates and rela-
tives who are still working ashore, and who, in safe-
guarding their own interests in parliamentary ways.3io THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
are all unlikely to forget him. They are his proxies,
can speak for him, can use their votes on his behalf.
Presently we shall find this great organisation having
something to say about the prototype of the mercantile
marine engineer in the Navy,—the “ Engine-Room
Artificer.” The Admiralty in its wisdom has chosen to
train up the naval engineer officer itself, so that he
shall be free from the influence of the workshop and
shall become a class apart from and above the me-
chanical engineer. But in the doing of this they have
been compelled to build up another corps to do the
work. They are known in the Navy as “ E.R.A’s ”
(Engine-Room Artificers), and it may be said without
any fear of contradiction that, as far as ability and ex-
perience goes, they are always the equals and often
the superiors of the merchant engineer. Indeed their
period of service and the knowledge required of them
before they can become chief engine-room artificers
in the Navy is much greater than the Board of Trade
require for the granting of engineers’ certificates for
the mercantile marine.
Then comes the great anomaly, the immense gulf
that divides the two classes of men. As I have said,
the merchant-ship engineer knows no superior on
board the ship except the master. He deserves the
best treatment, the best pay, and the greatest respect,
and he gets them. His work cannot be made lighter,
it must always be full of danger and toil ; but all that
can be done by way of mitigation of these onerous
conditions is done. On the other hand the E.R.A.
in the Navy is a nobody. His highest pay is trivial
as compared with his congener in a merchant ship ; heTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 311
gets no respect from anybody ; the youngest officer in
the ship is his despot, whom to answer back means
degradation and loss of pension; and he is berthed
and fed as a fireman is on board a merchant steamer,
so that he continually smarts under a sense of injus-
tice and looks with longing and envious eyes upon his
chums who, wiser than he, have gone into the mer-
chant service. More than that, he knows full well
that, as there are no reserves of engine-room artificers,
there are not nearly enough of them properly to man
the ships that are now afloat. In case of an outbreak
of war with a European Power, huge bribes would be
offered to merchant ship engineers to come and help
in the Navy. He knows, too, that not one of them
would come without being rated as an officer and re-
ceiving all the deference due to an officer in Her Ma-
jesty's service. And so he may find himself, after
years of the most arduous experience, ruled by a
nephew who was a babe in arms when he served his
time, who has all his life been engaged in one steady
occupation on the same kind of engines, never hurried,
never bullied, and probably with a sea experience of
one third of his uncle’s, the “ E.R.A.”
Therefore, because of these reflections and this
knowledge, the E.R.A. is continually warning young-
sters from the home shops not to enter the Navy by
any means. The merchant service is the place for
them if they want to be treated properly ; the Navy
is a place where they will never be anything else but
a “ dirty Tiffy,” looked down upon by the youngest
bluejacket, ar.d liable to be docked of many years
hard-earned pension for pointing out a mistake to anji2 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
officer who, instead of accepting expert information
gratefully, reports them for insolence.
I trust that these remarks about the E.R.A.’s may
not be considered malapropos, remembering the great
importance of the subject, and remembering, too,
that in the engineer of to-day we have not a mere me-
chanic, a man with no thought beyond his day’s work
and the receipt of his wages. I am afraid that the
importance of the engineer, especially at sea, is insuffi-
ciently recognised by non-engineers. Every class of
the community is benefited by the work of the engineer,
and in modern sea-traffic he is, as Kipling has finely
said, “ the king-pin of the ship.” He cheerfully takes
upon himself a burden of toil and danger such as the
ancient world never knew,—takes it too with the full
consciousness of what he is doing, and holds himself
ready at any time to sacrifice his body for the safety
of those whom he is serving. The least that we can do
who are thus served is to recognise his value to the full.
For my part I look upon the modern marine engineer
as the true nineteenth-century hero. Some day I hope
that a roll of honour will be drawn up, giving a list
of heroic deeds performed by engineers out of sight,
unostentatiously, just as a part of their duty. It
would be an inspiring record, and from no source
would more details be drawn than from the engine-
room in the Navy, where, as has been abundantly
proved, the engineer is thought but little of,—so little,
indeed, that all his efforts to obtain some meed of offi-
cial recognition are at present in vain. Good for us
that this does not obtain in the merchant service.
There the engineer is estimated by his shipmates at
his proper worth.CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE FIREMAN AND TRIMMER.
IT is a standing mystery to me however men can be
found who are willing to become the Firemen of ma-
rine boilers. Use dulls the edge of apprehension, of
course, and in time the mind refuses to be impressed
by the sense of imminent danger. Whether on the
battle-field or in the stokehold, this is so,but, apart
altogether from that, the nature of the work is such
that I always wonder what the state of a man’s mind
can be who is willing to undertake it, or who, having
undertaken it, remains in such a business. The engine-
room of a large steamship is a terrible place, with its in-
finite suggestions of incalculable forces exerting them-
selves in orderly ways under the steady control and
guidance of man ; but there is a sense of exultation, of
high satisfaction in the realisation of their own powers,
that goes a long way toward compensating the en-
gineers for the dangers they confront and the discom-
forts they undergo ; and where, as in the mercantile
marine, their high abilities and undaunted courage are
fully recognised, their treatment in pay, provisioning,
and accommodation as good as can be got, they have
also something which atones for a great deal of physi-
cal suffering. Yes, I can understand a man choosing
to become a marine engineer. But a fireman !
The very thought of such a life is terrifying. The3i4 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
sailor in his watch on deck at night is seldom called
upon to do anything but stand quietly at the helm or
on the lookout. If he be a man of any observation
he may hold sweet communion with Nature, may med-
itate in the sweetest solitude in the world, gazing out
upon the ever-beautiful face of the deep. In any case
he may smoke or doze undisturbed by any call to duty
except some shift of wind calling for trimming or
setting sail. It is a pleasant, mellow time for the
sailor,—the night watch at sea.
The fireman is called with the sailor at eight bells.
Hastily putting on his shirt, trousers, and boots, he
descends by many iron ladders past grim walls of iron/
that glow with fervent heat and give out a vibrant'
hum telling of the pent-up power within. Down,;
down he goes until at last he stands upon an iron
floor slightly raised above the very bottom of the’^
vessel. Over his head there is a circular opening down
which comes a steady draught of cool air; that is, if
the ship be in regions where the temperature will allow
of the air being cool. At any rate this air is fresh.
It is conducted below by the intervention of those
huge bell-mouthed ventilators wTucITaie 'so* proimi'nent
a feature of every steamship’s deck equipment.__In
front of him towers the face of the boiler that now
claims him as its slave for four hours. It is orna-
mented by divers strange-looking taps and gauges and
tubes with the use of which he must be familiar. And
it has a voice, an utterance, that, while not loud, is so
penetrating that soon it seems to a novice as if it were
reverberating within his skull. It is the speech of im-
prisoned steam that finds no outlet by any channelTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 315
except the one provided for it, the complaint of the
awful giant who is rending at every square inch of his
prison walls in the one supreme, never-ceasing effort
to escape. It is utterly disregarded by the fireman,
and it is doubtful, indeed, whether he even hears it or
is in any way conscious of it, for it is more to be felt
by the whole of the nerve centres than merely
through the ears. His concern is with the three vast
throats that occupy the lower third of the boiler.
There is no time to be lost. Seizing a shovel he lifts
with it the latch of one of the doors and flings it wide
open with a clangs The ship may be rolling furiously,
tuitrbTmg to and fro with that peculiarly Ulsconcerting
motion that seems to a landsman the subversion of all
principles of uprightness, but he must balance himself
somehow. With legs spread wide apart he stands
upon that slippery iron floor and stoops and peers
within at the roaring cavern of almost white-hot coals.
His trained eye can see just how they are burning,
where clinkers are forming, whether perfect com-
bustion is going on or certain expert manipulation is
necessary in order to make it do so. If all is satisfac-
tory he shifts his position slightly sideways so that he
can swing his shovel on one side to the bunker door,
at the sill of which a heap of coal is lying, fill it, and
then, with a peculiar stroke, send its contents broad-
cast over the lambent surface of the furnace bed.
The mere shoveffing'oTcoal into a fire has no relation
to the careful, intelligent stoking of a steamship’s
furnaces, as engineers are never weary of saying.
There is as much difference between a good fireman
and an incompetent one—although the latter may work316 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
far harder than the former—as there is between a
good and bad carpenter or any other skilled worker.
When I was lamp-trimmer in the Australian Steam
Navigation Company’s employ on the Australian
coast I was shipmate with an old Scotch fireman whose
invariable practice it was to get most methodically
drunk every time we left port. So drunk did he al-
ways become that he could not stand, much less walk.
But, crawling to the fidley, sometimes on hands and
knees, he would somehow get down into the stokehold
when his turn came, and there, balancing himself in
some mysterious fashion, he would feed his fires. No
sooner had he slammed to the furnace door than he
would collapse, his legs bending every which way, as
if they had been made of indiarubber. Yet the chief
engineer used to declare that “ Andra ” could keep
steam better drunk than any other firemen in the ship
could sober. I have known him, after a watch of fir-
ing, to be still so drunk that he could not climb on
deck, but lay huddled up in one corner of the stoke-
hold like a heap of rags, utterly oblivious of the work
going on around him.
It must, however, be remembered that pitching coal
into the furnace, though it is the principal work of a
fireman, does not by any means complete his work.
After he has been “ firing ” a certain length of time
he perceives the necessity for “ cleaning fires.” He
has been carefully raking and poking his fires at inter-
vals, so that no clogging of the bars shall hinder the
free upward draught,' and thisToperation, performed
with Tong tools called a"slice, a rake, and a devil, is
very severe. The operator must stand very close, toTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 317
the furnace mouth and peer within at the fervent
glow wjule-hZSagtres'the vitals of hrs fire as gliTckly'
and deftly as may be, lest the tell-tale gauge shall re-
veal to the watch'fu 1 engineer., that, the pressure of
steam is lessening, bringing him into the stokehold on
the run to know what the all-sorts-of-unprintable-words
that particular fireman is doing. But this is only the
merest child’s-play to cleaning fires. When that time
comes the other furnace or furnaces (each fireman has
two or three under his charge) must be at the top of
their blast, doing their very utmost. Then the fire-
man flings wide the door of the furnace to be cleaned,
plunges his tools into the heart of the fire, and thrusts,
rakes, and slices until he presently, half-roasted, drags
out onto the stokehold floor a mass of clinker. This
sends out such a fierce upward heat that it rnust needs
be damped down, the process being accompanied by
clouds of suffocating steam-smoke. But there is no
time to be lost. Again and again he frrves intoAhe
heart oFthe furnace, each time purging it o’fsome of the
deadening clinker, until at last, with smarting eyeballs,
half-choked, half-roasted, and wholly' exhausted for
the time, he flings a shovelful or so of coal upon the
now comparatively feeble fire and retires to call up Bis
reserve of strength.
And this work of course must go on continuously,
no matter how the vessel is behaving^even if, as often
li ap p e n s, Th e re"d e SC eh d s occasionally from on high a
flood of sea-water as waves break right .overjfie la-
bouring ship. The fireman must, to be efficient, nurse
his fires, keep them clean, and hand them over to his
successor in first-class going order, with the steam up318 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
to its ordered pressure, and failure to do this is pro-
vocative of bad language and much ill feeling. Surely
it hardly needs pressing upon the reader that such an
occupation involves a truly awful strain upon the hu-
man animal, especially in tropical climates. The
amount of strain has been officially recognised in the
arrangementoTfiremen’s watches. Instead of getting
four hours on and four hours off, as do the sailors,
they have four hours on and eight hours off, so that the
exhausted frame may be able in some measure to
recuperate. And in addition, wherever it is possible
to do so, they get somewhat better food. I do not
know certainly whether the institution is general, but
I have been in several steamers where at supper time
the firemen received a mess from the galley called
the “ black pot.” It consisted of the remains of the
saloon passengers’ fare sometimes made into a savoury
stew, sometimes simple of itself, according to its com-
ponent parts. But it was looked upon as the firemen’s
right, and no sailor ever participated in its contents.
It has probably occurred to the reader before this
to ask the question how, if the fireman is so hard
worked in the stokehold, and the space there be so
limited, does he manage to get at the truly enormous
quantity of coal that must be required to feed those
devouring furnaces? The explanation of this brings
us to the lowest deep of all on ’board-ship life to-day.
The providing of the coal for the use of the firemen is
the duty of the Trimmer, the nature of whose work is
so terrible that he should receive the sympathy of
every kindly man and woman whom he serves. The
coal is kept in vast magazines called bunkers, givingTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 319
onto the stokeholds by means of watertight doors. In
merchant ships these bunkers are placed so as to be
most convenient for the transmission of coal to the stoke-
holds and are as little subdivided as possible. What
their capacity is may be imagined from the fact that
some ships require 3,000 tonsof coal for a single pass-
age, it being consumed at the rate of between twenty
and thirty tons per hour. At the commencement
of the passage the trimmer’s work is comparatively
easy. The coal lies near the outlet, and by a little
skilful manipulation it is made to run out upon the
stokehold floor, handy for the fireman’s shovelling.
But as the consumption goes on, and the “face” of
the coal recedes from the bulkhead, the trimmer’s
work grows rapidly more heavy. His labour knows no
respite as he struggles to keep the fireman’s needs sup-
plied. And there is no ventilator pouring down fresh
air into the bunker. In darkness only penetrated by
the dim light of a safety-lamp, in an atmosphere com-
posed of Hie exhalations from the coal and a modicum of
dust-laden air, liable at any moment to be overwhelmed
by the down-rushing masses of coal as the ship’s motion
displaces it, the grimy, sweat-soaked man works on.
By comparison with him the coal-hewer in the mine
has a gentleman’s life. Darkness and danger and
want of breath are his inevitable environment. What
wonder is it that he becomes a hard citizen? The fact
is that no man with longings for decent life would or
could remain in such employment. Only those who
by carelessness and disregard of all that for the ma-
jority of us makes life worth living stay in it and enable
the ocean traffic of to-day to go on.320 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
It is absolutely impossible to exaggerate the mis-
eries of such a mode of life, made necessary by the
imperious demand for swift travel. Yet, severe as is
the lot of the coal-trimmer in an ocean liner, it again
is comparatively easy when compared with the lot of
the second-class stoker in Her Majesty’s Navy. For
these another set of conditions comes into play. The
necessity for using the coal as a means of protection
from shot and shell leads to the bunkers being sub-
divided into a host of “ pockets ” holding but a few
tons and communicating with each other deviously.
The work of getting the coal passed from one to the
other of these is far worse than anything of the kind
in the merchant service, as much worse as is the firing
under forced draught for a Belleville boiler than the
steady supply of fuel to a well-equipped natural-
draught stokehold of any of our great merchant
steamships, where Belleville boilers—thank God—
will never be used. And coming deeper still there is
the firing and trimming of a “ destroyer.” That oc-
cupation defies any attempt to describe it. No words
could give an adequately forceful idea of what the fire-
men, trimmers, and E.R.A’s must endure in order
that a vessel no larger than an above-bridge steamer
shall be driven by engines of five thousand horse-
power at the rate of thirty miles per hour. We do not
seem to have reached finality yet in this direction, but
I should think that, since human endurance has its
limits, there must of necessity be a halt soon, from the
utter impossibility of finding human beings able to
live and work under such awful conditions. When
you find the long quivering hull of a destroyer—onlyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 321
a plate of steel not much thicker than a crown-piece
keeping out the sea—packed full of boilers, whizzing
machinery, and coal, the tiny air-space left containing
something of which one inhalation would make you or
me, reader, feel as if we had been suddenly strangled,
and the heat greater than one would find in the hot-
test room of a Turkish bath, it seems time to consider
whether there can be any justification in compelling
our fellow-creatures, whom the need for bread has
driven to accept such employment, to endure im-
prisonment like that, let alone work in it.
It is somewhat comforting to know that the exigen-
cies of peaceful travel, severe as they are undoubtedly,
do not require such suffering as that from their ser-
vants. Of course there are times—such as upon the
outbreak of fire or the sudden springing of a leak—
when the toilers below are literally between the devil
and the deep sea. Also in the case of a boiler explo-
sion or a sudden break-down of machinery in full
career, when the danger and attendant suffering are
very great. But then we have all to face dangers at
times in burning houses, railway accidents, and so on,
which come so seldom that we do not lose any sleep
in anticipating them. Therefore we do not reckon the
possibilities of calamity among the drawbacks to a
fireman’s or trimmer’s business. It is the steady
stress of such conditions of labour which is to be de-
plored.
Before the “black watch ” below can be relieved
there is always a duty to be performed that makes no
unfitting climax to the preceding tale of toil. It is
“ Ashes up.” Some steamers have been fitted with a322 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
contrivance for obviating this piece of hard work,—the
fitting of a sort of valve in the ship’s side or bottom
through which the ashes and debris of the fire can be
blown into the sea. These, however, are few. The
usual way is for the ashes to be filled, down in the
stokehold, into long iron buckets, just as much, when
full, as a strong man can lift. Some of the trimmers
go on deck (how sweet the sea-air is after their long
sojourn below) and, sliding open a door in the tube of
one of the ventilators, discover there a winch. The
chain of this winch runs down into the stokehold,
where it is hooked on to the ash-bucket. The trim-
mers on deck heave away with all their might (for
when their task is ended they may go below), and
when the bucket reaches them they snatch it and
carry it to the ash-shoot, where they dump its contents
overboard. In some very-well-found ships there is a
small steam winch for doing this work, but usually it is
performed as described, and a heavy piece of business
it is, involving the raising of several tons of ashes from
the bottom of the ship.
Here I must leave the fireman and trimmer. I hope
that engineers and their crews will forgive me, being
a sailor, for having had the hardihood to say anything
about them at all. They know verywell the prejudice
that even now exists against them in the minds of most
sailors, and they will probably look closely into what
I have written for some sign of sneering depreciation.
But they will not find it. My sympathies are most
fully with them. My admiration for them is great.
And I think that, as regards the firemen and trimmers,
their work in tropical seas is so utterly unfit for whiteTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 323
men to do that, in spite of the hardships attendant
upon loss of employment at first, it would be a good
thing if stokeholds were entirely manned by negroes,
who from their constitutional experience of heat must
be far better fitted to endure the conditions of the
stokehold. Many southern-going ships carry them
now. I should not be sorry to see them the rule, and
my countrymen doing something better.CHAPTER XXXV.
CONCLUSION.
AND now, approaching the conclusion of the whole
matter, the end of what I feel to have been an import-
ant task while the way in which it has been performed
is an open question, I ask myself: “ What is likely to
be the effect of this book upon the minds of those for
whom it has been written ? Will they think that the
British mercantile marine is a profession which they
should exert all their influence to keep their young
friends and relatives out of, or will they feel, as I do,
that in spite of all its obvious drawbacks it should be
by no means neglected as an opening for enterprising
adventurous youngsters, the right stuff of which
British sailors are made ? ”
I have been compelled in truth to say many hard
things of the merchant service, but there is such a
thing as speaking the truth in love. And as I love
the merchant service with all my heart, and desire
most earnestly to see it flourish and prosper more and
more, I am the more anxious that nothing I have said
will be taken as spoken in a carping or pessimistic
spirit. I want to see the mercantile marine purged of
the foreigner, not because I hate the foreigner of any
nation, but because this peculiarly and particularly
maritime nation of ours cannot afford, in the face ofTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 325
the undoubted hatred manifested toward it by prac-
tically every Continental people, to allow the life
of its citizens to be dependent upon the good will
of aliens. In spite of what not only Continental
writers but many of our own scribes may and do say
about our unctuous hypocrisy, there can be no doubt
that the chief characteristic of the British nation to-
day is its careless magnanimity. Warned by innumer-
able writers of the risks we wilfully expose ourselves
to, we go on, with a good-natured shrug of the shoul-
ders, in the same reckless fashion. We welcome as if
we were a new colony with millions of acres undevel-
oped, with all our resources at their springtide, a con-
tinuous flood of aliens to our shores and in our ships.
We not only give them all the advantages we ourselves
possess, but actually strain a point wherever possible
in their favour. Finding no reciprocity anywhere, no
feeling of kindliness for all our generous treatment of
aliens, we are unmoved, nor is our policy, or want of
policy, altered. And this grand air of indifference,
which is not assumed, but real, is to the last degree
galling to our Continental neighbours. Their attitude
becomes daily more difficult to understand. Rejoic-
ing to see how we are, as they firmly believe, exposing
all our most vital, most vulnerable points to their
attack in matters of both war and peace, they are yet
almost frantic with rage at what they are pleased to
call our abominable insular insolence, our refusal to
be frightened of them. I do not pretend to justify our
insouciant attitude ; I only note its universal presence.
In the matter of our mercantile marine I feel sure
that we are heaping up for ourselves a most awfulj26 the men of the merchant service.
mountain of disaster in the way in which we are
allowing it to become really a foreign service. One
thing we could do, and should do at once,—apply the
same rule to the merchant service that is in force in
the Royal Navy. There no alien, unless he has be-
come naturalised, can hold any post whatever. It
sounds like a small reform, but it would have, I am
sure, the most far-reaching effects. At present it is
quite possible—indeed it will be found actually the
case in some instances—for a British sailing-ship to be
wholly manned by foreigners from the master to the
boy. Foreigners in steam are mostly confined to the
crew, and, as I have said before, I know of no instance
where foreign engineers are employed in our ships at
all. This is because, in the first place, our home-bred
engineers are the best in the world ; and, secondly, they
have behind them the support of a great trade union
that, although I do not suppose many seagoing engi-
neers are active members of it, would speedily make
its voice heard and its influence felt if any attempt was
made to bring in foreign competitors.
For reasons which I,hope I have made abundantly
clear in the preceding pages, such support cannot be
found for the foremast hand. But the officers might
do much more than they are doing. There are several
societies for the mutual help and defence of mercan-
tile marine officers, some doing excellent work, others
doing scarcely anything at all. I will not particularise,
for that would do no good. I will merely say that
if all these societies would amalgamate, would all pull
together and enlist the sympathy and support of
shipmasters and officers, retired as well as active, theyTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 327
would form a body extremely powerful in their influ-
ence on behalf of the best interests of their profession.
Such a body, composed of serious, thinking, well-
informed, and trustworthy men in full touch with the
subject, could do more in one .year for the upraising
and nationalising of the merchant service than will
ever be done by isolated efforts, however earnest.
For their own sakes they would not neglect the fore-
mast hand ; in the best interests of the service they
could not. Even by the present local efforts of some
of these societies much good has been done, enough
to show what might be done were they all united.
As to the ships themselves, perhaps enough has
been said already to indicate the transition stage
through which we are passing. For while it is un-
doubtedly true that the sailing-ship is doomed to
extinction in the near future, at the present day there
is still an enormous amount of sailing-tonnage afloat.
Thousands of good seaworthy sailing-ships still come
and go between distant shores, doing good work not
only in earning profits for their owners, but in rearing
sailors for the British mercantile marine. But we
are not building any more to replace them. We have
come to the conclusion that the future ofsea-traffic is-
to the steamer. Doubtless many shipownersjTTr-'-the’
present abnormally inflated state of the coal market,
are sighing over the fact that they are so dependent
upon the black dirty stuff for the due working of
their ships, and vainly wishing for the days to return
when the clean, free winds furnished all the motive
power needed. But we cannot go back again to sail.
Even the Norwegian timber droghers are taking to328 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
steam, and that is a portent indeed. It is the begin-
ning of the end. The end will come, for all sailing-
ships still making long voyages, with the opening of
the Panama Canal. Then at one fell swoop the
’Frisco trade in grain and the South American trade
in nitrate will pass into the hands or holds of the
steamships. Huge cargo-carriers able to stow 8,000
or 10,000 tons away with ease will go lumbering
steadily down the Gulf and through the Canal. They
will range the western seaboard of the Americas,
sweeping into their capacious maws every ounce of
cargo and stimulating production in an amazing way.
Presently also will come the petroleum-propelled
or electrically-engined ship as the carriage of coal be-
comes more and more of a burden while its price
steadily rises. Meanwhile the inventive genius of
America will surely find some way of re-creating for
herself a splendid mercantile marine. I cannot think
that she will always be content to see all her vast
carrying trade over-sea practically in the hands of
Britain and foreigners. At present it seems to be
evident to all except the average American that such
efforts as have recently been made with that object in
view are foredoomed to failure. Only one thing is
required for the rehabilitation of the American mer-
cantile marine, and that is, that owing to the rapid
filling up of all uninhabited land on the American
continent, the teeming millions along her seaboard
shall turn their earnest attention to the possibilities
of money-getting that there are in ship-owning and
ship-sailing. Then they will insist upon some reason-
able laws being passed that shall help, not hinder, theTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 329
expansion of American sea-traffic, and the thing will
be as good as done.
That, however, will require some considerable time
yet. Meanwhile the sailing-ships—wooden ships too
—will probably linger longest in our North American
colonies, but they too must disappear. Already they
are feeling the pinch very sorely, with economically
run tramp steamers cutting them out everywhere.
This is obvious now, when the thrifty Norwegians are
running tramp steamers in lieu of the ramshackle old
craft with which they have so long monopolised the
lumber and ice trade. To a seaman the spectacle of
steamers in the home ports discharging ice comes as
something of a shock, for he remembers what class of
vessels have always been used for this,—perhaps the
roughest of all the carrying trades known.
But the great work to be done is to disseminate
popular information with regard to maritime matters ;
to burn into the minds of our people at home what
the merchant ship means to them ; to make the
villager understand that the cheap and abundant food
which may be purchased even in remotest inland ham-
lets has been brought thus to his door from the other
side of the world by the unceasing strenuous labours
of seamen and the sleepless enterprise of shipowners.
I look earnestly for the day when every newspaper in
the kingdom will be considered incomplete without
its column of readable shipping matter,—true tales of
latter-day daring, of courage as high as any manifested
in the attempt to destroy life in battle ; when the British
seaman no longer feels that he is as completely isolated
from the thoughts and sympathies of his countrymen330 THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
as if he were an inhabitant of another planet; and when
the British man-o’-warsman, whether he be bluejacket
or stoker, shall know of a truth that his friends at home
realise what he is doing during his long absence from
home,—how he, for their sakes, in order that the
steady stream of fpod-bearing ships from prolific lands
far away shall never cease by day or by night through
the years, keeps sleepless watch all round the world.
Let no one think that this is a small matter. The ac-
quisition of knowledge like this is not only of the high-
est importance in itself, but it will bring with it a vast
amount of cognate information that now is much
neglected. Geography will become what it should be
—a popular science—because the immense value of it
will be recognised. Economical science will also
assume an interest which it has long lacked for all but
the minutest percentage of fairly well-educated people.
Politically such an education of the people will be of
the highest value, preventing them from [being led
away by clap-trap and jargon, and enabling them to
understand why our country has risen to its present
enviable height of prosperity, and how essential it is
to the well-being of every man, woman, and child in
the community that the peaceful flow of over-sea
traffic shall never be interrupted.
Beyond and above all this there is the liquidation
of the debt due to the sailor, the recognition, in prac-
tical ways, of the fact that without him we should not
merely be without at least half of what he has taught
us to look upon as the necessities of life,—necessities
which less than a century ago were looked upon as
the highest luxuries; but that we should be a feebleTHE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE. 331
population of slaves groaning under the iron rule of
some military Continental despot, who would rob us
of our very blood and marrow, and give us in return
leave to live that we might toil for him and his
satraps until, early worn out, we were flung aside to
die and obtain that liberty in death that we were
denied in life. We want to atone as far as we may
for our long neglect, through ignorance, and by our
united intelligent efforts to show that at last we have
awakened to the fact that in our mercantile marine we
possess the most magnificent heritage ever built up
for a free people by the courage and endurance of its
sons.