THE MEN
OF THE
MERCHANT 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.
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE
1900
(All rights reserved)
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
TO
RUDYARD KIPLING
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF BOTH HIS
WONDERFUL GENIUS
AND HIS GREAT KINDNESS
TO
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE.
It has been repeatedly represented to me by disinterested 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, yielding 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 qualifications 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 them to term my exaggerated modesty, prevents me from sinning now in that direction. I will merely say that I have 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 comparatively easy. The first thing that suggested itself was the setting forth, in a series of chapters, the duties, required 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 predilections 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 myself the fact that the passing of the sailing ship is being 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 sailing ship building. Considering the sailing ship's economy, 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 warehouse charges as well as freight—I cannot understand why the sailer should be suffered to disappear. Nevertheless, as engineering science advances, economies 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. The 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 need of attention here.
Care has been taken to avoid, as far as possible, all technical treatment of the subject. I have not assumed 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 plentiful 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 necessary for its appearance. The overwhelming importance of our over-sea commerce to Great Britain cannot be too greatly emphasized, while the astounding ignorance of maritime matters manifested by British people generally makes one gasp in amazement. Any book, therefore, that does anything to popularize knowledge of Mercantile Marine details cannot be superfluous 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 vessels upon whose regular advent depend our supplies of daily food, I shall feel abundantly justified in issuing it to my countrymen.
Dulwich,
July, 1900.
SYNOPSIS.
| [CHAPTER I.] | |
| THE RISE OF THE MASTER (IDEAL). | |
| PAGE | |
| Magnitude of the Merchant Service—Ignorance of its detailsashore—Want of information upon the subject—Popularityof sea-fiction—And unreliability of its details—"Master" or"Captain"—Cadet ships—Their value—The way up (ideal) | [1] |
| [CHAPTER II.] | |
| THE RISE OF THE MASTER (REAL). | |
| Apprentice difficulties—Sketch of an officer's progress—Lookingfor a ship—Classification of masters—Range betweenAtlantic "liner" and foreign-going schooner—Enviableposition of the master of a "liner"—Pilots' responsibility—Reliableofficers—But the master is emperor—All responsibilitycentres in him | [9] |
| [CHAPTER III.] | |
| THE MASTER (OF A TRAMP). | |
| Tramp masters—Less pay, more work—Hardships of tramps—Economicalowners—Anxious considerations—And all-roundqualifications—The aristocracy of tramps—Shoreberths for old skippers—Black sheep | [18] |
| [CHAPTER IV.] | |
| THE MASTER (SAILING SHIPS). | |
| Sailing ships—Their gradations—The beauty of seamanshipin Sunda Straits—Ship handling and pluck—Devilishships—Local knowledge v. "book larnin'"—The Horn—"Swanseamen"—A glorious old skipper—Overdue ships—Mediocrities | [26] |
| [CHAPTER V.] | |
| THE MASTER (SAILING SHIP)—continued. | |
| The skipper's temptations—His power over young officers—Paintingv. sailorizing—And the result—Various temperamentsof skippers—The discipline of the "Yank"—And ofthe "Blue-nose"—Their seamanship—The "Down Easter"—TheYankee clipper—His passion for cleanliness—Andbrutality—Elementary methods | [36] |
| [CHAPTER VI.] | |
| THE MASTER'S QUALITIES. | |
| The personal equation—An ideal commander—Want of tact—Theydo these things better in "Yanks"—Good to have ahobby—High standard of excellence—Difficulties of theBritish shipmaster with respect to his crew—Unpalatabletruths—The fear of God—Honesty of shipmasters—Incitementsto dishonesty | [45] |
| [CHAPTER VII.] | |
| THE MASTER'S DUTIES. | |
| A glimpse of navigation—The unstable compass—Dead reckoning—Pilotageanxieties—The shipmaster as trustee—As lawyer—Asdoctor—Rough-and-ready surgery—A true hero—The"malingerer" | [53] |
| [CHAPTER VIII.] | |
| THE MASTER'S DUTIES—continued. | |
| Voluntary duties—Knowledge of engineering—Of ship construction—Ofnatural history—The danger of drink—A drunkardor two—A memorable voyage—The Blue-nose skipper—Hisall-round excellence | [63] |
| [CHAPTER IX.] | |
| THE MATE. | |
| The "mate and his duties"—An ancient and honourable title—Hisrange of importance—A long step from mate to master—Bothin position and pay—Education of British officers—Examinations | [73] |
| [CHAPTER X.] | |
| THE MATE'S WORK. | |
| A good mate precious above rubies—Some difficulties of theyoung mate—Sensitiveness—Manager of a large business—Agreat gulf between tramp and liner for the mate—Lowwages—Difficult generalship—A scandalous miscarriage ofjustice—Again better in the "Yank"—Compensations | [82] |
| [CHAPTER XI.] | |
| THE MATE'S WORK (IN A SAILING SHIP). | |
| Peculiarities of status—The excellence of the sailing-shipmate—"Humouring" a ship—Care of her aloft—The mate's right-handman—Keeping them at it—The joy of a good sailingship—A happy mate—Keeping the log | [91] |
| [CHAPTER XII.] | |
| THE MATE'S WORK (IN A SAILING SHIP)—continued. | |
| Ideal log-book literature—Ruffianly mates—But splendid seamen—A"nigger-driver"—The mate as cargo clerk and warehouseman—Histemptations—An exultant Hebrew—Thedrink question again—The mate's privileges | [101] |
| [CHAPTER XIII.] | |
| THE SECOND MATE (IN STEAM). | |
| "Hazing" a second mate—His importance—His assuredexcellence in a liner—Careful selection—Really first lieutenantin a liner—But in the tramp "a servant of servantsshall he be"—An upper housemaid—An anomalous position—Asstevedore—The Yankee second mate | [112] |
| [CHAPTER XIV.] | |
| THE SECOND MATE (FIRST STEPS). | |
| The passing of the "Board"—School-boy work—Theoreticalnavigation—Practical seamanship—Colour-blindness—Queerinstruction—A kindly examiner—The astonishment of theschoolmaster—Only mate—And "bo'sun-second-mate" | [121] |
| [CHAPTER XV.] | |
| THE SECOND MATE (OF A SAILING SHIP). | |
| The difference between steam and sail—A kindly skipper for abeginner—The second mate's position as pupil—The seamyside—Everybody's dog—Again the difference between lime-juicerand Yank—The second mate of the East Lothian—Oh,what a surprise!—The value of muscle—The want ofdiscipline in our ships | [131] |
| [CHAPTER XVI.] | |
| THE THIRD MATE. | |
| Of great importance or none at all—A suggestion from the Navy—Norespect due to him—The owner's pet—The poopornament—His bringing up—A lost opportunity—The bullythird mate of an American ship—An error in judgment—Idlers | [142] |
| [CHAPTER XVII.] | |
| THE BO'SUN. | |
| A romantic figure—Rough but genuine—The naval bo'sun—Theworking foreman—Bo'sun and "lamps" combined—Theold-time bo'sun—A thorough sailor—A queer bo'sun—Abroken-down bo'sun—A brevet bo'sun | [151] |
| [CHAPTER XVIII.] | |
| THE CARPENTER. | |
| His general excellence—And unique position—A man of manyqualifications—All carpenters in British North America—Asin Finland—"Chips" and sailor too—An independentmember—Always plenty of work—The whaleship carpenters—Andboat-builder | [161] |
| [CHAPTER XIX.] | |
| THE SAILMAKER. | |
| An occupation that is passing—Its fascination for good sailors—Theart and mystery of sailmaking—The Yankee sailmaker—Hiscontempt for British sails—Like the carpenter, thesailmaker always has plenty to do—The beauty of sails | [171] |
| [CHAPTER XX.] | |
| THE STEWARD (IN STEAM). | |
| Wide range of status—But always a steward—Wonderfulcolspan="2" align="center"management—A small army to control—Work never done—Thetramp steward—His duties and difficulties—The"providore" | [180] |
| [CHAPTER XXI.] | |
| THE STEWARD (SAILING SHIPS). | |
| The passenger sailing ship almost extinct—Consequently fewchief stewards in sail—The responsible steward—Thecaptain's pet—Funny little ways—A bitter experience—TheYankee steward—His onerous post—The stewardess—Myfriend's pathetic story | [188] |
| [CHAPTER XXII.] | |
| THE COOK (IN STEAM). | |
| The most interesting figure on board ship—A chef indeed—Wheredo they come from?—Difficulties of ship cookery—Underthe best conditions—Careful, hard-working men—Australiancooks—Black Sam—Humpy Bill—His tribulationsand triumphs—The cook of a tramp | [195] |
| [CHAPTER XXIII.] | |
| THE COOK (SAILING SHIPS). | |
| His materials—His usual qualifications—No room for a goodcook—Good sailing ships—And bad—From the food pointof view—Bad food wasteful as well as dear—The cravingfor vegetable—The cook's day's work—So different inYankee ships—Blue-nose cookery—"Cracker hash"—"Duff" | [205] |
| [CHAPTER XXIV.] | |
| THE COOK (SAILING SHIPS)—continued. | |
| Salt junk—The never-satisfied sailor—Pork and peas—Dirtycooking—Abysmal ignorance—A lower depth—Bad weather | [215] |
| [CHAPTER XXV.] | |
| THE APPRENTICE (SUGGESTIONS). | |
| A serious matter—Want of knowledge—The system of apprenticeship—Needfor revision—The influx of foreign officers—Nowant of aspirants here—An experience of my own—No-premiumapprentices—Training ships—The housing of seaapprentices—A vexed question—To stop the waste of youngseamen—An A.B. no mere labourer—A good example—Amodel ship for apprentices—Training ships in America | [223] |
| [CHAPTER XXVI.] | |
| THE APPRENTICE (SOME FACTS CONCERNING HIS LIFE). | |
| The average boy's helplessness—The need for lessons in homelythings—An unhappy home—Waste of outfit—Need ofpersonal supervision—And honest treatment—Apprenticessubstituted for sailors—Some instances—All depends uponthe master—Wasted years—The embryo officer in the U.S.and Canada | [234] |
| [CHAPTER XXVII.] | |
| THE APPRENTICE (SOME PRACTICAL INFORMATION). | |
| How to get your boy to sea—Beware of the apprenticeshipbroker—A typical instance—Some hints as to outfit—A listof necessaries—The choice of a ship—Personal relations ofparents with officers—Hints to apprentices themselves | [244] |
| [CHAPTER XXVIII.] | |
| THE A.B. (GENERAL QUALIFICATIONS). | |
| The "common sailor"—His one-sided view of things—Hisdifficulties—The reading sailor—Argumentative qualities—Hisshyness ashore—The religious sailor—Misconceptions ofhis duties—Hardships of good men from the shipment ofduffers—The skilled A.B., some of his duties—The "steamboatsailor"—One instance | [253] |
| [CHAPTER XXIX.] | |
| THE A.B. (HIS ROUTINE). | |
| Some details fixed—Others varying indefinitely according to thewill of the master—The incidence of watches—Difference ofwork in steamships and sailing vessels—No easy times inAmerican ships—Keeping them "at it"—Wheel and look-outcase in point | [263] |
| [CHAPTER XXX.] | |
| THE A.B. (HIS POSITION). | |
| Putting a premium on incompetency—The steamship partly toblame—Are we getting lazy?—The need for a Naval Reserve?Why does the Reserve languish?—Not a bad life after all—Plentyof British seamen to be got—But they must havediscipline | [276] |
| [CHAPTER XXXI.] | |
| THE O.S. (ORDINARY SEAMAN). | |
| His elimination—No system—Many better than A.B.'s in thesame ship—A typical instance—An O.S.'s duties—A pieceof technical detail, crossing a royal yard—His position inthe fo'c'sle—"A servant of servants shall he be"—A rough-and-readyway out | [283] |
| [CHAPTER XXXII.] | |
| THE BOY. | |
| A romantic figure—Changed conditions—The bad old days—Bettertreatment forward than aft—The unfair change for aboy from the training ship to the trading ship—Cleanlinessbarred—Bad advice—What to do for him—Running awayto sea—An old-time shipping office—Small ships, bad andgood | [294] |
| [CHAPTER XXXIII.] | |
| THE ENGINEER. | |
| Need for literary engineers—A noble calling—Its perils and itspride—No sea-joys for the engineer—A nineteenth-centuryhero—A unique profession—Producing a high-grade man—Theevolution of the marine engineer—No foreigners allowed—TheE.R.A.—In case of war—No mere mechanic—Theblindness of the Admiralty with regard to the engineer | [305] |
| [CHAPTER XXXIV.] | |
| THE FIREMAN AND TRIMMER. | |
| Why do men become firemen?—A terrible calling—Some of hisduties—The voice of steam—Better drunk—Cleaning fires—Theslavery of civilization—A lower deep—Are wenearing finality? | [317] |
| [CHAPTER XXXV.] | |
| CONCLUSION. | |
| Pertinent questions—The whole truth—Does magnanimityanswer?—The peril of the alien—No Trade Union forsailors—The officer's chance—A valuable educational factor—Ournational safeguard—Finis | [328] |
THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
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, and, except among people directly engaged in shipping business, or a few earnest souls who think it is their duty to know something of the conditions under which their dear ones live, you will find scarcely any knowledge of the British Merchant Service at all. 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 disinclined 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 regarded 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 that, instead of all manner of facilities being given to our own youths who wish to become seamen, all manner 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 national assets, this indispensable bridging of the ocean for the supply of our daily food, as something no more needing our thoughtful attention than the recurrence of the seasons or the incidence of day and night.
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 criticize 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' work in this direction is to sit again in the dim fo'c'sle, 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 civilized life, he fled from it to the freedom of the tramp or the fo'c'sle scallywag, 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 manuscript.
But this preliminary digression is keeping us from consideration of the important character we have to become acquainted with—the shipmaster, or captain, as he is, by courtesy only, usually styled. No commander of a merchant vessel, no matter how magnificent she may be, is legally entitled to be called Captain. 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 practice 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 a stationary vessel, takes naturally a most prominent place in the training scheme, while naval architecture, languages, engineering, and nautical science all have their allotted place.
So useful are all the subjects taught to the average man, 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 completion 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 have frankly recognized 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 completed apprentice indentures for four years or certificates 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 entitle 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 ridiculously 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 standard set by the Board of Trade should be periodically raised until the amount of education required for successfully passing it would enable those paying for it to demand higher salaries and more honourable recognition 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 certificate, 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 hundred 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 recognized medium for the beginner.) 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 twelvemonth's voyage as second mate, and he may again approach the examiners for his chief mate's certificate. Again he should find not the slightest difficulty in passing, the additional qualifications required from 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 question 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 certificates which the Board of Trade can grant, he will proceed at once to undergo the examination for Master Extra; he will also "pass in steam"—an examination 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 examinations it may also be said that if our friend has kept up his cadet training, they will have no terror for him; they are only difficult to those who find mathematics 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 expertness in handling tables, and the indolent man will avail himself of these aids to the fullest extent.
THE RISE OF THE MASTER (REAL).
The Liner.
So far, I am afraid that in sketching out the possible 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. Feeling 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 occurrence. 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 consequently small facilities for advancing their apprentices in the profession when once their indentures have expired. 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 undoubted fact that an apprenticeship to any firm of ship-owners, no matter what the excellence of the individual apprentice may be, carries with it no guarantee 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 instance, it would be considered a waste of good material to discharge apprentices when out of their time unless they had proved themselves hopelessly incompetent. 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 frequently, 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 ship-owners—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 almost certainly in for a bad time. Probably the best 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 accustomed to command. In the mean time 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 promotion 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 tramp, 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 impossible to do more than generalize as to the probable time which will elapse before he reach 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 counterpart, as far as I know, in any other form of employment whatever. It is in the seeking for a 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, 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 gentleman 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 confusion. Having obtained a berth, however, it will generally 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 unattached 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 anticipate 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 at 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 master 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 between 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 determines whether a man shall be master of a liner or 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 magnificent 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 two hundred tons register. To the liner master's credit be it said, he does not show nearly the same hauteur towards 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 seafaring 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 the 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 passenger lists, no anxious study of weather charts or calculation of course to be pursued in reference to the time of year and consequently 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 responsible 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 permissible 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. Each of these in their turn take charge of the ship under 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, however, 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, calculating 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 independently 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, although they might well be excused if their brows were permanently furrowed with anxious thought. To know that upon you rests the charge of two thousand souls, to say nothing of from half to three-quarters 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 repose 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 goeth unto 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 trouble 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 confidence 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, knowing what a number of derelicts there are lurking about the Atlantic. I suppose they say to themselves that, remembering the wideness of the sea, there are an infinity 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 tremendous 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 recognize 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 weeding-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.
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 undoubtedly there are many shades of difference until we reach the very lowest class of all, run on principles despised by all ship-owners of repute. The hierarchy of merchant shipping, the great floating palaces belonging to such firms as the P. & O., the Cunard, the White Star, and the British India, 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; consequent upon this, a corresponding 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 is 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 fortunate 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 regular trade, as in the highest class of cargo ships he will be, his clerical work connected with the ship's earnings 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 knew myself of one firm, which shall be nameless, whose advertisements for passengers were most persistent and alluring, 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 seaman. For where the master's wages are kept so low, other economies are conducted in proportion. Such a vessel, say of 1500 tons register, would carry at most three mates and eight seamen. The latter would be mostly foreigners, the work for such a small complement being so hard that home-born men worth their salt fight shy of them. And the officers' wages, unfixed as the men's are, would also be cut down deplorably low. Still, even in such a ship as this the master's clerical work is very small. Agents of the company at each port await the vessel's regular arrival, 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 beyond the navigation and management of the ship herself. He has, of course, to consider his passengers, with no buffer between him and their often querulous complaints and constant questionings, such as his exalted 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 shockingly 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 principally, 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 be 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 north-east English ports, where the highest shipbuilding science is brought to bear upon the construction 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 shipping matters, who have been induced by speciously worded circulars, issued by some deeply interested manager, to invest their scanty capital in these dubious enterprises.
The master of such a ship as this may well feel that his lot is hard. With wages cut down to a point that could only attract a man upon his last legs financially, the manager always endeavours to get some investment, 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 better ships. In addition to the necessity he is under of nursing his ungainly, low-powered vessel in heavy weather, he is always being sent to fresh places, entailing upon him the acquisition of an immense amount of local knowledge. The purchase of coal in far-away ports, with all the vicissitudes of price to which that indispensable 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, although 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 construction, yet any expense incurred abroad for repairs is looked upon as almost a crime. Then there is the necessity 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 or non-obtainable. And his spirits fall, because he knows how such an experience will lower his average earnings 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 lawyer, 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 commerce 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 do also go wherever cargo is to be found on which a payable freight will be paid, 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 arrangements for the skippers. Between owners and 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 appreciated. 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 award. 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 comfortable retirement after a hard life at sea. But whatever 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, having 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 steamship-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 forethought is too great, to admit of many worthless men being in command. Especially is this the case in the north-east 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.
THE MASTER (SAILING SHIPS).
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 a four-masted steel clipper carrying 5000 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 shipmaster 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 only be too glad to quit that part 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 should be a sailor. That is, in the original sense of handling ships, a fine art, demanding high skill and courage as well as constant 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 commonplace 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 ship-handler, 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 passage 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 dangerous vicinity when night fell. Darkness shut down upon us, such a darkness as makes it necessary for the sailor to know the running gear intuitively—to develop some other sense to serve him in lieu of sight. Amidst a guttural growling of thunder which was 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 successively 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, making 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 utilized every favourable cats-paw, manœuvred against the unfavourable ones, remembering 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 south-east trade wind saluting us, and the broad bosom of the Indian Ocean lying invitingly before 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 labour are required. Moreover, the closest attention is necessary in order to utilize 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 master 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 who 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 a ship has been so shamefully 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 onslaught 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 circumstances 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 who has not either been built with or acquired some devilish habit of sea-spite that makes her an abode of misery 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 my evil hap to light upon once in London, bound for New Zealand. Every one 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 began 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, continually 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 front of the cabin for its protection. She, however, thought nothing of sweeping away the whole erection, and flooding the handsome state-rooms with a foaming torrent of salt water. Never shall I forget the sight of the podgy skipper, like some unlively porpoise, gambolling 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 appalling 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, we 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 you needed inch-long spikes or huge sucking-discs on your feet to keep on your legs at all.
Then there is the needed acquaintance with the best routes at given times of the year—the ability to direct your course so that you shall 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 quantity, her 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 obtainable; he studied them continually, and faithfully followed 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 traversed, 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 wonderful outcome of engineering science—the steamship.
How great a factor in the making of a successful passage under sail this personal acquaintance with the route pursued is, may be easily assessed from a superficial 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 Swansea, 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 word, fine gentlemen, their calling hardly admitted of the cultivation of the graces of life; but such was their knowledge of this, the most 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 repute, 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 persistent gales that rage around the planet. Here, for weeks on end, you shall feel the weight of an unfaltering westerly gale, with all its accompaniments of snow and sleet and darkness. One would say that the attempt to get round the Horn from east to west, in the teeth of such prevalent conditions, was madness, especially 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 before the inexorable westerly gale, right round the world, to reach such a port as San Francisco, for instance.
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-manœuvre even the terrible monarch of the southern sea. No doubt it was a hard life; but it was exultant, triumphant. 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. While not so severe in any sense as that of Cape Horn, it is difficult, teasing, and calling for constant watchfulness. Men who go that way only occasionally 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 navigation of that baffling bay become! One especially comes to my mind—Thomas Potts, of Messrs. Brocklebank'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 procedure 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 seamanship 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 adverse 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, that 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 slowness come all the host of mediocrities, making passages of average length, speedy enough to prevent owners 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 perform 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 remembered among seamen as the élite of the profession.
THE MASTER (SAILING SHIPS)—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 excellent, and that the training and experience necessary for the command of a ship always succeeded in turning 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 utilizing 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 absolute 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 higher 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 before his rising any higher. I do not profess to criticize the wisdom of this enactment, I merely state the facts as they are. And 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 shipmasters did their duty there would be far fewer officers obtain certificates than there are now. Also that no good officer need fear such treatment at the hands of any shipmaster—which was manifestly absurd, 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 did not expect his officers would need to be shown their work, and that he would prefer 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 recreation, 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 master, I decided to set up all the rigging, which was so slack as to be dangerous supposing that we encountered 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. Bullen, 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 everything to the mate, and never finds fault either. Amiable but lazy, he spends most of his time in sleep. 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. Naturally, 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 back-bone—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 under him all ways, and his grey beard beslavered with 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 Merchant Service) was entirely gone. At last the men refused to obey a most necessary order, simply because 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 recalcitrant 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 punishment, 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 realizes 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 consequences 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 American ships; and it should never be forgotten, when the statistics of our marvellous Mercantile Marine are studied, 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, because 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 passages 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 canvas 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 officers prided themselves far more upon their knowledge of sailorizing than mathematics, but they flew over the wide sea at a speed that our clumsier wooden vessels 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 foremost 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 voyage in such a flyer as the Sovereign of the Seas or the Dreadnought before the mast, 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 officers 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 state-rooms, poking his handkerchief into the mouldings 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 protection of the common seaman undoubtedly existed, but it was an unheard-of thing for them to be enforced; 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 matter of his slaying before the authorities, it was hopeless to attempt the murderer's arrest.
But brutal and reckless as Yankee masters undoubtedly were, the fact remains that they were unapproachable for seamanship and speedy passages. They skimmed the cream off the Far Eastern trade, and, owing 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 shipbuilders 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 (wooden planking with iron frame) ships—the famous tea-clippers of fo'c'sle story, built by such firms as Hall of Aberdeen and Steel of Greenock, against which no Yankee clipper had any chance whatever. And when the iron ship appeared in her turn, in spite of the immense difficulty of keeping the hull under water free from encumbrances of weeds and barnacles, she at once sprang 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 reasons for the rapid decay and disappearance of a body of men whose seamanship was peerless—men who carried the Stars and Stripes triumphantly over all the seas of the world. It must not be supposed, either, that American 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 sea-ports of the United States, on the lines of Bowditch, 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 were 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 were, and so there are now, among our own people, even with compulsory certificates granted by a vigilant Board of Trade.
THE MASTER'S QUALITIES.
If, as is highly improbable, the average landsman ever thinks anything about the duties of a shipmaster, it would be most interesting to know what he imagines 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 command stands unquestionably first. No doubt this quality is hard to define, but the possession or the want of it makes all the difference between a comfortable and a miserable ship. One man will seldom raise his voice during a whole voyage loud enough to be heard by any one except the individual to whom he is speaking; the calmness and placidity of his demeanour is 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 disobey one of his orders would be a most dangerous experiment, and that he knows everything that is going on fore and aft.
Such a man fulfilling this perfect attribute of command 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'sle. When he spoke it was in a velvet voice, but the man spoken to invariably took an attitude of profound 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 Merchant Service, as I am never tired of reiterating, respect 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-control. Since the shipmaster has no one above him in 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 example. 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 them treating him disrespectfully. 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, amenable 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, possessed by every healthy human organism.
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 expression of these qualities is of any avail. It may perhaps be thought impossible that, except in the rarest instances, such a combination of excellence 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 unfelt by masters of ships under other flags. For, to take one aspect only, the disciplinary. I have slightly indicated the manner in which discipline is maintained in American ships, viz. by the employment of violence, which is forbidden by law, yet is invariably winked at. In the ships of every other nation but the English-speaking ones, the merchant seaman is not only a native 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 disobedience to orders, insolence, or malingering (shamming sickness) are exceedingly expensive practices for the sailor to indulge in, the penalties being not only heavy, but their infliction certain.
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 officers, 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 tenderness of British law, and its severity towards 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, having 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-respecting, amenable to reason, and competent, as any good workman ashore. Sea life is not brutalizing in itself; it is ennobling, and it is a strange return for the benefits 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 unfortunate 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 example 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, seldom 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 necessary 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 command 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 of 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 shipmasters 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 overcharged 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 twenty-five per cent. on such innocent outlayings 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 agencies of the owner's abroad, but they do still exist, and the sailing shipmaster especially is often tempted to be dishonest in out-of-the-way ports of the world, temptations which, for his own sake, he should sternly refuse to countenance.
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 principles upon which this is done. I wish to disarm criticism 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 standard 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 others right round the globe in the opposite direction, or from east to west. These lines cross each other at right angles. The up and down ones, from pole to pole, are meridians of longitude; the East-West ones are parallels of latitude. Now, since these are all numbered as degrees, the space between them being 1°, the latitudes from the Equator to the poles on either side of it as 1° to 90°, and the meridians from Greenwich to its opposite point on the other side of the world 1° to 180°, it follows that if a seafarer can ascertain at the same time what particular degree of both 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 instrument 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 calculated the exact time at the ship. And as a chronometer, which every ship carries, shows the exact time at Greenwich, the difference between the two expresses in hours and minutes (easily convertible into degrees and miles) the distance east or west of Greenwich, the first 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 destination; that is, if the way in which the wind is blowing will allow him to do so (in a sailing ship). This is 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 altogether 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 cyclometer. Where, for economical reasons, the patent log is not used, the mariner must rely upon a primitive 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 position 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 it 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 comparison 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 opportunity to show what metal he is made of. Or, 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 advantage 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 derelicts.
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 their bodies imperiously demand, but they may serve to indicate them to the sympathetic reader. And when the exceedingly small percentage of casualties is 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 conveyance 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 law—and they are many—which affect the traffic; know how to deal with grasping brokers in foreign ports into which he may be driven by distress; 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 often 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 ailments among his crew, and probably some fractures. Ignorance of how to deal with these means a terrible amount of misery to the hapless sufferer lying groaning for assistance which is not forthcoming. The present generation of shipmasters are greatly in advance of what smattering of leech-craft 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 a dose out of No. 7 bottle prescribed for a supposed ailment, he made up the draught out of Nos. 4 and 3, upon finding 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 school 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 instance, as that of Captain Samuels of the Dreadnought 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 midway across the Atlantic when during a heavy gale a sea was shipped which dashed him against the bulwarks with such force that one of his legs was broken above the knee. It was a compound fracture; and although such attention as was possible under his direction was given him at once, in a few days he recognized the necessity for 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. 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 whaleship, the Union of Nantucket, Captain (?) Gardiner. While pursuing his calling off the West Coast of South America, the sperm whale he was fighting with flung its jaw upwards and across the boat, catching him 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 gunwale of the boat. In this deplorable state he was carried on board his ship. His young officers, naturally 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 recognize defeat. He gave directions, mostly by signs, for the preparation of bandages and splints, and instructed his willing but 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, although 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 distance 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 first two 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 imprisoned 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 fingers, 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 drowning 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 Huntling was not the man to allow any one to perish without 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 heartrending, 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 carpenter'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 hospital, where he recovered, and returning to America, passed the rest of his days in comfort as a small shop-keeper.
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 company, the "malingerer." Often he is by no means easy to "bowl out," being, like most lazy people, of considerable inventive genius. And although a humane 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 scalawag, 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 knowledge 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 uncomfortable that work will be a relief. But I find that the recapitulation of the master's duties demands another chapter.
THE MASTER'S DUTIES—continued.
While we have thus lightly run over such duties of the master of a merchant ship as are imperatively demanded 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 necessary, and no master who is really attached to his profession 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 connected 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 incapacitated, 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 better able to appreciate his engineers' 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 splendid 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 construction. 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 shipbuilding 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, below, 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. 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 unbiassed by any personal consideration. Mr. Lecky is a magnificent example of what the merchant shipmaster 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 shipmaster, so that I will say no more about the matter here, except that, unless greater efforts are put forward by sea-going youths in this most valuable direction, they will find it harder than ever to compete with the constantly increasing numbers of foreigners who are pressing into the afterguards of our Mercantile Marine.
And now for the least pleasant portion of this section 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 helpless drunkard. If he have any tendency that way there is only one thing for him to do—that is, become a total abstainer from intoxicants. Sad it is to say, on the testimony of many such men, that such a virtuous resolve should be 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 teetotaller doing justice to himself and his employer 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 outward bound, my skipper saying to me confidentially, "I always live on brandy while we're in the Channel," and the sick feeling that I experienced at his remark. Let me hasten to add that he was wrongly accusing himself, being at the time half-seas-over, and exaggerating, as was his 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 afterwards, 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, spending 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 my turn came, and, all unknowing what awaited me, I went on board. I found the poor old vessel most shamefully neglected, the crew looking woe-begone and disheartened, 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 instructions 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 that 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 ultimatum 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 unaided except by the weary crew, I endeavoured to navigate the clumsy vessel down the Nova Scotian coast in mid-winter. 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, New Brunswick, 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 commander appeared and went ashore, his first public appearance 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 returned 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 touching, and entered the mud feet first with a force that buried him to his arm-pits. 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 discharged the cargo, and taken in ballast according to instructions from the consignee, I again danced attendance 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 longshoreman, 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 state-room 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. 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 an 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 quondam stevedore was stowing the cargo; but all my remonstrances were unheeded. At last the cargo was complete, including a deck-load 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, telling 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 tempting 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 letter to the owner, in which I detailed matters. Two days afterwards a tug-boat was engaged, and the brig was towed back to St. John, where I heard that another 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 total 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 was, unfortunately for the skipper, 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 Mercantile 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 mariners, is a born seaman as well as a born shipbuilder. In only one other part of the world, viz. 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 loading 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 north-eastern 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, all 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 without 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 speak as their fancy listed, to the misery of all on board, as is undoubtedly the case in so many of our British ships.
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 concentrated our ideas upon the present duty to be performed, 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, 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 of 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, i.e. 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 him devolves the working of the ship and her command upon the death or incapacity of the master, to whom he comes next in importance 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 difference among mates—from him who manages a monster like the Oceanic, down to the mate of a footy little brigantine going foreign. Yet in the eyes of the Board of Trade they are both equal; the same certificate is required of both. As a matter of detail, however, it will be found that not only the mate, but the long list of junior 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 more important position—the mate of an ocean liner like the Campania, or the master of a sailing vessel of, say, some five hundred tons, creeping wearily about the world wherever 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 grade 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 difficulty 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 three-thousand-ton sailing ship without much previous training, he would be lost. His new duties would overwhelm him. As well expect a small tradesman, who has been grubbing 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 master'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 return, 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 necessary to go over again the various steps which have been already mentioned in the case of the master, except in the most cursory manner: First, usually, but not compulsorily, the serving of a term of apprenticeship 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 seaman, and then to A.B. This course is the one adopted in American and Canadian ships, where apprenticeships 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 probably, he is a friend or relative of one of the officers 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 process which he will in nowise 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 production at the right time and in the accepted fashion. Some young would-be officers are foolish enough to imagine that the master of a navigation school can also help them in their seamanship, but with lamentable results. For the navigation is in cut-and-dried exercises which any ordinarily capable scholar may learn with little 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 competent 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 mathematical theory of navigation, they would still in practice use the rule of thumb method. Not feeling at all capable of deciding between these two contestants, I merely present their views, contenting myself 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 different. Here there can be no difference of opinion. Seamanship, that is the handling of a ship under all circumstances 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 business, 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 book 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, 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 vivâ 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 navigation, on the other hand, is considered so much less important that failure to pass that part of the examination carries with it only 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 influential friends among ship-owners 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 certainly as a concession to the needs of officers in steamships—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, although 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 impossible 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 interoceanic canal connecting the Atlantic 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 ordeal 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 own 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."
THE MATE'S WORK.
Happy indeed is the master who finds a good mate, but happier still is the mate who has the joy of serving under a master who, while never neglecting his own duties, is not for ever 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 unostentatious manner, most careful that no one may suspect that the mate is being weighed in the balance of his mind. Whether a man make 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. Everywhere, 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 flush of shame rises, and the tongue is almost bitten through in the endeavour to restrain the furious reply that would be fatal;—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 the 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 mistakes is an axiom, for, as has often been said most truly, the man who makes no mistakes makes nothing—especially when one realizes 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, knows that swiftness and decision, 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 experiences, but the majority of modern officers bear about with them still 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 of Directors. In the great liners, while the foregoing still holds true, it must necessarily be modified somewhat. 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 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 for ever 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 entering and leaving 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 command 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. He had in his pre-steamer days 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 succeeded to the mate, who obtained a command elsewhere. For one year only he was mate, then, on the master's retirement, he obtained the command. We will not inquire 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 it was 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 necessary 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, 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. From the mate of a liner to the mate of a cargo steamer, or 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 relieve 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. Moreover, 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 position 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 2000 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 men 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 obscurity into the coveted post of master. Not so, however, in the case of disaster to his ship. No amount of theory as to the master bearing the whole responsibility 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 inquiry choose to bring him in to blame in any way. I do not mean to speak evil of dignities, 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 seldom a happy one; it may easily be made intolerable if the master be not kindly disposed towards 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 entire conduct of the ship's business on board, as distinguished 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 his energy to the endeavour to do as little as possible, and to getting drunk. The motley crowd that are working the cargo work only under steady stress of compulsion. If receiving cargo, the second mate must keep an eye on the stowage, so that he cannot assist his superior 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 steadily as well. And as if these things were not sufficient, he must compete with whatever personal abuse or violence a drunken seaman chooses to offer him, his only remedy 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 sent to herd with criminals for years. This is by no means vague generalization. The particular instance that excites my whole-hearted indignation is the case of the mate of the Lanarkshire. He was 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. The most sanguinary threats were made by this scoundrel against the mate, who, naturally alarmed, loaded his revolver and carried it in his pocket. Then, when in the gloom of the evening he suddenly realized 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 our 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.
Again I say that in the American Mercantile Marine such a thing would be inconceivable. In the first place, the man would never have been allowed to wander at his own sweet will backwards and forwards; 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, attempted 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 necessary where so many things must be kept going at one time; and, certainly, endurance of hardness. This is no easy way of getting through the world. It makes a man thankful for small mercies; as, for instance, when, after a harassing time, with all the worries of harbour, the mate heaves a sigh of relief upon mounting the bridge to keep watch through four hours of a dark, dirty night. With keen eyes, smarting 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, resourceful, 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 commercial enterprises, the Merchant Service.
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 his profession 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 complication. 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 is indefensible, since the man-o'-war sailor of to-day is, before anything, a trained artillerist, a man of mechanics, almost an engineer, in that he is always dealing with engineering appliance 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 efficiently is a fine art, a mystery full of grace and deep dexterity. Many a man, fairly successful in his calling, 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 shipmate 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 measure 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 anything 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, 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 herself: 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. Unlike 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, 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 all 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 distinction to those which are tightened and remain stationary) 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 in different ships slightly, according to the idiosyncrasy of the master, but perhaps 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 housekeeper. I think this will appeal to ladies, who know that, while nothing is more beneficial in a great household 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 endure as best he can.
Naturally this theory of non-interference presupposes 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 to admit than masters themselves that such drastic measures are rarely necessary. The incompetent mate rarely reaches the position, or, reaching 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 always 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 indispensable, as are 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 corners. 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 ship-keeper in charge of her for months, weather-worn, dilapidated, and miserable. 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 necessity for.
So far from this part of a mate's duties being irksome 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 "sailorize," that is, work with rope and wire as required; a master who will let them do their work without public interference—and a mate may be, and often is, as happy as any man ought to be in this world. For 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," i.e. 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 stern 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 passion 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, she, 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 mornin'. 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 vessel 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 sailorizing, 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—such operations as turning in deadeyes, re-bolstering, 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, trousers, 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 hen-coop 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 mutually 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, as far as nautical astronomy went. They could not prevent him from keeping the dead reckoning, but he was dependent upon them entirely for the ship's position by celestial observation for entry in the log. Utterly wrong and foolish, as well as illegal; but when a man is so much a monarch, he is apt to go like that sometimes. 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 then compare. If any error arises, it is thus almost certain to be discovered, and no properly-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 observations are worked up to noon, 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 truthfully be said that what little is given would better have 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.
THE MATE'S WORK (IN A SAILING SHIP)—continued.
Finding that this log-book business takes me farther than I anticipated, I judged it best to break off the last chapter somewhat abruptly, since I find that the average reader is not partial to long chapters, and I have rigidly limited mine to eight pages of manuscript.
A log-book is popularly supposed to be (and certainly 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 excluding 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 cultivated 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 assessment. Remembering how splendid a training it is for any one to record, as he roams about the world, all 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 observer 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 refining 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 attracted him, of course; but passing ships, birds, porpoises, fish, deck scenes, fronds of fucus or gulf-weed, were all utilized, and the result was a book beyond price. As he did a little every day, there was no sense of labour attached to it; yet the finished work gave the impression of a stupendous amount of work having 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.
Another gentleman I know always carried a camera with him, and ornamented his log-book with well-developed snapshot photographs, in this way interpreting 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 the 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 exercised, and add to the stature of the inner man, making 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 instead of being, as so many otherwise good seamen are, discontented with his lot, and looking forward anxiously 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, and 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 facilities for education provided in their go-ahead country. It would seem as if they thought that it was necessary for a 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 practice 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 newcomer, and with that minute admiration of smartness possessed by all seamen, even the laziest, we watched her. She came grandly up to her moorings close to us, amidst a very hurricane of roaring orders, and presently was securely moored. Then, instead of furling sails and coiling up ropes, as would have been the case with an English ship, the crew began to strip the yards of the sails and stop up the running-gear. The mate was ubiquitous. His tremendous tones reverberated over the quiet harbour incessantly, weighted by the weird profanity affected by 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 were loud in their condemnation 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 gentleman. 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 remember, 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 intensity of fervour that was almost comical to see, simply because he could not roar, neither could he kick. I 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 get 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 improved upon by the Blue-nose, and may be summed up in the following words of the Yankee mate to his crew: "W'en I say 'walk,' I want ye t' run; w'en I say 'run,' I want ye t' fly." And also 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 (counting) it in, this is all very well; but when, as often happens, he has many other duties to attend to simultaneously, and must therefore trust to others, he often finds himself in difficulties. I speak feelingly, having once loaded government stores in London for Zanzibar, 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 lading, I found a serious discrepancy. My assistant reported having taken in six dozen ash oars, but I found that the bill of lading specified eight dozen. 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 doubtless 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 concerned, 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 necessarily be, since he can get less help, while his responsibility remains the same.
All the ship's stores are also under his charge, and it 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 supreme 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 not only contributed 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 be not only its own reward, but in many cases 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. Unfortunately, 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 the 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 Rotterdam, and were boarded by a gang of touts after "shakings," tailors' orders, etc. One Jewish gentleman 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 I haf my vife pounts, unt you haf nodings." He said 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 tried since 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 they 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 k'n get the skipper t' take that I'll give you another thutty fur y'rself." I refused with some roughness, and ordered the fellow ashore. My feelings may be imagined when the next day my gentleman 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 owner's 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 although 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 so, in cargo ships; in passenger vessels he gets rather more company than he wants or is good for him.
And now I must part company with the mate, reluctantly, 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 that I know of, none 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.
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 perfectly 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 temper, 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 heart-burnings will be unavoidably 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 of misery such as we would not go through again for a great deal.
But here again there is a great range of status. Between 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 him 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 certificate, 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 dunderhead without resources, untrustworthy, not able even to keep awake in his watch on deck, and ignorant of the first principles of his calling. Much may be excused 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 round, will discover his junior officer, instead of being acutely anxious to justify his elevation to command, is lolling on a hen-coop 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 because 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 passenger 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 principal. It is, I believe, in most lines of passenger steamers—I know it is in some—the practice to keep a list of officers employed, and every accession to their ranks—no matter how high his previous qualifications may have been—must go in at the bottom. And it is of 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 step 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! Analyze 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 invisible 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 introduced, 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 experience 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 supernumerary mate of such a ship as the Rome or Carthage, which were then new! My heart sank within 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 promotion, 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. Promotion 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 live, certainly arrive at one of the most coveted positions known to seamen—that of master of a great steamship.
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 a week at a time is of itself a great task. And the man to whom it is entrusted holds a position the honour and responsibility of which cannot be lightly esteemed. When, in addition 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 respect to the stowage of the cargo, I am sure it will be conceded that his position is one that can be held only by a good man. His comforts are many, quite compensating 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 officers of a man-o'-war—and, for the same reason, the equality of status, though not of rank—there are the passengers. And although his pay is not large, his treatment 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 comforts, 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 officers, 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 attainable 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 marine 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 boring her way through opposing seas, outward or homeward, 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 itself; one man should be on the look-out 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 watch—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 dispensed with at the earliest possible moment. So the practice is for the second mate to come off the bridge, the man to be called off the look-out, and the trio having left the ship plunging blindly along over the gloomy sea, at dire peril to herself and any other vessel 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 look-out 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. Theoretically, 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 he would keep his berth, i.e. 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 absolutely 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 superior 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, and 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.
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 require of a man who presents himself before them as a candidate 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) before I made any serious attempt to prepare for the examination. 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 examinations, wherein all the problems were carefully worked out step by step. A "Norie's Epitome of Navigation," 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 sailing from New Zealand to Oregon, and thence home. We were a happy crew, young and lively, and the forecastle 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 interested, 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 programme 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 examination. 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 example set the ship is always supposed to be at starting within sight of some point of land whose position is known. A bearing of this is taken by the compass, and this, with the distance she is off, is known as the departure course and distance. The operation is technically termed "taking her departure," one of the very few purely nautical phrases which have passed into common 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 variation 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 occasionally 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 navigation 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 sixteen, while many would be able to 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, i.e. 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 vivâ 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? 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 that there was a blunder somewhere, 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 carefully 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 examiners 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 practical use out of a book ashore! I didn't say anything, but as soon as I got outside I dismissed him and all his discomforting remarks from my mind entirely, amusing myself in various ways unconnected with either navigation or seamanship until bedtime.
In the morning I went straight to the Board of 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 testing my eyesight, and a cold shudder ran through me as I realized that if my sight was wrong my career would be permanently 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 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 nothing 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.
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, returning 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 carefully 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 consider myself at the helm of the ship I was holding, he 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. Thenceforward 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, especially for master, with its searching questions into maritime legal matters, knowledge of the coasts added on 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 hope to pass. It may be true—I express no opinion—what I have been told about the laxity of examiners in some outports allowing duffers to slip through, but that is certainly not the fault of the examination as arranged.
And now I must apologize for having taken up so much space over this portion of my subject, and proceed 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 certificate 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," and 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 mathematical 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 sailmaker. Both these men were perfect treasures, but 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.
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 between 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 judgment as to the taking in or making sail, whose knowledge, 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 Lyttelton, New Zealand, the Bulwark, of 1300 tons, belonging to Messrs. Shaw, Savill & Co. Her master was an elderly 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'sle. 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 responsibility 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 10 p.m. the wind had increased to a gale, and anxious watching had assured me that she 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 confidence 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 naturally 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 outset. 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 etiquette for the second mate to receive all his instructions 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 master'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 shortening 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 general 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 till 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 practice. And some men are never better than bunglers at this beautiful evolution.
Whether he is respected by his watch as an officer should be depends, of course, upon himself in the first instance. Sailors are always keen to take advantage of a second mate, whom they regard as "everybody's dog;" and if he has not a masterful air, allied to a thorough knowledge of his duties, their behaviour towards 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 should have this done immediately it becomes necessary, and if he hesitates to do it from any fear of their grumbling, they will never do anything 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 before 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 allowed 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 position 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, he 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 sailorizing is interesting work. Few sailors (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 contented, the envy of all his shipmates, put him on sailmaking. 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, look upon such a position only 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, the careful discharge of cargo. In the majority of ports there are professional stevedores, who have made the placing of cargo in ships' holds their business, and understand it thoroughly. These are always engaged where they can be got, for obvious reasons, chief among which are the facts that good stowage makes a ship hold more, and that, especially with certain cargoes, bad, careless stowage renders a ship unseaworthy. 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 has 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 educated, but unpractised. In handling neither ships nor men has he had any extended experience. He is really still at school, and he will often be made to feel the truth of that statement very acutely. But in the Yankee or Blue-nose ship the second mate will be generally found a large man with horny fists 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 begin 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'n everybody aboard of her"! But such a thing on board of a Yank or a Blue-nose is unthinkable. 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 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-his-apprenticeship type, had been discharged, and the skipper had shipped a fresh one ashore who had been for some time in Nova Scotian ships. He was a splendid specimen 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 boatswain's direction. Mr. Eaton, the new second mate, was having a look round the ship, and strayed forward, where two men were passing water out of the big wash-deck tub. As Mr. Eaton passed, one of them, carelessly slinging a bucket towards 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 horribly, 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 waistband, 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 accompaniments. The boatswain did not stir to interfere, 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 forward, 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 necessary to resort to violence, for the men were respectful 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 advocate 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 truculent 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 necessary orders at night. Foremast hands will growl at this, I know full well; but they know it is true. And 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 emergency, 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 employment of foreign seamen. Foreign seamen, especially 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 characteristics 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, 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 personnel 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 of discipline can be made without its being swiftly followed by its due punishment. At least that was the reason. Now, I believe that a race of men-o'-war's 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 disciplinary 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 obeying one may, and probably will, be so able a seaman as to be capable of training, in all the intricate duties of a man-of-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.
THE THIRD MATE.
We have now exhausted, as far as the present work goes, the three official titles used in the Merchant Service; that is to say, with regard to the certificates issued. Master, mate, and second mate are alone recognized as responsible officers by the Board of Trade. Yet, with the growth of the steamship, it has become inevitable that more officers should be employed, 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 recognized titles. Notwithstanding 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 certificate 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, taking charge of the great ship alone. From what has preceded this, it will be seen that he must be eminently 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. Their position being, as I have said, unofficial and abnormal, 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 command one of those splendid leviathans that are the pride and glory of ocean traffic.
Of these unofficially-recognized 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 the 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 immediate 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 commonplace 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 then 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 afore 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, or some such title, and their 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 experience allows 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 seaman'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 considerable use to that hard-worked officer, or a source of much annoyance to him. Where (and I have personally known such cases) he is a blockhead, but has sufficient owners' 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 probably then divide his energies to killing time, lounging in the boys' house, yarning, and generally exhibiting that sad spectacle—a young man wasting his life, 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 exchange 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, 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-pot or manipulating a marline-spike to admit of his wearing 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 top-sails 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 opportunity 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 interfered 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 fit 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 he was. 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 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 protégés 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 uncertain sound in giving orders. What splendid men 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 recognized 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. But 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 their 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 manslaughter. 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 striking with little or no provocation, his utter disregard for human life—either his own or anybody's else—and his incessant blasphemy, are hardly compensated for by his tremendous courage, his magnificent seamanship, 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 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.
THE BO'SUN.
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 person 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 bo'sun is like. For one thing, it is certain that to speak of a gentlemanly bo'sun 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 necessity is laid upon me for doing so at this present. There are bo'suns to whom the above fancy description would apply precisely, only it would not be complete. Other qualities, not so picturesque, perhaps, but far more useful, would have to be added to finish the picture. And then you have a man whose better it would be almost impossible to find in the wide world.
In the Navy, the bo'sun, upon rising to the full height of that position, becomes for picturesque purposes 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 bo'suns of the popular fancy, the fine flower of the naval seamen.
As with all the rest of the officers, there are differences, not exactly in status, but in duties, between bo'suns of the highest class of steamships and the sailing ships which are big enough to carry bo'suns properly so called. But these differences are not nearly so great as among the certificated officers, for the bo'sun, whatever his ship may be, is essentially a foreman, a working man who, by reason of his superior 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. In 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 outbreak of fire, breakdown of engines, or falling in with a helpless sister that requires a tow, the boatswain is of the utmost importance. A good boatswain 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 boatswain 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 boatswain 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 command or knowledge to carry out, he will generally be glad to curry favour with anybody, not merely junior officers, but with the men under him—which is fatal.
The boatswain'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 bo'sun and lamp-trimmer. This degradation of an ancient and honourable position is quite unfair to the man who in a moment of folly or being hard up accepts such a queerly-associated employment. For how can a sailor be expected to show due deference 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 cleaning brass-work, both tasks that are quite unfit for a man who is a leader and commander of the crew, as a bo'sun is. Small tramps, of course, do not carry a bo'sun. The duties which he should perform fall upon the hapless officers, as aforesaid.
But if you would see the bo'sun in his glory go on board 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 last 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 more than double what they would now carry if afloat. The bo'sun with his two mates were most prominent figures, while their hoarse voices and the shrill scream of their pipes resounded over the adjacent water as the vessel came up to her berth. Those grand old vessels are gone, and with them the fine complement of British seamen 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 bo'sun they carried is yet extinct. Fortunately, no; for he would be a heavy loss indeed. He has grafted the old on to the new, and may be found to-day aboard the great sailing ships, that still do a fair share of ocean traffic, carrying on the work under the changed conditions, 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; and instead of needing a large number of men, much complication of tackles, and many hours to "set up" the rigging, 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 increased sail area and the practice of carrying an additional mast, the work was more onerous than ever.
So the bo'sun 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 refractory stuff. He cannot be content with simply knowing how it should be done, but he must be prepared to educate a crew such as he may very easily find under him—a crew whose only previous experience 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 mastheads himself, and prying into every detail for little defects, which may bring disaster if not attended to in time. And his mastery of ships' work should be such that it will be sufficient for the mate to say to him, "Bo'sun, 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 have had the misfortune to be once shipmates with, I was going to say, a bad bo'sun; but perhaps the better description of him would be that he was not a seaman at all, much less a bo'sun. We used to call him "the Curiosity," abbreviated to "Curio." He said that he had been bo'sun 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 bo'sun, and as she was a 1300-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 bo'sun, 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 washing decks or repeating their orders. Then he took to coming into the fo'c'sle, and trying to curry favour with the men by telling them of his varied experiences ashore. By his own confession, he had been a salesman 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 employments. His impudence as well as a certain bonhomie, which, however out of place in a bo'sun, would have been admirable in any of the positions he had occupied ashore, softened the crew towards 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 afterwards he visited us, an overpowering swell of distingué appearance, and grandly informed us that he was ring-master 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 bo'sun I have ever even heard of.
At the other end of the scale I place the bos'un of the Harbinger, a man of rot more than thirty, a giant in stature and strength, and completely master of his profession. Of all the seamen I have ever known, he was the most perfect specimen as far as rigging work was concerned, and the handling of a ship's company. So splendid was his work that, in conversation with him one day, after watching him splice a two-inch wire grummet round the goose-neck of the spanker-boom with far greater ease than most men would have done the 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, i.e. 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 bo'suns 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 sailor-men. For some were perfect in all their ways as far as "sailorizing" was concerned, yet could not get the work out of their men; others were good drivers, but were weak in their technical knowledge—at least, not quite so good at certain work as some of the seamen under them; others were lazy, and one especially do I remember, although a splendid seaman, was so great a coward, that he was a by-word 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 a bo'sun, a post for which his one defect eminently disqualified him. And he never learned to talk intelligible English. 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'sle door as the watch was turning out, and say, "Now, poys, gum lonk. Ve shrub und shrabe mit sant unt racks alla now;" which, being interpreted, 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, hopelessly 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, bo'suns are seldom carried in American ships, where the third mate or second mate, as the case may be, will efficiently perform a bo'sun'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" bo'sun 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 Scotian 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, and as soon as they had answered to their names he turned to the monster and said, "Now look here, bo'sun, I want you t' hurry up 'n git these spars lashed." "Ay, ay, 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 bo'sun doing his work well, just for the sake of the title with which he had been so suddenly honoured.
THE CARPENTER.
How shall I do fitting justice to the dignified, invaluable petty officer (warrant officer in the Navy) whose title stands at the head of this chapter? The honest journeyman ashore hearing the same title has always had a peculiar fascination for me, whether joiner or cabinetmaker. But he is no more to be compared with the carpenter of a ship than a hod-carrier is with an architect. It is not every port that can produce ships'-carpenters. Any shipyard where work is specialized, 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, the former being much the easier billet for him. In a fine passenger steamship his duties are mainly confined to seeing 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 that any needed repairs or alterations should be noted during the voyage; and for this particular oversight a carpenter is invaluable. And any remarks such as have been made hitherto 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 or heard of one. He is the man who may be relied upon to give less trouble than any other man on board 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 criticize 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 the constructional needs of the ship. The real glory of a ship's-carpenter, however, does not shine out in any steamer. It is in the sailing ship that he finds his opportunity for the display of those abilities 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 circumstances forbids the employment of a man who has been through the curriculum of the "yards" and has 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 shipbuilding yards. But on the Clyde and in Aberdeen they breed a race of men as ship-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 recognized 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 specialist. 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 sartor, 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 the water, has become a trade by itself.