III
THE LONGSHORE VIEW
EARLY in November 1914, on return from the sea, I was invited to join His Majesty's Forces.
". . . An' I can tell you this, mister," said the sergeant . . . "it ain't everybody as I asks t' join our corps. . . . Adjutant, 'e ses t' me this mornin', 'Looka here, Bates,' 'e ses, 'don't you go for to bring none o' them scallywags 'ere! We don't want 'em! We won't 'ave 'em at any price,' 'e ses!. . . 'Wot we wants is proper men—men with chests,' 'e ses!"
I felt somewhat commended; I trimmed more upright in carriage; he was certainly a clever recruiter. I told him I had rather important work to do. He said, with emphasis, that it must be more than important to keep a man out of the Army—these days! In sound of shrieking newsboys—"Ant—werp fallen! British falling back!"—I agreed.
I asked him what he did with the men recruited. He was somewhat surprised at my question, but told me that, when trained, they were sent across to the Front—he was hoping to return himself in the next draft. He thought all this talk was needless, and grew impatient. I mentioned that the men couldn't very well swim over there. He glared scornfully. "Swim? . . . Swim!. . . 'Ere! Wot th' hell ye gettin' at? You gotta hellova lot t' say about it, anyway!"
I explained that my business was that of putting the troops and the guns and the gear o' war across; that the drafts couldn't get very far on the way without our assistance. He glanced at my soft felt hat, at my rainproof coat, my umbrella, my handbag—said, "Huh" and went off in search of a more promising recruit. His broad back, as he strode off swinging his cane, expressed an entire disapproval of my appearance and my alleged business.
Good honest sergeant! His course was a clear and straight one. He would hold no more truck with one who wouldn't take up a man's job. His "Huh" and the swing of his arm said plainly to me, "Takin' th' boys across, eh? A —— fine excuse, . . . a rare —— trick! Where's yer uniform? Why ain't ye in uniform, eh? You can't do me with that story, mister! I'm an old Service man, I am. I been out t' India. I been on a troopship. I seen all them gold-lace blokes a-pokin' their noses about an' growsin' at th' way th' decks wos kep! Huh! A damn slacker, mister! That's wot I think o' you!"
The sergeant's attitude was not unreasonable. Where was our uniform? Where was any evidence of our calling by which one could recognize a seaman on shore? A sea-gait, perhaps! But the deep-sea roll has gone out since bilge-keels came to steady our vessels! Tattoo marks? These cunning personal adornments are now reserved to the Royal Artillery and officers of the Indian Army! Tarry hands? Tar is as scarce on a modern steamer as strawberries in December! Sea-togs? If there be a preference, we have a fondness for blue serge, but blue serges have quite a vogue among bankers and merchants and other men of substance! Away from our ships and the dockside waterfront, we are not readily recognizable; we join the masses of other workers, we become members of the general public. As such, we may lay claim to a common liberty, and look at our seafaring selves from an average point of longshore view.
. . . The sea? Oh, we know a lot about it! It is in us. We pride ourselves, an island race, we have the sea in our blood, we are born to it. Circumstances may have brought us to counting-house and ledger, but our heart is with the sea. We use, unwittingly, many nautical terms in our everyday life. We had been to sea at times, on a business voyage or for health or pleasure. We knew the captain and the mates and the engineers. The chief steward was a friend, the bos'n or quartermaster had shown us the trick of a sheepshank or a reef-knot or a short splice. Their ways of it! Port and starboard for left and right, knots for miles, eight bells, the watches, and all that! We returned from our sea-trip, parted with our good friends, feeling hearty and refreshed. We hummed, perhaps, a scrap of a sea-song at the ledgers. We regretted that our sea-day had come so quickly to an end. Anyway, we felt that we had got to know the sea-people intimately.
But that was on their ground, on the sea and the ship, where they fitted to the scheme of things and were as readily understood and appreciated as the little round port-holes, the narrow bunks, the cunning tip-up washstands, the rails for hand-grip in a storm. Their atmosphere, their stories, their habits, were all part of our sea-piece. Taken from their heaving decks and the round of a blue horizon, they seemed to go out of our reckoning. On shore? Of course they must at times come on shore, but somehow one doesn't know much about them there. There are our neighbours. . . . Yes! Gudgeon's eldest boy, he is at sea—a mate or a purser. He has given over wearing his brass buttons and a badge cap now: we see him at long intervals, when he comes home to prepare for examinations. A hefty sort of lad—shouldn't think he would do much in the way of study; a bit wild perhaps. Then Mrs. Smith's husband. Isn't he at sea, a captain or a chief engineer, or something? He comes among us occasionally; travels to town, now and then, in our carriage. A hearty man—uses rather strong language, though! Has not a great deal to say of things—no interest in politics, in the market, in the games. Never made very much of him. Don't see him at the clubs. Seems to spend all his time at home. At home! Oh yes; wasn't it only the other day his small daughter told ours her daddy was going home again on Saturday!
In war, we are learning. There are no more games; contentious politics are not for these days; the markets and business are difficult and wayward. We are come to see our dependence on the successful voyages of Mrs. Smith's husband. His coming among us, from time to time, is proof that our links with the world overseas are yet unbroken, that there may still be business to transact when we turn up at the office. Strangely, in the new clarity of a war vision, we see his broad back in our harvest-fields, as we had never noticed it before. He is almost one of our staff. He handles our goods, our letters, our gold, our securities, our daily bread. His business is now so near to us that——
But no! It cannot properly be done. We recall that there is one way for our ready recognition when we come on shore these days. We cannot appropriate a longshore point of view, we cannot conceal our seafaring and merge into the crowd. There is a mark—our tired eyes, as we come off the sea! True, there are now, sadly, many tired eyes on the beach, but few carry the distant focus, the peculiar intentness brought about by absence of perspective at sea. We cannot adopt a public outlook owing to this obliquity in our vision, we are barred by the persistence of that vexed perspective in our views on shore.
Still, the point may be raised that only in our actual seafaring are we recognized. We are poor citizens, nomads, who have little part with settled grooves and communal life on shore. The naval seaman is a known figure on the streets. His trim uniform, the cut of his hair, the swing of a muscular figure, his high spirits, are all in part with a stereotyped conception. He is the sailor; Mercantile Jack has lost his tradition in attire and individuality, he has vanished from the herd with his high-heeled shoes, coloured silk neckerchief, and sweet-tobacco hat.
In the round of shore communications there is exercise for assessing a measure of the other man's work: a large proportion of success hinges on easy fellowship, on an understanding and acquaintance not only with the technics of another's trade, but with his habits and his pursuits. All trades, all businesses, all professions have relations, near or distant, with the sea, but to them our grades and descriptions are dubious and uncertain. For this we are to blame. We are bad advertisers. We are content to leave our fraternization with the beach to the far distant day when we shall retire from the sea-service, 'swallow the anchor,' and settle down to longshore life. We cannot join and rejoin the guilderies on shore in the intervals of our voyaging. We preserve a grudging silence on our seafaring, perhaps tint what pictures we do present in other lights than verity. The necessary aloofness of our calling makes for a seclusion in our affairs: we make few efforts to remedy an estrangement; in a way, we adopt the disciplinary scourge of the flagellants, we glory in our isolation. If we share few of the institutions that exist for fellowship ashore, we have made no bid for admittance: if the tide of intercourse leaves us stranded, we have put out no steering oar on the drift of the flood. We are somewhat diffident. Perhaps we are influenced by a certain reputation that is still attached to us. Are we the prodigals not yet in the mood to turn unto our fathers?
Stout old Doctor Johnson enlarged on the sea-life—of his day—with a determination and no small measure of accuracy. "Sir," he said, "a ship is worse than a gaol. There is in a gaol better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of being in danger. When men come to like a sea-life they are not fit to live on land. . . . Men go to the sea before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession." At least he admitted the possibility of some of us coming to like a sea-life, though his postulate conveyed no high opinion of our intelligence in such a preference.
We have travelled far since the worthy Doctor's day. Not all his dicta may stand. There is still, perhaps, greater danger in a ship than in gaol, but Johnson himself admitted that "the profession of sailors has the dignity of danger"! For the rest, our air has become so good that invalids are ordered to sea; our conveniences are notably improved, our ships the last word in strength and comfort. Our company? Our company fits to the heave of our sea. If we have middling men for the trough, we have bold gallants for the crest. We draw a wide range to our service. The sea can offer a good career to a prizeman: we can still do moderately well with the wayward boy, the parents' 'heart-break,' the lad with whom nothing can be done on shore. Steam has certainly given a new gentility to our seafaring, but it cannot wholly smooth out the uneven sea-road. If we lose an amount of polish, of distinguished association, of education in our recruitment, we may gain just that essence that fits a man for our calling. Our company is, at any rate, stout and resolute, and, without that, we had long since been under German bondage.
THE MERSEY FROM THE LIVER BUILDINGS, LIVERPOOL
The war has brought a new prominence to our sea-trade. The public has become interested not alone in our sea-ventures, but in our landward doings. The astonishing fact of our civilian combatance has drawn a recognition that no years of peace could have uncovered. Not least of the revelations that the world conflict has imposed is the vital importance of the ships. Our naval fleets were ever talked of, read of, gloried in, as the spring of our national power, but not many saw the core of our sea-strength in the stained hulls of the merchants' ships. They were accepted without enthusiasm as an existing trade channel; they were there on a round of business and trade, not dissimilar to other transport services—the railways, road-carriage, the inland canals, the moving-van, the messengers. They were ready to hand for service; so near that their vital proportions were not readily apparent. Perhaps the greatest compliment the public has paid to the Merchants' Service lay in this abstract view. One saw an appreciation, perhaps unspoken, in the consternation that greeted the first irregularity in delivery of the oversea mails. Then, indeed, the importance of the ships was brought sharply home. It was incredible: it was unheard of. Mercantile practice and correspondence had outgrown all duplications and weatherly precautions; the service was so sure and uninterrupted that no need existed for a second string to the bow. Bills of exchange, indents, invoices, the mail-letter, had long been confided to sea-carriage on one bottom. Pages could be written of the tangled skeins, the complex situations, the confusion and congestion that were all brought about by extra mileage of an ocean voyage. Fortunes, not alone in hulls and cargo, lie with our wreckage on the floor of the channels.
The sea-front suddenly assumed an importance in the general view, as the drain on our tonnage left vacant shelves in the bakehouse. Commodities that, so common and plentiful, had been lightly valued, were out of stock—the ships had not come in! Long queues formed at the shop doors, seeking and questioning—their topic, the fortunes of the ships! The table was rearranged in keeping with a depleted larder. Anxious eyes turned first in the morning to the list of our sea-casualties; the ships, what of the ships? The valiant deeds of our armies, the tide and toll of battles, could wait a second glance. Not all the gallantry of our arms could bring victory if our sea-communications were imperilled or restrained; on the due arrival of the ships centred the pivot of our operations.
Joined to the fortune of the ships, interest was drawn to the seamen. A new concern arose. Who were the mariners who had to face these deadly perils to keep our sea-lines unbroken? Were they trained to arms? How could they stand to the menace that had so shocked our naval forces? Daily the toll rose. Savagery, undreamt of, succeeded mere shipwreck: murder, assassination, mutilation became commonplace on the sea. Who were the mercantile seamen; of what stock, what generation?
To a degree we were embarrassed at such new attention. The mystery of sea-life, we felt, had unbalanced the public view. Our stock, our generation, was the same as that of the tailors and the candlestick-makers who were standing the enemy on his head on the Flanders fields; we differed not greatly from the haberdasher and the baby-linen man who drove the Prussian Guard, the proudest soldier in Europe, from the reeking shambles of Contalmaison. Indeed, we had advantage in our education for a fight. Our training, if not military, was at least directed to mass operations in contest with power of the elements: torpedo and mine were but additions to the perils of our regular trade. If the clerk and the grocer could rise from ordered peaceful ways and set the world ringing with his gallantry and heroism, we were poltroons indeed to flinch and falter at the familiar conduct of our seafaring. We felt that our share in warfare was as nothing to the blaze of fury on the battle-fronts, our sea-life was comparative comfort in contrast to the grisly horrors of the trenches.
With universal service, opportunity for acquaintance with our life and our work was extended beyond the numbers of chance passengers. The exodus oversea of the nation's manhood brought the landsman and the seaman together as no casual meeting on the streets could have done. Millions of our country-men, who had never dreamed of outlook on blue water bounded by line of an unbroken horizon, have found themselves brought into close contact with us, living our life, assisting in many of our duties, facing the same dangers. In such a firm fellowship and communion of interest there cannot but be a bond between us that shall survive the passage of high-water mark.
THE MASTER OF THE GULL LIGHTSHIP WRITING THE LOG