The “Boy”
Another curious feature of the manning of our ships is especially noticed by the Registrar-General—the way in which young British seamen leave the sea-life at the earliest opportunity. His unemotional remark, that “as ‘sailors’ do not ordinarily enter the sea-service after they are twenty-five years of age, this falling off in the number of its young British sailors affects the source of supply of our future petty officers and able seamen,” is full of the gravest warning, which has, however, apparently passed unheeded. Out of the various training ships[3] there pass every year a very large number of lads into the mercantile marine, who have received at least an insight into the conditions of a sailor’s life as it should be. They are taught habits of obedience, cleanliness, and regularity, and in some cases have actual acquaintance with the working of small vessels under way. When they are considered to be fairly competent to do all that is likely to be required of them, they are taken in hand by an official whose duty it is to find ships for them. In due time they sign as “boys,” generally in sailing ships, and away they go to sea. To their utter amazement they find the life has scarcely anything in common with that which they have been used to. In the first place, they miss most painfully the abundance of good plain food. Then they have been used to cleanliness of the strictest kind, both in body and clothes. Now they are fortunate if they can obtain the eighth share of a bucket of fresh water once a week, unless rain falls. Their duties have been regular, their periods of rest unbroken; now they have as many masters as there are hands on board, and they never know what to do next. They have been under a regular system of tuition; now, if they learn anything, it is because they are determined to do so in spite of difficulties which are only to be overcome by such indomitable perseverance as one can hardly expect from a boy. And lastly, they are thrown into the intimate society of a group of men who, generally speaking, have but one topic of conversation, one mode of speech—the worst possible. They are continually being told that nobody but a fool goes to sea, that it is the life of a convict, with worse food and lodging, and that they had better sweep a crossing ashore. Consequently they are ever on the look-out for a way of escape, and the great majority succeed in finding one before very long.
[3] This does not apply to cadet ships, such as the Worcester and Conway.