For instance, I learnt how to tie knots, and unless a fellow can do that he is a duffer; I learnt how to handle and manage a boat by myself, how to right her when upset, and how to get in and out of her when bathing.
I learnt how to steer and manage a large sailing boat, taking my watch alone at night; how to read the stars and charts; and how to take the responsibility for navigating and not running her on to the rocks.
As a Sea Scout you get mighty hungry, so in order to feed yourself when on the water you have to be able to catch fish and to clean them, and to cook them for yourself. All this means that you have to be what a sailor is generally known as, a "handyman."
Then the life is so jolly, free, and breezy; there is lots of hard work at times, and difficulties and dangers to overcome, but also lots of enjoyable sunny cruising into strange places with good comrades around you.
Fellows boxed up in a ship together naturally become the best of friends and comrades if they are naturally good chaps with good tempers; if they are not—well—then I would rather not be in that ship, thank you!
Sailors are always manly fellows, and know how to give and take, and they manage to keep their tempers when small things go wrong.
* * * * *
GENERALS WHO WERE SAILORS.
Two of our greatest generals to-day began their careers as sailors.
Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood won his Victoria Cross as a midshipman in the Royal Navy while serving in the Crimea. Field-Marshal Viscount French, late Commander-in-Chief of our Forces in France and Flanders, was a sailor before he joined the Army, and so was Sir Hamilton Goold-Adams, who commanded the Town Guard so well in Mafeking.