THESE EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS
OF THINGS NAVAL
NEW AND OLD
ARE DEDICATED
WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF ESTEEM
TO
JOHN DENT AND WILLIAM MILBURN
AND TO THE MEMORY OF
E.H. WATTS
CONTENTS
[PREFACE]
[CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY]
[CHAPTER II. PECULIAR AND UNEDUCATED]
[CHAPTER III. A CABIN-BOY'S START AT SEA]
[CHAPTER IV. THE SEAMAN'S SUPERSTITIONS]
[CHAPTER V. THE SEAMAN'S RELIGION]
[CHAPTER VI. SAFETY AND COMFORT AT SEA]
[CHAPTER VII. WAGES AND WIVES]
[CHAPTER VIII. LIFE AMONG THE PACKET RATS]
[CHAPTER IX. BRUTALITY AT SEA]
[CHAPTER X. BRAVERY]
[CHAPTER XI. CHANTIES]
[CHAPTER XII. JACK IN RATCLIFF HIGHWAY]
[CHAPTER XIII. THE MATTER-OF-FACT SAILOR]
[CHAPTER XIV. RESOURCEFULNESS AND SHIPWRECK]
[CHAPTER XV. MANNING THE SERVICE]
ILLUSTRATIONS
(After Drawings by THOMAS RUNCIMAN)
["THE —— RATS HAVE EATEN UP HOLLAND"]
[TARRING THE MAINMAST STAY]
[TELLING HIS FORTUNE]
[A PARTING CHEER TO THE OUTWARD BOUND]
[RATCLIFFE HIGHWAY: "CARRYING SMALL CANVAS"]
[A BERWICKSHIRE HAVEN]
PREFACE
"I went in at the hawse-hole and came out at the cabin window." It was thus that a certain North Country shipowner once summarised his career while addressing his fellow-townsmen on some public occasion now long past, and the sentence, giving forth the exact truth with all a sailor's delight in hyperbole, may well be taken to describe the earlier life-stages gone through by the author of this book. The experiences acquired in a field of operations, that includes all the seas and continents where commerce may move, live, and have its being, have enhanced in value and completed what came to him in his forecastle and quarter-deck times. He learned in his youth, from the lips of a race now extinct, what the nature and traditions of seamanship were before he and his contemporaries lived. He has seen that nature and those traditions change and die, whilst he and his generation came gradually under a new order of things, whose practical working he and they have tested in actual practice both on sea and land.
It is on this ground of experience that the author ventures to ask attention to his views in respect of the likeliest means to raise a desirable set of seamen in the English merchant navy. But he also ventures to hope that the historic incidents and characteristics of a class to which he is proud to belong, as set forth in this book, may cause it to be read with interest and charitable criticism. He claims no literary merit for it: indeed, he feels there may be found many defects in style and description that could be improved by a more skilful penman. But then it must be remembered that a sailor is here writing of sailors, and hence he gives the book to the public as it is, and hopes he has succeeded in making it interesting.