Windjammers and Sea Tramps

by Baron Walter Runciman Runciman

CHAPTER XV

MANNING THE SERVICE

At the present time there is much writing and talking as to how the merchant service is to be kept supplied with seamen. Guilds, Navy Leagues, and other agencies of talk have been set at work to solve what they term a problem. Theories that are exasperating to read or listen to have been indiscriminately forced upon an enduring public; and after all the balderdash and jeremiads that have flowed copiously over the land we are pretty much where we were. The modern shipowner and his theoretic friends prefer to waste their energy in concocting theories to solve an imaginary problem—the only problem being that which exists in their own minds. There is nothing else to solve. Once the mildew is out of the way and the doors are set wide open, we shall soon have a full supply of recruits. During the last few years several steamship owners have so far overcome their prejudices as to take apprentices. Those who have worked it properly have succeeded; while others complain of the system being absolutely unsuccessful. My own impression is that the want of success is not the fault of the lads, but those who have the controlling of them.

Mr. Ritchie, when he was the head of the Board of Trade, introduced a system of barter, whereby a certain reduction of light dues was to be made to the firms who undertook to train boys for the merchant service and the Royal Naval Reserve. Needless to say, the very nature of the conditions caused it to fail. In the first place the parents of the boys looked upon the proposal as a form of conscription; and in the second, owners would have no truck with a partial abatement of the light dues. They very properly claimed that the charge should be abolished altogether. All other countries, except America and Turkey, have made the lighting of their coast-lines an Imperial question; and America only levies it against British shipping as a retaliatory measure. Mr. Ritchie lost his chance of doing a national service by neglecting to take into his confidence shipowners who were conversant with the voluntary system of training seamen. Had he done this, it is pretty certain they would have guided him clear of the difficulties he got into, and his measure would have been fashioned into a beneficent, workable scheme instead of proving a fiasco.

There are shipowners who believe that it is the duty of the State to pay a subsidy of twenty to fifty pounds per annum for every apprentice carried. I have always been puzzled to know from whence they derive their belief. When pressed to state definitely what arguments they have to give in favour of such a demand, their mental processes seem to become confused. They are driven to prophetic allusions to future naval war, and the usefulness of seamen in that event. Of course no one can dispute the usefulness of sailors at any time and under any circumstances; but if that is the only reason for asking the Government to pay owners part of the cost of manning their ships, then they are living in a fool's paradise, and are much too credulous about public philanthropy, and very unobservant and illogical too if they imagine that national interests are entirely centred in the industry they happen to be engaged in. It would be just as reasonable for Armstrong's or Vickers' to request a subsidy for training their men because their business happens to be the manufacture of guns and the construction of warships. Or on the same logical grounds the ordinary shipbuilder and engine-maker would be justified in cadging subsidies for training every branch of their trades, and thereby work their concerns at the expense of a public who are not directly connected with them. But no one has ever heard of these people making any such demand on national generosity. I believe I am right in stating that there are only very few shipowners who advocate such a parochial view. The great bulk of them regard it with disfavour, first, because it smacks of peddling dealing; and, secondly, even if it were right they know that State aid means State interference, and State interference savours too much of working commerce on strictly algebraic lines, which only an executive with a wealthy, indulgent nation behind it could stand. The Chamber of Shipping last year vigorously declared against subsidies of this kind; and the way in which the proposal was strangled leaves small hope of it ever being successfully revived.

An encouraging feature of the situation is that the Shipping Federation has at last taken the matter up. The late Mr. George Laws was always in favour of doing so, but unfortunately he got scant support from his members. Since his death, and the pronouncement the Chamber of Shipping gave in its favour at the last annual meeting, Mr. Cuthbert Laws, who succeeded his gifted father, has with commendable energy and marked ability undertaken the task of reviving the old system of every vessel carrying so many apprentices. He is penetrating every part of Great Britain with the information that the Federated Shipowners are prepared to give suitable respectable lads of the poor and middle class a chance to enter the merchant service on terms of which even the poorest boy can avail himself, without pecuniary disability; and I wish the able young manager of the most powerful trade combination in the world all the success he deserves in his effort, not only to keep up the supply of seamen, but to raise the standard of the mercantile marine.

In the early years of the last century, right up to the seventies, north-country owners placed three to four apprentices on each vessel, and never less than three. Many of them came from Scotland, Shetland, Norfolk, Denmark and Sweden. There were few desertions, and they always settled down in the port that they served their time from. If any attempt was made at engaging what was known as a "half-marrow"[2] there was rebellion at once; and I have known instances where lads positively refused to sail in a vessel where one of these had been shipped instead of an apprentice. Impertinent intrusion was never permitted in those days. As soon as they were out of their time the majority of the lads joined the local union. One of the conditions of membership was that each applicant should pass an examination in seamanship before a committee of the finest sailors in the world. They had to know how to put a clew into a square and fore-and-aft sail, to turn up a shroud, to make every conceivable knot and splice, to graft a bucket-rope, and to fit a mast cover. The examination was no sham. I remember one poor fellow, who had served five years, was refused membership because he had failed to comply with some of the rules. He had to serve two years more before he was admitted. I have often regretted that Mr. Havelock Wilson did not adopt similar methods for his union, though perhaps it is scarcely fair to put the responsibility of not doing so on him. The conditions under which he formed his union were vastly different from what they were in those days. He had to deal with a huge disorganised, moving mass, composed of many nationalities. At the same time I am convinced that a union conducted on the plan of the one I have been describing is capable of doing much towards training an efficient race of seamen, and I hope Mr. Wilson, or somebody else, will give it a trial.

Since the above was written Lord Brassey, by the invitation of the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce, has read a carefully prepared paper, in the Guildhall, to a large audience of shipowners and merchants, on the best means of feeding the Mercantile Marine and the Royal Navy with seamen. Lord Brassey must have been at infinite trouble in getting the material for his paper, and, notwithstanding the errors of fact and of reasoning in it, I think the shipping community, and indeed the public at large, owe him their hearty thanks for giving so important a subject an opportunity of being discussed. So far as his advocacy of the establishment of training vessels for the supply of seamen to the Royal Navy is concerned, I have nothing to say against it. The lads in those ships are trained by naval officers, under naval customs and discipline, and there should be some recruiting ground of the kind for that service. But Lord Brassey advocates it for the Mercantile Marine also. He suggests a plan of subsidy to be paid to the owner or the apprentice, and that the lad after serving four years, should be available for service in the Royal Navy. But to begin with, it may be objected that men trained in Royal Navy discipline and habits never mix well with men trained in the other service; their customs and habits of life and work are quite different to those of the merchant seaman. It used to be a recognised belief that the sailor of the merchantman could adapt himself with striking facility to the work of the Royal Navy and its discipline, but the Navy trained man was never successful aboard a cargo vessel. The former impression originated, no doubt, during the good old times when it was customary for prowling ruffians from men-of-war to drag harmless British citizens from their homes to man H.M. Navy, and all the world knows how quickly they adapted themselves to new conditions, and how well they fought British battles! But what a sickening reality to ponder over, that less than a century ago the powerful caste in this country were permitted, in defiance of law, to have press-gangs formed for the purpose of kidnapping respectable seamen into a service that was made at that time a barbarous despotism by a set of brainless whipper-snappers who gained their rank by backstair intrigue with a shameless aristocracy! All that kind of villainy has been wiped out; and the men of the Royal Navy are now treated like human beings; and they do their work not a whit less courageously and well than they did when it was customary to lash God's creatures with strands of whipcord loaded with lead until the blood oozed from their skins. There is no need to press either men or boys to enter the King's Naval Service. It has now been made sufficiently attractive to obviate the need for that. Nor is there any necessity for shipowners to be called upon, with or without subsidy, to train and supply men for the Navy. They have enough to do to look after their own manning, and this can be done easily by the adoption of methods that will break down any objection British parents may have to their sons becoming indentured to steamship owners, who will find work for them to do, and who will have them trained by a kindly discipline, paid, fed, and lodged properly; but still, if they are to be thorough men, there should be no pampering. Unquestionably, then, the place for training should be aboard the vessels they are intended to man and become officers and masters of. No need for subsidised training vessels; and certainly no need for a national charge being made for the benefit of shipowners, who have no right to expect that any part of their working expenses should be paid by the State.

As an example of how sympathy is growing for the apprenticeship system, Messrs. Watts,[3] Watts & Company, of London, have for many years carried apprentices aboard their steamers, and the grand old Blythman who adorns the City of London commercial life with all that is ruggedly honest and manly, has just purchased, at great cost, a place in Norfolk, which his generous son, Shadforth, has agreed to furnish, and then it is to be endowed as a training-field for sailor-boys. The veteran shipowner is well known by his many unostentatious acts of philanthropy to have as big a heart as ever swelled in a human breast; but, knowing him as I do, I feel assured that his philanthropy would have taken another form had he not been convinced he was conferring a real national benefit by giving larger opportunities to British lads to enter the merchant service.

I give two other notable examples of success because of the care taken in selecting the boys and the care adopted in training them. Mr. Henry Radcliffe, senior partner of Messrs. Evan Thomas, Radcliffe & Co., of Cardiff, has taken a personal interest in boy apprentices for years. His experience of them has long passed the experimental state, and his testimony is that this is the only way the merchant navy can be adequately and efficiently maintained.