In due course, when he completes his training and is drafted to sea, his Certificate accompanies him. As he goes from ship to ship, on pages 2 and 3 are entered the records of his service, his rating, the names of his ships, and the period he served in each.
On 31st December in each year his Captain assesses in his own handwriting, on page 4, the character and ability of each man in the ship. These fluctuate between various stages from "Very Good" to "Indifferent" in the former case; "Exceptional" to "Inferior" in the latter. Here, too, appear the history of award and deprivation of Good Conduct Badges; the more severe penalties of wrong-doing, such as cells and imprisonment. Here, too, they must remain (for parchment cannot be tampered with, and an alteration must be sanctioned by the Admiralty) in perpetual appraisement or reproach until the man completes his Engagement and his Certificate becomes his own property.
The heading PREVIOUS OCCUPATION shows plainly enough the trades and classes from which the Navy is recruited, and is interesting, if only for the incongruity of the entries. They are most varied among the Stokers' Certificates, as these men entered the Service later in life than the Seamen.
Labourer suggests little save perhaps a vision of the Thames Embankment at night, and the evidence that some one at least found a solution of the Unemployment problem. But we may be wronging him. Doubtless he had employment enough. Yet I still connect him with the Embankment. At the bidding of the L.C.C. it was here he wielded pick and crowbar until the sudden distant hoot of a syren stirred something dormant within him: the barges sliding down-stream out of a smoky sunset into the Unknown suggested a wider world. So he laid down his tools, and his pay is now 2s. 1d. per diem: from his NEXT OF KIN notation he apparently supports a wife on it.
Farm Hand. Can you say what led him from kine-scented surroundings and the swishing milk-pails to the stokehold of a man-of-war? Did the clatter of the threshing-machine wake an echo of
"... the bucket and clang of the brasses
Working together by perfect degree"?
Perhaps it was the ruddy glow of the hop-ovens by night that he exchanged for the hell-glare of a battleship's furnaces. Or, as a final solution, was it the later product of these same ovens, in liquid form, that helped the Recruiting Officer?
Newspaper Vendor. A pretty conceit, that Vendor! He has changed vastly since he dodged about the Strand, hawking the world's news and exchanging shrill obscenities with the rebuke of policemen and cab-drivers. But the gutter-patois clings to him yet: and of nights you may see him forward, seated on an upturned bucket, wringing discords of unutterable melancholy from a mouth-organ.
Merchant Seaman—Golf Caddie. He spat in the sand-box before making your tee, and looked the other way when you miss your drive, if he was as loyal as caddie as he is a sailor. Errand Boy—Circus Artiste. Of a surety he was the clown, this last. His inability to forget his early training has on more than one occasion introduced him to a cell and the bitter waters of affliction. But he is much in demand at sing-songs and during stand-easy time.
Now here is one with a heavy black line ruled across his record on page 2, and in the margin appears the single letter "K" He is a recovered deserter. He "ran," after eight years' service and stainless record. Was it some red-lipped, tousle-haired siren who lured him from the paths of rectitude? Did the galling monotony and austere discipline suddenly prove too much for him? Was it a meeting with a Yankee tar in some foreign grog-shop that tempted him with tales of a higher pay and greater independence? Hardly the latter, I think, because they caught him, and on page 4 of the tell-tale parchment appears the penalty—90 days' Detention.