For over three hundred years, our Alma Mater flourished as the spring of our seafaring—a noble and venerable Corporation, concerned solely and alone with the sea and the ships and the seamen. The Brethren saw only one aim for their endeavours—the supremacy of the sea-trade, the business by which the nation stood or fell. Nor was theirs an inactive part in all the long sea-wars and crises that reacted on our commerce. Before a navy existed, the stout old master-seamen of Deptford Strond were charged with the sea-defences of the capital. The new naval forces came under their control at a later date, and we have the record of an efficiency in administration that showed prevision and thought well in advance of that of their landward contemporaries. Piracy, privateering, the restraints of rulers and princes, were dealt with in their day. At critical turns in the courses of our naval conduct, it was to the steersmen of Trinity that the Ministers of the State relied for prompt and seamanlike action. The 'sea to the seamen' was the rule. Adapting their resources to the needs of the day, the Brethren were held fast by no conventional restraint. They assisted peaceful developments in trade in the quieter years, but could as readily mobilize for war service under threat of invasion, or turn their skilled activities to removal of the sea-marks to prevent the sailing of a mutinous fleet. In the long and stormy history of Trinity House there were many precedents to guide the action of the Brethren on the outbreak of war. As guardians of the sea-channels and the approaches to our coasts, they manned these misty sea-trenches on the outbreak of war in 1914. Weaponless, by exercise of a skill in pilotage and a resolution worthy of great traditions, the Trinity men have held that menaced line intact. That little has been said about their great work is perhaps a tradition of their service.
We are parted now. The Merchants' Service is no longer a studied and valued interest of the ancient corporation. In an assured position as arbiters between the State and the shipping industry, the Trinity Brethren could combine a just regard for the merchants' interest with a generous and understanding appreciation of the seamen's trials and difficulties. If for no other reason than the record of past endeavours, they should still control the personnel of the Merchants' Service, in regulating the scheme of our education, the scope of our qualification for office, the grades of our service, the essence of our sea-conduct. But in the fickle doldrums of the period when steam superseded sail as our motive power, we drifted apart. Shipping interests have become complicated with land ventures, as widely different from them as the marine engine is from our former sail plan. In 1850 the Merchants' Service was placed under control of the Board of Trade; we were handed over to a Board that is no Board—a department of the State with little, if any, sea-sentiment, and that is sternly resolved to repress all our efforts to regain a voice in the control of our own affairs.
THE BOARD OF TRADE
If we may claim the ancient Corporation of Trinity House as the Alma Mater of the Merchants' Service, we may liken our comparatively new directorate, the Board of Trade, to our Alma step-Mater—an austere, bureaucratic dame, hard-working and earnest, perhaps, but lacking the kindly spirit of a sea-tradition. She is utterly out of touch and sympathy with a sea-sense—her arms, overstrained perhaps by the tremendous burden of charge upon charge that comes to her for settlement, are never open to the seamen. Sullenly, we resent her dictation as that of a usurper—a lay impropriator of our professional heritage. Under her coldly formal direction, we may attend our affairs in diligence and prudence, but for us there is no motherly licence; she has no pride in our doings (if one counts not the vicious insistence of her statistics)—we are only the stepchildren of her adoption, odd men of the huge and hybrid family over whom she has been set to cast a suspicious, if guardian, eye. While Trinity House was concerned alone with the conduct of shipping and sea-affairs, our new controllers of the Board of Trade have interests in charge as widely apart as the feeding of draught-horses and the examination of a bankrupt cheesemonger. We are but a Department. The sea-service of the nation, the key industry of our island commerce, is governed by a subdivision in a Ministry that has long outgrown the limits of a central and answerable control. Instead of settlement by a contained and competent Ministry of Marine, our highly technical sea-conduct is ruled for us in queue with longshore affairs, sandwiched, perhaps, between horse-racing and the period of the dinner table.
"The President of the Board of Trade has intimated to the Stewards of the National Hunt Committee that . . . it is not possible to sanction a list of fixtures for the season."
"Mr. Peto asked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the decision of Mr. Justice Rowlatt . . . in which judgment was given for the plaintiff company, owners of the steamship X——, sunk in collision, due to steaming without lights."
"The President of the Board of Trade announces modifications of the Lighting Order during the present week, one effect being that the prohibition of the serving of meals in hotels after 9.30 p.m. is temporarily suspended."
Perhaps we were rather spoilt by the pride that was in us when our seafaring was ruled by the appreciative Brethren of Trinity, and it may be as a repressive measure of discipline the Board of Trade extends no particular favour to our sea-trade, and has indeed gone further in being at pains to belittle our sea-deeds, and disparage a recognition of our status. Our controllers are anxious that their ruling of award and reward should suffer no comparison. For gallantry at sea, the grades of their recognition may vary from the Silver Medal (delivered, perhaps, as in a recent case, with the morning's milk) to a sextant or a pair of binoculars.
In 1905 a very gallant rescue was effected by the men of the Liverpool steamer Augustine. The crew of a Greek vessel were taken from their foundering ship in mid-Atlantic under circumstances of great peril. Not only was boat service performed in tempestuous weather, but the officers of Augustine themselves jumped overboard to try to save the Greek seamen, who were too far exhausted to hold on to the life-lines and buoys thrown to them. The King of Greece, in recognition of the gallantry and humanity displayed, signed a decree conferring on the British master and his officers the Gold Decoration of the Redeemer.
A general view would be that this was an award quite appropriate to the services rendered, an expression by the Greek Government that they wished to place the names of the gallant savers of their seamen on the Roll of their Honour. Our Board of Trade objected. Through the Foreign Office, they appear to have informed the Greek Government that such distinguished awards were unusual and might prove a source of dissatisfaction in future cases. Possibly they viewed the appearance of a ribbon on the breast of a merchant seaman as an encroachment on the rights of their own permanent officials. The awards were not made; silver medals were substituted, which Captain Forbes and his officers, learning of the Board's action, did not accept. On a later occasion the same unsympathetic influence was exercised; the Russian Order of St. Stanislaus was withdrawn and replaced by a gold watch and chain!