Between British seamen anxious to leave the sea and captains eager to ship Dutchmen, the miserable remnant of our countrymen manning “deep-water” ships steadily dwindles. Those that remain are mostly like Sterne’s starling, or else they are hopeful youngsters who, having served their time in some singly-owned hooker, and passed for second mate, sail before the mast in hope of picking up a berth abroad. They cannot live at home in idleness wearing away the dock roads looking for berths which are all filled up by those possessing influence of some kind with the owners, so they put in their time as A.B.s and live in hope. This, however, is not all. Not content with supplying our forecastles, the Dutchmen kindly furnish us with officers as well. I have been before the mast in a ship, the Orpheus of Greenock, where the chief mate was a Liverpool man, who, with a Welsh A.B. and myself, represented the entire British element on board. Her crew numbered twenty-four all told. Doubtless I shall hear that this was a marvellously exceptional case, but I beg to differ—it is all too common.
The “Boy”
Another curious feature of the manning of our ships is especially noticed by the Registrar-General—the way in which young British seamen leave the sea-life at the earliest opportunity. His unemotional remark, that “as ‘sailors’ do not ordinarily enter the sea-service after they are twenty-five years of age, this falling off in the number of its young British sailors affects the source of supply of our future petty officers and able seamen,” is full of the gravest warning, which has, however, apparently passed unheeded. Out of the various training ships[3] there pass every year a very large number of lads into the mercantile marine, who have received at least an insight into the conditions of a sailor’s life as it should be. They are taught habits of obedience, cleanliness, and regularity, and in some cases have actual acquaintance with the working of small vessels under way. When they are considered to be fairly competent to do all that is likely to be required of them, they are taken in hand by an official whose duty it is to find ships for them. In due time they sign as “boys,” generally in sailing ships, and away they go to sea. To their utter amazement they find the life has scarcely anything in common with that which they have been used to. In the first place, they miss most painfully the abundance of good plain food. Then they have been used to cleanliness of the strictest kind, both in body and clothes. Now they are fortunate if they can obtain the eighth share of a bucket of fresh water once a week, unless rain falls. Their duties have been regular, their periods of rest unbroken; now they have as many masters as there are hands on board, and they never know what to do next. They have been under a regular system of tuition; now, if they learn anything, it is because they are determined to do so in spite of difficulties which are only to be overcome by such indomitable perseverance as one can hardly expect from a boy. And lastly, they are thrown into the intimate society of a group of men who, generally speaking, have but one topic of conversation, one mode of speech—the worst possible. They are continually being told that nobody but a fool goes to sea, that it is the life of a convict, with worse food and lodging, and that they had better sweep a crossing ashore. Consequently they are ever on the look-out for a way of escape, and the great majority succeed in finding one before very long.
[3] This does not apply to cadet ships, such as the Worcester and Conway.
The Naval Reserve
This brings me to a most important part of the subject, the question of merchant seamen as a reserve for the Navy. There can be no doubt that the institution of the Royal Naval Reserve was a grand idea, but there are grave doubts as to the way in which it is being carried out. As far as its officers are concerned, its success can hardly be disputed, though there may be more truth than is palatable in the assertion that Naval officers look down with much contempt upon the gallant merchantmen who become R.N.R. lieutenants. Whether that be so or not, I am sure that Naval officers would be the first to recognise the value of R.N.R lieutenants if ever their services were needed, and any lingering feeling of superiority would soon give place to admiration. But the men, the rank and file, who are each paid a substantial retaining fee yearly, besides a guinea a week for six weeks’ annual drill? I speak under correction as trenching upon a matter with which I have had small acquaintance, but I believe that drill is usually put in on board of an ancient hulk, with obsolete weapons, and that very few of the men have any acquaintance whatever with the actual conditions of service on board a sea-going vessel of war. If I am right in this contention, then this most valuable body of men are running to waste, and would be no more fit to take their places on board a man-o’-war than they would be to start cabinet-making. And if this be so in the case of Royal Naval Reserve men, what can be said of those outside that experimental force? Except that he would be hardly likely to get seasick, the merchant seaman suddenly transferred to (let us say) a first-class battleship would feel as much out of his element as any landsman, more so than an engine-fitter or a man accustomed to some of our big machine-shops. To use the same words, but in a very different sense, that I used about the tramp-steamer crews, a man-of-warsman (blue-jacket) is not a sailor at all now. He is a marine artilleryman with a fine knowledge of boat handling, but a spanner is fitter for his fist than a marlinspike. He lives in the heart of a bewildering complication of engineering contrivances, to which the mazy web of a sailing-ship’s top hamper is as simple as a child’s box of bricks. He is accustomed to the manipulation of masses of metal so huge as to excite the awe-stricken wonder of the ordinary citizen who is not an engineer. And familiarity with packages of death-dealing explosives renders him as contemptuously indifferent to their potentialities of destruction as if they were sand or sawdust. And, most important of all, long and rigid training has made him one of the smartest men in the world, able to act at the word of command like a pinion in a machine, at the right moment, in the right way, yet with that intelligence no machine can ever possess.
The Intelligent Foreigner
Talk about the average merchant seamen filling up gaps in the ranks of men like these is almost too much for one’s patience on the part of those whose business it is to know; it is criminal stupidity. Now in France every merchant seaman must perforce spend a large proportion of his time in the Navy, so that their reserve is always available. And that is one reason why France strives so eagerly to foster her Mercantile Marine even at such crushing cost to her long-suffering taxpayers. In the event of war with us, however, she would be in a far different position, because she could exist without a merchant ship at sea, and all their crews would be ready for service in the Navy. What should we do? Even supposing that all our merchant seamen were capable of taking their places on board of men-of-war if called upon, who would man the fleets of food-carriers? Accepting as rigidly correct the proportions shown by the official document already quoted, the percentage of foreign seamen in all foreign-going vessels was two years ago 35.5, and admittedly increasing rapidly. Would it be wise to withdraw from the merchant ships the stiffening of British subjects they now carry and replace them by aliens? I firmly believe that the danger limit has long been passed in the exclusively cargo-carrying trades, which, after all, are our very backbone. What this great army of aliens will do in the event of our going to war with one or two European Powers is a problem of undeniable gravity. But given a fine ship with a valuable cargo, with officers and crew nearly all German, what might they reasonably be expected to do? Failing an answer, I submit that the temptation to transfer the ship to their own flag would be very great. And it is a needless risk. Let it be granted that the alien officer or skipper is a good man, better educated most likely, a good seaman, and that he is cheap. All these qualities except the educational one (which is, after all, not so important to our officers as it is to the foreigner) our officers possess in just as great measure, while as for the price—well, I have seen half-a-dozen chief mates tumbling over one another for the chance of shipping in a 1200-ton Baltic tramp steamer at £5 : 10s. a month. They could not be much cheaper than that, unless they got the same wages as the crew. And I know of English skippers of sea-going steamers out of London who are getting £10 a month. Poor men, they are cheap enough!
To sum up as briefly as possible all the foregoing remarks: It seems clear to me, as it has done to all intelligent seamen that I have ever met, that very little legislation is needed to make the British Mercantile Marine popular again among our own countrymen. Legislation has hitherto done little for the sailor, while it has exasperated the shipowner, already handicapped as none of his foreign rivals have ever been. The Mercantile Marine should more nearly approximate to the Navy in many of its details, which need not entail extra expense or annoyance to the shipowner. It should be made possible for a shipmaster to ensure better discipline, but he should be able to give his men better food and better housing. The Board of Trade scale of provisions is a hateful abomination; it ought to be blotted out and a sensible dietary substituted, which need not exceed it in cost, while it would act like a charm upon seamen, for whom it has an importance undreamed of by those ashore, who even on the slenderest incomes can fare every day in a manner luxurious by comparison with our sailors. More attention should be paid to the men’s quarters. Here, again, expenses need not be raised; a little attention to detail in drawing up specifications would make a vast difference. And none but a naturalised British subject should be permitted to sign articles in a British ship. This plan is pursued with advantage in American vessels, which, like our own, carry an enormous percentage of foreigners of all nations. Of undermanning I need say nothing more, because the question is being dealt with, and will, I earnestly hope, be settled with as much satisfaction to everybody concerned as the splendid “Midge” scheme, the only piece of marine legislation that I can remember that has been completely successful. Unfortunately, under present conditions it is responsible for the still further depletion of our Mercantile Marine of British seamen, since numbers of them by its beneficent operations reach their homes with their hard-earned pay intact. This enables them to look about for a job ashore where they are known, whereas under the bad old conditions they would have been in a few days again “outward bound with a stocking round their necks,” as Jack tersely sums up the situation of a man who has squandered all his money, been robbed of, or has sold, all his clothes, and is off to sea again in the first craft that he can get, going he neither knows nor cares whither.