But such a Reserve would require the whole-hearted support of the Admiralty, not hardly-veiled enmity. Every seafaring man, with the best interest of his country at heart, knows full well how pitifully the grand opportunity afforded by the institution of the Royal Naval Reserve has been allowed to go to waste. Perhaps some day, before it is too late, the history of the Royal Naval Reserve will be written with inside knowledge of all the facts, and an amazing document it would make, though not more amazing than many similar documents dealing with the non-understandable ways of the great departments who spend the country's money.
Theoretically the Royal Naval Reserve should be a success. As far as the obtaining of officers is considered there is little doubt that it is a success, even though Merchant officers who seek to pass into the Navy viâ the Royal Naval Reserve are known by the invidious sobriquet of "the hungry half-hundred." Great shipping companies make it known that they wish their officers to belong to the Reserve, and straightway the thing is done. There is no compulsion, the suggestion is sufficient, and the retaining fee, being quite a nice little sum per annum, is also an inducement. But the numbers of the seamen in the Royal Naval Reserve do not increase. Why? There is a retaining fee of £6 per annum; there is also a guinea a week pay during drill, of which every member is supposed to put in six weeks a year. Seeing what sailors are, one would have thought that such a bait would have allured them in large numbers. And yet there is only about one-quarter of the number there should be. It is to be hoped most devoutly that, in the present agitation about the Navy and its various shortcomings, this will not be forgotten, and that it will be fully recognized that the only possible source of supply for the Navy in case of war is the Mercantile Marine.
To secure such a supply, it is imperative that the A.B. shall be looked after, made to feel that he is a man of some importance to the state, and that the good men shall not be handicapped by the wastrel; that a man shall earn the title of A.B. before he is permitted to take it, and that every man shipping as an A.B. who has no qualifications for that honourable post shall suffer for his misdeeds, his fraudulent burdening of his shipmates with work that he is unable to perform. Then I believe that we should get in the Merchant Service a good class of seamen, men who would not say that the sea was a life fit only for dogs. Under proper conditions, such as may even now be found, that statement is a libel. Speaking for myself, I can say with perfect candour that I have been as happy in ships before the mast as any workman could hope to be ashore. Where there is a good crew of men who know their work and will do it, decent food of good quality, and experienced officers, a sailor before the mast may, and does, have a very good time—infinitely better than any journeyman ashore, with all the worries attendant upon loss of employment, rent, strikes, etc. Only get the sailor to see that his business is a business that requires a trained man to make any hand at it, that the door into it is closed against the dock-walloper and the loafer, and that the same consideration that is meted out to mechanics ashore is accorded to him, and I am sure there would be a steady increase in the number of British seamen in British Merchant ships: aided, of course, by the institution of such a feeder as the non-premium apprenticeship I have already spoken about would be.
I am quite sure that British seamen are to be got and kept, if the powers that be will only go the right way to work, remembering that what is wanted is not so much fresh legislation as a little more use of the legislation already existing. Ship-owners are not anxious to carry foreign seamen, except, perhaps, in eastern trades, where lascars and Chinese come in handy. And even in those ships there will usually be found a stiffening of most excellent white seamen, who are usually British. No; the only question for the average ship-owner is, "How, in the face of the fierce and unscrupulous competition against which I have to fight, can I get my ships efficiently manned?" He wants men to earn their pay, pay which is higher than that of any other country, except America and Australia, and he does not at all concern himself about the nationality of those men. He leaves them, very properly, to those who will have to command them; but if masters of ships are made to believe that, no matter how good the pay and provisions given, they can never rely upon getting, in the first place, sailor-men of their own race at all, and, in the second, men of their own nationality who will work cheerfully for their pay without a constant succession of worrying rows, it must not be wondered at if they prefer the foreigner, who comes already broken in, trained in seamanship, polite, and hard-working, no matter where he hails from.
In bidding farewell to the A.B., I again earnestly express my full sympathy for and with him, and trust that ere long I shall have the joy of seeing A.B.'s of my own race again increasing in the British Merchant Service.
THE O.S. (ORDINARY SEAMAN).
In the days when the A.B. was properly considered to be a man who had learned his trade, and would have been ashamed to ship as an A.B. unless he were fully capable of doing any job of sailorizing that was given him, the O.S. was quite an institution. He was a young seaman who had been through a time of considerable tribulation as a ship-boy; but, having grown bigger and stronger, able to take his trick at the wheel, and make himself felt in furling sails, he ventured to take a step up the ladder. There was no specified manner in which this was to be done. With that haphazard disregard of the seamen's best interests which has characterized our Mercantile Marine for many generations, it was left to chance. One would have thought that a recognized method would have been for a boy to present himself before certain properly constituted authorities for an examination into his qualifications, and that, having satisfied them that he was able to do all that an ordinary seaman should be capable of, they would grant him a certificate to that effect.