“Mrs. R——s, H——n Place, told me her young brother was an orphan with herself. She said her sister brought him up till she was married. Then her husband was kind to him, and apprenticed him to the sea. He had passed as second mate in a sailing ship, but (he was a fine young fellow—I have his portrait) he was ambitious to ‘pass in steam’ also, and engaged to serve in the S—— ship, leaking badly, but was assured on signing that she was to be repaired before loading. The ship was not repaired, and was loaded, as he told his sister-mother, ‘like a sand-barge.’ Was urged by his sister and her husband not to go. His sister again urged him as he passed her door in the morning. He promised he would not, and went to the ship to get the wages due to him. Was refused payment unless he went, was over-persuaded and threatened, and called a coward, which greatly excited him. He went, and two days afterwards the ship went down. Her husband and Mrs. R——s also told me that he and his wife ‘had a bit crack,’ and decided to do all they could to ‘persuade Johnnie not to go.’ The young man was about twenty-two.
“Mr. J—— H——l told me that the captain was his friend, and the captain was very down-hearted about the way in which she was loaded (mind, she was loaded under the owner’s personal supervision). The captain asked him (Mr. A——) to see his wife off by train after the ship had sailed. She, poor soul, had travelled to that port to see him off. The captain said to him, ‘I doubt I’ll never see her more!’ and burst out crying. Poor fellow, he never did see her more.
“Now come with me to 36, C——, and see Mrs. J——e R——e. She is a young woman of superior intelligence, and has a trustable face—very. She may be about seven-and-twenty. She lost her husband in the same ship. He was thirty years of age, and, to use her own words, ‘such a happy creature; so full of jokes.’ He was engaged as second engineer, at £4 10s. and board. ‘After his ship was loaded he was a changed man; he got his tea without saying a word, and then sat looking into the fire in a deep study, like. I asked him what ailed him, and he said, more to himself than to me, “She’s such a beast!” I thought he meant the men’s place was dirty, as he had complained before that there was no place to wash. He liked to be clean, my husband, and always had a good wash when he came home from the workshop, when he worked ashore. So I said, “Will you let me come on board to clean it out for you?” And he said, still looking at the fire, “It ain’t that.” Well, he hadn’t signed, only agreed, so I said, “Don’t sign, Jim,” and he said he wouldn’t, and went and told the engineer he shouldn’t go. The engineer “spoke so kindly to him,” and offered him 10s. a month more. He had had no work for a long time, and the money was tempting,’ she said, ‘and so he signed. When he told me I said, “You won’t go, Jim, will you?” He said, “Why, Minnie, they will put me in gaol if I don’t go.” I said, “Never mind, you can come home after that.” “But,” said he, “they called me a coward, and you would not like to hear me called that.” ’
“The poor woman was crying very bitterly, so I said gently, ‘I hope you won’t think I am asking all these questions from idle curiosity;’ and I shall never forget her quick disclaimer, for she saw that I was troubled with her: ‘Oh no, sir; I am glad to answer you, for so many homes might be kept from being desolate if it was only looked into.’
“I ascertained that she is ‘getting a bit winning for a livelihood,’ as my informant phrased it, by sewing for a ready-made clothes-shopkeeper. She was in a small garret with a sloping roof and the most modest fireplace I ever saw; just three bits of iron laid from side to side of an opening in the brickwork, and two more up the front; no chimney-piece, or jambs, or stone across the top, but just the bricks laid nearer and nearer until the courses united. So I don’t fancy she could be earning much. But with the very least money value in the place, it was as beautifully clean as I ever saw a room in my life.
“I also saw a poor woman, who had lost her son aged twenty-two. She too cried bitterly, as she spoke with such love and pride of her son, and of the grief of his father, who was sixty years of age. Her son was taken on as a stoker, and worked on the ship some days before she was ready for sea. He did not want to go when he saw how she was loaded. She looked like a floating wreck, but they refused to pay him the money he had earned unless he went, and he too was lost with the others.
“Just one more specimen of the good, true, and brave men we sacrifice by our most cruel and manslaughtering neglect. This time I went and called upon an old man I knew, and, after apologising for intruding upon his grief, I asked him to tell me if he had any objection to tell me if his son had had any misgiving about the ship before he went. He said, ‘Yes, I went to see the ship myself, and was horrified to see the way in which she was loaded. I tried all I could to persuade him not to go, but he’d been doing nothing for a long time, and he didn’t like being a burden on me. He’d a fine sperret, he had, my son,’ said the poor old man.
“Here a young woman I had not observed (she was in a corner with her face to the wall) broke out into loud sobs and said, ‘He was the best of us all, sir—the best of the whole family. He was as fair as a flower, and vah-y canny-looking.’ ”
But it is not merely rotten hulks which may become coffin-ships: many superior vessels are woefully deficient in accommodation for the sailor’s comfort. He may, and often does, wade to his bunk through water, and the forecastle is too often a miserable hole, full of dirt and filth, where the men are packed like herrings. The food provided is principally “salt horse” and “hard bread,” i.e., sailor’s biscuit of the most inferior description; and when scurvy ensues, as a natural consequence of exposure to damp and cold, with poor living superadded, the very lime-juice, which is nearly worthless if not pure, is found to be a miserable imitation or grossly adulterated with citric acid, which, strange as it may appear, has no anti-scorbutic properties. In the Russian and French mercantile marines there is little or no scurvy, in consequence of the pretty general use of common sour wine, which in some degree makes up for the lack of fresh vegetables. And in French mercantile ships the sailor may at any time demand the same rations as [pg 120]those served out in the navy of the Republic. Owing to the carefully prepared dietary of our Royal Navy, scurvy has entirely disappeared, except in extreme cases of exposure and lack of precaution, as in the late Arctic Expedition.[36]
“In the West India Docks, which contain vessels trading to the West Indies, I observed a very different class of ships. Some are large and well supplied with provisions, but the majority are small, with wretched accommodation, badly manned, provisions indifferent in quality and deficient in quantity. Even in the larger vessels there is not that care taken of the men, and that amount of attention paid to their quarters and to the nature of their provisions, as in the ships belonging to the owners engaged in the East Indian and China trade. Captain Henry Toynbee strongly advocates the better ventilation and comfort of the forecastles, which he thinks should be under the control of Government. He has himself seen forecastles and seamen’s chests in first-class ships black from the gas which rises from the cargo, and which smells like sewage, which is especially the case in sugar ships. Captain Toynbee informed me a day or two since that he had actually seen a place containing two packs of foxhounds and three horses, which received half its ventilation by a hatch which opened into the sailors’ forecastle!...