“And so you want to go to sea, do you, how old are you?”
“I am turned fourteen, Captain, I would rather go to sea than anything else, would you tell me how to get a berth as apprentice?”
“I can tell you something about the life of an apprentice, my boy, and when I’ve done I think you’ll give up that notion. Your mother in her letter says you will have to depend on yourself, and a good job too, and the sooner you are able to do this the better for both of you. Most of the good firms, whose vessels sail out of Liverpool and London require a premium with a boy—generally speaking it amounts to fifty pounds, and this is paid back in wages during the four or five years’ apprenticeship. Half the boy’s time is spent in dancing attendance on the master and mates, doing the meanest work on the ship, that is if any work can be called mean, cleaning brasses, etc., and when his time expires often he is unable to put two ends of a rope together in a seamanlike manner.”
At this my heart sank, but the Captain went on:
“You must go in a small ship as an ordinary seaman where every man and boy has to do his share of the work, and then you will soon learn your business, and make a man of yourself. The premiums that are charged for boys are a fraud imposed on the parents, and a gross injustice for which there is no excuse.”
After a few puffs he resumed—“If anyone speaks to the ship-owner about it, he replies, ‘Oh, he cannot earn his keep the first two years.’ But that’s not true. They pay nothing for that boy, but if he were not on board they would require another boy or man, and the owners would have to pay port wages, so you see the fact of his being on board making up the complement of the crew is a gain to the owner.”
“Another thing—the Board of Trade stipulate that a ship shall carry a certain number of hands, but they do not say they must all be sailors, neither do they specify their ages. Many a good ship has been lost through having too many boys and too few men on board her. On these big ships the seamen get all the real good sailor work to do, such as knotting, splicing, strapping blocks, etc., and the dirty work falls to the lot of the apprentices. The officers often, finding so few seamen and so many duffers on board, vent their spleen on the boys, forgetting that it is the owners’ and not the boys’ fault.” Captain Watson grew warm on his subject, and it was pretty plain that he had suffered as an apprentice in his younger days.
“I know a ship,” he continued, “a four-masted vessel that carries nearly six thousand tons of cargo, a beautiful ship, heavily rigged, which goes to sea with a crew all told of thirty-eight hands. A fairly good number anyone would think! Yes, but notice how they are made up”—here he ran them off his fingers—“Captain, two mates, carpenter, sailmaker, boatswain, steward, cook, sixteen able seamen, and fourteen apprentices. The first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh sleep in all night in ordinary times and weather, thus leaving one officer, eight able seamen and seven apprentices to work the ship at night. Ah, it’s shameful! But you meet me at noon at the ‘Mercantile Marine Rooms,’ and I will see if I can get you a berth from some of my old shipmates.”
While Captain Watson had been talking, my eyes had been roaming round the room. It was a wonderful room, more like a museum than a living room. Catching sight of my wandering eyes he laughed a big hearty breezy laugh. “Ah, my boy,” he said, “these are some of the things you’ll see in other lands. See that ship,” he said, pointing to a picture of a full rigged ship in a seaway, “that was the first ship I was master of, she was called the ‘North Star’ of Liverpool, a better ship never sailed. These boxes of shells hanging on the wall came home in her from the West Indies, the boxes of red and white coral are from the East Indies, now look here, this is a case of flying fish, and what people call sea horses; the flying fish came aboard, but the sea horses were caught by one of the apprentices by hanging a piece of teased out rope over the side, and the little things get caught in it, they don’t live many minutes when they are taken out of the water as the air kills them. Now this is a queer weapon,” he said, pointing to what looked like a bone sword, “it’s the sword of a fish called by that name, and was taken out of a whale that had been killed by that swordfish and a thrasher, two sworn foes of the whale, and in the tussle the sword had been broken off and left in the whale’s carcass, that was in the tropics. That is a shark’s jaw on that black velvet mount, look at his teeth, no work there for a dentist, he likes to sharpen them on the good fat leg of a cow or pig, or a sailor who tumbles overboard through not looking out where he can hold on in safety to the rigging. These Indian spears, clubs, and bow came from Brazil, and this boomerang from Australia. It is a deadly weapon in the hands of a native, and I have seen one thrown in such a manner that it returned to the hand of the one who threw it. These cedarwood boxes and inlaid trays and little cabinet came from China and Japan, so you see my lad what you can expect when you go to sea and have learnt your business. I always made it a rule to bring some little thing from every foreign port I went to, and as my wages grew so did my curiosities. There is one other thing I want to show you, it is in the garden, it is the figurehead of another old vessel I was in, ‘The Maori Chief,’ a fine figurehead for as fine a ship as ever sailed on salt water.”
“And now my lad,” he said, when I had duly admired everything, both in that wonderful room and in the garden, “give my respects to your good mother, and tell her I will do my best to get you a ship, and after that it rests with yourself.”