Seamanship, being an art, can be acquired only by practice, and seamen being formerly an all-but-unlettered class, jealous of their calling, wrote no textbooks of their art until Captain John Smith, the famous old adventurer in Virginia, and Sir Henry Mainwayring, of the Elizabethan navy, wrote their treatises on the subject in the early part of the 17th Century. It is difficult, therefore, to say with any degree of certainty just what were the general practices of seamen of earlier times.
Because of this lack of definite information concerning ancient seamanship, I shall discuss the art only in its more modern aspects. It is interesting to mention again, however, what I have mentioned elsewhere, that the ancients were coasters rather than deep-sea sailors, who, until Columbus’s time, were unaccustomed to making long voyages out of sight of land save here and there, as, for instance, between Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea, and India. On such a route they came and went with the monsoons, which blow alternately at different seasons of the year from and to the Indian coast. But, aside from such exceptions, the ancients, able seamen though they may sometimes have been, seldom sailed far out of sight of land. In ancient times a sailor, it would seem, was anxious to stay near shore, for then he could readily follow his route, indirect though that might be. To-day the sailor is more at ease if he is well away from land, for the perils of the deep sea are trifling by comparison with the perils of the coast. Storms at sea can usually be ridden out without danger. Storms that blow as ships approach the shore are cause for apprehension. The ancient sailor kept his eyes open for heavy weather and if he saw it coming he made straightway for the beach, and, if possible, pulled his little ship high and dry until it had passed. The sailor of to-day, too, keeps his eyes open for storms, but if they come he would rather be safely far out at sea than near the coast, unless he could ride it out in some safe harbour. These differences between the ancient and the modern seaman are due to the increase in the size and seaworthiness of ships, and to the universal use nowadays of the compass, an instrument unknown to the ancients. Nowadays, too, steam has changed things, for ships that carry, in their hulls, powerful engines capable of successfully combating the wind need fear that danger of the sea far less.
A PAGE OF KNOTS IN COMMON USE
Many books on seamanship have been written since Captain John Smith and Sir Henry Mainwayring published theirs. “Modern Seamanship,” by Admiral Austin M. Knight, U. S. N., is a deservedly popular work, even though it is largely given over to the art in its connection with ships of war. The fact, too, that it contains 250,000 or more words shows how great the subject is, and how superficial my brief discussion must be.
The first duty of a sailor is to be familiar with his ship and the apparatus he is called upon to use. In the days of the clippers every sailor had to know how to perform almost every task. Many ships of that time carried cooks, sailmakers, and carpenters, it is true, and the duties of these men were for them alone. But every sailor was likely to be called upon to reef or steer, to handle an oar in a small boat, to splice lines and tie knots of all sorts, to re-rig spars and masts, man the pumps, paint, scrub, scrape woodwork, and perform a thousand other tasks with precision and rapidity. He had sometimes to “lay aloft” and in the blackness of bitter wintry nights to find his way along the foot-rope of a swaying spar far above the deck in order to reef sleet-covered sails that whipped repeatedly from his stiffening fingers. He had to know each of a thousand lines by name so as to belay or release the right one at a moment’s notice, even in the blackness of a night of storm. He had sometimes to make his way far out along the bowsprit to the jib boom or the flying jib boom in order to release some tangle of wind-whipped line, and to hold on for dear life as mountainous seas dashed their angry foam-flecked crests viciously at him as he maintained his precarious hold. He had to know what strain the whistling rigging could hold up under, and how to repair the damage wrought by storm. He had to beach his ship in far-distant ports and between the tides to scrape her bottom and calk her leaking seams. He had to know his ship from bow to stern, from truck to keel, and must ever have been ready to turn his hand to whatever task might momentarily have required him. It is no wonder that it took years to make a sailor. The wonder is that men were found to risk their lives in storm, to eat the disgusting food that such ships too often fed their crews, to toil for months—for years—for trifling pay, beaten by their officers for minor as well as major breaches of discipline, yet willing, once a voyage was done, to spend their little savings in one wild fling and ship once more.
But most of that is gone. Sailors on the steamships that circle the earth to-day are mechanics and workmen. The man at the wheel can be taught his job passably well in a few hours. The men on deck are often not sailors at all, in the old meaning of the word, but merely labourers, who work at their appointed tasks under the direction of the officers, many of whom would be all but helpless if called upon to handle a square-rigged ship under sail.
BEARINGS AND POINTS OF SAILING
But that is no reflection on the sailors of to-day. Their jobs are different and the wide experience and knowledge of the sailor of earlier days would benefit them little. Of what use is the ability to reef a sail to a sailor on a ship where there is nothing made of canvas save tarpaulins and awnings? Why know the intricacies of a sailing ship’s complicated rigging when one comes in contact only with ships on which the rigging is limited to steel masts and cargo booms? Why should one develop an eye for changes in the weather when a barometer can foretell it for one? Some of the old ways still leave their mark, but mechanics are of more service on the ships of to-day than sailors.