Scarcely one of the North Sea converts has turned out badly, for they usually have the stern stuff of good men in them; they have that manly and passionate gratitude which only the true and honest professor, free from taint of humbug or hypocrisy, can maintain, and I say deliberately that every man of them who is brought to lead a pure, sober, religious life, represents a distinct gain to our best national wealth—a wealth that is far above money.
I know that my dream may be translated into fact, for have we not the early success of the superb hospital smack to reassure us? Let us go a little farther and complete the work; let us make sure that no poor, maimed seaman shall be without a chance of speedy relief when his hard fate overtakes him on that savage North Sea. The fishers are the forlorn hope in the great Army of Labour; they risk life and limb every day—every moment—in our behoof; surely the luckier children of civilization may remember their hardly entreated brethren? No sentiment is needed in the business, and gush of any sort is altogether hateful. God forbid that I should hinder, those who feel led to aid the members of an unknown tribe in a dark continent, for in so doing I should be contravening the Divine injunction to evangelize all nations: but, on the other hand, I will discharge myself of what has lain as a burden on my conscience ever since I first visited the smacksmen; I will cry aloud for help to our own kith and kin, more, more HELP than has ever yet been given to them!
These men are splendid specimens of English manhood; their country is not far away; you can visit it for yourself and see what human nerve and sinew can endure, and if you do you will return, as I did, filled with a sense of shame that you had spent so many years in ignorance of your indebtedness to the fine fellows in whose behalf my tale is written. I am as grateful as our brave souls on the sea for all that has been done, but I incontinently ask for more, and I entreat those to whom money is as nothing to give the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen its hospital ship, for every fleet that scours the trawling grounds, but especially a fast or steam cruiser—a Robert Cassall—so that the wounded fisherman, in the hour of his need and his utter helplessness, may be as sure of relief as are the Wapping labourer or the Mortlake bargeman.
JAMES RUNCIMAN.
APPENDIX B.
Mission to Deep Sea fishermen.
Instituted in August, 1881.
The Mission was designed, in humble dependence upon the blessing of Almighty God,—