High freights and high cost of new ships.
The probability of a great increase in American and neutral shipping.
We cannot leave the subject without indicating that everything may be greatly changed by the attitude of labour. If the present “ca-canny” and “down tool” policies are to continue it is difficult to see how we can recover our prosperity. Labour will have to realise that it has its value, and that the receipt of wages carries with it the obligation to give an honest day’s work. And equally employers will have to recognise that labour must have a fuller share of the fruits of their labour and better conditions of life. Strikes will not settle these matters; they only serve to intensify distrust and ill-feeling. We must hope that our men returning from the front will have a wider outlook and altered views of life, and that employers will also generously recognise the changed conditions. We trust also that the Whitley report may be quickly followed by the establishment of Industrial Councils, and that these Councils will be able to promote confidence and good feeling and remove the friction and distrust which has too long existed between capital and labour. Meanwhile a propaganda might be started to instruct our people in those elementary principles of economic science which govern their labour, and about which so much ignorance unhappily prevails.
Chapter VII
THE “RED JACKET”
A Reminiscence of 1857
We are justly proud of the development of our steamships—their size, speed, and magnificent equipment—and we are apt to forget that this has always been characteristic of British shipping. In the old sailing-ship days, about 1850-1860, a walk round the Prince’s Dock, crowded with clipper ships, was something to fill an Englishman with pride. The beautiful symmetry of the hull, the graceful sweep of the sheer fore and aft, the tautness of the spars, the smartness of the gear and equipment attracted the eye; but, perhaps, above all, the romance of the sea attached itself to the sailing-ship and appealed to the imagination in a way which does not gather round a steamer, however large and magnificent. We realised that the sailing-ship had to do battle with wind and waves in far distant seas single-handed, relying entirely upon her sails and equipment and the skill of her crew; whereas a steamer tells us at once of her unseen power which makes her independent of winds and weather, and enables her to make her voyages with almost the regularity of the railway train. All this, the achievement of the steam engine and the development of the screw propeller, is very splendid to think upon, but the old romance of the sea has gone.
The inspiring and wonderful sight of the Liverpool docks, a forest of the masts of English and American clippers; the river Mersey at high water, alive with splendid sailing vessels leaving or entering our docks, and at anchor in a line extending from the Sloyne to New Brighton, or towing out to sea, or may be sailing in from sea under their own canvas—all was activity and full of life and motion. I remember seeing one of Brocklebank’s ships—the “Martaban,” of 600 tons—sailing into the George’s Dock Basin under full canvas; her halliards were let go, and sails were clewed up so smartly that the ship as she passed the Pierhead was able to throw a line on shore and make fast. It is difficult in these days to realise such a thing being possible. It was skill supported by discipline.
When I was young I was a keen yachtsman, and had the good fortune to make a voyage to Australia in one of the most famous of our clipper ships, the “Red Jacket.” Some account of the first few days of my voyage may be of interest, and bring into contrast the ease and luxury enjoyed on board an Atlantic liner, with the hard life on board a first-class clipper ship. It is not too much to say that on board an Atlantic liner the weather does not count; on board an old sailing-ship the weather meant everything.
