The incident I have just related took place in the month of December, so it will be easily understood that the pilot’s voluntary bath was not a very warm one. Do our Victorian pilots go so far in search of ships, and do they ever board them in the Cork fashion? I trow not. The two systems of pilotage are very different. Here, pilotage is compulsory; that is, the ship must pay for a pilot whether she takes one or not. There, if you don’t take a pilot, you are not required to pay for one. I may be wrong, but I often think that if the Cork system were in vogue here, our pilots would go further to sea in search of ships, and as a natural sequence there would be fewer wrecks strewn along our coast. When I use the term “Cork system,” I refer solely to the voluntary plan and the practice of going over a wider radius in search of ships. The jumping overboard process I don’t advocate, although emergencies may rise sometimes to make even that necessary.
Turning back to the opinions given at the trial, I cannot help taking notice of what Pilot Schutt said in answer to the question as to whether the water getting into the saloon had taken the Alert down stern first? His reply was, “I say no. Supposing forty tons of water were in the saloon, I don’t see that it would take her down, owing to her watertight compartments.” If the saloon had been in the forepart of the Alert, Mr. Schutt’s opinion would have been a correct one. Forty tons of anything in the other end of the ship would have made a wonderful difference, for the ship would have been more on an even keel, and would have had a better hold of the water with her forefoot. But forty tons placed in the stern of a small vessel, already overladen aft, would certainly sink her even if there were no other causes.
Another witness gave it as his opinion that “beam ends was almost an impossibility. He could not imagine a ship in such a position.” This is simply a landsman’s way of putting it because he gets it into his head that a ship has to be over to an angle of 90 degrees before she is beam ended. Seamen, however, think and say that a ship is on her beam ends when she lies down on her side till her deck assumes an angle of 45 or 50 degrees, and certainly that position is “beam ends” enough to satisfy the most fastidious man on board. When a ship is in the position I have described, it is much more easy to crawl about on the outside of the weather bulwarks, than to crawl about the ship’s deck.
By way of giving a clearer idea of “beam ends,” I may here relate a bit of my own experience. On one occasion I was in a splendid ship called the Mary Ellen, bound from the Clyde to Demerara. By the time we had been a week at sea, we were about 100 miles outside of Cape Clear, on the Irish Coast, and then got caught in a very heavy gale of head wind. For three days we lay hove to under the close reefed main topsail—a position in which some ships will ride comparatively dry, and skim the waves like a seagull—but for some reason or other our ship made what in nautical parlance is termed “very bad weather of it.” Strange as it may seem to landsmen, it is nevertheless true that ships are like men; you have to be acquainted with them for a considerable time, under all sorts of circumstances, before you get to know their good qualities and their bad ones. Experience alone can make you familiar with their little tricks, or ways, and then you are in a position to deal with them accordingly.
The Mary Ellen was a new ship, on her first voyage, and seeing that she was behaving badly, the captain, after consultation with his officers, determined to try if the ship would ride easier under the lee clew of the main topsail, or “goose wing” as it is sometimes called. When everything was ready to execute the movement, I ran aloft to the maintop, in order to see and keep all the necessary gear running clear. However, before the weather sheet was half hauled up, the ship fell off until she was beam on to the sea and wind. The skipper at once called out, “Get that sheet home again as soon as you can, but meantime look out, men, and hold on for your lives.” On glancing up to windward, I saw a tremendous sea coming down broad on the ship’s beam, its angry looking crest seemed on a level with where I stood in the main top. Along it came, and struck the ship with such force that she heeled clean over, so much so that as I looked down I saw nothing underneath me out of the water except the ship’s weather topside from the bilge to the top-gallant rail. She was literally buried under water, the weight of which caused her to tremble so, that I felt the very mast I was on shiver like a leaf. My first thought was that the ship would never rise, then, as I saw she was making an effort to get up and free herself, it flashed across my mind that if she ever came to the surface again, I would be the only soul left on board! Slowly the good ship began to uprighten, and as she did so I saw here and there beneath me, heads, legs and arms of my shipmates darting out of the water like fish when they are plentiful in a pond.
As soon as she rose we placed a tarpaulin in the mizzen rigging, sheeted the topsail home again, and got the ship up to the wind once more. If another such sea had come along before we got things put right, it would have been a case with the ship and all of us. As it was two men were swept overboard; the lee bulwarks were gone from the poop to the cathead; boats, galley, and almost everything about the decks had disappeared as if they never had been! Two days afterward the gale eased off, and we ran back to Queenstown, discharged the cargo, and docked the ship for repairs before starting again on our voyage.
In order to show the enormous loss of life amongst seamen in comparison with other trades, or callings, Mr. J. H. Wilson, a member of the House of Commons, has compiled a table from statistics contained in the “Report on the work of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade” and issued on November 28, 1894.
Mr. Wilson’s table embraces a period of ten years, 1883-4 to 1893-4, and is as follows:—
| Industries | Number Employed | Ten years loss | Annual Average |
| of Life | Loss of Life | ||
| Factory and Workshop Operatives | 5,270,835 | 4,047 | 405 |
| Railway Servants | 381,626 | 4,717 | 472 |
| Miners | 718,747 | 10,333 | 1,033 |
| Seamen | 188,391 | 21,241 | 2,172 |
Further, Mr. Wilson estimates that one seventh of the lives lost amongst seamen is due to causes which could not easily be prevented, and that the remainder—18,206 for ten years, or 1862 annually—are lost through preventable causes such as under-manning, incompetent seamen, insufficient stability, want of proper shifting boards, over insurance, reckless navigation, superficial surveying and over loading. The foregoing list, be it remembered, is not ancient history, but is made up to date, so to speak, and during a time when the “Plimsol Shipping Act” was supposed to be in full swing!