had given him a new view of the subject; but, shaking his head suddenly,
as if to clear his mind of all matter that was not in it before, he
said, “Ay, it may be as you observe, and I’m not the man to tell you
that sailors are likely to get more than what they ought to want. The
point’s this: If it’s a beautiful thing to read such pieces of gratitude
as these documents contain, how much more beautiful would the reading of
them be if it was to be known what impediments, that have grown up like
mangrove bushes from the lack of a proper Christian civilization to cut
’em down, a ship’s captain has to contend with in order to gratify his
instincts as a man of feeling and compassion. It’s all very well,” said
he, striking a match and holding a flame in the hollow of his hand as
though a stiff breeze were blowing, “for landsmen to read those letters
of thanks and to feel touched, and to talk of the generosity of sailors
and the like. Why--since the laws which govern folks are made ashore,
and not at sea--why, after they’ve done wiping their eyes over the
humble thanks poor sailors give to them who save their lives, don’t they
turn to and give a hand to the cause of humanity on the ocean by letting
captains know that the laws of the British nation, anyway--leaving other
countries out--will never let a man who does a noble act suffer for it
as much, ay, and sometimes more than if he did a wrong? You hear of
ships passing vessels in distress--taking no notice--pushing on, as if
in a hurry to get out of sight. There is nothing in the marine reports
which set my teeth more on edge than those yarns--nothing! But I’m
master of a ship; I know the duties and responsibilities of that
position. I’ve tried to do good, have hauled some fellow-mortals out of
the very jaws of death, and have been so made to suffer for my humanity
that when I think of it there comes into my mind a bitterness that makes
me curse the ill-luck which drove me into the track of the sinking ship
and her perishing crew. These are strong words, but if I don’t justify
them you shall force me to eat ’em. Give me your attention for five
minutes. I’ll try not to keep you longer; and if I should lose my temper
and talk a bit stronger than you may think there’s need for, take no
notice, but just quietly go on listening till I’ve done; and then,
should I fall a-swearing, maybe I’ll have got you into a frame of mind
fit to join me.
“In the middle of last October my ship sailed from a certain
port--there’s no need to give any names--in ballast, bound on a voyage
across the Atlantic. The weather was promising enough for three or four
days after we got away; moderate, north-easterly winds which, crank as
we were, enabled us to carry a fore-topmast studding-sail, and we drove
along prettily enough, nothing happening to call for remark. But this
sort of thing was too good to last; accordingly, at midnight or
thereabouts on the fifth day of sailing, I was roused by the mate, and,
hurrying on deck, found half a gale of wind blowing, everything in
confusion, vessel almost on her beam ends, everything let go, and as
much shindy aloft as would furnish out noise for a battle-field. It was
a squall with a storm behind it. However, bit by bit we managed to roll
up the canvas and save our spars, and when daylight broke we found
ourselves under a lower maintop-sail, tumbling upon as savage a sea as
was ever rolled up in a few hours by a gale in the Atlantic.
“This was the beginning of a deal of delay. The gale kept us humbugging
about in one place--allowing for that lee drift which you’ll expect of a
ship in ballast--for hard upon a week: then better weather came. We
shook out reefs, mast-headed the yards, and crawled a trifle to
wind’ard; but the slant was a short one; another gale came along and
lasted three days; and so it went on, sometimes fine and most often
foul, until at the end of thirty-six days we found ourselves a good deal
closer to Europe than we were to America.
“Well, sir, the thirty-seventh day proved moderate; a breeze from the
W.N.W., a heavy swell running to show that either a gale had been
blowing or was coming, and pretty clear weather, with a little glimmer
of sunshine now and again streaming through the cloud-rifts; enough to
improve our spirits. I came on deck at half-past seven, and was taking a
look at the weather and wondering if the swell that was making the ship
roll like an empty cask was to signify more bother, when I was hailed by
the mate, who sung out that there was a dark object upon the water, a
point on the lee bow. I took the glass and made out the hull of a
totally dismantled vessel--apparently a barque, but all that was left of
her masts were three stumps barely showing above her topgallant
bulwarks. She was water-logged--like a pancake on the swell that hid her
with every send; and after taking another look at her, and not doubting
from her appearance that she was abandoned, I put the glass down,
waterlogged vessels being by no means rare objects in the North
Atlantic.
“We were swarming along over the swell at about three to four knots an
hour, and as we should pass the hulk pretty close to windward, I
reckoned that if there was any poor miserable creature aboard her we
were bound to see him as we drove by. However, I had scarcely put the
glass down five minutes, and was standing looking over the taffrail,
when the mate again hailed me, and on my going to where he stood peering
through the telescope, he put the glass into my hand and told me to look
yonder, for there was a boat full of men, heading directly for us. I
looked, and sure enough saw a whole boat-load of human beings lifting
and falling and coming towards us. It was more like an apparition than a
real thing, for when I examined the wreck again I could not conceive how
such a number of men had managed to keep by a hull which offered them no
refuge aloft, and over whose decks the water rolled in shining masses,
as she swung into the hollows.
“As the boat approached, we backed the mainyards, and lay waiting for
her to come alongside. By this time I could make out no less than
fourteen men, and a sadder freight of human beings I never want to see
again. Their white faces, their streaming clothes, their gaunt, hollow
looks, the languid movement of the oars, and, above all, the manner in
which those who rowed kept their faces turned towards us upon their
shoulders, as if they feared we should vanish if they did not keep their
eyes fixed upon us, was a sight the most iron-hearted man could not have
viewed without pain and grief. We hove them the end of a rope, and
dragged the boat alongside; and I wanted no better assurance of the
character of their sufferings and of the lamentable condition they were
then in than their slow, weak motions as they caught the line, and got
their oars in and stood up. One by one we lifted or helped them over the
side--fourteen of them, sir. Some of them were too weak to answer our
questions. My men took the seamen forward, holding them up as they
walked, for they could scarcely use their limbs; and I carried the
captain and the two mates into the cabin, where we furnished them with
food and dry clothing, and then got them to bed.
“All this while we remained hove to with the wreck bearing about a mile
distant from us on our lee bow. My own crew consisted of eleven hands
only, and the job of helping the rescued men forward had given them work
enough until the poor fellows were below. I went on deck, and found the
mate singing out to the hands to swing the main-topsail and get way upon
the ship. I stood looking on, full of thought. Presently the sails were
trimmed, and I called the mate over to me.
“‘Do you know,’ said I, ‘that we have been very nearly forty days at
sea?’
“‘Ay, sir,’ he answered, ‘I know it only too well.’
“‘We’re provisioned, Mr. ----,’ said I, giving him his name, ‘for one
hundred and ten days, counting for our crew only. But if you add
fourteen to eleven you get twenty-five, and that’s the number of people
our provisions must now serve for.’
“He grew very thoughtful, and took a long look round at the weather.
“‘I fear,’ continued I, ‘that it will merely be tempting Providence to
pursue our voyage with all these extra men aboard in the face of the
ill-luck that’s dogged us for near upon forty days. If we’re to make no
more headway than we’ve already done in the same time, I’m afraid,’
said I, pointing to the wreck that was slowly drawing abeam of us, ‘we
shall be as badly off here as if we turned to and shipped ourselves
aboard yonder hulk.’
“‘That’ll be about it, sir,’ said he. ‘The harness cask, to say nothing
of the scuttle-butts, is much too small for fourteen extra hands, unless
we’re to get a gale of wind astern of us.’
“‘Which we’ve got no right to expect,’ I answered.
“However, before I decided I thought I’d first take counsel with the
captain we had rescued, and, on his waking up much refreshed in the
afternoon, I put my position before him, and asked him for his opinion.
He never hesitated when he heard how long we had been at sea and for how
many days we had been provisioned. But I’m not sure that even his advice
would have settled my resolution--for what can be more trying than to
have to give up and go back, after beating about and toiling to get
across for over a month?--had it not that same evening breezed up ahead
with a stormy appearance. It was just as if the weather said, ‘No, you
don’t.’ I took a look, listened a moment or two at the men singing out
as they clewed up the topgallant-sails, and then told the mate to get
his helm over and head the ship for the homeward passage.
“Now, sir, though it was disagreeable enough to have to go back after
consuming so much time in getting forward, I was a good deal comforted
by reflecting upon the cause that was sending me home. It was a cheerful
thing, likewise, to see the men who had come aboard half-dead gradually
recovering their health and spirits, and testifying their gratefulness
by not only lending a hand with a will, but by striving to take all the
work they could come at out of the hands of my crew. Besides, I will
frankly own to you, sir, that I was buoyed up by the belief that any
money difficulty that must follow my useless trip into the
Atlantic--useless, I mean, in the commercial sense of that word--would
be in some degree met by the owners of the craft whose people I had
saved, and if not by them, then by the ‘authorities’--a sort of strange
people who come into one’s head when one falls into an expecting mood,
and stop there as if they were real and had all the disposition and
power you fancy of ’em, though to my mind there’s no illusion to equal
’em, and ne’er a word in the English dictionary that makes a man fiercer
to come across after he’s got, by writing letters and calling, to find
out the true meaning of it.
“The nearest port was a French port, and there we arrived after a pretty
quick run, and landed the rescued men, of whom I’ll say this--that their
gratitude was such, that if they could have turned their bodies into
gold so that we could have made sovereigns out of their flesh they’d
have done it cheerfully. Well, sir, after I arrived in England, the
first thing I did was to represent what I had done to the owners of the
barque whose crew I had saved. I told them that I had been obliged to
abandon my voyage in consequence of the assistance I had rendered, and
that by so doing I had not only lost a voyage, but consumed the whole of
my stores. No notice was taken of me; and when I complained to a friend
who knows a good deal about the law, he said the wonder would have been
if any notice _had_ been taken, as I had no claim whatever on the owners
of the barque for the rescue of the crew.
“‘But,’ said I, ‘d’ye mean to tell me that there’s no Act of Parliament,
no statute, no sort of general understanding, no kind of provision--call
it by what name you will--to protect a man from suffering heavily in
his pocket because he goes out of his way to save fourteen human lives?’
“‘No,’ says he.
“‘And must I,’ says I, ‘be compelled to pay off my crew--which I’ve
done--and ship another--also done--and accept a twopenny freight to the
West Indies to enable me to reprovision my ship--all which I’ve had to
do--with never a living being in this whole wide world made responsible,
either as the manager of a fund set apart for such cases, or as the
owner of the wrecked vessel, or as the British Government itself, whose
business it should be to encourage acts of humanity shown to those
sailors it’s always bragging about and leisurely looking after, for the
loss I’ve been put to?’
“‘Well,’ says he, ‘on reflection I think ye might drop a line to the
“authorities”’--you know who he meant, sir: ‘there’s a fund called the
Mercantile Marine Fund, out of which, I think--mind, I only think--the
“authorities” may, if they think fit, pay a certain sum, whatever it be,
in satisfaction of salvage where nothing more valuable has been saved
than fourteen human lives.’
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘I’ll write to them;’ and so I did. And what do you
think was the result?”
“I cannot imagine,” I replied.
“I got no answer,” said he. “I got no answer,” he repeated,
passionately; “and there’s no more chance of my getting an answer than
there is of----” he paused, and added, “I was going to say than there is
of my stopping to pick up more shipwrecked mariners--but God forgive me
for the fancy! It’s not in my head, sir. But, putting all sentiment
aside, wouldn’t you consider mine a hard case? And is my loss made the
lighter to me because I am asked to reflect whether I _ought_ to expect
the authorities, or the owners, or anybody else to pay me for saving
fourteen men from a dreadful death? Here, sir, you have one of the
difficulties--one of the hundred difficulties--master-mariners have to
contend with, as little known to or understood by landsmen as Jack
comprehends the business of an attorney. It’s not for me to suggest what
should be done. But when next you hear of shipwrecked sailors being
abandoned by a passing ship, don’t be too quick to condemn the captain
as a coward and a villain for leaving his fellow-beings to perish
miserably, but say to yourself, ‘His heart was with them, and he’d have
saved them if he had dared; but British civilization said, “Whatever you
do you do at your own risk. If no harm befalls you, good and well; you
shall pass by and nothing more be said or heard of your act; but if you
lose money, don’t look to _me_,” says British civilization, “for the
only answer you’ll get will be that you’re an impudent fellow to expect
to recover any loss you incur in the service of humanity;”’ and so the
skipper, knowing this to be true, sails away, holding that his wife and
children at home must not be beggared that a perishing crew may be
rescued.”
Thus speaking, my friend the shipmaster rose abruptly from his chair,
pulled his hat down to his ears, and impetuously wishing me good day,
left me to lapse into a very brown, I may almost say a very black,
study.
_SMACK APPRENTICES._
“I don’t know what country he hailed from, I’m sure; but, thank the
Lord, he wasn’t an Englishman,” said a smacksman, in the most fervent
manner, to me the other day, speaking of Osmond Otto Brand, who was
executed on the 23rd of May for the murder of an apprentice named
William Papper or Pepper. At any other time than this I believe the
story of that miscreant’s barbarity would have deeply stirred the public
mind; but of late days[C] murder has become a common thing, much talked
of and freely practised. People’s capacity of being horrified gets
dulled by iteration of shocking news, and the significance of any one
item in a blood-red catalogue loses value as a particular impression.
Whatever effect, however, may have been produced by Brand’s crime on the
lay mind outside the district where the murderer and his victim were
known, there can be no doubt of the impression it has made upon
smack-owners and smacksman all round the coast. There is scarcely a
fisherman who has not the horrible story off by heart, who does not view
the atrocious cruelties practised by the foreign smack-master as a foul
disgrace to the fishing industries, and who does not indignantly lament
that the men who helped Brand to slowly kill the miserable apprentice
were not hanged along with their skipper. One result of Brand’s crime
was to cause some questions to be asked in the House of Commons. There
was also some talk about the whole subject of fishing apprentices being
considered by Government. If it is to be dealt with it will be as well,
perhaps, first to give the Hull murder time to drop out of memory. To
adopt it as a text for legislation would assuredly be to mislead
honourable members who vote without looking very deep into the matters
on which their opinions are challenged. If the condition of the smack
apprentice is an improvable feature of current life, it is not so merely
because Brand slowly tortured Pepper to death. We must shelve all
thoughts of that murder, and ask questions without the least reference
to it. What is the life of a fishing apprentice at sea? What is it
ashore? How is he fed and clothed? What is the nature of his relations
with the owners’ interests? What is the average character of the men
with whom he is thrown? These and other questions I will endeavour to
answer from inquiries I have made into the inner or hidden part of the
lives of a body of lads of whom the public know less than they know of
any other kind of seafaring people.
I once wrote an account of a voyage in a smack in the North Sea. One
such journey is enough for a lifetime, and the recollection of it makes
me here declare--and I am sure there is not a sailor living who will
contradict me--that of all the several forms of seafaring life there is
absolutely none comparable in severity, exposure, hardship, and stern
peril to that of the smacksman. His vessel is a small one; his cabin a
little darksome hole; his working hours are full of harsh toil; he has
to give battle to the wildest weather, to struggle on for bread through
storm and snow and frost, through the long blackness of the howling
winter’s night, through the grey wilderness of a foaming ocean swept by
winds as pitiless as the hand of death. No legislation can alter these
conditions of his life. Philanthropy will have its cod and sole and
turbot. The fish must be caught, but caught in such a manner that those
who shoot their trawls for them catch other things besides--a wild
roughness of bearing, a defiance of civilized instincts, a sense of
outlawed and neglected life that brings with it a fixed conviction of
social immunity. “I’m a fisherman myself, sir,” a man once said to me;
“and I’ll allow that there are many well-mannered, sober, steady men
among us; but, taking us all round, you’ll not find a coarser set of
human beings in the world; and, if you want to know the reason, you’ve
only got to look at yonder smack, heading away into the North Sea,
where, maybe, she’ll be heaving and tossing about for weeks, with ne’er
a proper influence in the shape of books or company for the men to come
at.”
Take now the fishing apprentice. He comes to this severe, coarse life,
himself most often of the coarsest. He is fresh from a reformatory, from
a union, or, worse still, from the gutter. His associates are men who
were themselves apprentices; lads who came one knows not from where, the
refuse of the street manufactured into marine objects by the owner’s
boots, and breeches, and coats; and hammered into sprawling, unwieldy
smacksmen by the hard blows of their calling. They know all about
dandy-bridles and trawl-warps; but they do not know how to read, and
they do not know how to write, and they do not know how to think. Their
home is the public-house when ashore, and they take the morals of that
sort of home to sea with them. The apprentice comes among them, gets
knocked about, picks up their oaths and their shore theories, and
imitates them masterfully enough to be able to hand on their conditions
with an added flourish, when he is out of his time and has boys under
him to swear at. Now, what is legislation going to do here? You have the
roughest life in the world; the roughest lads in the world recruits its
ranks. What is to be done, short of what a few philanthropists are
endeavouring to do, to prevent them from being the roughest men in the
world? I cannot see that the smack-owners are to blame. They must have
apprentices. They will take the best of such boys as they can get; and
it is really carrying idealism too high to expect that these men, who
have to work hard themselves, who have to be down among their vessels,
seeing that their men do not run away, that they are properly engaged in
preparing for the voyage, and so forth,--I say you cannot expect that
these men, who come home of a night tired out, should turn schoolmaster
and parson to their apprentices, and set them to moral jobs, when they
are ready to abscond--with their master’s clothes also--if they are not
allowed their evening out after being at work all day up to their knees
in mud, scrubbing the vessel’s bottom. No one with any knowledge of the
smack-owner’s calling, of his hardly earned money, of his risks and
anxieties, will envy him. Boys are boys all the world over, and that
smack-boys should be peculiarly troublesome is not hard to account for
on reference to their antecedents--that is, the antecedents of most of
them. “The law has come between us and the boys,” was said to me, “and
makes our case harder than it was. We have no remedy now. Time was when
we could send a constable after a lad when he was off; but the law has
stopped that. We have got to wait a couple of days, and then apply for a
warrant, by which time the boy’s t’other end of England. Take the case
of a vessel about to start. A boy refuses to turn to. I’m on the spot,
and call a policeman, and in his presence repeat the order. Boy still
refuses. Policeman then walks him off afore a magistrate, who fines him,
and I have to pay the fine if I want to get the vessel to sea; for if I
don’t pay then the boy’s locked up, and the vessel detained two or three
days whilst I’m seeking another boy.” The hardship is clear enough,
though I for one should be heartily sorry to see it rectified by a
return to the old and brutal system of locking up lads in gaol at the
will of the smack-owner. Let me briefly place the case of the owners
before you with regard to their apprentices. To begin with, the lads
come from all parts, as I have said, and are bound apprentice for terms
of three, five, or six years. If bound by institutions such as
workhouses, reformatories, and the like, a certain sum of money is paid
with them--in some cases £10, enough to purchase an outfit. I asked a
smack-owner what he reckoned to be the average yearly cost of a lad’s
clothes, and he said £8. “A pair of sea-boots alone,” said he, “cost £1
16s.” Boys, however, when they first go to sea do not get sea-boots, but
“bluchers,” the cost of which is about 12s. a pair. When the lads are in
harbour the smack-owner has to house them. In many instances they sleep
in his own house, or in lodgings provided for them. If they do not take
their meals with their masters they live as well; dining from the same
joint and getting much the same fare as he has for tea and breakfast.
There may be exceptions to this; but it is a practice so general that it
may be taken as a rule. When ashore the owners also keep the boys
furnished with a little pocket-money. The lad, for instance, who acts as
cook at sea gets, when in harbour, 6_d._ a night, the deck-boy 9d., and
the third-hand apprentice 1_s._ These payments are made during what is
termed “settling time;” but, in addition to this money, the owner gives
them the small fish caught during the voyage, called “stocker-bait,” the
produce of which yields each lad an average sum of 1_s._ a week all the
year round. Whilst in port the apprentice’s work mainly consists in
scrubbing the vessel’s bottom, touching her up with the paint-brush,
preparing nets for the next voyage, etc. At sea the lesser duties are
assigned him. Suppose a smack carries three boys; the youngest will
probably act as cook. When the net is hove up his post is in the hold,
where he coils away the trawl-warp, which done he returns to his
cooking. The deck-boy’s post is on deck when the men are below taking
their meals. He steers the vessel in the morning until noon or 12.30;
then gets his dinner, and turns in. The duty of a third-hand apprentice
is that of a man. He is commonly within two years of his time; and,
though he is still an apprentice, he is generally treated as a
well-seasoned and fully developed smacksman. Talking recently with a
body of smack-boys, I asked them what sort of grub they got aboard.
“Good enough, master.”
“What do you have for breakfast?” said I.
“Well, we has the choice of tea or coffee or cocoa; we has roast fish
and butter and soft tack--as long as it’ll last--and then we has
biscuit.”
“And what do you get for dinner?”