I stood overhanging the stone projection and looking down on the
landing-steps. From a large sailing-ship towing up the river, a
waterman’s boat shot away and made for the Gravesend pier. In it was a
middle-aged man, bronzed with the suns and winds of four months, and
dressed in clothes which it scarcely needed a tailor to guess were of an
Antipodean cut. His luggage was heaped about him in the bottom of the
boat. I watched him land, and followed him as he came up the steps,
when a rush was made by a little group of people dressed in mourning,
and in a breath a woman, tossing up her black veil, was in his arms, and
sobbing on his shoulder. Those sombre garments threw a shadow upon the
happiness of this meeting; but still, he had come back, he was well, and
by-and-by the dead, never to be forgotten, let us hope, would be buried
indeed, and the living heart reassert itself. The watermen seemed to
know when that ship had left her port on the other side of the world,
and so I found that this man had been four months in making his way to
England. And how much longer had he been absent? But then think of the
glory of the green trees and fragrant beauties of our English May to
this traveller fresh from one hundred and twenty days of salt water!
Figure the flavour he will find in a cut from a prime sirloin! the
sweetness of “soft tack”--ay, even such bread as is now baked--after the
bilious little bits of dough manufactured in the galley by the baker,
and sent aft under the satirical title of “rolls!”
Scarcely had the sunburnt man and his friends disappeared, when there
came a little figure that I could not view without lively concern and
compassion. This was a small midshipman, resplendent in the newest of
uniforms. The buttons glittered on his tiny jacket, and the brand-new
badge on his cap shone like a freshly minted sovereign. There lay his
ship a short way down the stream--a good-looking iron vessel, very long
and very narrow, without an inch of that “swell of the sides” one loves
to see, as I had taken notice when she slewed on her heel to the first
of the flood and gave us a view of herself end on, with double
topgallant yards, skysail poles, and the capacity for an immense spread
of lower cloths. The poor little chap took a long squint at his new
home, and then a peep at the lady alongside of him, who, from the strong
family likeness between them, I reckoned at once to be his mamma. She
had been crying, her eyes were red, but she looked at her youngster with
a kind of quivering smile now, for it would clearly not do to capsize
his sensibilities at this most trying point. He had insisted upon going
to sea, no doubt, much against poor mamma’s will. He had fine notions of
the marine calling, I dare say, all acquired by days and nights of study
of nautical romances; and here he was ready to sail away, handsomely
brass bound, mamma red-eyed at his side, bravely fighting with her
heart. Hundreds of men have gone through this, and something betwixt a
laugh and a sigh will come from them when they think of this little
brass bounder and look back to their first voyage. What ideas had the
young fellow formed of the life? But, alas! what mariner has not allowed
his boyhood to gull him in the same way? “There is,” says Dana, “a
witchery in the sea, its songs and stories, and in the mere sight of a
ship and the sailor’s dress, especially to a young mind, which has done
more to man navies and fill merchantmen than all the pressgangs in
Europe. I have known a young man with such a passion for the sea, that
the very creaking of a block stirred his imagination so that he could
hardly keep his feet upon dry ground.” These sentences recurred to me as
I watched the little midshipman. But for how many days was the spell of
the ocean’s witchery to lie upon him? Probably, if they had head winds
down Channel, he would be sick of the life and longing to be ashore in a
warm bed, with his mother to tuck him up, and a good breakfast to go
downstairs to next morning, before they were abreast of the Start. “Oh,
my golly!” said a negro whom I met at Gravesend, selling flowers,
“S’elp me, sah, as I stan’ here, I’d gib dis basket--yas, ah would--and
all de close horff my back, for a good blow-out of lobscouse!” But that
little middy will have to be a black man if he wants to enjoy sea-fare
as my negro-friend did. A few days of dark and evil-looking pork, and
salt beef out of which he might cut models of ships for his friends at
home, and “duff” made of copper-skimmings, not to mention the being
routed out in his watch below, and having to tumble up aloft in a night
blind with storm and rain, are pretty sure to disillusion him. But his
buttons are new, and his hopes are young and fresh; there is no tarnish
of salt water on either as yet; so let him take his mother’s yearning,
passionate kiss, and bundle into the boat and be off. She could not bear
to see him row away, and the moment he went down the steps she hurried
off; whilst he, to show what a man he was, squatted himself in the stern
sheets, and pulled out a short wooden pipe and lighted it. In a few
minutes he was out in the stream. I watched him get alongside his ship,
trot up the gangway ladder, and vanish in a kind of twinkle of new brass
and gilt over the side.
It is these constant comings and goings which give Gravesend its
interest and its memories. One hour it is a party of people newly
arrived from the bottom of the world; another it is a couple of drunken
firemen tumbling into a boat, and shoving off for some lump of a steamer
that lies abreast of the Obelisk or Denton Mill. But, in spite of the
heaps of nautical conditions which beset it, Gravesend cannot be called
wholly marine. It may be thought fishy, but it certainly is not salt.
Contrast it with Deal, which it resembles in its lower streets. The wind
may pipe never so merrily, but there is no shrewd briny pungency in the
shrilling gusts as they sweep round the corners. The boatmen have a
fresh water look. Their sou’westers and jerseys cannot deceive the
practised eye. They can handle an oar capitally; but they have not the
toughened and bronzed and Channel-tossed look of the fellows whom you
encounter lolling in blanket trousers over the Ramsgate piers, or
arguing in groups at the entrance of the Margate jetties, or heightening
the picturesque appearance of the Deal and Folkestone shingle. Yet I
cannot conceive of any place better calculated to delight a man of
maritime studies and scenes than Gravesend. You may linger all day on
the queer-looking roofed-in pier, with the old barge moored against it,
and never feel weary. Hour after hour unfolds the canvas of a
never-ending panorama of shipping. Picture after picture goes by--the
great ocean steamship, the little ratching ketch, the sturdy old
collier, the white and shining yacht, the large and loftily rigged ship,
the eager tug hissing through the trembling current, and all the life
and light and colour and wondrous transformations of the river take a
certain character of remoteness akin to unreality, as though what you
gazed at was nothing but a series of noble paintings, indeed, from the
quietude that prevails about you; an atmosphere of lazy stillness broken
by the muffled, rushing sound of the current sweeping under the pier,
the dulled voices of men conversing outside the wooden structure, and
the straining noise of boats as the tide sets the little craft chafing
one another’s sides.
_A CHAT WITH A FISHERMAN._
A few days after the dreadful gale that had wrecked whole fleets of
smacks belonging to the eastern and north-eastern ports, and drowned
many hundreds of fishermen, I was visited by a Hull smacksman, who came
to tell me that he had lost a son in one of the vessels which had gone
down on the Dogger Bank during the storm, and to inform me of the misery
and destitution into which the widows and children of the poor drowned
men were plunged. He told me in a rough, plain, earnest way how his son
was to have been married to a young girl on his return, and how the poor
lad had saved up a few pounds to purchase a little furniture for the
home, which she was preparing, when the news reached her that the smack
in which her sweetheart was had gone down with all hands; how, in house
after house, down whole streets, there was a constant sound of wailing
and moaning, with misery and hunger indoors, amongst the weeping women
and the sobbing children; and, said my fisherman to me, though God knew
he was a poor man, yet such was the suffering he had witnessed, so
unspeakably great was the calamity that had overtaken the fishing
population of Hull--and of other ports, but he spoke of Hull because he
belonged to it--that, had the thirty shillings he subscribed to the fund
for the relief of these widows and orphans been the last bit of money
he had in the world, he must have given it and taken his chance for
himself.
The subject was a deeply interesting one to me, who had lived among
fishermen, written about them, knew their heroism well, their hardships,
the simple-heartedness of them. We got talking about the smacksman’s
life, his risks, of various features connected with his calling; and, as
the subject is one that has been commended to the British public in an
appeal for charity for those whom the frightful storm bereaved, I offer
no excuse for repeating in print some of the observations made by this
smacksman on his own vocation. His reference to what is known as the
“boxing system” enabled me to lead off with my questions. The term
boxing, I may say, is applied to the conveyance of fish in boats from
the smacks to the steamers which bring the fish home. As the vessels
fill up with fish they transfer them to steamers, which, by relieving
them of their freight, enables them to remain for weeks on the fishing
ground.
“Is it a fact,” I inquired, “that smacksmen object to the boxing
system?”
“It is, sir,” was the reply.
“Why?”
“Because it’s dangerous to life, sir. It keeps men working for a
considerable time in open boats in all kinds of weather. It answers the
owner’s purpose; he shares in the profits of carrying the fish, and it
enables him to keep his vessel at sea as long as it is possible for her
to remain there; and by this means the men are deprived of all home
comforts and of the management of their families.”
“What is the size of the boats employed in carrying fish from the smacks
to the steam cutters?”
“Well, their length’ll be about 20 ft., breadth 6 ft., and depth 3 ft.”
“And these boats the men have to launch in heavy weather?”
“Yes, often in weather that may be called heavy. The risk is increased
by the peculiar circumstances under which the men are placed whilst
working at the boxing system; for you’ll hear again and again of their
shoving the whole of a night’s catch into the boat at once, in order to
secure a quick despatch and obtain the earliest possible market.”
“How is the Dogger Bank relished as a fishing ground?”
“Well,” he replied, “it passes by the name of ‘The Cemetery’ among us.
In the winter time, I don’t suppose there’s a more dangerous place in
the world. With strong winds from the N.E., veering to the N.W., there
come the heavy seas from the Atlantic--if you can call the ocean to the
norrards of the North Sea by that name--which strike the rising ground
of the bank and turn the water into a boiling caldron. It was there
where the smacks went down. The seas just coiled over and fairly broke
upon ’em, smothering ’em, smashing in their decks, stamping ’em out as
you might grind a beetle out of sight with your heel.”
“Are your smacks supplied with barometers? I mean by that, have they any
means of knowing when to expect foul weather?”
“No, sir; they’re not generally supplied. One firm owning about twenty
sail of vessels, who always work on the single-boat system in winter,
provide their vessels with barometers. I should think they must be very
useful instruments,” said he, speaking as though he had never been
shipmates with one; “and I may here add that none of those twenty
vessels alluded to were lost. The majority of us smacksmen have nothing
to tell the weather by except practical experience.”
“But couldn’t the admiral signal--couldn’t _he_, at least, be furnished
with a barometer?”
“No doubt,” he replied. “But smacks get scattered, and it would be best
for each master to understand the weather for himself. The admiral is
more for rallying of us. He has his job cut out for him after a storm.
His general scheme is to fall in with a steam carrier, and then sail to
the ground from which he’s been driven by the gale, expecting the rest
of the fleet to do likewise; but it often happens that many days pass
before they’re able to get together, and this brings heavy losses among
the fishermen, who, having no ice, are forced to find the admiral before
they can start fishing afresh.”
“What difference is there in the mode of fishing among the Hull,
Grimsby, Ramsgate, Penzance, and other smacks?”
“Vessels belonging to Hull, Grimsby, Ramsgate, and Lowestoft use the
trawl net; but the Penzance boats are what is called ‘drifters,’ or
herring boats.”
“I asked that question,” said I, “in order to inquire what kind of
fishing--that is, which sort of voyage--is most in favour among
smacksmen.”
“Why, in winter time we like best the single-boat system--when a smack
goes out and gets what fish she can, and returns. This system does not
require us to use small boats. It pays just as well as the other system,
and is less dangerous in other directions than that of doing away with
‘boxing,’ as it leads to vessels scattering, and helps in that manner to
lessen the risk of collision. We don’t object to the boxing system in
summer, but it oughtn’t to be practised in winter. That’s what we
think.”
“Smack-owners manage to secure themselves, don’t they?”
“Well, yes, by what’s termed mutual insurance, which provides for total
loss and for damage to a certain amount apart from fishing gear. Masters
don’t much like these here insurance companies. They’re too despotic.
I’ll tell you what they do, sir: they won’t allow a master the right of
defending himself against any charge that’s brought against him before
them. Why, they think nothing of suspending a man from acting as master
for a couple of years, perhaps for nothing worse than an error of
judgment which the Board of Trade Commissioner would have been satisfied
to reprimand him for.”
“Do smacksmen make a provision for their families by any method of
insurance or clubbing?”
“Yes, sir,” he answered; “as a rule they do. There is a Fishermen’s
Widow and Orphan Society, which, for payment of one shilling a month,
pays a widow £20 or £25, according to the time her husband has been a
member; and there is also a Friendly Protection Society, numbering at
Hull 700 members, which gives sick pay for certain periods and £12 at
death. Both these institutions do a great deal of good. Many fishermen
also join the local friendly societies.”
“But a large number, I suppose, do not subscribe, and it is the widows
and children of those who have been plunged into immediate destitution
by their husbands’ death?”
“Yes, sir. But it is not always possible to subscribe; there are too
many of us, and some go without work for weeks.”
“What is the average tonnage of the Hull and Grimsby smacks?”
“About seventy tons.”
“What is your opinion of them as seaworthy vessels?”
“Well, sir, the build and behaviour of them are first rate; but a great
many are ill found, and are in a bad state as concerns leakage; and I
can assure you that among us fishermen there is a strong feeling that
there ought to be Government inspection of fishing vessels by practical
men.”
“Will you explain to me the meaning of shares, and how they are
proportioned?”
“It’s in this way,” said he: “the net proceeds are divided into eight
shares; the master takes 1⅜ share, the mate 1⅛ share, and the owner 5½
shares, out of which he has to pay three boys or casual hands, who
receive together on an average about £2 2s. a week, and he has also to
find his vessel’s outfit.”
“Is it true that smacksmen object to lifebelts?”
“No; they don’t object generally. Some do, on the ground of their being
too cumbersome to work in. They ought to be worn in ‘boxing.’ There’s a
particular danger in that system which I forgot to mention: it’s that of
collisions, which are constantly happening owing to the men being
anxious to get their fish on board the steam cutter, to do which they
all sail to her as close as they can, with their boats in tow and two
hands in each boat.”
“And what other special dangers are there,” said I, “connected with your
calling?”
“Well,” he replied, “answering that question, as concerning the
single-boat system, which I’ve explained, I can but say that what the
smacksman has to contend with are just the ordinary perils of a
seaman’s life, such as shipping heavy seas which wash us overboard, and
being dragged into the sea whilst drawing water, hauling in the net, and
the likes of that. But the boxing system adds to these dangers by the
risk of collision, the capsizing of boats, and the uselessness of the
casual hands, the best of them preferring to ship in vessels on the
single-boat system.”
“Your casual hands, as you call them, touch the apprentice question.
What is your opinion of smack-boys’ homes?”
“Why, that they’re a great advantage to all fishing ports and to the
lads themselves, if the homes are properly managed.”
“Can you say that smack-boys are ill-treated at sea?”
“No, I can’t, sir. There are a few exceptions, but my experience is that
the boys are treated with uniform kindness.”
“To return to the question of loss of life,” said I, “amongst smacksmen,
what proposals have you to offer to diminish it?”
“Well, sir, if I had my way, I’d totally abolish the boxing system from
the end of September till the end of March. That alone would greatly
reduce the death-rate among fishermen; and I’d also have Government
inspectors to survey the vessels, and see that they were found, and
equipped, and ballasted, and so on.”
“And now,” I asked, referring to the vessels which trade among the
smacks in spirits and tobacco, “what can you tell me about the system
called ‘coopering’?”
“Why,” he answered, warming up, “my opinion of ‘coopering’ is that steps
ought to be taken to put a stop entirely to such degrading traffic. If
it could be put an end to, it would be a blessing to all
concerned--particularly to the men. It ’ud make your hair stand on end
to hear of some of the awful things I and scores besides have
witnessed--many of our men having, in their drunken fury, jumped
overboard, and in many instances been drowned, and in hundreds of cases
‘coopering’ has been the means of causing the men at sea to fall out and
fight almost to death’s door. I’ll explain how it’s carried on. The
trafficking craft is in most cases an old vessel that has been condemned
in England and sold to some foreigner for the purpose of carrying on
this trade--some one hailing from Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Antwerp, or some
port along the Dutch, German, or Belgian coast. This man--or call it
these people--get their tobacco, cigars, liquors, and the various other
articles they deal in, in large quantities from agents in the different
ports they visit, at a very low price. The articles sold are of a very
inferior quality--especially the drink, which is chiefly rum and gin of
a very common and fiery nature. The prices charged, as a rule, are--for
shag tobacco, 1_s._ 6_d._ per lb.; cavendish, 2_s._ per lb.; cigars,
from 6_s._ to 12_s._ per box. Gin and rum are sold at 1_s._ 6_d._ per
bottle; brandy, 2_s._ The smacksmen generally arrange to take a little
money to sea with them for the purpose of buying tobacco, to save paying
4_s._ per pound for it at home. In my opinion, this traffic would
receive a blow if fishermen were allowed to get their tobacco out of the
bonded stores.”
This, it will be seen, coincides with the report of the Sea-Fishing
Trade Committee, who called attention in strong terms to the evils of
“coopering.” Not only, was it stated, do these boats lead to the
bartering of ships’ stores and gear for drink, “but they bring about
the demoralization of the hands and even of the skippers serving on
board smacks, and directly lead to risk and loss of life. We have it in
evidence that they are floating grog-shops of the worst description, and
that they are under no control whatever.”
There was little more that I could think of to ask my intelligent
friend. In reply to my inquiry as to the value of smacks at various
ports, he said the question was difficult to answer, “as there’s a vast
deal of difference among the smacks belonging to the ports, and likewise
in the damage done ’em, for its damage that counts heavily in the
support of them. The cost of a new smack at Hull and Grimsby, with all
the modern appliances, will be about £1500; the average worth of smacks
at those ports is about £900, and the cost of their fishing-gear about
£70.”
“And a Hull smack’s earnings?”
“Between £800 and £900 a year--I mean the gross earnings.”
“Smacks are being constantly run down by vessels. Do they want better
lights? What is the reason of these frequent disasters?”
“As a rule,” he answered, “smacks carry very good lights; but there is
room for improvement. I’m one of many who strongly advise that smacks
should carry more powerful lights than they now use. If smacks are very
often rundown--and true enough that is--it’s mainly because of the bad
look-out that’s kept aboard vessels navigating the North Sea. There are
captains who don’t respect our lives. They see us lying-to our nets,
they know we can’t get out of the road; but on they come, never shifting
their helm, and if they pass by without striking us, and we call to ’em
to know where they’re coming, all the answer we get consists of brutal
curses.”
Apparently, then--and I say it not alone on the evidence of this man,
but on the assurance of many others engaged in the fishing trade--the
measure that is required to diminish the loss of life at sea among the
valuable class of men employed in the North Sea fishery is the
suppression of the boxing system during the winter months. And another
most important step would be the supervision of smacks by qualified
inspectors appointed by the Board of Trade. At present I do not know of
any law to prevent an owner from sending, or to punish an owner for
despatching, to sea the craziest old smack that can be kept alive by
long and frequent spells at the pump. It is certainly most anomalous
that close attention should be given to the loading, construction, and
equipment of ships belonging to one section of the English marine,
whilst another section that finds occupation for many thousands of men
and boys is utterly disregarded by the State in all things saving the
exhibition of lights.
_A FOURPENNY VOYAGE._
Dr. Johnson once said that the full tide of human life was to be seen at
Charing Cross. The full tide of human commerce begins a few bridges
lower down. A man should count it a real privilege that, for the modest
sum of fourpence, he is able to survey such an illustration of the
wealth and power of this Empire as may enable him to form a very clear
and true conception of the aggregate commerce and industry of the United
Kingdom. To embark at London Bridge on board a fourpenny steamboat,
bound to Woolwich, is, in my humble judgment, to be conveyed through the
most wonderful series of transformation scenes that the world has to
offer. What is comparable to that passage? No one who has entered the
Sidney Heads but will remember the astonishment and delight inspired by
the miles of blue water studded with fairy islands, the jasper-like
reflection of clouds in the glass-clear depths, the rich tropical
vegetation of the shores, the gleaming spars of shipping lifting their
delicate tracery into the darkly-pure blue. Passages of strange and
shining beauty recur like haunting memories of fragments of Eastern
story to those who have threaded the waters of the Nile or the Hoogly;
and recollections of the Peiho are made delightfully picturesque and
impressive by visions of uncouth junks moored in the rushing stream, by
glimpses of distant temples, by remembrance of soft winds aromatic with
spices.