THE SAIL-CARRIERS
If you set aside the forty years from 1837 to 1877 you cover the
period which is unsurpassed for the glories of the sea. It is a period
when the Mercantile Marine in every ocean rose to such a standard
of seamanship as was never seen before nor will ever be witnessed
again. It is a time when the triumph of the shipwright and the skill
of the sailor combined to bring about the golden age. Every log-book,
ship-illustration or reminiscence that bears on this epoch should be
regarded with the utmost care and preserved for the wonderment of
posterity, for at present we are living so close to this epoch that we
hardly appreciate its worth. Those who come after us will rightly envy
us for having seen at least some of the ships and spoken with those who
handled them. For it was a time when wooden ships were run by men of
iron.
The traditions inherited from the old East India Company after the
latter had lost its monopoly in India and China were too noble and
inspiring to be dissipated at once. The high grade of officers and
men remained for a long time a standard, especially when the captain
of an East Indiaman even as late as about 1830 was making anything
between £6000 and £10,000 a voyage. So, too, the Blackwall yard still
retained its name for building the best ships. And though they had
ceased to construct the stately but slow vessels which had been good
enough as long as the monopoly lasted, a big advance came in the year
1837, when Richard Green launched the 818-ton _Seringapatam_. She was,
in fact, the first of a new order of things. In her the double stern
and galleries were abandoned, and owing to her finer lines she became
famous for her quick and regular passages to the East, and was destined
to be the model for many vessels to follow. It was such men as Green,
Wigram, Somes, Dunbar, Baines and others who built up the Mercantile
Marine after the East India Company left the sea; for these men saw
their grand opportunity, and seized it. Most of these purchased some of
the best of the company’s ships. The _Earl of Balcarres_, for instance,
was sold for £10,700, and she voyaged for fifty-two years before she
became a hulk. The same price was paid for that fine ship the _Thames_;
the _Lady Melville_ fetched £10,000, the _Buckinghamshire_ £10,550
and others realised between £4000 and £10,000. In certain cases the
company, seeing their approaching fate, began to sell as far back as
1830.
Some of the captains, officers and men from the honourable company
were now taken on by these enterprising new shipowners about to enjoy
the benefits of free trade. But not more than one-fifth of these
“old-timers” changed over to the new régime, at any rate straight away.
Why? Firstly, these private owners were not too anxious to employ a
personnel who had been accustomed to work in ships where expense had
not been of the first consideration. Secondly, some officers thought it
beneath their dignity to serve in “free trade” vessels, and in any case
their remuneration could not be as high as had been possible during
the company’s extravagant existence. So the captains and officers
appealed to their late employers for pensions. They had entered the
East India Company’s service expecting provision for life, but now
they found themselves awkwardly placed. Not without reluctance the
company eventually decided to grant compensations to all commanders and
officers who had been in their employ for five years from April 22,
1834. Every commanding officer therefore received £1500 and the other
officers received proportionate amounts. But, in addition to this, each
commander also received £4000 for three unexpired voyages, £3000 for
two voyages and £2000 for one voyage, which they would have made had
they continued in the service. Nor was that all; for those commanders
who had served for ten years were given a pension for life of £250 a
year, the chief mates getting £160 a year, and so the scale ranged
down to the carpenters and gunners. The only condition was that these
assured the company of their inability to obtain further employment,
and that any income which they possessed was to be in abatement of
these pensions. Thus, to the very end, the old East India Company
treated its officers and crews very handsomely, especially when we
remember the value of a sovereign in those days.
The _Seringapatam_ was the first of those famous Blackwall frigates
which were the direct descendants of the defunct East India Company.
The last of the series, also built by Green’s Blackwall yard, was the
_Melbourne_ (afterwards well known as the _Macquarie_), launched in
1875. Most of this historic fleet were built at the Blackwall yard,
at Smith’s Tyne yard, at Sunderland or in India, but especially
at Blackwall. They were all high-class ships which were run in a
high-class manner. The discipline was strict, the personnel was
excellent, and they were in every way worthy successors of the old
monopolists. If you talk to any of the officers still alive who served
in these Blackwallers, or read their reminiscences, you will understand
at once that it was thought an honour to be allowed into this new
service.
These ships differed from any other merchant vessels in that they
carried midshipmen and not apprentices. These midshipmen were drawn
from the same families who supplied officers to the Royal Navy, and
were known as “young gentlemen.” Very often in the case of a country
rector who had two sons, you find the eldest going into the Navy and
the younger into a Blackwall frigate. If a guardian could get a boy
into one of these ships, there was no further cause for worry: a fine
career was assured. He went to sea in what were happy ships and he
gradually rose in his profession until he was making about £5000 a
year in the case of the best captains. The guardian or parent had to
pay a premium of £60 a voyage for the young midshipman, but those were
the days when the commanding officers were the finest navigators in
the world and had time to instruct the aspirant. It was a life totally
different from that of a modern apprentice.
For some time the officers in these ships were allowed to wear the
lion and crown of the East India Company on their uniform buttons,
but eventually the house flags of the companies were substituted. A
great deal of the old dignity and semi-naval routine were retained in
this new service, with action stations and sail-drill. For they were
frigate-built and carried guns, so that they could readily be turned
into corvettes and be useful fighting units. In an interesting little
book entitled _Reminiscences of a Blackwall Midshipman_, published some
years ago, Mr. W. I. Downie remarked with pride: “It was a fine service
and afforded a good opening for younger sons, whose elder brothers
were in the Army or Navy, but whose parents could not very well spare
the means to dispose in the same way of all their sometimes numerous
progeny.” He himself joined up in the ’sixties, having considered
himself disappointed at not entering the Royal Navy, but lucky to
obtain a berth as midshipman in Green’s Blackwall frigate _Trafalgar_,
and bound to India. This ship was built in the year 1848, and was of
1038 tons, her construction being of teak.
When lying at anchor with a few guns on her maindeck and her boat-booms
swung out and boats in the water, she might be taken for a frigate,
even by a seafaring man, but for the house flag at her main. She had
painted ports, square yards and enormous whole topsails. In such a ship
no officer or man dared address a superior on duty without saluting.
It was because of this excellent discipline and semi-naval character
that these well-found ships created such a fine pride of service among
its personnel. We shall speak presently of the other development in
shipping which was to proceed collaterally with the Blackwallers,
but it may be mentioned here that the latter frequently used to race
in the ’sixties against the clippers met on the high seas. Downie
mentions that these frigates often were able to hold the clipper ships,
especially in hard winds, for though the Blackwallers had high bulwarks
and heavy sterns, which made them in comparison look clumsy, yet
underwater they had fine lines.
Every known device was resorted to in the effort to squeeze out an
extra half-knot, and the third mate of the Blackwaller would be sent
down with a gang of men to roust the lee cable out of the chain locker
and range it along the weather side of the deck. The fourth mate would
take another gang to pump fresh water out of the lee tanks into those
of the weather tanks that were empty. In light winds the hose would
be taken aloft to wet the sails—the old dodge of making the canvas
hold the wind better. Nor did they hesitate to race even against such
flyers as the crack clippers _Taeping_ and _Fiery Cross_, and in one
instance they competed with another sailing ship and beat her home by
twenty-four hours; and this after racing for 16,000 miles! Yes, they
were sail-carriers in those days. The Mercantile Marine was full of
expert seamen.
This _Trafalgar_, for instance, carried, besides her commander, five
mates, several midshipmen, a full crew, a bo’sun and his two mates,
carpenter, sail-maker, fiddler and cooper. The last two would seem
strange to a modern apprentice, but the former used to sit on the
capstan and fiddle while the hands were heaving up the anchor with an
endless “messenger,” and would provide the music for hornpipes danced
in the second dog-watch. The cooper was a necessary rating, for casks
and barrels were used a good deal, and when not wanted were taken to
pieces and reconstructed as required. The midshipmen received their
occasional invitations to dine with the captain, as to-day in the
naval service. Sundays and Thursdays were the occasions when there was
champagne at the captain’s table, and a midshipman thought himself
lucky if his turn to be invited occurred on one of these days.
The voyage was begun by the ship being towed out of dock down to
Gravesend, where she brought up for twenty-four hours to enable the
crew to get over their final shore carouse. The captain—in this case
a tall, thin man wearing an eyeglass, himself a scientist and a great
authority on the law of storms—would come on board, and the tug would
take the ship down to the North Foreland and then cast off. If it was
a fair wind the Blackwaller would then carry on down Channel. If it
was foul she would anchor and wait for a slant in the Downs. In spite
of their sailorlike, alcoholic weakness, these hands were very fine
fellows, specially selected, who had sailed in the old East Indiamen
or Blackwallers since boyhood, and very rarely did they ever serve in
other ships. There was, then, practically continuity of employment, and
it is the lack of this which in the twentieth century is the weakest
element of the Mercantile Marine.
In these ships there was nothing slovenly, and every one had to be
correctly and smartly uniformed. The officers’ cap in those days had
the old-fashioned peak at right angles, like that still worn by the
officers of the Dutch Navy to-day. Every morning the captain’s steward
would convey to the midshipmen the instructions as to what rig was
to be worn, as, for instance, in fine weather blue jackets, white
waistcoats and trousers. In many other merchant ships there was trouble
with the crew, which consisted of a mixture of pier-jumpers, gaol-birds
and the riff-raff of all the European ports; but it was seldom that
the Blackwall men gave any trouble. Every Sunday there was service on
the poop in fine weather, or in the saloon when the weather was bad,
and all hands were supposed to attend. In harbour the Blackwall ships
always looked smart and clean, with yards squared to mathematical
precision like a naval frigate.
As a sign of mourning the custom was to paint all the white parts of
the ship a pale blue, such as the white ribbon round the hull, the
lower masts, the boats, and so on. There were some ships in which
the discipline was stricter than in others, according to whether the
captain was more disposed towards man-o’-war fashion. Those ships which
ran to India were more strict in their discipline and more formal
in their routine than the vessels which sailed to Australia. In the
former the passengers consisted chiefly of Army officers and their
families, or civil servants going out to take up their appointments,
or of consumptives voyaging for their health. But in the Australian
ships life was more easy-going, with concerts, theatricals, dances, and
even bazaars. In both ships there was a good deal of fraternising and
philandering between the younger officers and the eternal feminine,
which was natural enough during those long voyages.
The late Captain W. B. Whall, who died not long since, served as
a midshipman in the Blackwaller _Hotspur_ during the ’sixties,
and fortunately has left behind in his _School and Sea Days_ some
interesting recollections. The commander of this famous 1000-ton East
Indiaman was Captain Henry Toynbee, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.S., uncle of Arnold
Toynbee, the social economist and philanthropist. Whall describes how,
after the _Hotspur_ had anchored off Gravesend, the captain would be
received on board in true naval style. This commanding officer, who,
by the way was uncle to Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the famous scout,
will always be remembered for his amazing skill as a navigator. Captain
Whall said he recollected on one occasion when the _Hotspur_ had been
ninety days out of sight of land, and had sailed over three oceans
bound for Calcutta direct, Toynbee came up on deck about 8 p.m. and
told the chief officer to send a man up to the foretopsail yard and to
order him to look two points on the starboard bow, and he would then
see the Lower Floating Light. The hand had barely got his head over
the sail when he cried from aloft: “Light two points away on starboard
bow.” And this was without having sighted anything since the Lizard!
In contrast to this fine ability of an East Indiaman navigator must
be placed the rough-and-ready methods of those fine but ignorant
skippers of the fruit-trade schooners which were built and sailed
like yachts and went down as far south as the Azores. Often when
full-rigged ships were blown by easterly gales from the western end of
the English Channel as far west as the Fastnet, these splendid little
fore-and-afters would be able to make excellent passages to windward.
In old waterside inns of the West country you may still see pictures
of these ships with the canvas cut in realistic fashion to obtain
verisimilitude. They made wonderfully fast passages, and they were
most perfectly handled, but the captains, not being capable always of
working out their longitude, used to hail any passing ship and hang out
a blackboard with the question: “What is your longitude?”
Such a ship as the _Hotspur_, well manned, well navigated, would go
round the Cape and land her forty passengers in Calcutta within three
months. They would come aboard at Gravesend with their own cabin
furniture, but included in the fare was an ample supply of liquor.
Often the charge for a stern cabin for a man and wife would be £300
from Calcutta to England, and the ship would have also probably 500
troops aboard, or a total of 600 souls. The decks would be encumbered
with sheep, hay, potatoes, bananas, hen-coops, and yet if any disaster
had occurred there was accommodation in the boats for not more than
about 100. Whall, who served in these ships for ten years, never once
saw a Blackwaller heave-to in a heavy gale. But that was because they
were well found and so well manned under the best commanders. In those
days the sailor ashore loved his grog too much, and when he left the
ship at the end of a voyage with probably £40 on him, he would proceed
to get drunk, then perhaps some one in the East End would drug him,
and finally, when he awoke up next day he would find himself without
so much as a penny. But at sea he was the best fellow in the world,
well-disciplined, able to go aloft in the heaviest weather to hand or
reef a sail and lay out on a yard. He was an expert at the wheel or
with the lead or marlin-spike, and a captain knew that his men could be
relied upon from the moment the ship left Gravesend. It was thus that
such ships as _Flying Cloud_, _Sovereign of the Seas_, _James Baines_
and _Marco Polo_ could on occasions reel off their eighteen knots, or
420 knots in the twenty-four hours. In fact during the ’fifties the
sailing ships could make passages as fast as any mail steamer afloat.
Every one who has had command of vessels and men realises how important
is the spirit of emulation and the pride of ship and service. Whall,
the son of a rector, remarked that all who served in these ships
looked down on the officers of the Liverpool contemporary sailing ships
as being less polished and wearing no uniform, though he admitted they
were perhaps smarter sailormen than the Blackwallers. In his memoirs
_My Life at Sea_, that experienced mercantile officer, Commander W.
C. Crutchley, R.N.R., says of a certain renowned clipper ship: “The
officers and men of that craft considered themselves very superior
beings to those who had not the good fortune to sail under the blue St.
Andrew’s Cross; but they, in their turn, were looked down upon by the
men sailing in the ships of Green, Dunbar, Wigram and Smith. In those
days it would have required a very careful M.C. to give the varying
grades of the Merchant Services their due order of preference.”
It was the same at Southampton at one time between the officers of
the Royal Mail and the P. & O. Lines, who would not foregather on any
account, owing to their mutual jealousies. But those were the days
when ship-love and pride of service were more accentuated than to-day.
And yet in even some of the contemporary crack steamships there was
plenty to find fault with, and Crutchley, who served in the Union liner
_Roman_, which ran to South Africa, complains that even in that ocean
steamship there was neither engine-room telegraph nor standard compass;
for orders were shouted down the engine-room skylight, and the ship was
steered from right on the poop, with a binnacle on either side, that on
the starboard being the one used for navigating.
[Illustration:
[_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
S.S. “NORTHUMBERLAND.”
2,180 tons, 500 horse-power. Henry Skinner, Commander. About 1871. She
was one of Money Wigram & Sons’ Australian steamships. The famous house
flag will be seen at the main.]
We have digressed from our main theme in order to show the spirit
which actuated the Mercantile Marine at that important period which
followed the abolition of the monopoly and saw the numbers of
shipyards, ships and mariners rapidly increasing, thanks to freedom and
competition. It is now time for us to watch this progress in detail.
If we compare the _Seringapatam_ with one of the East India Company’s
ships of say 1826, we can see indeed more points of resemblance than
of difference. Both are frigates, each has a bluff bow and heavy stern
that remind us of the Stuart ships, yet in the new type inaugurated
by _Seringapatam_ it meant a daring advance to omit the heavy double
stern and quarter galleries. She still retained her ship rig, her white
ribbon, her square ports and her high-steeved bowsprit, but in her was
the first break, architecturally, with the olden times. The sailing
ship was now in a new era.
Even in the very year of Queen Victoria’s accession, Money Wigram
launched for the Australian trade the 293-ton _Emu_, for this was
beginning to open as an important lane of commerce. And in that same
year the yard built such different ships as the 461-ton whaler _Active_
and the 621-ton steamer _Neptune_, the latter for the General Steam
Navigation Company. It was a couple of years later that they launched
the 852-ton _Earl of Hardwicke_ for Richard Green. This ship was
originally fitted with paddles and 100-horse-power engines to be used
in calms, but they were found unsuitable and removed in the following
year. And then in 1839 they launched the _Owen Glendower_, which was
such a splendid sailing ship that foreign merchantmen used to salute
her with the respect as for a man-of-war. She was a sister ship of the
_Earl of Hardwicke_. In that year, too, they built the Opium clipper
_Moa_ for Jardine, Mattheson & Co., though we shall come to the
clipper ships presently. Three years later the Blackwall yard launched
the two magnificent 1223-ton flush-decked, frigate-built sister ships
_Queen_ and _Prince of Wales_, as well as the 449-ton _Sylph_.
[Illustration:
[_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
AUXILIARY S.S. “KENT.”
2,300 tons. G. Fairles Gibbs, Commander. Built and owned by Money
Wigram & Sons. About 1876.]
And here we come to another severing of olden ties, for this was the
last ship which was ever built by the firm of Green, Wigrams & Green.
In the following year the partnership expired, a wall was built through
the yard, and the western portion was made over to Money Wigram &
Sons, whilst the eastern half became the property of Richard and Henry
Green. Sentimentally it seemed a pity that after all those years the
separation should have taken place; but, as already foreshadowed, it
was bound to come, owing to the difference in interests. The firm had
become _individually_ interested in shipowning, and not collectively.
Thus Wigram never owned so large a fleet as Green, and where a firm is
divided against itself obviously it must come to an end before long.
Richard Green and Henry Green went on building and increasing their
ownership until the discovery of gold in Australia, when they launched
many ships to cope with the rush. Richard Green did not die until 1863,
and just before his death one of his ships had made a voyage to China.
In his life he did much to improve the Mercantile Marine, and it was he
who was the chief mover and first chairman of what was originally known
as the Thames Marine Officers’ Training Ship, better known to-day as
H.M.S. _Worcester_. In the year 1922 this ship celebrated its sixtieth
anniversary, and during its existence has been able to turn out 3000
officers for the Mercantile Marine, of whom so many distinguished
themselves during the Great War. Thus, directly through the Blackwall
yard there is an intimate connection between the merchant ships of the
time of Queen Elizabeth and those liners of to-day.
The two finest ships in the Mercantile Marine of 1851 were the East
Indiamen _Marlborough_ and _Blenheim_, owned by Messrs. T. & W. Smith,
who had begun running ships to the East soon after the monopoly had
gone, in competition with Green and Wigram. It was the gold-diggings
of South Australia and Victoria from 1851 onwards which made a sudden
demand for shipping passengers out from England: in fact by 1853 the
demand was greater than the supply. But the only suitable vessels
available for first- and second-class passengers were these famous
Blackwall frigates, and the Greens were thus in a position to transfer
some of their large fleet from the Calcutta to the Australian trade.
Money Wigram, not having yet become a large shipowner, began to build
for this Melbourne trade.
The Blackwall frigates were devoid of sheer, had long poops, short
maindecks, and were beautifully built of picked teak and oak. Green’s
ships were not as sharp-ended as Smith’s or Wigram’s, but Somes’ and
Dunbar’s were real old-fashioned, clumsy-bowed craft. The fastest of
Green’s ships were the _Alnwick Castle_, _Clarence_, _Windsor Castle_
and _Anglesey_. The fastest of Wigram’s fleet was the _Kent_. The old
East India Company’s influence for a time so dominated these Blackwall
frigates that dignity, comfort and safety first were rather the
mottoes of the fleet, unlike the clipper ships, always snugging down
for the night. Some of the best-known Green ships were the 835-ton
_Madagascar_, built in 1837, the 852-ton _Earl of Hardwicke_, already
mentioned, built in 1838, but afterwards wrecked on the South African
coast in 1863; the _Owen Glendower_, built in 1839, the _Agincourt_
(958 tons), in 1841, the _Prince of Wales_ (1223 tons), in 1842, the
_Monarch_ (1444 tons), in 1844, the _Alfred_ (1291 tons), in 1845, the
_Barham_ (934 tons), in 1846. The _Prince of Wales_ and _Queen_ of 1842
were both 1223-ton ships, the former built for Green and the latter for
Wigram at the Blackwall yard. Pierced for fifty guns and flush-decked,
they were ready with their crew of seventy-eight each to be turned into
naval corvettes at once.
The _Anglesey_, built in 1852, of 1018 tons, holds the record for
having made the biggest day’s run by a Blackwaller. This was 380
miles, and her passage from Melbourne to the Start in seventy-nine
days with a crew of forty-six was a remarkable achievement. Wigram’s
927-ton _Kent_, built in 1852, was invaluable during the gold rush
to Australia. She was one of the crack sailing ships in history, and
actually beat the tea-clippers. It was a great innovation when, in 1866
and 1868 respectively, the Blackwall yard built the 1451-ton _Superb_
and the 1458-ton _Carlisle Castle_, for both were of iron, and owing to
Richard Green’s prejudice against iron the firm had to wait until after
his death to discard teak. The former became a popular passenger ship
to Melbourne; and the last of these famous Blackwall frigates was the
_Melbourne_, built for the Greens at the Blackwall yard in 1875 as the
finest iron passenger sailing ship in the world. Of 1857 tons and 269·8
feet long, her passenger accommodation was excellent—a great difference
from the old East Indiamen.
[Illustration:
[_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
S.S. “NORFOLK.”
3,196 tons, 2,500 horse-power. J. Pyne O’Callaghan, Commander. One of
Money Wigram & Sons’ Australian ships. About 1879.]
Until 1887 _Melbourne_ sailed regularly to the Australian port of the
same name, and was then bought by Messrs. Devitt & Moore, who changed
her name to _Macquarie_. In 1897 she was used as one of this firm’s
cadet ships, six years later she was sold to the Norwegians and changed
her name to _Fortuna_, and these owners eventually sold her, so that
now she is used as a hulk in Australia. So ended one interesting period
in one of the most important developments of the Mercantile Marine. The
combination of personal interest on the part of builder and owner; the
great pride in the ship not merely as a money-maker, but as a thing of
beauty and queen of the sea; the ability of officers and men serving
under a captain who was anxious to maintain the dignity of his line—all
these brought about a high standard of seafaring which was thoroughly
let down when owners without consciences sent crews to sea in ill-found
steam coffin-ships. The fine, historic reputation of the Merchant
Service received a shock, the best men were attracted by other walks in
life, and so for a while the standard deteriorated. There are many who
believe, rightly, that the Mercantile Marine of any country could and
should be run with fixity of employment and the same lofty standard as
the fighting navies. If that were done, the grade of officers and men
would be as high as it was in the days of the East Indiamen. Let it be
realised what a nation’s merchant ships mean to the country, and then
the public will concede it proper respect and give to that service its
best sons.