the sailor against the rapacity of those owners who would load their
vessels down to their waterways, if they could only manage to make them
float at that, there must always be a most unpleasant quality of
insufficiency in the controversies the subject has excited, so long as
they exclude consideration of the kind of vessels which are launched
month after month and year after year from many shipbuilding yards. The
absurdity of painting or nailing a loading disc upon the side of a
vessel which is to a strong well-constructed ship what a cheap suburban
villa built with nine-inch walls is to a house in Grosvenor or
Berkeley-square, struck me forcibly, as I stood the other day looking at
the flimsy metal skeletons which, when plated with thin sheets of iron
and loaded with the dead weight of coal and freight and engines, are to
confront and give battle to the terrible sea. I shall be asked if no
protection is afforded the sailor against the deadly risks such
shipbuilding as this involves by those marine surveyors, whose duties as
inspectors are very clearly and precisely laid down for them by the
authorities they represent? I answer, let those interested in the
subject make a tour of inspection for themselves—slip in quietly, as I
did, into those shipbuilding yards where cheap steamers are
manufactured, and judge with their own eyes to what extent I am
inaccurate in affirming that a proportion of the ships which are built
in this country are renewing with tenfold disgrace those maritime crimes
which were supposed to have been ground out of our civilization, and
reviving with tenfold horror those peculiar forms of marine disasters
which were hopefully assumed to have been shelved along with the old
wooden craft.
And now let me say here a few words on the subject of marine surveying.
If there be one class of responsible men more than another who should be
wholly above suspicion, who should be possessed of a moral courage
equal, under all circumstances, to the unbending and unfaltering
discharge of the duties accepted by them, they should consist, one would
think, of the men employed by Lloyd’s and the Board of Trade to inspect
the construction of ships, and to pronounce upon their fitness as
sea-going fabrics. You have only to consider what is involved in the
duties of marine surveyors to appreciate the high and extraordinary
character of their obligations. Upon their capacity to distinguish
between good and bad work, and upon their courage as judges to whom
their employers entrust the exercise of the widest possible discretion,
practically depends the life of every human being who goes to sea as a
sailor or as a passenger. Of course, the difficulties of the vocation,
humanly speaking, are not hard to understand. We may appreciate the
embarrassment a surveyor labours under in having to condemn the work of
a shipbuilder with whom he is on very friendly terms, to say no more.
The temptation to inspect any other part of the fabric than that which
imperatively calls for condemnation must, under certain circumstances,
be very great. But let all this be freely admitted. Life is more
precious than class sensibilities, and if an evil is to flourish only on
the condition that nothing is said about it, most of us will agree that
it is high time to cultivate candour, in that direction at least.
I have no hesitation in saying that a large proportion of the marine
surveying of the day is one of the most glaring, as it certainly is the
cruellest, of the shams of the period. Samples of work are passed which,
were there the least sincerity and conscience in the minds of those who
decide upon them, could under no possibility have left the yards in
which they were produced. Men, women, and children are sent to sea in
structures which never would have been permitted to quit the only place
they are safe on—I mean the dry land—had the surveyors put any shadow of
honesty into the duties they are appointed to discharge.
“Look,” said a gentleman to me the other day in a shipbuilding yard,
“Look at that faulty work there! is it possible that Mr. —— (naming the
surveyor) means to pass it?”
The surveyor stood at a distance; the gentleman called him and pointed
out the defective work. The surveyor seemed surprised, and shook his
head. “Ah,” said he, “that is too bad. I shan’t be able to pass that.”
But he _did_ pass it, for the gentleman some days after wrote to tell me
that the faulty points had not been remedied, and that the ship was to
be launched just as she was.
“What,” cries an American writer, in a Yankee shipping journal, “What of
the _Ismailia_, _Bernina_, _Bayard_, _Homer_, _Stamfordham_, _Telford_,
_Zanzibar_, _Toxford_, _Sylvia_, _Surbiton_, _Joseph Pease_, and the
forty British steamers which foundered last year, and scores of others
which have gone to Davy Jones’s Locker?” We are constantly boasting of
the vastness and sovereignty of our mercantile marine; but we shall have
to acquire a new theory of bragging if we are to reconcile our
self-complacency with such plain-speaking as this, which comes to us in
our own tongue from across the seas.
“Far less need of hospitals, did they use us well,
Were this forecastle of ours fit wherein to dwell.
Ships are coffins nowadays, life is but a toy,
‘Jerry’ murders millions, Board of Trade ahoy!”
sings the contemporary sailor; but there is very little use in his
shouting “Ahoy,” if the only response he gets is the appointment of men
who, filling offices designed for his protection, deliberately ignore
their most grave and great responsibilities and lure him, by what are
absolutely false representations, into committing his life to
unseaworthy ships. Unhappily in marine topics public interest is only to
be awaked by reiteration. But let it be remembered that it is not only
Jack’s life that is jeopardized by our new shipbuilding departures. The
subject is one that concerns every living being that crosses the ocean
or who has friends at sea. The sailor, we know, is an abstraction.
Nautical as we are as a people, we barely take count of him unless as a
stage show, or as the pig-tailed Jack Pudding of a romance. But when we
think of passengers we think of our friends and of ourselves. Is the
loss of the _Clan Macduff_ still within living memory? Everybody was
much shocked at the time by that dreadful wreck. But shore-going people
would have been more shocked had they taken the trouble to master the
meaning of the Wreck Commissioner’s finding, when, by absolving the
owner from all responsibility on the grounds that the vessel had been
passed by a Board of Trade surveyor, he practically decided that the
Board of Trade, through the official who certificated the _Clan
Macduff_, was answerable for the dreadful disaster that befel her. At
this rate what assurance have the travelling public, leaving sailors out
of the question, that their lives are in any degree cared for?
Apparently the Board of Trade are not to be reached if one of their
servants passes a ship which goes to pieces as an ill-built, crazy
machine in the first gale of wind she encounters; whilst the owner of
the sea-coffin becomes an irresponsible being on the merits of a
certificate cunningly courted and fraudulently given. If the Wreck
Commissioner’s law be sound, then the criminality of certificating
unseaworthy ships is intensified by the fact that it secures the owners
against all penalties. Of course, both the Board of Trade and Lloyd’s
act with perfect sincerity. They appoint the best men they can get for
the trifling wages they give to do certain work, and it is not their
fault that some of these men should prove unfaithful. But since nothing
can be more certain than that the whole system of marine surveyorship,
as we have it, is deceptive, blundering, and in a high degree obnoxious
to human life and property, is it not about time that we set to work to
invent some better method for guaranteeing, so far as shipbuilding
workmanship and material go, the lives and property of the hundreds and
thousands of people who go to sea as sailors and passengers? No society
nor Government department has a right to subject men invested with
powers made solemn by their involvement of precious life to the
temptations to faithlessness which surround the marine surveyor.
“How on earth did the builders manage to get that cruelly ill-built
vessel passed?” was asked not long since.
“Why, sir,” was the answer, “by taking care that the surveyor saw her
through no other medium than a bottle of champagne.”
A glass of liquor may cost a hundred lives; but the surveyor still keeps
his place, and draws his little salary, and goes on passing bad work,
with every shipwright in his district sniggering over the man’s
complaisance. Is it a system proper to denounce? I think it is; and no
disinterested person who is in the secret but must deplore it as deeply
dishonouring to the highest and most opulent and fertile branch of
British industry, and as a species of legalized and truly rank
conspiracy against the lives of passengers and sailors.
I have briefly referred to the case of the _Clan Macduff_; it will serve
my purpose to give a more particular instance of marine surveying as I
found it reported at length in one of the shipping journals. The brig
_Scio_ was a wooden vessel built in 1839, and she was still afloat in
1881. She was the property of a Mr. Blumer Bushell, of South Shields,
who had purchased her for £110, probably quite as much as she was worth.
She was docked and repaired at a cost of £336. Her first start, after
leaving the doctor’s hands, was unfortunate, for she went ashore at
Kunda and damaged her keel. This was repaired, £84 being spent upon her.
Next voyage she went to sea with a crew of eight hands, and a load of
four hundred and twenty-nine tons of coal, her registered tonnage being
a trifle over two hundred and sixty-five. Scarcely was she at sea when
she was found to be making water. The master’s attention was engrossed
by the job of pumping, in the midst of which the wind breezed up hard,
the vessel fell off, the mainboom jibed and broke in halves, one piece
of which, falling upon a boy, struck him down dead. The leak increased,
and the crew compelled the master to run for Leith Roads. Here the
vessel was placed on the mud, and caulked as high as nine feet of water
around her would let the irons go. Thus soldered, she started once more,
and plumped on to Inchkeith. She was towed off after discharging fifteen
tons of cargo, and was docked with four hundred and fourteen tons of
coal in her bottom. A portion of her crew now refused to share any more
of her fortunes, so they were discharged and others shipped in their
room. Once more this noble brig proceeded, but had not put fifteen miles
betwixt her and the land when the crew came aft in a body, swore that
the water was coming in fast and must presently drown the ship, and
begged the master to put back. This he did, in the face of a strong head
wind, which obliged him to beat up the Firth of Forth in short tacks.
By-and-by a squall came along and blew the lower fore-top-sail out of
the bolt-ropes. Soon afterwards the _Scio_ struck on some sands off
Buckhaven, but managed to beat over them. The master said he now wanted
to haul his brig off the land, but that the men refused to turn to. The
crew denied this, but, let the truth be what it would, not long after
the vessel had beaten over the sands she went ashore somewhere north of
Kirkcaldy, on which the crew very sensibly got out. Such is the
picturesque history of a brig which no man will believe could by any
possibility have been found afloat in these days of the stringent
Merchant Shipping Act, and of surveyors appointed by the Board of Trade
to stop rotten vessels from proceeding to sea. It was declared at the
re-hearing—for a good deal of litigation was generated by this dismal
old brig—that two shipwright surveyors, who were officers of the Board
of Trade, inspected the vessel whilst under repairs, visiting her
several times and pointing out what should be done. Yet you will have
observed that the _Scio_ never quitted the dock without all hands going
to the pumps, only to knock off in order to come aft and request the
skipper to put back to save their lives. And, as if this most
unimpeachable testimony to the value of Board of Trade surveying was not
of sufficient weight, there comes a Mr. Turner into court with samples
of the timbers and planks of the wreck which he had inspected on the
beach, and this gentleman deliberately declares—pointing to the samples
as he speaks—that, from the survey he made of the wretched old hooker’s
remains, she was unseaworthy.
There is no arrogance in pretending to wisdom after the event has
happened. The surveyors might affirm what they chose, but we, having the
end of the story under our eyes, are at full liberty to say that no
declarations that the brig was seaworthy can make her seaworthy in the
face of the water that ran into her bottom, and that kept the crew
pumping and hurrying back to land to save their lives. Theories are
excellent things in the absence of facts; but when a fact comes in the
road the biggest theory must make way. The pumping and the putting back
are the most satirical commentaries which can be imagined on the
declarations of the Board of Trade surveyors. What is their notion of
seaworthiness? Is it pumping morning, noon, and night, and all hands
imploring the skipper to put his helm up and try back? If it be not
that, if, on the contrary, they define seaworthiness to consist of a
tight, well-found craft, how are they going to reconcile the results of
their survey of the brig _Scio_ with the results of her attempted
voyages?
I quote this example of surveying because it is illustrative of the
worthlessness of the supervision practised by the Board of Trade under
the present system of protecting life and property, and because it is
typical of much of the work that is done in that way by the men who are
paid to look after the interests they represent. The land-going justices
who sat at a re-hearing of the first investigation absolved the owner on
the grounds that he did all that he could to render his brig
seaworthy—that is to say, “taking into consideration the precautions
taken by the owner, under the surveillance of the Board of Trade
surveyors at Shields and at Leith, and having all the work executed by
practical men of long standing, the Court could come to no other
conclusion than that set forth in the judgment.”
But what said the assessors, the nautical element in this investigation?
“We do not concur in this judgment ... and will furnish our own report.”
That report is the only endurable supplement to the justices’ annex that
could be devised. The writers declare that the brig was not properly and
efficiently repaired, and that she was not in a good and seaworthy
condition when she left Leith; “that, in their opinion, the _Scio_ was
in all probability in a worse state when she left Leith on November 26th
than when she left the Tyne on the 2nd.” They deny that the owner used
all those reasonable means in opening the _Scio_ out and ascertaining
her exact condition which, as a practical man, he should have known a
vessel of her age required, “and which he had such ample and available
means of doing in his own dock, thereby neglecting to ensure her being
sent to sea in a seaworthy condition.”
The whole story bears out this decision; and, the assessors’ judgment
being unquestionably correct, what are we to think of the surveyors who
could allow the brig to go to sea leaking like a sieve and then come
into court and speak well of the vessel on the grounds that they had
superintended the repairing of her and had even pointed out what should
be done? In this case, happily, no lives were lost; the brig went ashore
and her people left her. But, suppose she had gone down and drowned her
crew out of hand, would not the Board of Trade, in the person of their
representative, have been morally guilty of the death of the men?
Assuredly they accepted the responsibility of that brig being in a fit
condition to go to sea, as they accept the responsibility of every
vessel which their representatives pass being seaworthy. This
consideration ought surely to give significance to the system of
supervision they now practise; and to make them ask themselves whether,
having regard to the weight and solemnity of their self-imposed
obligations, they have any right, as servants of the public, to persist
in multiplying the perils of the deep by a sham and hollow method of
inspection. There is not a shipmaster in the country who is not sensible
of the necessity of a speedy reform in this matter; and there is not a
passenger who would not eagerly join in the cry for reformation were
even but a very little bit of the truth published in language which
should be intelligible to the landsman.[79]
Footnote 79:
This was written five years ago. In five years, at the present rate of
living, many changes happen; yet I do not find a single statement made
in this paper that I can expunge or modify as a fact of to-day, as it
was a fact five years since.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_FRENCH SMACKSMEN._
I will not say that the Chinese junk is a handsomer and handier ship
than the three-masted top-sail lug-rigged French smack that hails from
Boulogne or Gravelines or Calais; but, viewed from a distance, they are
not at all unlike. In truth, the horizon of these seas really offers
nothing more gaunt, primitive, and cumbersome than the French
lugger-rigged smack with her immensely round bows, great spring forward,
raking pole-masts crowned with fantastic vanes, brown sails almost as
square at the head as at the foot, and cut with an inclination towards
the bows like those of a junk, showing more freeboard than many a seven
hundred ton steam collier goes to sea with, her decks full of men
dressed in a queer kind of blouses, huge sprawling boots and immense
earrings, six sweeps or long oars perhaps over either side, an old man
steering, and half a dozen women in red or blue petticoats and
handkerchiefs tied over their heads, bustling about—the whole of them,
from the ancient chap at the tiller to the small boy gutting fish on the
forecastle, talking at once, and dropping their various jobs of
sweeping, repairing nets, stringing fish, and the like, to gesticulate.
Where do all these people sleep? How do they manage to stow themselves
away? I once counted twenty-three men, women, and boys aboard a French
smack that certainly did not exceed five and twenty tons. Three or four
men—two of whom probably might be youngsters—would have been thought as
many hands as that smack wanted had she been an English vessel. And yet,
numerous as those French men and women were—and the ladies lent a hand,
pulling and hauling with the rest—they worked their ship so slowly and
laboriously, and made so much noise, that any one would have supposed
she was under-manned and all hands abusing the skipper for putting to
sea without a proper complement. The wind was an inshore breeze, and
they had to beat out of harbour. It was enough to make one split one’s
sides to see the fellows tumbling and floundering over one another
whenever the helm was put down. Every man seemed skipper, bawled out
orders in a lingo compared to which the accents of a Newcastle pitman
excited by whisky would be considered chaste music, and I looked to see
half of them in their frantic hurry topple overboard. It so happened
that at the particular moment when the Frenchman had rounded on the
starboard tack for the purpose of making another board so as to fetch
the open water, a large passenger steamer was entering the harbour at
the rate of eight or nine miles an hour. The men on the pier roared to
the French smack to get out of the road. “Yash, yash!” answered the old
fellow at the tiller, waving his hand, but he never shifted his helm,
either not understanding what was said, or else supposing that the
steamer would go clear of him. What followed happened in a breath. The
steamer could not stop her way, though her engines were by this time
reversed and the wheels sending a whole surface of foam sluicing towards
her bows; her sharp stem took the Frenchman right amidships, there was a
crash of splintered wood, and, the vessels immediately going clear, I
saw that the unfortunate smack was cut down to the water’s edge.
And her people? As I live to write it, all hands were overboard! They
had jumped—men, women, and boys—over the rail when they saw that the
steamer was bound to come, and the foaming eddies thrown along by the
racing reversed wheels of the steamboat were full of revolving red caps,
and earrings, and white handkerchiefs. It was wonderful to see them all
in the water, supporting themselves with the utmost ease, half of them
breast high, waiting until they should cease to rotate that they might
“fix” their vessel and observe whether she meant to float or sink.
Before any boat could put off to them they had made up their minds, and
were swimming towards the smack, over whose sides they clambered, until
her decks were once more filled with them, and there they stood, with
the water streaming from their clothes, anathematizing the steamer in
one voice, and with every contortion of figure it was possible for their
ungovernable rage to fling them into. However, nobody was hurt, and the
smack, throwing her sweeps out, was got alongside one of the wharves,
where all hands promptly fell to drying themselves.
These vessels are very common objects in some of our English harbours;
but, familiar as they are, there is a deal of amusement to be obtained
by standing and looking down on their decks. If they hailed from a
country ten thousand miles distant the manners, appearance, customs of
the crews could not be more totally different from those of our own
smacksmen. It makes one think of the Spaniards at Trafalgar hanging big
wooden crosses on their spanker-boom ends before going into action, to
see these poor fellows when they leave Boulogne—and may be the other
ports they belong to for all I know—kneel down in their immense boots
upon the deck and offer up a prayer to the cross on the church on the
summit of the rocks. I have watched the English smacksman leave a good
many harbours, but never observed him in a devotional posture. Perhaps
on these occasions he withdraws into his little cabin, taking care to
assemble the apprentices first. Be this as it may, the French smack’s
deck in harbour is a real study, and one I never tire of watching. The
craft is so crowded that she seems full of business. If it is summer
time five or six brawny yellow-skinned lads are taking the diversion of
a bath over the side, while the ladies of the extensive company go
quietly on with their mending of nets or stockings. The men smoke,
argue, grease their boots, peel potatoes, clean fish, and the gruff
murmur of a wild _patois_ floats up, amid which the most accomplished
French scholar can only now and again hear a word that reminds him of
the French language. They and their ship make somehow—ugly as their
vessel is—a prettier picture than an English smack to fit a summer day.
It is no doubt the numerous crew, the oddness and wildness of their
appearance, the dress of the women. Some of the boats are
extraordinarily massive, perfect beds of timber with immensely round
bows and enormously thick scantling. The vanes at their mastheads are
often real marine curiosities; even the west country fishermen cannot
beat them. You can always tell a Frenchman by his vane though he should
lie in the middle of a whole forest of Dartmouth, Penzance, Brixham,
Shoreham, and other spars. You may also know him by the smell of the
smoke from his galley chimney—the little funnel that rises out of his
deck, and discharges a fish-like vapour, made even worse than ancient to
the British nostril by—what shall I say? what mystery of vegetable,
seasoning, stirring, and peppering?