taffrail, and as the mountains came roaring along, towering far above
the stern of the little ship and threatening her with extinction, these
hawsers broke the wrath of the rollers, and made them spread into
masses of prancing foam. The captain and crew said they would never
have been able to scud before the hurricane but for their influence.
She arrived at Queenstown a complete wreck having been literally under
water or covered by it from leaving the Banks until they passed the
Fastnet; bulwarks were gone fore and aft; boats were smashed, but the
hatches were intact. The captain had been so long without sleep and
proper rest that he had lost the power of sleep. His nerves were so
badly shattered, and his physical endurance so completely exhausted, a
new captain had to be sent to relieve him, and the poor fellow never
really regained his normal state afterwards. I have often heard him say
"it was death or glory; scud, pump, or sink," which was one of the
common phrases used by seamen in describing circumstances of this
nature.
Stories more or less sensational are written from time to time of the
terrors of a passage from Liverpool to New York aboard one of the White
Star or Cunard liners, or even a passage on an ordinary ocean tramp,
and although I would not under-estimate either the danger or the
discomforts of either the crew or the passengers aboard one of these, I
am bound to say they can only form a meagre conception of what it must
have been like on one of the diminutive frail sailing crafts that built
up the supremacy of the British mercantile marine. No one can really
imagine the awfulness of the work these vessels and their crews had to
do except those who sailed in them. This vessel, like many others of
her class and size, did useful work in her time in building up our
trade with other parts of the world. Distance and danger were no
obstacles to the crews who heroically manned them. They feared nothing
and dared everything. Their pride of race was inherent. They aimed at
upholding the fine traditions of their nautical forbears, and
contemptuously ignored the right of other nations to a place on the
high seas. It was their dominion, and their prerogative therefore to
monopolize them. Uneasy, ill-informed, political propagandists and
commercial theorists would do well to ponder over what it has cost in
courage, in vital force, in genius and in wealth to build up an edifice
that represents half the world's tonnage. This structure of national
strength has been erected without the aid of subsidies or bounties, and
it may be not only maintained without them, but grow still greater if
it is left alone to pursue its natural course under a system that
brought us out of commercial bondage into a freer air over fifty years
ago. That system has been the secret of much of our success, and once
we embark on the retrograde course of protection then that will be the
beginning of our mercantile decadence. Is the heritage not too
magnificent, too sacred, to have pranks played with it?
THE END
THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
"WINDJAMMERS AND SEA-TRAMPS."
_With Six Full-page Illustrations by Thomas Runciman._
"The special attractiveness of the volume arises from the fact that the
author began as a cabin-boy, worked his way up to master, and is now a
leading steamship manager, and that he has been at the pains to
epitomise his experiences and state his views."--_Fairplay._
"In _Windjammers and Sea Tramps_, Mr. Walter Runciman, sen., has put
together memories and information drawn from many years' experience of
the British mercantile marine, mostly in sailing vessels."--_St. James'
Gazette._
"His yarns are chiefly of the things that took place a generation ago,
when there was far more brutality on ocean-going ships than there is in
these more enlightened days."--_Daily News._
"Mr. Walter Runciman, sen., has given the characteristic title,
_Windjammers and Sea Tramps_, to a little book of recollections and
opinions on the merchant service. His pages are full of experience and
rich anecdotage, and smack refreshingly of the sea."--_Manchester
Guardian._
"Mr. Runciman packs together a surprising amount of information on our
merchant service, and his modest hope that 'he has succeeded in making
the book interesting' is very fully justified."--_Saturday Review._
"To all lovers of the sea, to all those whose hearts go the merrier for
the sight of a ship or a yarn with an old salt, this book will come a
little sadly, and bring regrets for the old days and the dead
traditions. Not many men now living can remember the old sea
order."--_The Speaker._
"Mr. Walter Runciman is a practical sailor. He has had experience of
the sea in many capacities, and this lends weight to his opinions on
matters connected with the mercantile marine and interest to the
various yarns which he has to spin."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
"Every self-respecting Briton knows that a windjammer is a sailing
vessel, and the book before us, written by a man who 'went in at the
hawse-hole and came out of the cabin-window,' should commend itself to
a maritime nation."--_Birmingham Gazette._
End of Project Gutenberg's The Shellback's Progress, by Walter Runciman