Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
WINDJAMMERS AND SEA TRAMPS
_By_
WALTER RUNCIMAN, _Sen._
Author of "The Shellback's Progress in the Nineteenth Century."_
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE: THE
WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: 3 EAST 14TH STREET. 1905.
THESE EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS
OF THINGS NAVAL
NEW AND OLD
ARE DEDICATED
WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF ESTEEM
TO
JOHN DENT AND WILLIAM MILBURN
AND TO THE MEMORY OF
E.H. WATTS
CONTENTS
PREFACE
I. INTRODUCTORY
II. PECULIAR AND UNEDUCATED
III. A CABIN-BOY'S START AT SEA
IV. THE SEAMAN'S SUPERSTITIONS
V. THE SEAMAN'S RELIGION
VI. SAFETY AND COMFORT AT SEA
VII. WAGES AND WIVES
VIII. LIFE AMONG THE PACKET RATS
IX. BRUTALITY AT SEA
X. BRAVERY
XI. CHANTIES
XII. JACK IN RATCLIFF HIGHWAY
XIII. THE MATTER-OF-FACT SAILOR
XIV. RESOURCEFULNESS AND SHIPWRECK
XV. MANNING THE SERVICE
PREFACE
"I went in at the hawse-hole and came out at the cabin
window." It was thus that a certain North Country shipowner
once summarised his career while addressing his
fellow-townsmen on some public occasion now long past, and
the sentence, giving forth the exact truth with all a
sailor's delight in hyperbole, may well be taken to describe
the earlier life-stages gone through by the author of this
book. The experiences acquired in a field of operations,
that includes all the seas and continents where commerce may
move, live, and have its being, have enhanced in value and
completed what came to him in his forecastle and
quarter-deck times. He learned in his youth, from the lips
of a race now extinct, what the nature and traditions of
seamanship were before he and his contemporaries lived. He
has seen that nature and those traditions change and die,
whilst he and his generation came gradually under a new
order of things, whose practical working he and they have
tested in actual practice both on sea and land.
It is on this ground of experience that the author ventures
to ask attention to his views in respect of the likeliest
means to raise a desirable set of seamen in the English
merchant navy. But he also ventures to hope that the
historic incidents and characteristics of a class to which
he is proud to belong, as set forth in this book, may cause
it to be read with interest and charitable criticism. He
claims no literary merit for it: indeed, he feels there may
be found many defects in style and description that could be
improved by a more skilful penman. But then it must be
remembered that a sailor is here writing of sailors, and
hence he gives the book to the public as it is, and hopes he
has succeeded in making it interesting.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
It was a bad day for Spain when Philip allowed the "Holy
Office" to throw Thomas Seeley, the Bristol merchant, into a
dungeon for knocking down a Spaniard who had uttered foul
slanders against the Virgin Monarch of England. Philip did
not heed the petition of the patriot's wife, of which he
must have been cognisant. Elizabeth refused the commission
Dorothy Seeley petitioned for, but, like a sensible lady,
she allowed her subjects to initiate their own methods of
revenge. Subsequent events show that she had no small share
in the introduction of a policy that was ultimately to sweep
the Spaniards off the seas, and give Britain the supremacy
over all those demesnes. This was the beginning of a
distinguished partnership composed of Messieurs John Hawkins
and his kinsman Francis Drake, and of Elizabeth their Queen.
Elizabeth did not openly avow herself one of the partners;
she would have indignantly denied it had it been hinted at;
yet it is pretty certain that the cruises of her faithful
Hawkins and Drake substantially increased her wealth, while
they diminished that of Spanish Philip and that of his
subjects too. Long before the Armada appeared resplendent in
English waters, commanded by that hopeless, blithering
landlubber, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who with other sons
of Spain was sent forth to fight against Britain for "Christ
and our Lady," there had been trained here a race of
dare-devil seamen who knew no fear, and who broke and
vanquished what was reckoned, till then, the finest body of
sailors in the whole world. That our sailors have maintained
the reputation achieved in the destruction of the great
Spanish Armada is sometimes disputed. I am one of those who
trust that British seamen would be worthy of British
traditions were they even now put to the test by some
powerful invader. To suppose that the men who smothered the
Armada, or those who broke the fleets of Spain and France at
Trafalgar, were more courageous than those of our day would
be found in similar circumstances, is arrant folly. In
smaller things we can see the same sterling qualities shown
by members of our Navy now as their forebears exhibited of
old. The impressive yet half comic character of the religion
that guided the lives of seamen during Drake's time has been
faithfully handed down like an heirloom to the genuine old
salt of our own time.
The great Admiral had inconsistencies of character, and
conduct that would seem to live on in more or less elevated
examples up till now. He conducted himself in regal style on
his long voyages, dressing in an imposing way for dinner,
during which he commanded fine music to be played--for at
that day England was the home _par excellence_ of music--and
no food was eaten at his table until the blessing of the
Almighty had been asked upon it, and "thanks" was solemnly
offered ere rising. The Holy Sacrament was partaken by him
with Doughty the Spanish spy. The latter, after being kissed
by Drake, was then made to lay his head on the block, and
thereafter no more was heard of him. Afterwards the Admiral
gave forth a few discourses on the importance of unity and
obedience, on the sin of spying into other people's affairs;
and then proceeded, with becoming solemnity and in the names
of God and the Icy Queen, to plunder Spanish ports and
Spanish shipping. Drake believed he was by God's blessing
carrying out a divinely governed destiny, and so perhaps he
was; but it is difficult somewhat to reconcile his
covetousness with his piety. But what is to be said of his
Royal mistress whose crown and realm were saved to her by
free sacrifices of blood and life on the part of thousands
of single-minded men, whom the Royal Lady calmly allowed,
after they had secured her safety and that of England, to
starve in peace on Margate Sands? Times have changed. Were
such reward to be meted to the sailors of to-day after some
great period of storm, stress and national peril had been
passed through by virtue of their prowess, the wrath of the
nation might break forth and go near to sweep away such
high-placed callousness for good and all.
The modern austere critic of the condition of the seamen of
the mercantile marine is somewhat of an infliction. He slays
the present-day sailor with virulent denunciation, and
implores divine interposition to take us back to the good
old days of Hawkins, Drake, Howard, Blake and the intrepid
Nelson. He craves a resurrection of the combined heroism and
piety of the sixteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
centuries. The seaman of those periods is, to his mind, a
lost ideal. And without doubt the men trained and
disciplined by Hawkins and Drake _were_ the glory of Britain
and the terror of other nationalities. Their seamanship and
heroism were matchless. They had desperate work to do, and
they did it with completeness and devotion. And the same
credit may be given to the sailors of still later times
under altered conditions. But Nelson's and Collingwood's men
did great deeds in different ways from those of Hawkins and
Drake. Both sets of seamen were brave and resourceful, but
they were made use of differently, and were drafted from
different sources. The latter were seamen and piratical
rovers by choice, and warriors very often by necessity.
They were willing, however, to combine piety, piracy, and
sanguinary conflict in the effort to open out new avenues of
commercial enterprise for the mutual benefit of themselves
and the thrifty lady who sat upon the throne, and who showed
no disinclination to receive her share of the booty
valiantly acquired by her nautical partners.
The race of men which followed the Trans-Atlantic, Pacific,
and Mexican buccaneers of Cadiz, San Juan and Armada fame
has been different only in so far as transitional
circumstances have made it so. Indeed, the period which
elapsed from the time of the destruction of the Armada up to
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century had evolved innumerable changes in modes
of commerce which changed our seamen's characteristics as
well. But although the circumstances of the sailors'
avocation had changed, and they had to adapt themselves to
new customs, there is no justification for the belief that
the men of the sixteenth were any more capable or well
behaved than those of the eighteenth and the beginning of
the nineteenth centuries. Nor is it justifiable to assume
that because of the rapid changes which have taken place
during the last fifty years by the introduction of steamers,
the seamen who man the steamers are inferior to those who, a
generation before, manned sailing vessels, or who man what
is left of sailing vessels now. The steamer seamen of to-day
are mentally, physically and mechanically as competent to do
the work they are engaged to do as were any previous race of
seamen, and, taking them in the aggregate, they are better
educated than their predecessors and quite as sober. Their
discipline may not be all that could be desired, but that is
not the fault of, nor need it even be considered a defect
in, the seaman himself. It is a defect of the system they
live under, the responsibility for which must rest with
those whose duty it is to train them. It often happens that
those who declaim so cynically against the shortcomings of
the present-day sailor are incompetent to make a suitable
selection of captains and officers who may be entrusted with
the task of establishing proper discipline and training
aboard their vessels. Very frequently the seamen are blamed
when the captain and officers ought to be held responsible.
If captains and officers are not trained properly in their
graduating process themselves, and have not the natural
ability to make up for that misfortune when given the
opportunity of control, it is inevitable that disorder must
follow. There are, however, exceptional cases where, for
example, an officer may have been reared in a bad,
disorderly school, and yet has become a capable
disciplinarian. An instance of this kind seldom occurs; but
the merchant service is all the richer for it when it does.
It must not be supposed that I have any intention of
defending the faults of our seamen. I merely desire that
some of the responsibility for their faults and training
should be laid on the shoulders of those critics who shriek
unreasonably of their weaknesses, while they do nothing to
improve matters. Many of these gentlemen complain of Jack's
drunken, insubordinate habits, while they do not disapprove
of putting temptation in his way. They complain of him not
being proficient, and at the same time they refuse to
undertake the task of efficient training. They cherish the
memory of the good old times. They speak reverently of the
period of flogging, of rotten and scanty food allowance, of
perfidious press-gangs, and of corrupt bureaucratic tyranny
that inflicted unspeakable torture on the seamen who manned
our line of battleships at the beginning of the
century--seamen who were, for the most part, pressed away
from the merchant service.
In my boyhood days I often used to hear the old sailors who
were fast closing their day of active service say that there
were no sailors nowadays. They had all either been "drowned,
killed, or had died at home and been decently buried." I was
impressed in those days with the opinions of these vain old
men, and thought how great in their profession they must
have been. As a matter of fact, they were no better nor any
worse than the men against whom a whimsical vanity caused
them to inveigh. Many years have passed since I had the
honour of sailing with them and many, if not all of them,
may be long since dead; but I sometimes think of them as
amongst the finest specimens of men that ever I was
associated with. Their fine manhood towered over everything
that was common or mean, in spite of their wayward talk.