MANNING THE SERVICE
At the present time there is much writing and talking as to
how the merchant service is to be kept supplied with seamen.
Guilds, Navy Leagues, and other agencies of talk have been
set at work to solve what they term a problem. Theories that
are exasperating to read or listen to have been
indiscriminately forced upon an enduring public; and after
all the balderdash and jeremiads that have flowed copiously
over the land we are pretty much where we were. The modern
shipowner and his theoretic friends prefer to waste their
energy in concocting theories to solve an imaginary
problem--the only problem being that which exists in their
own minds. There is nothing else to solve. Once the mildew
is out of the way and the doors are set wide open, we shall
soon have a full supply of recruits. During the last few
years several steamship owners have so far overcome their
prejudices as to take apprentices. Those who have worked it
properly have succeeded; while others complain of the system
being absolutely unsuccessful. My own impression is that the
want of success is not the fault of the lads, but those who
have the controlling of them.
Mr. Ritchie, when he was the head of the Board of Trade,
introduced a system of barter, whereby a certain reduction
of light dues was to be made to the firms who undertook to
train boys for the merchant service and the Royal Naval
Reserve. Needless to say, the very nature of the conditions
caused it to fail. In the first place the parents of the
boys looked upon the proposal as a form of conscription; and
in the second, owners would have no truck with a partial
abatement of the light dues. They very properly claimed that
the charge should be abolished altogether. All other
countries, except America and Turkey, have made the lighting
of their coast-lines an Imperial question; and America only
levies it against British shipping as a retaliatory measure.
Mr. Ritchie lost his chance of doing a national service by
neglecting to take into his confidence shipowners who were
conversant with the voluntary system of training seamen. Had
he done this, it is pretty certain they would have guided
him clear of the difficulties he got into, and his measure
would have been fashioned into a beneficent, workable scheme
instead of proving a fiasco.
There are shipowners who believe that it is the duty of the
State to pay a subsidy of twenty to fifty pounds per annum
for every apprentice carried. I have always been puzzled to
know from whence they derive their belief. When pressed to
state definitely what arguments they have to give in favour
of such a demand, their mental processes seem to become
confused. They are driven to prophetic allusions to future
naval war, and the usefulness of seamen in that event. Of
course no one can dispute the usefulness of sailors at any
time and under any circumstances; but if that is the only
reason for asking the Government to pay owners part of the
cost of manning their ships, then they are living in a
fool's paradise, and are much too credulous about public
philanthropy, and very unobservant and illogical too if they
imagine that national interests are entirely centred in the
industry they happen to be engaged in. It would be just as
reasonable for Armstrong's or Vickers' to request a subsidy
for training their men because their business happens to be
the manufacture of guns and the construction of warships. Or
on the same logical grounds the ordinary shipbuilder and
engine-maker would be justified in cadging subsidies for
training every branch of their trades, and thereby work
their concerns at the expense of a public who are not
directly connected with them. But no one has ever heard of
these people making any such demand on national generosity.
I believe I am right in stating that there are only very
few shipowners who advocate such a parochial view. The great
bulk of them regard it with disfavour, first, because it
smacks of peddling dealing; and, secondly, even if it were
right they know that State aid means State interference, and
State interference savours too much of working commerce on
strictly algebraic lines, which only an executive with a
wealthy, indulgent nation behind it could stand. The Chamber
of Shipping last year vigorously declared against subsidies
of this kind; and the way in which the proposal was
strangled leaves small hope of it ever being successfully
revived.
An encouraging feature of the situation is that the Shipping
Federation has at last taken the matter up. The late Mr.
George Laws was always in favour of doing so, but
unfortunately he got scant support from his members. Since
his death, and the pronouncement the Chamber of Shipping
gave in its favour at the last annual meeting, Mr. Cuthbert
Laws, who succeeded his gifted father, has with commendable
energy and marked ability undertaken the task of reviving
the old system of every vessel carrying so many apprentices.
He is penetrating every part of Great Britain with the
information that the Federated Shipowners are prepared to
give suitable respectable lads of the poor and middle class
a chance to enter the merchant service on terms of which
even the poorest boy can avail himself, without pecuniary
disability; and I wish the able young manager of the most
powerful trade combination in the world all the success he
deserves in his effort, not only to keep up the supply of
seamen, but to raise the standard of the mercantile marine.
In the early years of the last century, right up to the
seventies, north-country owners placed three to four
apprentices on each vessel, and never less than three. Many
of them came from Scotland, Shetland, Norfolk, Denmark and
Sweden. There were few desertions, and they always settled
down in the port that they served their time from. If any
attempt was made at engaging what was known as a
"half-marrow"[2] there was rebellion at once; and I have
known instances where lads positively refused to sail in a
vessel where one of these had been shipped instead of an
apprentice. Impertinent intrusion was never permitted in
those days. As soon as they were out of their time the
majority of the lads joined the local union. One of the
conditions of membership was that each applicant should pass
an examination in seamanship before a committee of the
finest sailors in the world. They had to know how to put a
clew into a square and fore-and-aft sail, to turn up a
shroud, to make every conceivable knot and splice, to graft
a bucket-rope, and to fit a mast cover. The
examination was no sham. I remember one poor fellow, who
had served five years, was refused membership because he had
failed to comply with some of the rules. He had to serve two
years more before he was admitted. I have often regretted
that Mr. Havelock Wilson did not adopt similar methods for
his union, though perhaps it is scarcely fair to put the
responsibility of not doing so on him. The conditions under
which he formed his union were vastly different from what
they were in those days. He had to deal with a huge
disorganised, moving mass, composed of many nationalities.
At the same time I am convinced that a union conducted on
the plan of the one I have been describing is capable of
doing much towards training an efficient race of seamen, and
I hope Mr. Wilson, or somebody else, will give it a trial.
Since the above was written Lord Brassey, by the invitation
of the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce, has read a carefully
prepared paper, in the Guildhall, to a large audience of
shipowners and merchants, on the best means of feeding the
Mercantile Marine and the Royal Navy with seamen. Lord
Brassey must have been at infinite trouble in getting the
material for his paper, and, notwithstanding the errors of
fact and of reasoning in it, I think the shipping community,
and indeed the public at large, owe him their hearty thanks
for giving so important a subject an opportunity of being
discussed. So far as his advocacy of the establishment of
training vessels for the supply of seamen to the Royal Navy
is concerned, I have nothing to say against it. The lads in
those ships are trained by naval officers, under naval
customs and discipline, and there should be some recruiting
ground of the kind for that service. But Lord Brassey
advocates it for the Mercantile Marine also. He suggests a
plan of subsidy to be paid to the owner or the apprentice,
and that the lad after serving four years, should be
available for service in the Royal Navy. But to begin with,
it may be objected that men trained in Royal Navy discipline
and habits never mix well with men trained in the other
service; their customs and habits of life and work are quite
different to those of the merchant seaman. It used to be a
recognised belief that the sailor of the merchantman could
adapt himself with striking facility to the work of the
Royal Navy and its discipline, but the Navy trained man was
never successful aboard a cargo vessel. The former
impression originated, no doubt, during the good old times
when it was customary for prowling ruffians from men-of-war
to drag harmless British citizens from their homes to man
H.M. Navy, and all the world knows how quickly they adapted
themselves to new conditions, and how well they fought
British battles! But what a sickening reality to ponder
over, that less than a century ago the powerful caste in
this country were permitted, in defiance of law, to have
press-gangs formed for the purpose of kidnapping respectable
seamen into a service that was made at that time a barbarous
despotism by a set of brainless whipper-snappers who gained
their rank by backstair intrigue with a shameless
aristocracy! All that kind of villainy has been wiped out;
and the men of the Royal Navy are now treated like human
beings; and they do their work not a whit less courageously
and well than they did when it was customary to lash God's
creatures with strands of whipcord loaded with lead until
the blood oozed from their skins. There is no need to press
either men or boys to enter the King's Naval Service. It has
now been made sufficiently attractive to obviate the need
for that. Nor is there any necessity for shipowners to be
called upon, with or without subsidy, to train and supply
men for the Navy. They have enough to do to look after their
own manning, and this can be done easily by the adoption of
methods that will break down any objection British parents
may have to their sons becoming indentured to steamship
owners, who will find work for them to do, and who will have
them trained by a kindly discipline, paid, fed, and lodged
properly; but still, if they are to be thorough men, there
should be no pampering. Unquestionably, then, the place for
training should be aboard the vessels they are intended to
man and become officers and masters of. No need for
subsidised training vessels; and certainly no need for a
national charge being made for the benefit of shipowners,
who have no right to expect that any part of their working
expenses should be paid by the State.
As an example of how sympathy is growing for the
apprenticeship system, Messrs. Watts,[3] Watts & Company, of
London, have for many years carried apprentices aboard their
steamers, and the grand old Blythman who adorns the City of
London commercial life with all that is ruggedly honest and
manly, has just purchased, at great cost, a place in
Norfolk, which his generous son, Shadforth, has agreed to
furnish, and then it is to be endowed as a training-field
for sailor-boys. The veteran shipowner is well known by his
many unostentatious acts of philanthropy to have as big a
heart as ever swelled in a human breast; but, knowing him as
I do, I feel assured that his philanthropy would have taken
another form had he not been convinced he was conferring a
real national benefit by giving larger opportunities to
British lads to enter the merchant service.
I give two other notable examples of success because of the
care taken in selecting the boys and the care adopted in
training them. Mr. Henry Radcliffe, senior partner of
Messrs. Evan Thomas, Radcliffe & Co., of Cardiff, has taken
a personal interest in boy apprentices for years. His
experience of them has long passed the experimental state,
and his testimony is that this is the only way the merchant
navy can be adequately and efficiently maintained.
Daniel Stephens, senior partner of Messrs. Stephens, Sutton
& Stephens, which firm has carried apprentices for a number
of years, is a sailor himself, who has had the good sense
never to try and hide the fact that he was trained amid a
fine race of west-country seaman, and he is proud to be able
to say that he has been training boys for years with uniform
satisfaction. He relates with obvious pride that one of his
boys, a coal-miner's son, seven years to a day from the date
of joining his firm as an apprentice, sailed as chief
officer of their newest and largest steamer.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: A "half-marrow" was a young man who was trying
to become a seaman without serving his apprenticeship.]
[Footnote 3: During the passage of this book through the
press, Mr. Watts, senior, has passed away.]
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Windjammers and Sea Tramps, by Walter Runciman