THE MASTER'S QUALITIES.
If, as is highly improbable, the average landsman ever thinks anything
about the duties of a shipmaster, it would be most interesting to
know what he imagines them to be. Most intelligent men and women
know that the primary duty of a shipmaster is to take his vessel
across the trackless ocean to her destined port and return again as
speedily as possible. So far so good, but beyond this first reason
for a shipmaster's existence there are a host of other duties, in all
of which he is supposed to be more or less proficient. And there are
certain qualities which he must also possess. Failing them, he may be
perfect in science, full of energy, and faultless in seamanship, but
as a commander he is naught. Of these, the ability to _command_ stands
unquestionably first. No doubt this quality is hard to define, but
the possession or the want of it makes all the difference between a
comfortable and a miserable ship. One man will seldom raise his voice
during a whole voyage loud enough to be heard by any one except the
individual to whom he is speaking; the calmness and placidity of his
demeanour is amazing, yet in some mysterious way every one on board
is made to feel that the master holds the reins of power with no slack
or unready hand, that to disobey one of his orders would be a most
dangerous experiment, and that he knows everything that is going on
fore and aft.
Such a man fulfilling this perfect attribute of command I once had the
pleasure to serve under--an elderly, prosaic-looking figure, who used
to come on deck shortly after daybreak every morning, with a moth-eaten
Bombay-made dressing-gown flung over his pyjamas, a mangy old fez upon
his head, and his bare feet thrust into sloppy slippers. Thus attired,
he would pace rapidly up and down the poop for the space of half an
hour, taking his constitutional--a most mirth-provoking figure. Yet no
one ever laughed, either behind his back, on deck, or in the privacy
of the fo'c'sle. When he spoke it was in a velvet voice, but the man
spoken to invariably took an attitude of profound respect on the
instant. He was old and feeble, and our crew numbered among them some
rowdies; but from England to China and back again that old gentleman's
commanding personality kept the ship in a quiet state of discipline
which was as perfect as it was rare.
On the other hand, I have seen a most stately figure of a man, with
a voice like a thunder-peal, unable to obtain respect from his crew.
Because in the Merchant Service, as I am never tired of reiterating,
respect cannot be enforced; it must come spontaneously, a tribute to
the personality of the officer to whom it is due, or it does not come
at all; and then that ship is in a bad way.
Another quality, which is only second in importance to the one just
mentioned, is self-control. Since the shipmaster has no one above him
in his little realm, it is highly important to his whole well-being,
as well as to the comfort of the ship, that he should command himself.
However irritated he may feel at a mistake on the part of one of his
officers, he should be able to conceal it before his crew. And here the
Americans have shown British officers a good example. So long as an
officer remains an officer on board of American vessels, so long is he
upheld by all the authority of the master. There is no sneering comment
upon his movements indulged in before the crew, no tacit information
conveyed to those keen-witted fellows that the hapless mate, first,
second, or third, as the case may be, has lost the confidence and
respect of his commander, and that consequently there is little or no
danger in them treating him disrespectfully. Perhaps this is one of the
hardest lessons that a shipmaster has to learn, especially in a sailing
ship. For three, or perhaps four, or even five, months sole monarch
of his small kingdom, anxious to make a smart passage, and often
sadly hampered by adverse winds and calms, it is no easy thing for a
naturally hasty man to discipline himself in such wise as to win the
maximum amount of obedience and deference from those around him. Happy
man if he have a hobby of some kind--a thirst for learning, a taste for
natural history, anything that will exercise the powers of his mind and
keep him from the moral dry-rot that always sets in where men are at
the top of things, amenable to no authority but their own, and without
any definite object whereon they may work and feed that appetite for
labour, whether mental or physical, possessed by every healthy human
organism.
Patience, perseverance, and a sense of justice are also indicated, as
they are, of course, in the leaders in every business or profession,
yet to an even greater degree at sea than anywhere else; for where
you can neither get rid of your men nor afford to lose their services
by punishing them, only the highest expression of these qualities
is of any avail. It may perhaps be thought impossible that, except
in the rarest instances, such a combination of excellence should be
found in any one man. But that impression is not a true one. I am not
exaggerating in the least when I say that but for the possession of
these qualities in an extraordinary degree by masters, our Mercantile
Marine would never have risen to its present splendid height in spite
of so many hampering disabilities unfelt by masters of ships under
other flags. For, to take one aspect only, the disciplinary. I have
slightly indicated the manner in which discipline is maintained in
American ships, viz. by the employment of violence, which is forbidden
by law, yet is invariably winked at. In the ships of every other nation
but the English-speaking ones, the merchant seaman is not only a native
of the country to which his ship belongs, but he is never free from the
environment of naval law; the same law, that is, which obtains on board
of a warship. For every seaman there is a man-o'-war's man, bound to
put in so much actual service in a vessel of war, and, as such, under
the articles of war; so that disobedience to orders, insolence, or
malingering (shamming sickness) are exceedingly expensive practices
for the sailor to indulge in, the penalties being not only heavy, but
their infliction certain.
In a British ship, on the other hand, a master may unwittingly ship a
crew of scoundrels, who have made up their minds to do as little as
they can as badly as possible, to refuse the most ordinary forms of
respect to their officers, and to either desert or go to gaol at the
first port, not because their ship is a bad one, but just by way of a
change. And if the master or officers, worried beyond endurance, take
the law in their own hands, their punishment and subsequent ruin is
almost certain to ensue promptly. The rascals who have made the ship
a hell afloat, confident in the tenderness of British law, and its
severity towards all forms of oppression, pursue their rejoicing way,
and if brought to court _may_ be fined a trifle of wages, which, as
they set no value upon money, does not punish them in the least.
Some decent foremast hands may feel that I am here unduly severe upon
the rank and file; that, having been an officer, and, besides, left
the sea for good, I have, like so many others, turned against my
old shipmates. But they would be utterly mistaken. It is the merest
platitude to say that every decent man's interest lies in having his
eyes wide open to the faults of the class he wishes to benefit. The
most of my sea-service was spent in a ship's forecastle, and I can
assure my readers that I have never since felt more shame and disgust
at the behaviour of some of my watchmates than I did then. I cannot for
my life see why the foremast hand should not be as self-respecting,
amenable to reason, and competent, as any good workman ashore. Sea
life is not brutalizing in itself; it is ennobling, and it is a strange
return for the benefits that a life at sea confers upon those who
live it that so many of them should gratuitously become brutish. Of
course there is more excuse for the unfortunate slaves of steam, the
firemen and trimmers. Yet even they can, and do in many instances,
rise superior to their hard surroundings and show an example to men in
positions where every comfort of life is enjoyed.
Another quality which shipmasters should possess, but whose necessity
will be hotly debated by many, is that of being a God-fearing man.
Some people will say that this embraces all the rest. That it should
do so is undeniable; that it does do so is, unhappily, seldom the
case. It is a great pity that in so many otherwise estimable men the
spirit of godliness should be accompanied by a weakening of their
power to command men. They become afraid lest their necessary acts
for the preservation of discipline should be misconstrued into a
violation of the principles which they profess. And this often results
in their Christian virtues being taken advantage of by unscrupulous
subordinates, so that the ship's condition becomes worse, not better,
for the fact of a man being in command who is anxious to love his
neighbour as himself. Needless to say, perhaps, that such a condition
of things is altogether opposed to the true spirit of Christianity,
which does not approve of allowing one's subordinates to break rules
and defy rulers. This, however, is far too large a question to be more
than glanced at here, especially as it is so hotly debated by many
excellent seamen who hold that the practice of the Christian religion
in the Merchant Service is an impossibility.
A master should be honest. Eyes will open wide at this, no doubt, since
all men _should_ be honest; but it must not be forgotten that all men
are not so liable to temptations to be dishonest in a perfectly safe
way (as far as the law goes) as a shipmaster is. The ports of the
world are thronged with scoundrels who tempt shipmasters to betray
their trust in a variety of ways. By bribery, the most common form of
corruption, they are led into cheating the owner and the crew, into
downright robbery. There is the temptation to rob the crew, a perfectly
safe operation, and one that can be excused by its perpetrators on
the ground that, as Jack will only squander his money upon the vilest
forms of debauchery when he gets paid off, a good percentage of it
will be much better in their pockets than his. It may be done in a
variety of ways, from the ostensible payment of _blood money_ to a
San Francisco boarding master or crimp, which is deducted from the
seaman's wages and shared by the skipper and his ally, to the commoner
form of collusion with bumboatmen, tailors, etc., whereby the sailor
is overcharged for everything he buys aboard, in order that a heavy
percentage of his spendings may go into the master's pocket. _Of
course_ Jack is not compelled to spend anything; but it is unfair that
he should be mulcted twenty-five per cent. on such innocent outlayings
as for soft bread, eggs, fruit, or clothing. In these latter days the
temptations to dishonesty in respect of such larger operations as
chartering, towage, etc., are greatly lessened by the multiplication of
appointed agencies of the owner's abroad, but they do still exist, and
the sailing shipmaster especially is often tempted to be dishonest in
out-of-the-way ports of the world, temptations which, for his own sake,
he should sternly refuse to countenance.