THE A.B. (GENERAL QUALIFICATIONS).
And now we approach the discussion of the A.B., the man of the rank
and file, the "common sailor," as he is sometimes contemptuously
termed by those who, God forgive them, know absolutely nothing of
his uncommon trials, virtues, and temptations. It is most probable,
nay, almost certain, that for what I have written in the preceding
pages the A.B. will bear me little good-will. He will most likely set
me down in his own mind as another mercenary scoundrel, paid by the
owners to vilify the fo'c'sle man. When you come to look at the matter
you will see that it must be so. Such a one-sided view of themselves
is not confined to the sailor. It is rampant among men who should be
able to weigh questions impartially--intelligent workmen ashore of
all kinds. As a general rule, they lay themselves open to the charge
of grossest unfairness, because they will not abide the truth about
themselves. One need not use any names, because they will occur to
all who keep in touch with current events--names of men who have been
chosen from among their fellows for their exceptional abilities, and
empowered to represent them in various councils. As long as such
representatives could see in capital no white and in labour no black
they were popular, cheered to the echo; but as soon as they learned the
fundamental fact that there are two sides to every question, and wisely
endeavoured to use that knowledge, they were subjected to much abuse,
gross misrepresentation, and perhaps the mildest suggestion made about
them was that they had been "got at."
But although the foremast hand finds it impossible to be fair; although
he, taken collectively, regards all owners as blood-suckers, and all
officers as traitors or tyrants, every one of his well-wishers--of whom
I claim to be one of the warmest--can, and do, find many excuses for
him. Please to consider his position. For the great majority of his
days he lives in the utmost ignorance of what is going on in the world.
He is like the inhabitants of some undiscovered country where-into none
of the latter-day adjuncts of civilization had penetrated. From year's
end to year's end he never reads a newspaper, at least not until it is
long out of date. During his quiet voyaging from one side of the world
to the other, the whole political aspect of the planet may be changed,
but he knows nor recks nothing of it. Speak to him of the rise and
fall of governments, the strife of parties, the hubbub of a general
election, and he will look upon you as one that talks in an unknown
tongue. To those of his class who read, supposing that they possess
the right books, this aloofness from the world-movement is all to the
good: they can enter into the spirit of those giants of literature
as no other men can. Bringing to the consideration of immense topics
minds unfettered and undisturbed by the petty squabbling and sordid
tricks of politics, whether Imperial or local, they enjoy their reading
as few other men do. One of my chief delights when I was before the
mast was to sit on deck in the brilliant tropical moonlight, or on a
lotus-eating evening before the dark had arrived, and read aloud to
the assembled watch. I had no inattentive listeners. Hardly breathing,
except to keep their pipes aglow, they drank in every syllable,
their long acquaintance with all sorts of hybrid variants of English
enabling them to catch the sense, even if they were unable to grasp the
full meaning of the sonorous sentences. For I never would read them
rubbish, or what I considered rubbish. I carried with me for years
three volumes of the Chandos Classics, the "Odyssey," the "Æneid," and
Longfellow. Shakespeare I always had, and I should be puzzled indeed
to say which of the two, the "Odyssey" or Shakespeare, they relished
most. They did not favour discussion of the books read very much; they
were content to enjoy. I grieve to say that their discussions were
usually most trivial and unprofitable. They would start an argument
upon some question about which none of them knew anything, and carry it
on with the utmost fierceness and heat, even unto blows. Once I used
to intervene with some reliable information, but I found that when, in
reply to the query, "Who told you that?" I admitted that I had learned
it from books, I was thenceforward scouted as a purveyor of second-hand
information, and I desisted.
It is a poor task bringing book evidence to the average sailor. Marshal
your authorities as you may, you will ever be met with the stolid
question, "How do _you_ know? You _wasn't_ there!" etc., until you
retire like a man who in the dark has run head first against a stone
wall. It is no good to argue with the average sailor, either. He lives
in a little world of his own, its horizon bounded by the blue sky,
and unbroken by any vision of the movements of shore-dwellers except
at long intervals. Then when those brief periods of contact with
landward folk arrive, he is like a boy suddenly let loose from school.
He forgets his sea-troubles, his long confinement, in the strange
sensation of liberty. How can these men be expected to use their
freedom wisely? Their experience of it is so limited, their ignorance
of shore ways so pathetic, that it would be surely a miracle to see
them behave themselves in reasonable fashion. But one peculiarity I
have often noticed among sailors is their preternatural suspicion,
allied to a blind trustfulness--two opposite qualities meeting. Only,
with the perversity of poor human nature, they exercise suspicion
where they should be trustful, and confidence where they should be
most cautious. Any scoundrel that lays himself out to cajole and cheat
a sailor is almost certain to succeed, while a philanthropist, aiming
only at the seaman's highest welfare, will find it a most difficult and
disheartening task to gain his confidence or even attention. And so it
comes to pass that at seamen's missions, wherever anything is being
done for destitute sailors, the greatest care has to be exercised, the
wisest discrimination used, in order that meals, etc., provided are not
entirely monopolized by longshoremen, and the sailor conspicuous by
his absence. It must always be borne in mind that the sailor is just
a big child, whose opportunities for being understood by shore people
are almost _nil_, who cannot tell you what he wants, and whose life is
hidden from you. Herein is one of the greatest difficulties confronting
missions to seamen. They have but a very short time to work upon any
individual sailor, only a few days wherein to teach him things that
shore people, when they learn them at all, often take years to acquire,
and then the exigencies of his calling remove him from all those
hallowed influences for perhaps four or five months on end. On shore
it is recognized by all the Churches that if you would do good it is
not sufficient to preach godliness to people: you must provide for them
the right kind of society in lieu of that which they must abandon, you
must nurse them through their period of babyhood in grace until they
are able to stand, or walk, or run, in the way of righteousness. But
the poor sailor gets no such nursing. Before he has scarcely awakened
to the fact that old things have passed away, all things have become
new, he is back again to the fo'c'sle. And now he is very lonely,
because he knows that the only things that are continually talked of
are those that should not be so much as named. His quietness is taken
for moroseness, he gets nicknamed the "queer fellow," all sorts of
influences are brought to bear upon him, tending to push him back into
the slough; and if he stand firm, be very sure that he is a man, in the
highest sense of that much-abused word.
I feel, however, that I must apologize for straying into this side
issue, which, although it is so important to me, hardly comes within
the scope of the present work. Perhaps I ought to have begun this
chapter with a definition of the A.B.'s position. It is popularly
supposed, even at sea, that the able-bodied seaman, a term whereof
the initials "A.B." are the recognized official contraction, is a man
who can "hand, reef, and steer." These three duties mean, first, the
furling of sails--that is, rolling them up, and making them secure;
secondly, the reducing of a sail's area by enfolding a portion of it,
and securing it by a series of short pieces of rope sewn into a doubled
or trebled band of canvas across it, technically "reef points;" and the
third requires no explanation for any one. But while it is undoubtedly
true that a seaman who can do these things, and no more, cannot have
his wages reduced for incompetency, it is absolutely certain that an
A.B. on board a sailing ship, at any rate, who could do nothing more
than these things would be looked upon as an impostor, not only by the
officers, but by his shipmates. Yet there are an immense number of
A.B.'s whose qualifications are hardly up to that primitive standard.
More than that, their number is increasing; for in steamships the
handling of sails is reduced to a continually lessening minimum,
reefing is a vanished art, and as for steering, well, steamships of any
importance carry quartermasters, who do all the steering, receiving a
few shillings a month extra pay therefor. So that you shall often find
a man occupying an A.B.'s position who is really only an unskilled
labourer. Placed on board of a sailing ship he would be as helpless and
useless as any landlubber, except that he would not be seasick.
An A.B., properly so called, is a skilled mechanic with great
abilities. In the first place, he is able to splice hemp- or wire-rope,
work that requires a considerable amount of technical skill, for
splicing is not by any means simply the joining of two pieces of rope
together in a certain way. There are many kinds of splices: short
splices, long splices, eye-splices, sailmakers' splices, grummets,
etc., etc. And it is not sufficient to be able to make a splice;
it must be done neatly, in workmanlike fashion, so that when it is
"wormed," "parcelled," and "served," it shall only show as a smoothly
graduated enlargement in the rope, or, as in the case of a sailmaker's
long splice, be without any covering, hardly visible at all as a
splice. He must be able to make all the various "seizings," or securing
of two parts of a rope together by a neatly passed lashing of tarred
cord or wire--make them, too, in any position aloft, while the ship
is tumbling about, and not merely in a comfortable corner on deck. He
must know the right method of "bending" sails--that is, of fastening
them to yards or stays, for setting by "robands" and "earrings," so
that they shall remain doing their work, no matter how severe the
weather. He must understand the technique of sending up or down yards
and masts, be able to improvise lashings for the securing of sails when
carried away in a gale, or broken spars dangling aloft like fractured
limbs. He should know how to handle a "palm and needle"--that is, sew
canvas for making or mending sails, and understand the manipulation
of "purchases" (pulleys and ropes), the rigging of derricks, and the
distribution of strains; how to "set up rigging," "rattle down," and
"heave the lead," of course.
Now, all these queer-sounding names of duties that the good A.B. must
be able to perform would require a vast amount of laborious explanation
to make their meaning and purpose clear to any landsman, and it is
doubtful whether one person in ten thousand would take the trouble to
master their details if an attempt were made to give them. But I think
that few will assert that a man who can do all these things as they
must be done at sea can be in any sense classed as an unskilled man.
And I must add that what I have given are only the broad features, as
it were. There remain still an enormous number of smaller matters,
knowledge of which is expected of an A.B. But I must admit that the
class of A.B. which is capable of answering to such a description as
this is growing yearly smaller and smaller. That, of course, is the
fault of steam. While sailing ships endure there will always be some
of them--there must be--but they are not wanted in steamships, and so
the supply dwindles with the demand. But it is a great pity, because
these men are capable of rising to the height of an emergency. They
have individuality and resource as well as technical ability. And when,
as so often happens, a steamer gets into trouble at sea, breaks down,
or is overtaken by a gale against which her low power is helpless, the
need of skilled seamen is often sorely felt.
An old shipmate of my own was telling me the other day of a case in
point. He was one of the A.B.'s in a large steamer called the _Bengal_,
outward bound to Japan. They were overtaken in the Bay of Biscay by
a tremendous gale, before which they scudded with the huge square
foresail set, in order to keep her ahead of the sea. (It was being
overtaken by such a sea that caused the awful loss of the _London_.)
But at last it became necessary to take in that foresail, and heave
the ship to; it was unsafe to run her any longer, especially as the
sail might carry away at any moment, and the very evil they dreaded
come upon them instantly. So all hands were called aft, eight of them,
and the skipper said, "D'ye think ye can take that foresail in, my
lads?" At which question they were amazed, for none of them had ever
heard such a question put before. After a moment's silence one fellow
shouted, "Take it in! Why, 'course we can, sir. We c'd _eat_ it!"
That comforted the old man, and he gave orders to haul it up, at the
same time manipulating the spanker so that she came round cannily, head
to sea, and did not ship any heavy water. They furled sail without any
difficulty more than usual; but when they had cleared up the gear, the
old man's voice rang out again, "Splice the main-brace." Pelting aft
at the double, they received each a glass of grog, and the old man's
heartfelt thanks. He told them that on the previous voyage he had a
crew of steamboat sailors, who in just such a night as that refused
to go aloft--they were afraid; and he had to see the sail blow away,
see also a great deal of damage done to his deck-gear, and at one time
it looked as if the vessel would be lost. So this voyage he had been
careful to select sailing-ship sailors, and the result had entirely
justified him. "Yes," said one man, "that's all very well for you,
sir. But how about our getting a ship next voyage? We shall be called
steamboat sailors now." Of course the poor shipper had no answer to
that, but I have no doubt he felt the full force of the remark. For
therein lies the great difficulty. No skipper of a sailing ship dare
take steamboat men, unless he has absolute proof that they know the
work on board a sailing vessel. And even then he is sure that a few
months in steam rusts a sailor; he is not likely to be very smart
getting aloft, or to be as expert as a man in training when he gets
there. More than that, the steamboat sailor being, as I have said,
almost invariably better fed than he is in any sailing vessel, does not
take at all kindly to a return to the same miserable way of living,
neither does he appreciate being so long at sea. And all these things
tend to assist the influx of the foreign element which, flocking into
our sailing ships, speedily overflows into steamers, and, having once
obtained a secure foothold, never returns to its own place again.