THE BOY.
At last we have arrived at the very bottom of the social scale of
board-ship life. The "boy," as distinguished from the "cabin" boy, has
long posed as a hero of romance in sea fiction. We all know that boy.
His marvellous deeds have inspired generations of home-bred youths with
an unquenchable thirst for the sailor's life, where, to quote one of
the most charming of song-writers,
"We watch the waves that glide by our vessel's stately side,
Or the wild sea-birds that follow through the air;
Or we gather in a ring, and with cheerful voices sing;
Oh, gaily goes the ship when the wind blows fair."
How many youngsters, lured by the mysterious air of adventure pervading
all things connected with the sea, have run from comfortable homes,
and, after hardships innumerable, have compassed the goal of their
desire--have found a shipmaster willing to take them to sea with him
as boy! And then--well, happily, the young seafarer soon develops a
wonderful capacity for patient endurance of evils not to be avoided,
and, if of the true grit, in time looks back upon his probationary
period of suffering as a training which he was glad to have endured.
And the older he grows the more complacently does he recall the
days when he learned to expect the blow first and the explanation
afterwards, learned to eat what he could get with an appetite like an
ostrich, could sleep in drenched clothing with a bare plank beneath
him, and find all his consolation in the fact that soon he would be
able to look down upon a newcomer with the lofty superiority of the
full-blown mariner.
At the risk of being thought tedious, I must repeat that for the ship
boy, as for boys everywhere else in our favoured land, a brighter day
has dawned. Within the memory of middle-aged men a boy on board a ship
was the butt, the vicarious sacrifice to all the accumulated ill-temper
of the ship. To-day tales are told of the treatment of boys in
"Geordie" colliers that are enough to make the flesh creep to hear. In
those days it was the privilege of every man on board to ill-treat the
boy; and if, as very often happened, the poor little wretch died under
it--well, what of it?--it was only a boy. And the peculiar part of it
all was that the brutes who did these evil deeds prided themselves that
their actions were right and proper. There was only one way of training
a boy--with a rope's-end if it were handy; if not, a fist or a boot
would do, but he must be beaten. One man, whom I shall always remember,
as smart a seaman as ever trod a ship's deck, beat me until there was
not a square inch of my small body unbruised. Scarcely a watch passed
that I did not receive some token of his interest in my welfare, and
on two occasions he kicked me with such violence that, with all the
will in the world to obey his orders, I was perfectly helpless. My only
wonder is that he did not kill me.
Yet when I left the ship he bade me quite an affectionate farewell,
bidding me remember how hard he had laboured for my benefit, that every
blow he had given me was solely aimed at making me more useful, and
fitting me for my duties. At the time I felt that he was lying, and
that his treatment of me was dictated by that savage lust of cruelty to
an unresisting victim that grows alarmingly with the yielding thereto,
and that had I only possessed the strength and courage to retaliate,
he would speedily have altered his mind. But now I do not know. I
feel that perhaps he _may_ have been sincere. Men were self-deceivers
ever; and there are few self-deceptions more common among mankind
than this--that cruelty is a splendid aid to education. But here let
me say that cruelty to boys was far more common among the officers
than the men. If a boy was willing and respectful and clean, it was
very seldom that he got beaten in the fo'c'sle. There was almost
always a certain amount of public spirit which made for justice where
half a dozen of even the roughest men were gathered together. I have
known one exception to this good rule--have experienced it in my own
person--where out of a whole crew of eight there was not one man enough
to protest against the daily practice of cruelty to me. More than that,
they encouraged a big boy, who was getting the same pay as myself, but
whose qualifications, except strength, were far inferior to mine, to
pummel me too. Such a gang I have never met with before or since, and
I am sure that the combination is uncommon.
The majority of the boys going to sea to-day unapprenticed are drawn
from the training ships, those good schools for the boy who is said to
be unmanageable ashore. Coming from the wild and precarious life of the
streets into such a ship as the _Warspite_, _Arethusa_, or _Cornwall_,
is such a revelation to a boy, that for a little while he feels as if
the bottom had fallen out of his world. For the anarchical condition,
tempered by a salutary dread of the policeman, under which he has
been living, there are substituted law and order, cleanliness and
discipline; for regular short commons and dog-like snatching of sleep
come good food regularly eaten, regular sleep at set times, regular
play, and a sound prospect of benefits, very real indeed, for the
patient worker in well-doing. Here the boy is taught all the essentials
of seafaring except the actual going to sea, and in at least one
instance that practical want is supplied, in that a small square-rigged
vessel is kept, which, with selected boys for a crew, under the charge
of experienced seamen, plies up and down the river under sail. And it
may truly be said that a boy who has passed a couple of years under
such treatment as this is as well prepared for becoming a good seaman
as it is possible for a boy to be.
But, strangely enough, the training is of very little real service to
the lads when they go to sea to earn their living. For at once they
find themselves under such conditions as they never before dreamed of.
In place of the perfect discipline and stringent rules to which they
have been accustomed, they find the greatest laxity prevailing. Rules
are almost non-existent. In the training ship each of them had his work
allotted to him. When the signal was given he knew just what to do, and
how to do it; and when it was done, he was done too. In the merchant
ship the rigging is different, the method is different, and instead
of his having any set duties, he is at everybody's beck and call,
given tasks to accomplish single-handed that he has been taught to do
man-of-war fashion--that is, with so many hands that the work was done
like magic, and in a few seconds a sail was furled or set, or a mast
was sent up or down.
They cannot now keep themselves clean and smart-looking. For, in the
first place, they have little time allowed, and, in the next, there
is not much water (in sailing ships). No longer is it necessary that
they should present themselves at stated hours for inspection; no
longer is every movement of theirs regulated as if by clock-work. They
may be as slovenly, as dirty as they list, there is no one to enforce
upon them the keeping of the good rules they have so long been under;
and that principally because those who bear rule over them know that
such enforcement is impossible. So that the carefully instilled habits
of order, regularity, and cleanliness are broken down at once, and
in place of the smartly-clad, well-set-up youth who joined the ship,
there is presently seen a slouchy, shifty-eyed gamin, who is a profound
student of the art of "dodging Pompey," who gets the well-deserved
character from his shipmates of being "a young sailor, but a d---- old
soldier." There is a greater evil, if possible, than this impending. It
is that all the careful training of the lad shall presently be of no
avail whatever; because, mixing freely with the crew, he is sedulously
taught that the sea as a profession or calling is played out. "Why,
just look at it a minnit," says his mentor. "You've never got no time
to call yer own" (which is a lie, in an English ship, at any rate),
"yer everybody's dorg, yer fed wuss'n a pig, and what y' got t' look
forrward ter? T' die in the wukkus. 'Sides, 'n Englishman don't like
ter be mucked up all the time with a lot er foreigners in one of his
country ships. Why, they looks down on us now 'sif we wus a---- lot
of interlopers wot got no right to sail under owr own flag. 'N, after
all, wot are yer? Never nothin' but a dirty sailor all yer days. Nobody
'shore knows nothin' about yer; 'n don' care neither. Y' ain't got no
vote, y' ain't got no home, y'r jest a bit of wreckage. Quit it, me
son, 'n git a job ashore, where, if you're a bloomin' scavenger, you've
got yer pull on the vestrymin, because you've got a vote, an' if they
don't look after your interests, w'y, out they goes; see!"
This is the kind of pernicious stuff (all the more dangerous because
of its half-truth) that the boy is regaled with, along with a great
deal more that cannot be reproduced, for reasons that need not be
given; and again I say, without fear of being hauled over the coals
for repetition, it is quite sufficient to account for the falling off
in the numbers of young British seamen. But I feel certain that some
such scheme as I have sketched out in the Apprentice chapters would
be efficacious in preventing this wholesale waste of good material.
From the lowest class of seamen up to the second mate (except in
the first-class liners) the evil to be battled with is the lack of
continuous employment. It does not admit of the sailor acquiring any
interest in his ship. Moreover, there is ever dangling before his eyes
the terror of being "outward bound"--those two fateful words that
convey such a mountain of meaning to every seafaring man. To be outward
bound means that he is ashore penniless, dependent upon the kindness
of a boarding-master for a little food; to prowl about the docks,
boarding ship after ship, in the remote chance of securing a berth,
and to meet with black looks everywhere; to be told continually that
he is a cumberer of the ground, a loafer, a fellow that might, if he
would, get a ship, but prefers instead to hang around maritime liquor
shops, keeping a keen look-out for homeward bounders who will treat
him, instead of being, as he really is in nearly every case, feverishly
anxious to get back to sea again: these are some of the greatest
drawbacks to a deep-water sailor's career.
And they tell with tremendous force against the boy. Friendless and
homeless in many cases, or with parents so poor that they can do
nothing to help him, earning such small wages that he can hardly
purchase necessary clothing, much less pay for board and lodging, and
with all a boy's natural carelessness, he is sorely tempted to take
the first job that comes in his way, and quit the sea altogether as a
means of livelihood. If he does so, even though the new employment may
only last for a few months, he will hardly go to sea again. And no one
knowing the peculiar difficulties of his lot will be able to blame him.
I have often wished that it were possible to make lads who at school
chatter so glibly about "running away to sea," understand how
impossible it is to do any such thing nowadays, except, indeed, in
such vessels as are the last resort of the unfortunate. Even after
I had been at sea for a couple of years I found it difficult to get
a ship, on account of the competition of the training-ship lads,
who, with their well-replenished outfits and sturdy appearance--to
say nothing of the persistence of the agent charged with the duty
of getting them shipped--were readily accepted by skippers, to the
exclusion of outsiders. The "unfortunate" vessels of which I speak are
those small sailing craft which still drag out a precarious existence
in competition with steam. They may be seen in all our smaller ports,
often lying disconsolately upon mud-banks at ebb-tide, or, looking
woefully out of place, at some wharf belonging to a seaside place like
Margate or Ramsgate. Oh, so dirty, so miserable they look! They only
carry such rough cargoes as it does not pay to put in steam, and, in
consequence, their freight-earning capacity is very low. That, again,
reacts upon the equipment. Worn-out gear, wretched food, and not enough
men or boys to do the heavy work, they provide a hard school for the
young seaman. In them may still be found lingering some of the bad
traditions of half a century ago.
Yet among even these poor relations of the sea may be found varieties
of grade. The great majority of them are coasters--that is to say,
they do not leave the vicinity of our shores except for ports just
across the Channel. In these, though the conditions of life are hard
for a boy, who usually does the cooking (?) at an open stove on deck,
the food, if coarse, is much better than it is on vessels of the same
kind going "deep water." There no relief can be found for months, while
in the home trade it is but a few days from port to port, so that the
ill-used or aggrieved youngster has but to step ashore and be off. And
under the peculiar slipshod method of engagement and discharge in these
vessels there is little danger to the deserter.
In my day there used to be regular houses of call for men and boys
shipping in such vessels in London. One public-house of the kind I knew
well, having, when very young, spent many a weary hour in its dingy
tap-room waiting for a chance of shipment. To it used to come burly
skippers clad in pilot-cloth, with blue jerseys in lieu of vests, and
fur caps. They sought first a stout, well-spoken man, who was always
hanging about there from ten till six, and told him their requirements.
He knew what men and boys were available, and where to find them--in
the tap-room or just at the door. He introduced master to man, and
the first preliminary was always to feel the applicants' hands. If
they were horny enough to satisfy the skipper that their possessor
had not been too long out of work, a few questions ensued relative to
wages, destination, etc. There was seldom any difficulty raised by
the sailors. Poor fellows, by the time they had got to waiting at the
King's Head or Arms, they were in no mood for haggling, and in this
way wages were often cut down very low for men, while I have seen boys
going for five shillings a month. When the bargain was made, a handsel
of a shilling was given to the sailor. Whether he gave the agent
anything I never knew, for although I waited there a long time--some
three months off and on--I never got a ship or a barge there. Of course
the skipper paid something to the agent, who looked fat and prosperous;
but beyond the shillings I never saw any money change hands. And that
money was always spent forthwith in the same manner--it was like
performing a mystic rite. Two pots of four ale and two half-ounces of
shag were purchased at the bar, and all the waiting hands, without
being invited, stepped up and partook. It looked so strange to me, I
remember, for many of the poor fellows looked as if a meal would have
done them so much more good.
There were never lacking participants, either. No matter if the
tap-room was quite deserted by candidates when the bargain was
concluded, the appearance of the beer and tobacco always found them
present--drawn thither, I suppose, by some mysterious influence.
Another peculiar thing about that place was that men with money did
not frequent it--sailor men, that is to say. It had its own customers
among the workers of Thames Street, but they never intruded upon the
apartment sacred to the shipping interest.
It was all very sordid and pitiful, a side path of seafaring that must
have lent itself to many abuses, through which many a poor misguided
lad got away to sea, and found no place for repentance until too late.
I have only mentioned it here, because in speaking of the boy I am
painfully reminded of the great number of miserable little sea-drudges
who are still to be found in these vessels, leading the hardest of
lives, and uncared for by any one. They are worthy of all sympathy,
being so helpless, so unable to raise themselves. Their environment is
as bad as it can well be, for, whether ashore or afloat, the company
they are in is usually of a very bad kind. Now and then, of course,
such a vessel will have a good, steady seaman, who has an interest in
her, for a skipper. A man like that will often carry his wife, and will
endeavour to keep a respectable crew with him voyage after voyage. And
as likely as not he will take an interest in the boy, and try to make
something of him.
Here, as far as the sailor _personnel_ of merchant ships is concerned,
my task ends. Several times during its performance I have felt that
perhaps I should have done better to begin with the boy and end with
the skipper, as being the more natural way. But I hope that what I have
done, as well as the way in which it has been done, will be acceptable
to shore-folks, for whom it is written. Sailors do not require any
information of the kind.
And now for a few words on behalf of the men of iron who toil below.