defence. Gunnery experts were added to our war complement. A division
for organization of our ordnance was formed, the Defensively Armed
Merchant Ships Department of the Admiralty. We do not care for long
titles; we know this division as the "Dam Ships." Most of the officers
appointed to this Service are R.N.R. They are perhaps the most familiar
of the war staff detailed to assist us. Their duties bring them
frequently on board our ships, where (on our own ground) relations grow
quickly most intimate and cordial. The many and varied patterns of guns
supplied for our defence made a considerable shore establishment
necessary, not alone for the guns and mountings, but for ammunition of
as many marks as a Geelong wool-bale. In the first stages of our
war-harnessing, the supply of guns was limited to what could be spared
from battlefield and naval armament. The range of patterns varied from
pipe-stems to what was at one time major armament for cruisers; we had
odd weapons--_soixante-quinze_ and Japanese pieces; even captured German
field-guns were adapted to our needs in the efforts of the D.A.M.S. to
arm us. Standardization in mounting and equipment was for long
impossible. Our outcry for guns was cleverly met by the department. We
could not wait for weapons to be forged: by working 'double tides' they
ensured a twenty-four-hour day of service for the guns in issue, by a
system that our ordnance should not remain idle during our stay in port.
Incoming ships were boarded in the river, their guns and ammunition
dismounted and removed to serve the needs of a vessel bound out on the
same tide. The problem of fitting a 12-pounder on a 4.7 emplacement
taxed the department's ingenuity and resource, but few ships were held
in port for failure of their prompt action.
With the near approach to standardization in equipment (a state that
came with increased production of merchant-ship arms) the division was
able to reorganize on more settled lines. New types of armament were
issued to them and there was less adaptation for emplacements to be
considered. With every ship fitted, the pressure on their resource was
eased, the new ships being constructed to carry guns as a regular part
of their equipment. While their activities are now less confused by the
new methods, there is no reduction in their employment. Other defensive
apparatus has been placed in their hands for issue and control, and
their principal port establishments have grown from small temporary
offices to large well-manned depots. To the surface guns have been added
howitzers, bomb-throwers, and depth-charges for under-water action:
smoke-screen fittings and chemicals form a part of their stock in trade:
they issue mine-sinking rifles, and even control the supply of our
zigzag clocks. The range of their work is constantly being extended.
Their duties include inspection to ensure that darkening ship
regulations may not fail for want of preparation in port. Makeshift
screening at sea is dangerous.
Their establishments are at the principal seaports, with branch
connections and transport facilities for reaching the smaller harbours.
The gun-wharves may not present as splendid a spectacle as the huge
store-sheds of our naval bases, but they have at least the busy air of
being well occupied, a brisk appearance of having few 'slow-dealing
lines' on the shelves. Their permanent staff of armourers and
constructional experts are able to undertake all but very major repairs
to the ordnance that comes under their charge. By express
delivery--heavy motor haulage--they can equip a ship on instant
requisition with all that is scheduled for her armament: down to the
waste-box and the gun-layer's sea-boots, they can put a complete
defensive outfit on the road almost before the clamour of a requesting
telephone is stilled.
Another of our staff is the officer in charge of our 'Otter'
installation, an ingenious contrivance to protect us against the menace
of moored mines. For deadly spheres floating on the surface we have a
certain measure of defence in exercise of a keen look-out, but our eyes
avail us not at all in detecting mines under water moored at the level
of our draught. Our 'Otters' may be likened to blind sea-dolphins,
trained to protect our flanks, to run silently aside, fend the explosive
charges from our course, bite the moorings asunder, and throw the
bobbing spheres to the surface.
The 'Otter' expert is invariably an enthusiast. He claims for his pets
every virtue. They run true, they bite surely: they can speak, indeed,
in the complaint of their guide-wires when they are not sympathetically
governed. While it is true that we curse the awkward 'gadgets' in their
multitude of tricks, denounce the insistence with which they dive for a
snug and immovable berth under our bilge keels--those of us who have
come through a hidden minefield share the expert's affection for the
shiny fish-like monsters. We cannot see their operation: we have no
knowledge of our danger till it is past and over, a dark shape with ugly
outpointing horns, turning and spinning in the seawash of our wake.
[Illustration: INSTRUCTIONAL ANTI-SUBMARINE COURSE FOR MERCHANT OFFICERS
AT GLASGOW]
Adoption of the convoy system has brought a host to our gangways. Our
war staff was more than doubled in the few weeks that followed the
sinister April of 1917. If, at an earlier date, we had reasonable ground
for complaint that our expert knowledge of our business was
studiously ignored by the Admiralty, apparently they did not rate our
ability so lightly when this old form of ship protection was revived.
The additions to our staff included a large proportion of our own
officers, withdrawn from posts where their knowledge of merchant-ship
practice was not of great value. In convoy, measures were called for
that our ordinary routine had not contemplated. The shore division of
our new staff aid us in adapting our commercial sea-gear to the more
instant demands of war service. They 'clear our hawse' from turns and
twists in the chain of our landward connections. Repairs and
adjustments, crew troubles, stores--that on a strict ruling may be
deemed private matters--became public and important when considered as
vital to the sailing of a convoy. In overseeing the ships at the
starting-line, indexing and listing the varying classes and powers of
the vessels, the convoy section have no light task. To the longshore
division, who compose and arrange the integrals of our convoys, we have
added a sea-staff of commodores, R.N. and R.N.R., who go to sea with us
and control the manoeuvres and operations of our ships in station. For
this, not only a knowledge of squadron movements is required: the ruling
of a convoy of merchantmen is complicated as much by the range of
character of individual masters as by the diverse capabilities of the
ships.
It was not until the spring of 1917 that Admiralty instituted a scheme
of instruction in anti-submarine measures for officers of the Merchants'
Service. We were finding the defensive tune difficult to pick up as we
marched. The German submarine had grown to be a more complete and deadly
warship. Sinkings had reached an alarming height: a spirit almost of
fatalism was permeating the sea-actions of some of our Service. Our guns
were of little avail against under-water attack. Notwithstanding the
tricks of our zigzag, the torpedoes struck home on our hulls. If our luck
was 'in,' we came through: if we had bad fortune, well, our luck was 'out'!
A considerable school--the bold 'make-a-dash-for-it-and-chance-the-ducks'
section of our fellows--did not wholly conform to naval instructions. In
many cases zigzag was but cursorily maintained; in darkening ship,
measures were makeshift and inadequate.
Schools for our instruction were set up at various centres, in
convenient seaport districts. At the first, attendance was voluntary,
but it was quickly evident to the Admiralty that certain classes of
owners would give few facilities to their officers to attend, when they
might be more profitably employed in keeping gangway or in supervising
cargo stowage. (The fatalistic spirit was not confined to the seagoers
among us.) Attendance at the classes of instruction was made compulsory;
it became part of our qualification for office that we should have
completed the course.
Although our new schooling occupies but five days, it is intensive in
its scope and application. The cold print of our official instructions
has its limitations, and Admiralty circulars are not perhaps famous for
lucidity. More can be done by a skilled interpreter with a blackboard in
a few minutes than could be gathered in half an hour's reading. At first
assembly there is perhaps an atmosphere of boredom. Routine details and
a programme of operations are hardly welcome to masters accustomed to
command. In a way, we have condescended to come among our juniors, to
listen with the mates and second mates to what may be said: we assume,
perhaps, a detached air of constraint.
It is no small tribute to the lecturer that this feeling rarely persists
beyond the opening periods. Only the most perversely immovable can
resist the interest of a practical demonstration. The classes are under
charge of an officer, R.N., who has had deep-sea experience of enemy
submarine activities. Often he is of the 'Q-ship' branch, and can
enliven his lectures with incidents that show us a side of the
sea-contest with which not many are familiar. If we are informed of the
deadly advantage of the submarine, we are equally enlightened as to its
limitations. In a few minutes, by virtue of a plot on the blackboard,
the vantage of a proper zigzag is made clear and convincing. Points of
view--in a literal sense--are expounded, and not a few of us recall our
placing of look-outs and register a better plan. Following the officer
in charge, a lieutenant of the Submarine Service dissects his vessel on
the blackboard, carefully detailing the action in states of weather and
circumstance. The under-water manoeuvres of an attack are plotted out
and explained in a practical way that no handbook could rival. The
personal magnetism of the expert rivets our attention; the routine of
under-seafaring gives us a good inkling of the manner of man we have to
meet and fight at sea; we are given an insight to the mind-working of
our unseen opponent--the brain below the periscope is probed and
examined for our education.
Nothing could be better illustrative of the wide character of our
seafaring than the range of our muster in the lecture-hall. Every type
of our trade appears in the class that assembles weekly to attend the
instructional course. We have no grades of seniority or precedence. We
are sea-republicans when we come to sit together in class. Hardy
coasting masters, commanders of Royal Mail Packets, collier mates,
freighter captains, cross-Channel skippers, we are at ease together in a
common cause; on one bench in the classroom may be seafarers returned
from foreign ports as widely distant as Shanghai and Valparaiso.
For instruction in gunnery and the use of special apparatus we come
under tuition of a type of seaman whom we had not met before. If the
backbone of the Army is the non-commissioned man, the petty officer of
the Royal Navy is no less the marrow of his Service. Unfortunately, we
have no one like him in the Merchants' Service. As Scots is the language
of marine engines, the South of England accent may be that of the guns.
That liquid ue! "Metal adapters, genelmen, luek. Metal adapters is made o'
alueminium bronze. They are bored houet t' take a tuebe, an' threaded on
th' houetside t' screw into th' base o' th' cartridge case--like this
'ere. Genelmen, luek. . . ." His intelligent demonstration of the gear
and working of the types of our armament possesses a peculiar quality,
as though he is trying hard to reduce his exposition to our level. (As a
matter of plain fact, he is.)
The instructional course closes on a note of confidence. We learn that
even 'inexorable circumstance' has an opening to skilled evasion. We go
afloat for a day and put into practice some measure of our schooling. At
fire-control, with the guns, we exercise in an atmosphere of din and
burnt cardboard, aiming at a hit with the fifth shot in sequence of our
bracket. (An earlier bull's-eye would be bad application of our
lectures.) A smoke-screen is set up for our benefit, and we turn and
twist in the artificially produced fumes and vapours in a practical
demonstration of defence. A sea-going submarine is in attendance and is
open to our inspection. Her officers augment the class instruction by
actual showing. Every point in the maze of an under-water attack is
emphasized by them in an effort to impress us with the virtue of the
counter-measures advised. It must be hard indeed for the submarine
enthusiast (and they are all enthusiasts) to lay bare the 'weaknesses'
of his loved machine. We feel for them almost as if we heard a man,
under pressure, admit that his last ship was unseaworthy.
[Illustration: THE LOSS OF A LINER]
III
THE LONGSHORE VIEW
EARLY in November 1914, on return from the sea, I was invited to join
His Majesty's Forces.
". . . An' I can tell you this, mister," said the sergeant . . . "it
ain't everybody as I asks t' join our corps. . . . Adjutant, 'e ses t'
me this mornin', 'Looka here, Bates,' 'e ses, 'don't you go for to bring
none o' them scallywags 'ere! We don't want 'em! We won't 'ave 'em at
any price,' 'e ses! . . . 'Wot we wants is proper men--men with chests,'
'e ses!"
I felt somewhat commended; I trimmed more upright in carriage; he was
certainly a clever recruiter. I told him I had rather important work to
do. He said, with emphasis, that it must be more than important to keep
a MAN out of the Army--these days! In sound of shrieking
newsboys--"_Ant--werp fallen! British falling back!_"--I agreed.
I asked him what he did with the men recruited. He was somewhat
surprised at my question, but told me that, when trained, they were sent
across to the Front--he was hoping to _return_ himself in the next
draft. He thought all this talk was needless, and grew impatient. I
mentioned that the men couldn't very well swim over there. He glared
scornfully. "Swim? . . . Swim! . . . 'Ere! Wot th' hell ye gettin' at?
You gotta hellova lot t' say about it, anyway!"
I explained that my business was that of putting the troops and the guns
and the gear o' war across; that the drafts couldn't get very far on the
way without our assistance. He glanced at my soft felt hat, at my
rainproof coat, my umbrella, my handbag--said, "_Huh_" and went off in
search of a more promising recruit. His broad back, as he strode off
swinging his cane, expressed an entire disapproval of my appearance and
my alleged business.
Good honest sergeant! His course was a clear and straight one. He would
hold no more truck with one who wouldn't take up a man's job. His "Huh"
and the swing of his arm said plainly to me, "Takin' th' boys across,
eh? A ---- fine excuse, . . . a rare ---- trick! Where's yer uniform? Why
ain't ye in uniform, eh? You can't do me with that story, mister! I'm an
old Service man, I am. I been out t' India. I been on a troopship. I
seen all them gold-lace blokes a-pokin' their noses about an' growsin'
at th' way th' decks wos kep! _Huh!_ A damn slacker, mister! That's wot
I think o' you!"
* * * * *
The sergeant's attitude was not unreasonable. Where was our uniform?
Where was any evidence of our calling by which one could recognize a
seaman on shore? A sea-gait, perhaps! But the deep-sea roll has gone out
since bilge-keels came to steady our vessels! Tattoo marks? These
cunning personal adornments are now reserved to the Royal Artillery and
officers of the Indian Army! Tarry hands? Tar is as scarce on a modern
steamer as strawberries in December! Sea-togs? If there be a preference,
we have a fondness for blue serge, but blue serges have quite a vogue
among bankers and merchants and other men of substance! Away from our
ships and the dockside waterfront, we are not readily recognizable; we
join the masses of other workers, we become members of the general
public. As such, we may lay claim to a common liberty, and look at our
seafaring selves from an average point of longshore view.
. . . The sea? Oh, we know a lot about it! It is in us. We pride
ourselves, an island race, we have the sea in our blood, we are born to
it. Circumstances may have brought us to counting-house and ledger, but
our heart is with the sea. We use, unwittingly, many nautical terms in
our everyday life. We had been to sea at times, on a business voyage or
for health or pleasure. We knew the captain and the mates and the
engineers. The chief steward was a friend, the bos'n or quartermaster
had shown us the trick of a sheepshank or a reef-knot or a short splice.
Their ways of it! Port and starboard for left and right, knots for
miles, eight bells, the watches, and all that! We returned from our
sea-trip, parted with our good friends, feeling hearty and refreshed. We
hummed, perhaps, a scrap of a sea-song at the ledgers. We regretted that
our sea-day had come so quickly to an end. Anyway, we felt that we had
got to know the sea-people intimately.
But that was on their ground, on the sea and the ship, where they fitted
to the scheme of things and were as readily understood and appreciated
as the little round port-holes, the narrow bunks, the cunning tip-up
washstands, the rails for hand-grip in a storm. Their atmosphere, their
stories, their habits, were all part of our sea-piece. Taken from their
heaving decks and the round of a blue horizon, they seemed to go out of
our reckoning. On shore? Of course they must at times come on shore, but
somehow one doesn't know much about them there. There are our
neighbours. . . . Yes! Gudgeon's eldest boy, he is at sea--a mate or a
purser. He has given over wearing his brass buttons and a badge cap now:
we see him at long intervals, when he comes home to prepare for
examinations. A hefty sort of lad--shouldn't think he would do much in
the way of study; a bit wild perhaps. Then Mrs. Smith's husband. Isn't
he at sea, a captain or a chief engineer, or something? He comes among
us occasionally; travels to town, now and then, in our carriage. A
hearty man--uses rather strong language, though! Has not a great deal to
say of things--no interest in politics, in the market, in the games.
Never made very much of him. Don't see him at the clubs. Seems to spend
all his time at home. At home! Oh yes; wasn't it only the other day his
small daughter told ours her daddy was _going_ home again on Saturday!
In war, we are learning. There are no more games; contentious politics
are not for these days; the markets and business are difficult and
wayward. We are come to see our dependence on the successful voyages of
Mrs. Smith's husband. His coming among us, from time to time, is proof
that our links with the world overseas are yet unbroken, that there may
still be business to transact when we turn up at the office. Strangely,
in the new clarity of a war vision, we see his broad back in our
harvest-fields, as we had never noticed it before. He is almost one of
our staff. He handles our goods, our letters, our gold, our securities,
our daily bread. His business is now so near to us that----
But no! It cannot properly be done. We recall that there _is_ one way
for our ready recognition when we come on shore these days. We cannot
appropriate a longshore point of view, we cannot conceal our seafaring
and merge into the crowd. There _is_ a mark--our tired eyes, as we come
off the sea! True, there are now, sadly, many tired eyes on the beach,
but few carry the distant focus, the peculiar intentness brought about
by absence of perspective at sea. We cannot adopt a public outlook owing
to this obliquity in our vision, we are barred by the persistence of
that vexed perspective in our views on shore.
Still, the point may be raised that only in our actual seafaring are we
recognized. We are poor citizens, nomads, who have little part with
settled grooves and communal life on shore. The naval seaman is a known
figure on the streets. His trim uniform, the cut of his hair, the swing
of a muscular figure, his high spirits, are all in part with a
stereotyped conception. He is the sailor; Mercantile Jack has lost his
tradition in attire and individuality, he has vanished from the herd
with his high-heeled shoes, coloured silk neckerchief, and sweet-tobacco
hat.
In the round of shore communications there is exercise for assessing a
measure of the other man's work: a large proportion of success hinges on
easy fellowship, on an understanding and acquaintance not only with the
technics of another's trade, but with his habits and his pursuits. All
trades, all businesses, all professions have relations, near or distant,
with the sea, but to them our grades and descriptions are dubious and
uncertain. For this we are to blame. We are bad advertisers. We are
content to leave our fraternization with the beach to the far distant
day when we shall retire from the sea-service, 'swallow the anchor,' and
settle down to longshore life. We cannot join and rejoin the guilderies
on shore in the intervals of our voyaging. We preserve a grudging
silence on our seafaring, perhaps tint what pictures we do present in
other lights than verity. The necessary aloofness of our calling makes
for a seclusion in our affairs: we make few efforts to remedy an
estrangement; in a way, we adopt the disciplinary scourge of the
flagellants, we glory in our isolation. If we share few of the
institutions that exist for fellowship ashore, we have made no bid for
admittance: if the tide of intercourse leaves us stranded, we have put
out no steering oar on the drift of the flood. We are somewhat
diffident. Perhaps we are influenced by a certain reputation that is
still attached to us. Are we the prodigals not yet in the mood to turn
unto our fathers?
Stout old Doctor Johnson enlarged on the sea-life--of his day--with a
determination and no small measure of accuracy. "Sir," he said, "a ship
is worse than a gaol. There is in a gaol better air, better company,
better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional
disadvantage of being in danger. When men come to like a sea-life they
are not fit to live on land. . . . Men go to the sea before they know
the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it,
they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose
another profession." At least he admitted the possibility of some of us
coming to _like_ a sea-life, though his postulate conveyed no high
opinion of our intelligence in such a preference.
We have travelled far since the worthy Doctor's day. Not all his dicta
may stand. There is still, perhaps, greater danger in a ship than in
gaol, but Johnson himself admitted that "the profession of sailors has
the dignity of danger"! For the rest, our air has become so good that
invalids are ordered to sea; our conveniences are notably improved, our
ships the last word in strength and comfort. Our company? Our company
fits to the heave of our sea. If we have middling men for the trough, we
have bold gallants for the crest. We draw a wide range to our service.
The sea can offer a good career to a prizeman: we can still do
moderately well with the wayward boy, the parents' 'heart-break,' the
lad with whom nothing can be done on shore. Steam has certainly given a
new gentility to our seafaring, but it cannot wholly smooth out the
uneven sea-road. If we lose an amount of polish, of distinguished
association, of education in our recruitment, we may gain just that
essence that fits a man for our calling. Our company is, at any rate,
stout and resolute, and, without that, we had long since been under
German bondage.
[Illustration: THE MERSEY FROM THE LIVER BUILDINGS, LIVERPOOL]
The war has brought a new prominence to our sea-trade. The public has
become interested not alone in our sea-ventures, but in our landward
doings. The astonishing fact of our civilian combatance has drawn a
recognition that no years of peace could have uncovered. Not least of
the revelations that the world conflict has imposed is the vital
importance of the ships. Our naval fleets were ever talked of, read of,
gloried in, as the spring of our national power, but not many saw the
core of our sea-strength in the stained hulls of the merchants' ships.
They were accepted without enthusiasm as an existing trade channel; they
were there on a round of business and trade, not dissimilar to other
transport services--the railways, road-carriage, the inland canals, the
moving-van, the messengers. They were ready to hand for service; so near
that their vital proportions were not readily apparent. Perhaps the
greatest compliment the public has paid to the Merchants' Service lay in
this abstract view. One saw an appreciation, perhaps unspoken, in the
consternation that greeted the first irregularity in delivery of the
oversea mails. Then, indeed, the importance of the ships was brought
sharply home. It was incredible: it was unheard of. Mercantile practice
and correspondence had outgrown all duplications and weatherly
precautions; the service was so sure and uninterrupted that no need
existed for a second string to the bow. Bills of exchange, indents,
invoices, the mail-letter, had long been confided to sea-carriage on one
bottom. Pages could be written of the tangled skeins, the complex
situations, the confusion and congestion that were all brought about by
extra mileage of an ocean voyage. Fortunes, not alone in hulls and
cargo, lie with our wreckage on the floor of the channels.
The sea-front suddenly assumed an importance in the general view, as the
drain on our tonnage left vacant shelves in the bakehouse. Commodities
that, so common and plentiful, had been lightly valued, were out of
stock--the ships had not come in! Long queues formed at the shop doors,
seeking and questioning--their topic, the fortunes of the ships! The
table was rearranged in keeping with a depleted larder. Anxious eyes
turned first in the morning to the list of our sea-casualties; the
ships, what of the ships? The valiant deeds of our armies, the tide and
toll of battles, could wait a second glance. Not all the gallantry of
our arms could bring victory if our sea-communications were imperilled
or restrained; on the due arrival of the ships centred the pivot of our
operations.
Joined to the fortune of the ships, interest was drawn to the seamen. A
new concern arose. Who were the mariners who had to face these deadly
perils to keep our sea-lines unbroken? Were they trained to arms? How
could they stand to the menace that had so shocked our naval forces?
Daily the toll rose. Savagery, undreamt of, succeeded mere shipwreck:
murder, assassination, mutilation became commonplace on the sea. Who
were the mercantile seamen; of what stock, what generation?
To a degree we were embarrassed at such new attention. The mystery of
sea-life, we felt, had unbalanced the public view. Our stock, our
generation, was the same as that of the tailors and the
candlestick-makers who were standing the enemy on his head on the
Flanders fields; we differed not greatly from the haberdasher and the
baby-linen man who drove the Prussian Guard, the proudest soldier in
Europe, from the reeking shambles of Contalmaison. Indeed, we had
advantage in our education for a fight. Our training, if not military,
was at least directed to mass operations in contest with power of the
elements: torpedo and mine were but additions to the perils of our
regular trade. If the clerk and the grocer could rise from ordered
peaceful ways and set the world ringing with his gallantry and heroism,
we were poltroons indeed to flinch and falter at the familiar conduct of
our seafaring. We felt that our share in warfare was as nothing to the
blaze of fury on the battle-fronts, our sea-life was comparative comfort
in contrast to the grisly horrors of the trenches.
With universal service, opportunity for acquaintance with our life and
our work was extended beyond the numbers of chance passengers. The
exodus oversea of the nation's manhood brought the landsman and the
seaman together as no casual meeting on the streets could have done.
Millions of our country-men, who had never dreamed of outlook on blue
water bounded by line of an unbroken horizon, have found themselves
brought into close contact with us, living our life, assisting in many
of our duties, facing the same dangers. In such a firm fellowship and
communion of interest there cannot but be a bond between us that shall
survive the passage of high-water mark.
[Illustration: THE MASTER OF THE GULL LIGHTSHIP WRITING THE LOG]
IV
CONNECTION WITH THE STATE
TRINITY HOUSE, OUR ALMA MATER
OF all trades, seafaring ever required a special governance, a unique
Code of Laws, suited to the seaman's isolation from tribunal and land
court, to the circumstance of his constant voyaging. On sea, the
severance from ordered government, from reward as from penalty, was
irremediable and complete. No common law or enactment could be enforced
on the wandering sea-tribesmen who owned no settled domicile, who
responded only to the weight of a stronger arm than their own, who had
an impenetrable cloak to their doings in the mystery of distant seas.
The spirit and high heart that had called them to the dangers and
vicissitudes of a sea-life would not brook tamely the dominance and
injunction of a power whose authority was, at sea, invisible--and even
under the land, could carry but little distance beyond high-water mark.
To the bold self-enterprise of the early sea-venturers, the unconfined
ocean offered a free field for a standard of strength, for a law of
might alone. Kings and Princes might rule the boundaries of the land,
but the sea was for those who could maintain a holding on the troubled
waters. Were the 'Rectores' not Kings on their own heaving decks, their
province the round of the horizon, their subjects the vulgar
'shippe-men,' their slaves the unfortunate weaker seafarers, whom chance
or the fickle winds had brought within reach of their sea-arms? The
sea-rovers were difficult to bridle or restrain. _Spurlos versenkt_
might well have been their motto--as that of later pirates. No trace!
The sea would tell no tales. They were alone on the breadth of the
ocean, no ordered protection was within hail, the land lay distant under
rim of the sea-line. Blue water would wash over the face of robbery and
crime: the hazards of the sea could well account for a missing ship!
Reverse the setting and the same uncharity could similarly be masked. In
turn, the humanity the seamen contemned was denied to them. Driven on
shore, wrecked or foundered on coast or shoal, the laws they scorned
were powerless to shield or salve the wreckage of their vessels, to save
their weary sea-scarred bodies. 'No trace' was equally a motto for the
dwellers on the coast: blue water would wash as freely over their bloody
evidence, the miserable castaways could be as readily returned to the
pitiless sea: an equal hazard of the deep could as surely account for
missing men!
Only special measures could control a situation of such a desperate
nature, no ordinary governance could effect a settlement; no one but a
powerful and kingly seafarer could frame an adjustment and post wardens
to enforce a law for the sea. When Richard Coeur de Lion established
our first Maritime Code, he had his own rude sea-experience to guide
him. On perilous voyaging to the Holy Land, he must have given more than
passing thought to the trials and dangers of his rough mariners. Sharing
their sea-life and its hardships, he noted the ship-measures and rude
sea-justice with a discerning and humane appreciation. In all the
records of our law-making there are few such intimate revelations of a
minute understanding as his Roles d'Oleron. The practice of to-day
reflects no small measure of his wisdom; in their basic principles, his
charges still tincture the complex fabric of our modern Sea Codes.
Bottomry--the pledging of ship and tackle to procure funds for provision
or repair; salvage--a just and reasonable apportionment; jettison--the
sharing of another's loss for a common good; damage to ship or
cargo--the account of liability: many of his ordinances stand unaltered
in substance, if varied and amplified in detail.
The spirit of these mediaeval Shipping Acts was devoted as well to
restrain the lawless doings of the seamen as to check the inhuman
plunderings of the coast dwellers. The rights and duties of master and
man were clearly defined: in the schedule of penalties, the master's
forfeit was enhanced, as his was assumed to be the better intelligence.
For barratry and major sea-crimes, the penalty was death and
dismemberment. All pilots who wrecked their charges for benefit of the
lords of the sea-coast were to be hung on a gibbet, and so exhibited to
all men, near the spot where the vessels they had misdirected were come
on shore. The lord of the foreshore who connived at their acts was to
suffer a dire fate. He was to be burned on a stake at his own
hearthstone, the walls of his mansion to be razed, and the standing
turned to a market-place for barter of swine! Drastic punishment!
Doubtless kingly Richard drew abhorrence for the wrecker from his own
bitter experience on the inhospitable rocky coast of Istria!
Little detail has come down to us of the means adopted to enforce these
just acts. Of the difficulties of their enforcement we may judge a
little from the character of the seamen as presented by contemporary
chronicles. . . .
"_Full many a draught of wyn had he drawe
From Burdeux-ward, whil that the chapman sleep.
Of nyce conscience took he no keep.
If that he foughte, and hadde the heigher hand,
By water he sent hem hoom to every land._"
. . . Thus Chaucer; but Chaucer was a Collector of Customs, and would
possibly assess the stolen draught of Bordeaux as a greater crime than
throwing prisoners overboard! From evidence of the date, Richard's
shipping laws seem to have been but lightly regarded by the lords of the
foreshore. In the reign of King John, wrecking had become a practice so
common that prescriptive rights to the litter of the beaches was
included in manorial charters, despite the Role that . . . "the pieces
of the ship still to belong to the original owners, notwithstanding any
custom to the contrary . . . and any participators of the said wrecks,
whether they be bishops, prelates, or clerks, shall be deposed and
deprived of their benefices, and if lay people they are to incur the
penalties previously recited."
It was surely by more than mere chance the churchmen were thus specially
indicted! Perhaps it was by a temporal as well as a spiritual measure
that Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, strove to remove a
reproach to the Church. He founded a Guild of sea-samaritans, a
Corporation
"of godly disposed men, who, for the actual
suppression of evil disposed persons bringing
ships to destruction by the shewing forth of false
beacons, do bind themselves together in the Love
of our Lord Christ, in the name of the Masters and
Fellows of Trinity Guild to succour from the
dangers of the sea all who are beset upon the
coasts of England, to feed them when ahungered and
athirst, to bind up their wounds, and to build and
light proper beacons for the guidance of
mariners."
An earnest and compassionate Charter: a merciful and honourable
Commission.
In this wise was formed our Alma Mater, the ancient guild of shipmen and
mariners of England. Subsequent charters advanced their titles as they
enlarged their duties and charges. In 1514, Henry VIII confirmed their
foundation under style of . . . "Master, Wardens, and Accistants of the
Guild or Fraternity of the Most Glorious and Undivided Trinity, and of
St. Clement, in the Parish of Deptford Strond, in the County of Kent."
Some years later, the 'accistants' were subdivided as Elder and Younger
Brethren, the Foundation being familiarly referred to as the Corporation
of Trinity House.
In early days, their efforts were directed in charity to stricken
seafarers, in humane dispensation, in erection and maintenance of
sea-marks, in training and provision of competent sea and coast
pilots--a line of endeavour directed by the Godly Primate, in his
Commission. Beacons were built on dangerous points of the coast, keepers
appointed to serve them, watchers detailed to observe the vessels as
they passed and restrain the activities of the wrecker. The magnitude
of the task, the difficulties of their office, the powerful
counter-influences arrayed against their beneficent role, may be judged
by an incident that occurred as late as little over a hundred and twenty
years ago. . . . "When Ramsgate Harbour, as a port of refuge from storm
and stress, was intended, and the business was before Parliament, a
petition from the Lord of the Manor tended to accelerate matters. He
represented to the House, while the Bill was depending, that, _as the
wrecks on the coast belonged to him and formed a considerable part of
his property, he prayed that the Bill would not pass_!"
Established in charity for the guardianship of the coasts, the Brethren
of Trinity passed to a supervision of the ships and the seamen. Although
a closely guarded Corporation, qualifications for entry were simply
those of sea-knowledge. The business of shipping, if more hazardous and
difficult on the sea, was less complicated in its landward connections
than is its modern conduct. The merchants were well content to be guided
in their affairs by their sea-partners, the men who actually commanded
and sailed the ships. The voyages, ship construction, refitment and
victualling were matters that could only be advised by the skilled
seamen. Jealous for professional advancement, the Brethren of Trinity
held their ranks open only to skilled master seamen and to kindred
sea-tradesmen--the shipwrights and rope-makers. While attracting leaders
and statesmen to the higher and more ornamental offices, control was
largely vested in the Elder and Younger Brethren--technical advisers,
competent to understand sea-matters.
In no small measure, the rise and supremacy of our shipping is due to
their wise direction and control. They were the sole machinery of the
State for control of the ships and the seaman. Survey and inspection of
sea-stores, planning and supervision of ship construction, registry and
measurement of vessels, had their beginning in the orderly efforts of
the Brethren. Examination of the competence of masters was part of their
duties--as was their arbitration in crew disputes. They licensed and
supplied seafarers of all classes to the 'King's Ships,' tested their
ordnance and examined the ammunition. Their reading of the ancient
charter of their foundation was wide and liberal in its scope--"_to
build, and light proper beacons for the guidance of mariners_" was their
understanding. In construction and equipment and maintenance of
sea-marks, in licence and efficient service of their coastal pilots,
they carried out to the letter the text of their covenant; in spirit,
they understood a guidance that was less material if equally important.
Their beacons were not alone standing structures of stone and lime, but
world-marks in precept and ordinance, in study and research. They held
bright cressets aloft to illuminate the difficult seaways in the paths
of navigation and science of the seafarer. They placed facilities for
the study of seamanship before the mariners and sought to advance the
science of navigation in line with the efforts of our sea-competitors.
The charts and maps of the day--most of them being rude Dutch draft
sheets--were improved and corrected, and new surveys of the coastal
waters were undertaken at charge and patronage of the Brethren. Captain
Greenville Collins, Hydrographer to Charles II, bears witness to their
high ideals in presenting to the Corporation the fruits of his seven
years' labour in survey and charting of the coast. The preface to his
work is made noteworthy by his reference to the practice of the day--the
haphazard alterations on the charts that brought many a fine ship to
grief.
". . . I then, as in Duty bound (being a Younger
Brother) did acquaint you with it, and most humbly
laid the Proposals before you; whereupon you were
pleased not only to approve of them, but did most
bountifully advance towards the charge of the work.
. . . I could heartily wish that it might be so
ordered by your Corporation, that all Masters of
Ships, both using Foreign and Home Voyages, might
be encouraged to bring you in their Journals, and a
Person appointed to inspect them; which would be a
great Improvement of Navigation, by imparting
their Observations and Discoveries of the true Form
and Prospect of the Sea Coast . . . and other
dangerous Places. . . . And that those Persons who
make and sell Sea Charts and Maps, were not allowed
to alter them upon the single Report of Mariners,
but with your approbation; by which means our Sea
Charts would be more correct and the common Scandal
of their Badness removed."
In all her enactments and activities, our Alma Mater ever preserved a
worthy pride in her sons. Enthusiasm for a gallant profession, patronage
for advancement in sea-skill and learning, a keen and studied interest
in whatever tended to elevate and ennoble the calling of the sea, were
her inspiring sentiment. Even in wise reproof and cautionary advice, her
words were tempered by a brave note of pride--as though, under so many
difficulties and serious dangers, she gloried in our work being worthily
undertaken. In charge to the seaman, Captain Collins continues his
kindly preface:
"It sometimes happens, and that too frequently,
that when Ships which have made long and dangerous
Voyages, and are come Home richly laden, have been
shipwrecked on their native Coast, whereby both
Merchants, Owners, and Mariners have been
impoverished. All our neighbours will acknowledge,
that no Nation abounds more with skilful and
experienced Seamen than our own; none meeting a
Danger with more Courage and Bravery . . . so a
Master of a ship has a very great Charge, and
ought to be a sober Man, as well as a skilful
Mariner: All Helps of Art, Care, and
Circumspection are to be used by him, that the
Lives of Mariners (the most useful of their
Majesties' Subjects at this juncture) and the
Fortunes of honest Merchants under his Care may be
preserved."
[Illustration: AT GRAVESEND: PILOTS AWAITING AN INWARD-BOUND CONVOY]
For over three hundred years, our Alma Mater flourished as the spring of
our seafaring--a noble and venerable Corporation, concerned solely and
alone with the sea and the ships and the seamen. The Brethren saw only
one aim for their endeavours--the supremacy of the sea-trade, the
business by which the nation stood or fell. Nor was theirs an inactive
part in all the long sea-wars and crises that reacted on our commerce.
Before a navy existed, the stout old master-seamen of Deptford Strond
were charged with the sea-defences of the capital. The new naval forces
came under their control at a later date, and we have the record of an
efficiency in administration that showed prevision and thought well in
advance of that of their landward contemporaries. Piracy, privateering,
the restraints of rulers and princes, were dealt with in their day. At
critical turns in the courses of our naval conduct, it was to the
steersmen of Trinity that the Ministers of the State relied for
prompt and seamanlike action. The 'sea to the seamen' was the rule.
Adapting their resources to the needs of the day, the Brethren were held
fast by no conventional restraint. They assisted peaceful developments
in trade in the quieter years, but could as readily mobilize for war
service under threat of invasion, or turn their skilled activities to
removal of the sea-marks to prevent the sailing of a mutinous fleet. In
the long and stormy history of Trinity House there were many precedents
to guide the action of the Brethren on the outbreak of war. As guardians
of the sea-channels and the approaches to our coasts, they manned these
misty sea-trenches on the outbreak of war in 1914. Weaponless, by
exercise of a skill in pilotage and a resolution worthy of great
traditions, the Trinity men have held that menaced line intact. That
little has been said about their great work is perhaps a tradition of
their service.
We are parted now. The Merchants' Service is no longer a studied and
valued interest of the ancient corporation. In an assured position as
arbiters between the State and the shipping industry, the Trinity
Brethren could combine a just regard for the merchants' interest with a
generous and understanding appreciation of the seamen's trials and
difficulties. If for no other reason than the record of past endeavours,
they should still control the personnel of the Merchants' Service, in
regulating the scheme of our education, the scope of our qualification
for office, the grades of our service, the essence of our sea-conduct.
But in the fickle doldrums of the period when steam superseded sail as
our motive power, we drifted apart. Shipping interests have become
complicated with land ventures, as widely different from them as the
marine engine is from our former sail plan. In 1850 the Merchants'
Service was placed under control of the Board of Trade; we were handed
over to a Board that is no Board--a department of the State with little,
if any, sea-sentiment, and that is sternly resolved to repress all our
efforts to regain a voice in the control of our own affairs.
THE BOARD OF TRADE
IF we may claim the ancient Corporation of Trinity House as the Alma
Mater of the Merchants' Service, we may liken our comparatively new
directorate, the Board of Trade, to our Alma step-Mater--an austere,
bureaucratic dame, hard-working and earnest, perhaps, but lacking the
kindly spirit of a sea-tradition. She is utterly out of touch and
sympathy with a sea-sense--her arms, overstrained perhaps by the
tremendous burden of charge upon charge that comes to her for
settlement, are never open to the seamen. Sullenly, we resent her
dictation as that of a usurper--a lay impropriator of our professional
heritage. Under her coldly formal direction, we may attend our affairs
in diligence and prudence, but for us there is no motherly licence; she
has no pride in our doings (if one counts not the vicious insistence of
her statistics)--we are only the stepchildren of her adoption, odd men
of the huge and hybrid family over whom she has been set to cast a
suspicious, if guardian, eye. While Trinity House was concerned alone
with the conduct of shipping and sea-affairs, our new controllers of the
Board of Trade have interests in charge as widely apart as the feeding
of draught-horses and the examination of a bankrupt cheesemonger. We are
but a Department. The sea-service of the nation, the key industry of our
island commerce, is governed by a subdivision in a Ministry that has
long outgrown the limits of a central and answerable control. Instead of
settlement by a contained and competent Ministry of Marine, our highly
technical sea-conduct is ruled for us in queue with longshore affairs,
sandwiched, perhaps, between horse-racing and the period of the dinner
table.
"_The President of the Board of Trade has
intimated to the Stewards of the National Hunt
Committee that . . . it is not possible to sanction
a list of fixtures for the season._"
"Mr. Peto asked the President of the Board of
Trade whether his attention has been called to the
decision of Mr. Justice Rowlatt . . . in which
judgment was given for the plaintiff company,
owners of the steamship X----, sunk in collision,
due to steaming without lights."
"_The President of the Board of Trade announces
modifications of the Lighting Order during the
present week, one effect being that the
prohibition of the serving of meals in hotels
after 9.30 p.m. is temporarily suspended._"
Perhaps we were rather spoilt by the pride that was in us when our
seafaring was ruled by the appreciative Brethren of Trinity, and it may
be as a repressive measure of discipline the Board of Trade extends no
particular favour to our sea-trade, and has indeed gone further in being
at pains to belittle our sea-deeds, and disparage a recognition of our
status. Our controllers are anxious that their ruling of award and
reward should suffer no comparison. For gallantry at sea, the grades of
their recognition may vary from the Silver Medal (delivered, perhaps, as
in a recent case, with the morning's milk) to a sextant or a pair of
binoculars.
In 1905 a very gallant rescue was effected by the men of the Liverpool
steamer _Augustine_. The crew of a Greek vessel were taken from their
foundering ship in mid-Atlantic under circumstances of great peril. Not
only was boat service performed in tempestuous weather, but the officers
of _Augustine_ themselves jumped overboard to try to save the Greek
seamen, who were too far exhausted to hold on to the life-lines and
buoys thrown to them. The King of Greece, in recognition of the
gallantry and humanity displayed, signed a decree conferring on the
British master and his officers the Gold Decoration of the Redeemer.
A general view would be that this was an award quite appropriate to the
services rendered, an expression by the Greek Government that they
wished to place the names of the gallant savers of their seamen on the
Roll of their Honour. Our Board of Trade objected. Through the Foreign
Office, they appear to have informed the Greek Government that such
distinguished awards were unusual and might prove a source of
dissatisfaction in future cases. Possibly they viewed the appearance of
a ribbon on the breast of a merchant seaman as an encroachment on the
rights of their own permanent officials. The awards were not made;
silver medals were substituted, which Captain Forbes and his officers,
learning of the Board's action, did not accept. On a later occasion the
same unsympathetic influence was exercised; the Russian Order of St.
Stanislaus was withdrawn and replaced by a gold watch and chain!
In supervision of our qualifications as masters and mates, the Board of
Trade has followed the lines of least resistance. It is true that they
have established certain standards in navigation and seamanship that we
must attain in order to hold certificates, but the training to these
standards has never been an interest of their Department. While our
shipmate, the marine engineer, has opportunity in his apprenticeship on
shore to complete his education, we are debarred from the same facility.
Apprenticed to the sea at from fourteen to sixteen years of age, our
youth bid good-bye to their school books and enter on a life of freedom
from scholarly restraint--a 'kindergarten' in which their toys are
hand-implements of the sea. There is no need to worry; there is no study
required for four years; a week or two at the crammer's will suffice to
satisfy the Board of Trade when apprenticeship days were over. And the
fault does not lie with the 'crammer.' Scholarly and able and competent,
as most of them are, to impart a better and more thorough instruction,
the system of leaving all to the voyage's end offers to them no alternative
but to present the candidate for examination as rapidly as possible.
Sea-apprentices of late years did not often share in a scheme of instruction
afloat. Rarely were they carried as complements to a full crew; for the
most part they were workmen in a scant manning--'greenhorns'--drudges
to the whim of any grown man. In a rough measure, the standard of such
seamanship as they _gathered_ was good--else we had been in ill case
to-day--but it was without method or apprehension--a smattering--the
only saving grace of which lay in the ready resource that only seafaring
engenders. The exactions of a busy working sea-life left little leisure
for self-advancement in study; the short, and ever shortening, intervals
of a stay in port provided small opportunity for exercise of a helping
hand from the shore. By deceptive short cuts that gave small
enlightenment, by rules--largely mnemonic--we passed our tests and
obtained our certificates. On shore, the landward youth fared better.
The spirit of the times provided a free and growing opportunity for the
study of technics and advance of scientific craftsmanship. The Navy took
full advantage of this tide. The Board of Admiralty saw the futility of
the old system of sea-training, having regard to the complete alteration
of the methods in seamanship and navigation. Naval education could no
longer be compensated by a schedule of bugle-calls and the exactitude of
a hammock-lashing. Concurrent with a sound sea-training, general
education was insisted upon. Zealously Admiralty guided their youth on a
path that led to a culture and appreciation of values, wide in scope, to
serve their profession. If it was essential, in the national interest,
that the general education and sea-training of naval officers should be
so closely supervised, it was surely little less important that that of
the merchants' officers should receive some measure of attention. But
for the private efforts of some few shipowners, nothing on the lines of
a considered scheme was done. No assistance or advice or grant in aid
was made by the Board of Trade. While drawing to their coffers huge
sums, accumulations of fines and forfeitures, deserters' wages, fees,
the unclaimed earnings of deceased seamen, they could afford no
assistance to guide the youthful seaman through a course of right
instruction to a better sea-knowledge; they made no advances to place
our education on a less haphazard basis. It may be cited as an evidence
of _their_ indifference that a large proportion of unsuccessful
candidates for the junior certificates fail in a test of _dictation_.
With our entry to the war at sea in 1914, the same indifference was
manifest. There was no mobilization or registration of merchant seamen
to aid a scheme of manning and to control the chaos that was very soon
evident. Despite their intimate knowledge of the gap in our ranks made
by the calling-up of the Naval Reserve--accentuated by the enlistment of
merchant seamen in the Navy--the Board of Trade could see no menace to
the sea-transport service in the military recruitment of our men. It was
apparently no concern of theirs that we sailed on our difficult voyages
short-handed, or with weak crews of inefficient landsmen, while so many
of our skilled seamen and numbers of our sea-officers were marking time
in the ranks of the infantry. Under pressure of events, it was not until
November 1915 they took a somewhat hesitating step. This was their
proclamation; it may be contrasted with Captain Greenville Collins's
preface.
"MAINTENANCE OF BRITISH SHIPPING
"At the present time the efficient maintenance of
our Mercantile Marine is of vital national
interest, and captains, officers, engineers, and
their crews will be doing as good service for
their country by continuing to man British ships
as by joining the army.
"THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE."
"AT the present time"! Possibly our Board was writing in anticipation of
the completion of the Channel tunnel, or of a date when our men-at-arms
and their colossal equipment, the food and furnishings of the nation,
the material aid to our Allies, could be transported by air. "As good
service"! An equality! An option! Was it a matter of simple balance that
a seaman on military service was using his hardily acquired
sea-experience as wisely as in the conduct of his own skilled trade, as
efficiently as in maintaining the lines of our oversea communications?
Events at this date were proving that we had no need to go ashore for
fighting service.
In the first violence of unrestricted submarine warfare, the Board
advanced little, if any, assistance to the victims of German savagery.
Their machinery existed only to repatriate torpedoed crews under warrant
as "distressed British seamen"; they were content to leave destitution,
hunger--the rags and tatters of a body covering--to be relieved and
refitted by the charitable efforts of philanthropic Seamen's Societies.
To them--to the kindly souls who met us at the tide-mark--we give all
honour and gratitude, but it was surely a shirking of responsibility on
part of our Board that placed the burden of our maintenance on the
committee of a Seaman's Bethel. As a tentative measure, our controllers
advanced a scheme of insurance of effects--a business proposition, of
which many took advantage. Later, this was altered to a gratuitous
compensation. Cases occurred in which distressed seamen had a claim
under both schemes: their foresight was not accounted to them. Although
proof might be forthcoming of the loss of an outfit that the small
compensation could not cover, they could claim only on one or the other,
the insurance or the gratuitous compensation. It was evident that the
Board derived some measure of assistance from the examiners in
bankruptcy on their staff.
In certain seaports--notably at Southampton--Sailors' Homes (built and
endowed for the comfort and accommodation of the merchant seamen) were
permitted, without protest, to be requisitioned by Admiralty for the
sole use of their naval ratings. The merchantmen, on service of equal
importance and equal danger, were turned out to the streets, and our
Board took no action, registered no complaint.
To await popular clamour was evidently a guiding principle with our
controllers. Their view was probably that we were private employees in
trading ventures, that their concern was only to see the sea-law carried
out. Sea-law, however, was not in question in the case of the master and
officers of _Augustine_, and, if they could assume the right to
interfere in that personal matter, they accepted a position as curators
of the personnel of the Merchants' Service. They cannot complain if our
understanding of their duties does not agree with theirs. Deliberately,
they have asserted that our sea-conduct is within their province.
An extraordinary matter is the character and calibre of the Board's
marine officials. Unquestionably able and personally sympathetic as they
are, it remains the more incomprehensible that our governance is so
stupidly controlled. Perhaps their submissions fail of acceptance in the
councils of a higher control--that has also to decide on horse-racing
and bankruptcy. Under a less heavily encumbered Ministry, our affairs
should receive the consideration that is their due. It required but
little experience of the new sea-warfare to establish our claim to be
considered a national service with a mission and employment no less
vital and combatant than that of the enlisted arms. Master and man, we
have earned the right to no small voice in the control of our own
affairs. Our sea-interests are large enough to require a separate
Department of the State, a Ministry of Marine, in which we should have a
part.
The Board of Trade has failed us, they have proved unworthy of our
confidence. Quite lately they began to mobilize and register the
mercantile seamen of the country. _Three years and nine months after the
outbreak of war, they sounded the 'assembly' of the Merchants' Service._
Let that be their epitaph!
[Illustration: TRANSPORTS LEAVING SOUTHAMPTON ON THE NIGHT PASSAGE TO
FRANCE]
V
MANNING
SEA-LABOUR cannot be likened to employment on shore. Once signed and
boarded and to sea, there can be no dismissal and replacement of the men
such as may be seen any morning at the street gates of a workshop or
shipyard. Good or bad, we are bound as shipmates for a voyage. Ordinary
laws and regulations cannot reach us in our sailing; we are given the
Merchant Shipping Act for our guidance, the longest and wordiest Act on
the Statute Book, a measure that presupposes a discipline that no longer
exists. Our ships, in size and power--our complement, in number and
character--have altered greatly beyond the views of the Act. That
statute, that in its day may have sufficed to set a standard of law and
order to the moderate crews of our sailing ships, is utterly inadequate
to control effectively the large ship's company of our modern steam
vessels. The men, too, are changed--the sailormen, perhaps, not
greatly--but, with the thundering evolution of steam-power, we have
drawn grown men to the fires, ready-made men, uninfluenced by traditions
of sea-service. We had no hand in their making--in the early years when
discipline may be inculcated and character be formed. The drudgery and
uninterest of their heavy work makes for a certain reaction that
frequently finds its expression in violence and criminal disorder. The
short voyage system and the grossly inadequate provisions of the Act
afford no opportunity to guide the reaction in a less vicious direction.
We hailed as a benefactor to the sea the inventor of single topsails;
the statistics of our sea-fatalities give a definite date to their
introduction. Daily we pray for an inventor to emancipate our stokehold
gangs.
It would be idle to pretend that, as master-seamen, we were not
disquieted by our manning problem, following upon the outbreak of war.
While mobilization of the Army Reserve drew men from all industries in a
proportion that did not affect seriously any one employment, the
calling-up of the Royal Naval Reserve strained our resources in men to
the utmost. Seamen, naval or mercantile, are of one great trade: the
balance of our activities being thrown suddenly and violently to one
side of our engagement could not fail in disorganizing the other. Added
to the outgoing of the retained Reserve seamen, recruitment of a new
Reserve to man Auxiliaries and Special Service vessels was almost
instantly begun. There were many applicants; the choice naturally fell
upon our best men remaining. In and after August 1914, we were
short-handed in the Merchants' Service. We were, indeed more than
short-handed, for the loss of our steadiest men had effect in removing a
certain check upon indiscipline. We missed just that influence upon
which, for want of adequate authoritative powers, we counted to preserve
some measure of subordinance in our ranks.
Large vessels were most seriously affected. The service of troop
transport suffered and was delayed. On occasion, there was the amazing
instance of some 1500 trained and disciplined troops standing by to
await the sobering-up and return to duty of a body of seamen and
firemen. Drunkenness is not yet accounted a crime, but the holding up of
vital reinforcements was no petty fault. Under the Act we were empowered
to inflict a fine of exactly five shillings on each offender. The
offence that held 1500 soldiers in check was met by a mulct of two
half-crowns.
[Illustration: LIVERPOOL: MERCHANTMEN SIGNING ON FOR OVERSEA VOYAGES]
The Army and the Naval Authorities were startled, as at a situation they
had not contemplated. Masters and officers, if not actually challenged,
were deemed to be responsible for such a state of insubordination
among their crews. While such an assumption was, to a degree, unjust, it
is true that we were not wholly blameless. For the sake of a quiet
commercial life, we had accepted the difficulties of our manning without
protest. In this we erred. Had we been an independent and economically
fearless body, we would, in the days before the war, have refused to
proceed to sea with any less than the summary powers held by a
magistrate on shore to enforce law and order in his district. It is true
that no magisterial powers will prevent drunkenness, but that condition
on the ships was due directly to the general indiscipline that we were
unable wholly to control.
The state of affairs called for more than a merely temporary measure,
but our controllers advanced no settlement--only they devised an
expedient. The situation was met, not by a firm action that would affect
all merchant ships and seamen alike, but by a Defence of the Realm
regulation that operated only when ships were chartered directly by
Government. The opportunity to make the merchantmen's forecastle a place
for decent men to earn a living was passed by. While admitting, by their
concern, that the matter called for redress, Government could only take
action in cases where their bureaucratic interests were threatened.
Vessels on purely commercial voyages, including carriage of the mails
and millions in the nation's securities, were left without the
regulation: we had to carry on as best we could. It entailed hardship on
the better-disposed members of our ships' companies: in whatever
fashion, the work had to be carried on: we taxed our steady men to the
limit. The effect upon them may be judged when they realized that the
delinquency of their shipmates, whose duty they had undertaken, was
assessed at the price of a pound of 'Fair Maid' tobacco.
While the quality of our men was thus affected, we suffered in their
diminished numbers. Without a protest from our governing body, the Board
of Trade, the army took a toll of our seamen. Thus early, it was not
realized that we merchantmen would have to fight for our ships and our
lives at sea. The drums of field-war set up a note that was heard
outside of six fathoms of blue water; large numbers of our seamen and
many ships' officers joined up for military service. There was a certain
measure of compensation afforded by the industrial situation ashore. As
the magnitude of the world conflict was realized, nervous employers of
labour reduced their staffs. All workmen suffered, the building trades
being perhaps most affected. As needs must, we were open to recruit
able-bodied men: we had to make seamen, and that quickly. Masons,
brick-layers, tilers, slaters--they reached tide-mark in their quest for
employment. We were glad enough to sign them on to make up our
complements. At the first they were not of great value. Unused to the
sea and ship-life, they had to be nursed through stormy weather: a
source of anxiety to the watch-keeper when the seas were up. In time
they became moderately efficient. As good tradesmen, they had a
self-respect that could be encouraged: they were not difficult to
control.
Of these, perhaps 50 per cent. made a second voyage, but not more than
10 per cent. remained at sea permanently. Their reasons for returning to
the beach were always the same. Not the hard work or the seas appalled
them, but the class of men with whom they had to live and work. Some of
our recruits had other objects in view than a desire for a sea-life. At
ports abroad, notably in the United States, they deserted. Strict as the
Federal machinery is for regulating immigration into the United States,
there appeared to be no keen desire on the part of the authorities to
embarrass the improper entry of our men. It was not difficult to assign
a cause for their laxity. Technically, the men were seamen. Our Uncle
Sam was stirring towards true sea-power--the acquisition of large
mercantile fleets. The native American could see no prosperous
commercial career in the forecastle: only from abroad might labour be
obtained for operation of the ships. We had done the same in our time.
Desertions were not confined to the landsmen of our crews. A situation
arose quickly, in which it became profitable for our men to desert
abroad and re-sign on another ship at an enhanced pay. As though to
facilitate their breach of agreement, it was not long before the United
States Seamen's Act came into force. By some international process that
we seamen are not yet able to understand, this Act became operative on
every vessel entering an American port. It establishes, for all seamen,
the 'right to quit.' Strangely, our men did not all abandon ship. Some
stirring of the patriotism that, later, became pronounced among them
must have had effect in restraining wholesale disembarkation.
Short-handed by perhaps an eighth of a full crew, we made our return
voyages. By shift and expedient, we kept a modest head of steam. The
loss was almost wholly at the fires. Stewards were set to deck duties
and the look-out, the released sailormen went below to the stokehold--on
occasion, passengers were recruited on board to bear a hand. Perhaps the
public grumbled at receiving their letters an hour or two behind time.
It is not easy to advance reasons for the new and better spirit that
came to us coincident with the appearance of German savagery at sea.
Restrictions of the supply of drink had effect in enabling us to
commence a voyage under good conditions, without brawling and bloodshed
in the forecastle. An atmosphere of determination was, perhaps,
introduced by the tales of undying heroism in the trenches that reached
us. The losses in ships served partially to supplement the numbers of
men available: a choice could be made in engagement of a crew. Over all,
there was the menace to our seafaring--the threat and challenge to our
sea-pride, as compelling and remedial as the draught of a free breeze.
In his action, the enemy made many miscalculations; not the least was
when he roused a spirit of readiness to service in our merchantmen; he
blew more than the acrid fumes into us with the shattering explosion of
his torpedoes.
If we may claim a patriotic influence acting upon our white seamen as
reason for good service in the war, how shall we assess the lascar's
quiet employment in a conflict that, perhaps, only dimly he understood?
Of its operation he could have no ignorance. _Schrecklichkeit_ was
particularly to be employed against the native seaman. Shell and torpedo
took toll of his numbers, but there was little hesitancy when he was
invited to sign for further voyages. It was ever a point of prophecy
with his detractors in the days of peace that he would be found wanting
under stress. Not boldly or magnificently or in a spirit of vainglory,
but in a manner that is not the less impressive because few have spoken
of it, he has given them the lie.
The attitude of the naval authorities in regard to our manning is
peculiar. They seem to be unable to think of ships' crews in any other
terms than that of their own large complements. There is one part in the
lectures of our instructional course that never fails to arouse rude
merriment among the master-seamen attending--as it produces a shamefaced
attitude on part of the naval lecturer (now intimate with our
difficulties). In instructions for detailing our men to 'action
stations' the phrases occur: "a party to be detached for attention to
wounded," "a party to serve hoses at fire stations," "an ammunition
supply party," "party to put the provisions and blankets in the boats."
In practice, we are also working the guns, attending the navigation,
spotting the fall of shot, keeping post at wheel and look-out. The
average cargo vessel rarely carries more than eight men on deck: we
cannot afford to have many wounded!