The transition of a great nation from barbarism to an elementary form
of culture is always interesting. So, too, is the same transition in
the case of a "great profession." In 1840, when the propulsion of
ships by means of a steam-driven screw opened a new era in maritime
history, the "practical man" in the engineering trade was an
uneducated savage. Possessing no trade union, no voice in Parliament,
no means of educating himself in the intricate theory of the machinery
he helped to build, the mechanic of sixty years ago was regarded
by those above him in the social scale merely as a "hand." When,
therefore, steamships became common, and men were needed to operate
and care for the propelling mechanism, they were naturally drawn
from the ranks of mechanics who were employed in the works to
construct it. Stokers were enlisted, in a similar way, from those
working on land-boilers. Here, then, were two new classes of
seamen, corresponding very largely to the officers and sailors of a
sailing-ship. To the unbiassed judgment, it went without saying that
the engineer on watch would take rank with the navigating officer on
watch; but the old school of mariners, the school whose ideas of
progress are crystallised for all time in the historic report of
certain Admiralty Lords that "steam power would never be of any
practical use in Her Majesty's Navy," thought differently. In their
opinion, the engineer was the same as a stoker, and from that day
almost to this the deck-officer who served his time in a sailing-ship
secretly regards the engineers of his steamer as upstarts more or
less, whose position and pay are a gross encroachment upon his own
more ancient privileges.
A little consideration will show that there was some reason for
this feeling in the beginning. In the case of the Royal Navy, the
aggravation was particularly acute. The deck-officers, then as now,
were sons of gentlemen, were members of an ancient and honourable
service, a service included among that select quaternity, to be
outside of which was to be a nonentity--the Navy, the Army, the
Church, and the Bar. The naval officer, then as now, did not soil his
hands, wore a sword, and was swathed in an inextricable meshwork of
red tape, service codes, and High Toryism. He had his own peculiar
notions of studying a profession, looked askance at the new-fangled
method of driving a ship, honestly thinking, with Ruskin, that a
"floating kettle" was a direct contravention of the laws of God.
Imagine, then, the aristocratic consternation of these honourable
gentlemen when the care and maintenance of propelling machinery,
auxiliary mechanism, and also guns and gun-mountings, were gradually
transferred to a body of men of low social extraction, uncultured and
unpolished land-lubbers and civilians! Only within the last twenty
years have naval engineer officers, now drawn from the same social
strata as the navigating officers, won official recognition of their
importance in the _personnel_ of a ship.
In the case of the engineers of the Mercantile Marine the struggle has
been the same, though by no means so bitter or so sustained. The
reasons for this are two.
In the first place, the navigating officers of a merchantman are
merely the employees of civilians--the shipowners. In the second
place, the Board of Trade, by compelling shipowners to carry a certain
number of navigators and engineers holding certificates of competency,
have placed them on one professional level. Nevertheless, the
animosity between the mates and the shrewd, greasy, sea-going engineer
was keen enough, sharpened no doubt by the preponderating wages of the
latter. Again, the former's habits of deference and mute obedience to
the master, at once navigator, agent, and magistrate of the ship,
were not readily assimilated by the engineer, whose democratic
consciousness was just then rising into being, and whose mechanical
instincts were outraged by the sailor's ignorant indifference to the
knowledge and unremitting vigilance demanded by the machinery in his
care.
It is in this fashion that a class of men like my Chief have
developed. Born of the lower middle class, the artisan class,
apprenticed to their trade at twelve or thirteen years of age, and,
on going to sea, suddenly finding themselves in possession of a
definite uniform and rank with a fixed watch and routine, their
natural instinct leads them to do their utmost to "live up" to their
new dignity. In course of time, after a certain minimum of sea
service, and an unbroken record of efficiency and good behaviour, the
Board of Trade examiner affixes his stamp on the finished product, and
the youth ventures on matrimony and indulges in dreams of rising in
the world. His travelling has given his mind a certain shallow breadth
of outlook; he will discuss Italian art with you, although his
knowledge of Italy is confined to the low parts of Genoa and Naples,
with perhaps a visit to the Campo Santo of the former. He has acquired
the reading habit, perforce, at sea, though his authors would be
considered dubious by the educated; and a smattering of some other
language, generally Spanish, is, in his own opinion, good reason for
holding himself above the common mechanic ashore. His salary as a
chief engineer enables his wife to keep a servant and buy superior
garments; he puts money by, and in the course of time solidifies his
position as a genuine bourgeois. In the meantime he exhales Smiles. He
believes in Rising in the World. He would blot out a perfectly
inoffensive, if ignoble, ancestry, and he would also, if he could,
make friends with English Grammar. But how can I hope for his success
in the latter struggle when the books he borrows from my little store
are returned uncut. Possibly the colourless eyes, which survey me over
the _retrousse_ nose and deceptive moustache, are capable of gathering
wisdom from the uncut fields of learning. And yet, and yet, have I not
unintentionally surprised him in his cabin devouring "The Unwritten
Commandment" or "The Lady's Realm," while my Aristophanes is on
the settee? I do not blame a sea-going engineer for disliking
Aristophanes. Many agricultural labourers would find him uninforming.
But why borrow him and simulate a cultured interest in his plays?
My friend, I think, abhors blatant uxoriousness. So do I. And I fear
the Most Wonderful Man on Earth is blatantly uxorious. I honour him
for a certain sadness in his voice when he speaks of unrequited love.
But his constant reference to Ibsen's _motif_ in the "Wild Duck,"
though it fails in its primary object of convincing me that he is
familiar with Ibsen's plays, does in truth tell me that some fair one
gave him sleepless nights.
Of course, this amusing assumption would not stand a single hour in a
cultured circle. Some periodicals of the day foster the fallacy in
many an unfortunate mind that to read about a book is really quite
as good as actually to read it. Their readers are led to infer that
learning is quite a spare-time affair. I once assured a victim of this
delusion that in true culture there was no threepence-in-the-shilling
discount; and he wrinkles his brows yet, I believe, wondering what I
meant. How many years of close study, my friend, are required to
enable one to stroll through a second-hand book-shop, pick up the
_one_ treasure from the shelves, and walk out again?
It may be, perchance, that I labour this trait in the character of one
who would be great but for his disabilities. Which thought recalls to
my mind a suspicion that intermittently haunts me--that, living as we
do here on this ocean tramp, "thrown together," as the phrase goes,
so constantly, faults in another man grow more and more apparent;
social abrasions which would be smoothed down and forgotten ashore are
roughened at each fresh encounter, until the man is hidden behind one
flaming sin. Especially is this to be expected when mind and body are
worn, the one with responsibility, the other with rough toil. Who am I
that I should claim cultured intercourse from these heroes? Have I not
shared their agony and bloody sweat in times of storm and stress?
Have I not seen this same wearer of elevators in his engine-room,
a blood-stained handkerchief across his head where he has been
"smashed," the sweat running from his blackened features, watching
his engines with an agony no young mother ever knew?
What of the time when our main steam pipe burst in the Irish Sea in a
fog? Read in the Chief Mate's log an entry, "_Delayed 2 hrs. 40 min.,
break-down in engine-room._" Simple, isn't it? But behind those brief
words lies a small hell for the Chief Engineer. Behind them lies two
hours and forty minutes' frenzied toil in the heat of the boiler-tops,
where the arched bunkers keep the air stifling; two hours and forty
minutes' work with tools that race and slither to the rolling of the
ship, with bolts that burn and blister, with steam that knows no
master when she's loose. Literature? Art? Old friend, these gods seem
very impotent sometimes. They seem impotent, as when, for instance, my
first gauge-glass burst. Pacing up and down in front of my engines,
there is a hiss and a roar, and one of my firemen rushes into the
engine-room, his right hand clasping the left shoulder convulsively.
He has been cut to the bone with a piece of the flying glass. Men of
thirty years' sea-time tell me they never have got used to a glass
failing. And then the fight with the water and steam in the darkness,
the frenzied groping for the wires to shut the cocks, the ceaseless
roar of water and steam! A look at the engines, an adjustment of the
feed-valves, lest the water get low while I am fitting a new glass,
and then to work. How glad one is when one sees that luminous ring,
which denotes the water-level, rise "two-thirds glass" once more! And
how far from the fine arts is he whose life is one long succession of
incidents like these? Can they blame us if we look indulgently upon
mere writers and painters? Surely, when the books are opened and the
last log is read, when the overlooker calls our names and reads out
the indictment "_Lacking culture_," we may stand up manfully and
answer as clearly as we can, "Lord, we had our business in great
waters."