Every passage of a ship of yesterday, whose yards were braced round
eagerly the very moment the pilot, with his pockets full of letters, had
got over the side, was like a race—a race against time, against an ideal
standard of achievement outstripping the expectations of common men.
Like all true art, the general conduct of a ship and her handling in
particular cases had a technique which could be discussed with delight
and pleasure by men who found in their work, not bread alone, but an
outlet for the peculiarities of their temperament. To get the best and
truest effect from the infinitely varying moods of sky and sea, not
pictorially, but in the spirit of their calling, was their vocation, one
and all; and they recognised this with as much sincerity, and drew as
much inspiration from this reality, as any man who ever put brush to
canvas. The diversity of temperaments was immense amongst those masters
of the fine art.
Some of them were like Royal Academicians of a certain kind. They never
startled you by a touch of originality, by a fresh audacity of
inspiration. They were safe, very safe. They went about solemnly in the
assurance of their consecrated and empty reputation. Names are odious,
but I remember one of them who might have been their very president, the
P.R.A. of the sea-craft. His weather-beaten and handsome face, his
portly presence, his shirt-fronts and broad cuffs and gold links, his air
of bluff distinction, impressed the humble beholders (stevedores, tally
clerks, tide-waiters) as he walked ashore over the gangway of his ship
lying at the Circular Quay in Sydney. His voice was deep, hearty, and
authoritative—the voice of a very prince amongst sailors. He did
everything with an air which put your attention on the alert and raised
your expectations, but the result somehow was always on stereotyped
lines, unsuggestive, empty of any lesson that one could lay to heart. He
kept his ship in apple-pie order, which would have been seamanlike enough
but for a finicking touch in its details. His officers affected a
superiority over the rest of us, but the boredom of their souls appeared
in their manner of dreary submission to the fads of their commander. It
was only his apprenticed boys whose irrepressible spirits were not
affected by the solemn and respectable mediocrity of that artist. There
were four of these youngsters: one the son of a doctor, another of a
colonel, the third of a jeweller; the name of the fourth was Twentyman,
and this is all I remember of his parentage. But not one of them seemed
to possess the smallest spark of gratitude in his composition. Though
their commander was a kind man in his way, and had made a point of
introducing them to the best people in the town in order that they should
not fall into the bad company of boys belonging to other ships, I regret
to say that they made faces at him behind his back, and imitated the
dignified carriage of his head without any concealment whatever.
This master of the fine art was a personage and nothing more; but, as I
have said, there was an infinite diversity of temperament amongst the
masters of the fine art I have known. Some were great impressionists.
They impressed upon you the fear of God and Immensity—or, in other words,
the fear of being drowned with every circumstance of terrific grandeur.
One may think that the locality of your passing away by means of
suffocation in water does not really matter very much. I am not so sure
of that. I am, perhaps, unduly sensitive, but I confess that the idea of
being suddenly spilt into an infuriated ocean in the midst of darkness
and uproar affected me always with a sensation of shrinking distaste. To
be drowned in a pond, though it might be called an ignominious fate by
the ignorant, is yet a bright and peaceful ending in comparison with some
other endings to one’s earthly career which I have mentally quaked at in
the intervals or even in the midst of violent exertions.
But let that pass. Some of the masters whose influence left a trace upon
my character to this very day, combined a fierceness of conception with a
certitude of execution upon the basis of just appreciation of means and
ends which is the highest quality of the man of action. And an artist is
a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient,
or finds the issue of a complicated situation.
There were masters, too, I have known, whose very art consisted in
avoiding every conceivable situation. It is needless to say that they
never did great things in their craft; but they were not to be despised
for that. They were modest; they understood their limitations. Their
own masters had not handed the sacred fire into the keeping of their cold
and skilful hands. One of those last I remember specially, now gone to
his rest from that sea which his temperament must have made a scene of
little more than a peaceful pursuit. Once only did he attempt a stroke
of audacity, one early morning, with a steady breeze, entering a crowded
roadstead. But he was not genuine in this display which might have been
art. He was thinking of his own self; he hankered after the meretricious
glory of a showy performance.
As, rounding a dark, wooded point, bathed in fresh air and sunshine, we
opened to view a crowd of shipping at anchor lying half a mile ahead of
us perhaps, he called me aft from my station on the forecastle head, and,
turning over and over his binoculars in his brown hands, said: “Do you
see that big, heavy ship with white lower masts? I am going to take up a
berth between her and the shore. Now do you see to it that the men jump
smartly at the first order.”
I answered, “Ay, ay, sir,” and verily believed that this would be a fine
performance. We dashed on through the fleet in magnificent style. There
must have been many open mouths and following eyes on board those
ships—Dutch, English, with a sprinkling of Americans and a German or
two—who had all hoisted their flags at eight o’clock as if in honour of
our arrival. It would have been a fine performance if it had come off,
but it did not. Through a touch of self-seeking that modest artist of
solid merit became untrue to his temperament. It was not with him art
for art’s sake: it was art for his own sake; and a dismal failure was the
penalty he paid for that greatest of sins. It might have been even
heavier, but, as it happened, we did not run our ship ashore, nor did we
knock a large hole in the big ship whose lower masts were painted white.
But it is a wonder that we did not carry away the cables of both our
anchors, for, as may be imagined, I did not stand upon the order to “Let
go!” that came to me in a quavering, quite unknown voice from his
trembling lips. I let them both go with a celerity which to this day
astonishes my memory. No average merchantman’s anchors have ever been
let go with such miraculous smartness. And they both held. I could have
kissed their rough, cold iron palms in gratitude if they had not been
buried in slimy mud under ten fathoms of water. Ultimately they brought
us up with the jibboom of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker—nothing
worse. And a miss is as good as a mile.
But not in art. Afterwards the master said to me in a shy mumble, “She
wouldn’t luff up in time, somehow. What’s the matter with her?” And I
made no answer.
Yet the answer was clear. The ship had found out the momentary weakness
of her man. Of all the living creatures upon land and sea, it is ships
alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretences, that will not put up
with bad art from their masters.