Windjammers and Sea Tramps by Walter Runciman

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WINDJAMMERS AND SEA TRAMPS

_By_

WALTER RUNCIMAN, _Sen._

Author of "The Shellback's Progress in the Nineteenth Century."_

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE: THE
WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: 3 EAST 14TH STREET. 1905.

THESE EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS
OF THINGS NAVAL
NEW AND OLD
ARE DEDICATED
WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF ESTEEM
TO
JOHN DENT AND WILLIAM MILBURN
AND TO THE MEMORY OF
E.H. WATTS

CONTENTS

PREFACE
I. INTRODUCTORY
II. PECULIAR AND UNEDUCATED
III. A CABIN-BOY'S START AT SEA
IV. THE SEAMAN'S SUPERSTITIONS
V. THE SEAMAN'S RELIGION
VI. SAFETY AND COMFORT AT SEA
VII. WAGES AND WIVES
VIII. LIFE AMONG THE PACKET RATS
IX. BRUTALITY AT SEA
X. BRAVERY
XI. CHANTIES
XII. JACK IN RATCLIFF HIGHWAY
XIII. THE MATTER-OF-FACT SAILOR
XIV. RESOURCEFULNESS AND SHIPWRECK
XV. MANNING THE SERVICE

PREFACE

"I went in at the hawse-hole and came out at the cabin
window." It was thus that a certain North Country shipowner
once summarised his career while addressing his
fellow-townsmen on some public occasion now long past, and
the sentence, giving forth the exact truth with all a
sailor's delight in hyperbole, may well be taken to describe
the earlier life-stages gone through by the author of this
book. The experiences acquired in a field of operations,
that includes all the seas and continents where commerce may
move, live, and have its being, have enhanced in value and
completed what came to him in his forecastle and
quarter-deck times. He learned in his youth, from the lips
of a race now extinct, what the nature and traditions of
seamanship were before he and his contemporaries lived. He
has seen that nature and those traditions change and die,
whilst he and his generation came gradually under a new
order of things, whose practical working he and they have
tested in actual practice both on sea and land.

It is on this ground of experience that the author ventures
to ask attention to his views in respect of the likeliest
means to raise a desirable set of seamen in the English
merchant navy. But he also ventures to hope that the
historic incidents and characteristics of a class to which
he is proud to belong, as set forth in this book, may cause
it to be read with interest and charitable criticism. He
claims no literary merit for it: indeed, he feels there may
be found many defects in style and description that could be
improved by a more skilful penman. But then it must be
remembered that a sailor is here writing of sailors, and
hence he gives the book to the public as it is, and hopes he
has succeeded in making it interesting.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

It was a bad day for Spain when Philip allowed the "Holy
Office" to throw Thomas Seeley, the Bristol merchant, into a
dungeon for knocking down a Spaniard who had uttered foul
slanders against the Virgin Monarch of England. Philip did
not heed the petition of the patriot's wife, of which he
must have been cognisant. Elizabeth refused the commission
Dorothy Seeley petitioned for, but, like a sensible lady,
she allowed her subjects to initiate their own methods of
revenge. Subsequent events show that she had no small share
in the introduction of a policy that was ultimately to sweep
the Spaniards off the seas, and give Britain the supremacy
over all those demesnes. This was the beginning of a
distinguished partnership composed of Messieurs John Hawkins
and his kinsman Francis Drake, and of Elizabeth their Queen.
Elizabeth did not openly avow herself one of the partners;
she would have indignantly denied it had it been hinted at;
yet it is pretty certain that the cruises of her faithful
Hawkins and Drake substantially increased her wealth, while
they diminished that of Spanish Philip and that of his
subjects too. Long before the Armada appeared resplendent in
English waters, commanded by that hopeless, blithering
landlubber, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who with other sons
of Spain was sent forth to fight against Britain for "Christ
and our Lady," there had been trained here a race of
dare-devil seamen who knew no fear, and who broke and
vanquished what was reckoned, till then, the finest body of
sailors in the whole world. That our sailors have maintained
the reputation achieved in the destruction of the great
Spanish Armada is sometimes disputed. I am one of those who
trust that British seamen would be worthy of British
traditions were they even now put to the test by some
powerful invader. To suppose that the men who smothered the
Armada, or those who broke the fleets of Spain and France at
Trafalgar, were more courageous than those of our day would
be found in similar circumstances, is arrant folly. In
smaller things we can see the same sterling qualities shown
by members of our Navy now as their forebears exhibited of
old. The impressive yet half comic character of the religion
that guided the lives of seamen during Drake's time has been
faithfully handed down like an heirloom to the genuine old
salt of our own time.

The great Admiral had inconsistencies of character, and
conduct that would seem to live on in more or less elevated
examples up till now. He conducted himself in regal style on
his long voyages, dressing in an imposing way for dinner,
during which he commanded fine music to be played--for at
that day England was the home _par excellence_ of music--and
no food was eaten at his table until the blessing of the
Almighty had been asked upon it, and "thanks" was solemnly
offered ere rising. The Holy Sacrament was partaken by him
with Doughty the Spanish spy. The latter, after being kissed
by Drake, was then made to lay his head on the block, and
thereafter no more was heard of him. Afterwards the Admiral
gave forth a few discourses on the importance of unity and
obedience, on the sin of spying into other people's affairs;
and then proceeded, with becoming solemnity and in the names
of God and the Icy Queen, to plunder Spanish ports and
Spanish shipping. Drake believed he was by God's blessing
carrying out a divinely governed destiny, and so perhaps he
was; but it is difficult somewhat to reconcile his
covetousness with his piety. But what is to be said of his
Royal mistress whose crown and realm were saved to her by
free sacrifices of blood and life on the part of thousands
of single-minded men, whom the Royal Lady calmly allowed,
after they had secured her safety and that of England, to
starve in peace on Margate Sands? Times have changed. Were
such reward to be meted to the sailors of to-day after some
great period of storm, stress and national peril had been
passed through by virtue of their prowess, the wrath of the
nation might break forth and go near to sweep away such
high-placed callousness for good and all.

The modern austere critic of the condition of the seamen of
the mercantile marine is somewhat of an infliction. He slays
the present-day sailor with virulent denunciation, and
implores divine interposition to take us back to the good
old days of Hawkins, Drake, Howard, Blake and the intrepid
Nelson. He craves a resurrection of the combined heroism and
piety of the sixteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
centuries. The seaman of those periods is, to his mind, a
lost ideal. And without doubt the men trained and
disciplined by Hawkins and Drake _were_ the glory of Britain
and the terror of other nationalities. Their seamanship and
heroism were matchless. They had desperate work to do, and
they did it with completeness and devotion. And the same
credit may be given to the sailors of still later times
under altered conditions. But Nelson's and Collingwood's men
did great deeds in different ways from those of Hawkins and
Drake. Both sets of seamen were brave and resourceful, but
they were made use of differently, and were drafted from
different sources. The latter were seamen and piratical
rovers by choice, and warriors very often by necessity.
They were willing, however, to combine piety, piracy, and
sanguinary conflict in the effort to open out new avenues of
commercial enterprise for the mutual benefit of themselves
and the thrifty lady who sat upon the throne, and who showed
no disinclination to receive her share of the booty
valiantly acquired by her nautical partners.

The race of men which followed the Trans-Atlantic, Pacific,
and Mexican buccaneers of Cadiz, San Juan and Armada fame
has been different only in so far as transitional
circumstances have made it so. Indeed, the period which
elapsed from the time of the destruction of the Armada up to
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century had evolved innumerable changes in modes
of commerce which changed our seamen's characteristics as
well. But although the circumstances of the sailors'
avocation had changed, and they had to adapt themselves to
new customs, there is no justification for the belief that
the men of the sixteenth were any more capable or well
behaved than those of the eighteenth and the beginning of
the nineteenth centuries. Nor is it justifiable to assume
that because of the rapid changes which have taken place
during the last fifty years by the introduction of steamers,
the seamen who man the steamers are inferior to those who, a
generation before, manned sailing vessels, or who man what
is left of sailing vessels now. The steamer seamen of to-day
are mentally, physically and mechanically as competent to do
the work they are engaged to do as were any previous race of
seamen, and, taking them in the aggregate, they are better
educated than their predecessors and quite as sober. Their
discipline may not be all that could be desired, but that is
not the fault of, nor need it even be considered a defect
in, the seaman himself. It is a defect of the system they
live under, the responsibility for which must rest with
those whose duty it is to train them. It often happens that
those who declaim so cynically against the shortcomings of
the present-day sailor are incompetent to make a suitable
selection of captains and officers who may be entrusted with
the task of establishing proper discipline and training
aboard their vessels. Very frequently the seamen are blamed
when the captain and officers ought to be held responsible.
If captains and officers are not trained properly in their
graduating process themselves, and have not the natural
ability to make up for that misfortune when given the
opportunity of control, it is inevitable that disorder must
follow. There are, however, exceptional cases where, for
example, an officer may have been reared in a bad,
disorderly school, and yet has become a capable
disciplinarian. An instance of this kind seldom occurs; but
the merchant service is all the richer for it when it does.
It must not be supposed that I have any intention of
defending the faults of our seamen. I merely desire that
some of the responsibility for their faults and training
should be laid on the shoulders of those critics who shriek
unreasonably of their weaknesses, while they do nothing to
improve matters. Many of these gentlemen complain of Jack's
drunken, insubordinate habits, while they do not disapprove
of putting temptation in his way. They complain of him not
being proficient, and at the same time they refuse to
undertake the task of efficient training. They cherish the
memory of the good old times. They speak reverently of the
period of flogging, of rotten and scanty food allowance, of
perfidious press-gangs, and of corrupt bureaucratic tyranny
that inflicted unspeakable torture on the seamen who manned
our line of battleships at the beginning of the
century--seamen who were, for the most part, pressed away
from the merchant service.

In my boyhood days I often used to hear the old sailors who
were fast closing their day of active service say that there
were no sailors nowadays. They had all either been "drowned,
killed, or had died at home and been decently buried." I was
impressed in those days with the opinions of these vain old
men, and thought how great in their profession they must
have been. As a matter of fact, they were no better nor any
worse than the men against whom a whimsical vanity caused
them to inveigh. Many years have passed since I had the
honour of sailing with them and many, if not all of them,
may be long since dead; but I sometimes think of them as
amongst the finest specimens of men that ever I was
associated with. Their fine manhood towered over everything
that was common or mean, in spite of their wayward talk.

CHAPTER II

PECULIAR AND UNEDUCATED

The average seaman of the middle of the nineteenth century,
like his predecessor, was in many respects a cruel animal.
To appearance he was void of every human feeling, and yet
behind all the rugged savagery there was a big and generous
heart. The fact is, this apparent or real callousness was
the result of a system, pernicious in its influence, that
caused the successive generations of seafaring men to swell
with vanity if they could but acquire the reputation of
being desperadoes; and this ambition was not an exclusive
possession of those whose education had been deplorably
neglected. It was proudly shared by some of the best
educated men in the service. I do not wish it to be
supposed, however, that many of them had more than a very
ordinary elementary education; but be that as it may, they
got along uncommonly well with the little they had. Mr.
Forster's Educational Bill of 1870, together with Wesleyan
Methodism, have done much to nullify that cultivation of
ignorance, once the peculiar province of the squire and the
parson. Amongst other influences, Board Schools have
revolutionised (especially in the villages and seaport
towns) a condition that was bordering on heathenism, and no
class of workmen has benefited more than seamen by the
propaganda which was established by that good Quaker who
spent his best years in hard effort to make it possible that
every English child, no matter how poor, should have an
education.

At the time of the passing of the Education Act there were
thousands of British lads who were absolutely illiterate
(this does not apply so much to Scottish boys); and there
were hundreds of master-mariners who could neither read nor
write, and who had a genuine contempt for those who could.
They held the notion that learning, as they called it,
always carried with it nautical ignorance and general
deterioration; and in some instances the old salts' opinions
seemed amply borne out by palpable blunders in practical
seamanship which were not uncommonly made when the theoretic
seaman or navigator was at work. These shortcomings of the
"learned" were never forgotten or forgiven by the practical
though illiterate seamen.

Until well into the 'fifties the north-east coast collier
brigs and schooners were usually commanded by this type of
illiterates, and innumerable stories might be told of their
strange methods and grotesque beliefs. The following is a
fair example. The London trade once became congested with
tonnage, and a demand sprang up for Holland, whereupon a
well-known brig was chartered for Rotterdam. She had been so
long employed running along the coast with the land aboard
that the charts became entirely neglected. When the time
came to say farewell there was more than ordinary affection
displayed by the relatives of the crew whose destiny it was
to penetrate what they conceived to be the mysteries of an
unexplored East. There were not a few females who regarded
the undertaking as eminently heroic. With characteristic
carelessness the trim craft was rollicked along the
Yorkshire coast until abreast of Flamborough Head, when it
became necessary to take a departure and shape a course for
Rotterdam. She scampered along at the rate of six to seven
knots an hour amid much anxiety among the crew, for a
growing terror had possessed the captain and his mate as
they neared the unknown dangers that were ahead of them. The
captain went below and had begun to unroll the chart which
indicated the approaches to his destination, when he became
horrorstruck, and rushing up the cabin stairs called out,
"All hands on deck! Hard, a port!" The mate excitedly asked,
"What's the matter?" "The matter?" said the infuriated and
panic-stricken skipper, "Why the b----y rats have eaten
Holland! There is nee Rotterdam for us, mister, _this_
voyage." But in spite of a misfortune which seemed serious,
the mate prevailed upon this distinguished person to allow
_him_ to have a share in the navigation, with the result
that the vessel reached the haven to which she was bound
without any mishap whatever.

It was not unusual for those old-time brigs, when bound to
the North in ballast, to be blown off the land by strong
westerly gales, and these occasions were dreaded by the
coasting commander whose geographical knowledge was so
limited that when he found himself drifting into the German
Ocean beyond the sight of land, his resources became too
heavily taxed, and perplexity prevailed. It was on one of
those occasions that a skipper, after many days of
boisterous drifting, remarked to his mate, "I wish our wives
knew where we are this terrible night!"

"Yes," replied the shrewd officer, with comic candour; "and
I wish to heaven we knew where we are ourselves!"

Such was the almost opaque ignorance, in spite of which a
very large carrying trade was successfully kept going for
generations.

The writing of the old-time skipper was so atrocious that it
brought much bad language into the world. One gentleman used
to say that his captain's letters used to go all over the
country before they fell into his hands, and when they did,
they were covered over with "try here" and "try there."
Their manners, too, were aboriginal; and they spoke with an
accent which was terrible. They rarely expressed themselves
in a way that would indicate excessive purity of character.
They thought it beneath the dignity of a man to be of any
other profession than that of a sailor. They disdained
showing soft emotion, and if they shook hands it was done in
an apologetic way. The gospel of pity did not enter into
their creed. Learning, as they called it, was a bewilderment
to them; and yet some of those eccentric, half-savage beings
could be entrusted with valuable property, and the
negotiation of business involving most intricate handling.
Sometimes in the settlement of knotty questions they used
their own peculiar persuasiveness, and if that was not
convincing, they indicated the possibility of physical
force--which was usually effectual, especially with
Levantines. Here is an instance: one of the latter plethoric
gentlemen, with an air of aggrieved virtue, accused a
captain of unreasonableness in asking him to pay up some
cash which was "obviously an overcharge." The skipper in his
rugged way demanded the money and the clearance of his
vessel. The gentlemen who at this time inhabited the banks
of the Danube could not be made to part with money without
some strong reasons for doing so. The Titanic and renowned
captain, having exhausted a vocabulary that was awful to
listen to, proceeded to lock the office door on the inside.
That having been satisfactorily done, he proceeded to unrobe
himself of an article of apparel; which movement, under
certain conditions, is always suggestive of coming trouble.
The quick brain of the Levantine gentleman saw in the
bellicose attitude assumed possibilities of great bodily
harm and suffering to himself; on which he became effusively
apologetic, and declaimed with vigorous gesticulation
against the carelessness of his "account clerk who had
committed a glaring error, such as justified his immediate
dismissal!" That stalwart hero of many rights had not
appealed in vain. He got his money and his clearance, and
made a well-chosen and impressive little speech on the
wisdom of honest dealing. His convert for the time being
became much affected, declaring that he had never met with a
gentleman whose words had made such a strange impression on
him!

This then was the kind of creature who wrought into its
present shapes and aspects England's Mercantile Marine. In
carrying out his destiny he lashed about him with something
of the elemental aimlessness of his mother the sea. The next
chapter will show how the captain of to-day grew up and,
literally, got licked into his present form at the rough and
cruel hands of the old-time skipper.

CHAPTER III

A CABIN-BOY'S START AT SEA

During recent years I have had the opportunity of listening
to many speeches on nautical subjects. Some of them have not
only been instructive but interesting, inasmuch as they have
often enabled me to get a glimpse into the layman's manner
of thinking on these questions. It invariably happens,
however, that gentlemen, in their zeal to display maritime
knowledge, commit the error of dealing with a phase of it
that carries them into deep water; their vocabulary becomes
exhausted, and they speedily breathe their last in the
oft-repeated tale that the "old-fashioned sailor is an
extinct creature," and, judging from the earnest vehemence
that is thrown into it, they convey the impression that
their dictum is to be understood as emphatically original.
Well, I will let that go, and will merely observe how
distressingly superficial the knowledge is as to the
rearing, training, and treatment which enabled those
veterans to become envied heroes to us of the present day.
Much entered into their lives that might be usefully
emulated by the seamen of our own time. Their unquestionable
skill and hardihood were acquired by a system of training
that would have out-matched the severity of the Spartan, and
they endured it with Spartan equanimity. A spasmodic growl
was the only symptom of a rebellious spirit. The maritime
historian who undertakes to write accurately the history of
this strange society of men will find it a strain on the
imagination to do them all the justice they deserve. Their
lives were illuminated with all that is manly and heroic and
skilful. They had no thought of cruelty, and yet they were
very cruel--that is, if they are to be judged by the
standard of the present age; but in this let us pass
sentence on them with moderation, and even with indulgence.
The magnitude of the deeds they were accustomed to perform
can never be fully estimated now, and these should excuse to
some extent many of their clumsy and misguided modes of
operation. It must not be supposed that all these men were
afflicted by a demoniac spirit. It was their training that
blanketed the sympathetic side of them, until they
unconsciously acquired all the peremptory disposition of
Oriental tyrants. But the stories I am about to relate of
childlife aboard ship will show how difficult it is entirely
to pardon or excuse them. The blood runs chilly at the
thought of it, and you feel your mind becoming impregnated
with the spirit of murder.

No personage ever attracted so much attention and sympathy
outside the precincts of his contracted though varied sphere
of labour as the cabin-boy who served aboard the old sailing
brigs, schooners, and barques, and I must plead guilty to
having a sentimental regret that the romance was destroyed
through this attractive personality being superseded by
another, with the somewhat unattractive title of "cook and
steward." The story of how poor boys of the beginning and
middle of the century and right up to the latter part of the
'sixties started sea-life is always romantic, often
sensational, and ever pathetic. They were usually the sons
of poor parents living for the most part in obscure villages
or small towns bordering on the sea, which sea blazed into
their minds aspirations to get aboard some one of the
numerous vessels that passed their homes one way or the
other all day long. The notion of becoming anything but
sailors never entered their heads, and the parents were
usually proud of this ambition, and quite ready to allow
their offspring to launch out into the world while they were
yet little more than children. It very frequently happened,
however, that boys left their homes unknown to their
families, and tramped to the nearest seaport with the object
of engaging themselves aboard ship, and they nearly always
found some skipper or owner to take them. Swarms of Scotch
and Norfolk boys were attracted to the Northumberland ports
by the higher rate of wages. Many of them had to tramp it
all the long way from home, and quite a large number of them
became important factors in the shipping trade of the
district. It was a frequent occurrence to see a poor
child-boy passing through the village where I was brought
up, on his way from Scotland to Blyth, or the Tyne, his feet
covered with sores, and carrying a small bundle containing a
shirt, a pair of stockings, and flannel pants. This was his
entire outfit. My mother never knowingly allowed any of
these poor little wanderers to pass without bringing them to
our home. They were promptly supplied with bread and milk
while the big tub was got ready so that they might be
bathed. They were then provided with night clothing and put
to bed while she had their own clothes washed, and mended if
need be (they always required washing); they were then sent
on their journey with many petitions to God for their safety
and welfare. Some of the villagers were curious to know why
this gratuitous hospitality was given to unknown passers-by,
and my mother satisfied their curiosity by pointing to her
own children, and remarking, "Don't we live within the sound
of the sea? and I wish to do by these poor children that
which I should like some one to do by mine if it ever should
come to pass that they need it." Little did she suspect
when these words were uttered that one of her own sons was
so soon to be travelling in an opposite direction in quest
of a cabin-boy's berth.

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