Windjammers and Sea Tramps by Walter Runciman

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An encouraging feature of the situation is that the Shipping
Federation has at last taken the matter up. The late Mr.
George Laws was always in favour of doing so, but
unfortunately he got scant support from his members. Since
his death, and the pronouncement the Chamber of Shipping
gave in its favour at the last annual meeting, Mr. Cuthbert
Laws, who succeeded his gifted father, has with commendable
energy and marked ability undertaken the task of reviving
the old system of every vessel carrying so many apprentices.
He is penetrating every part of Great Britain with the
information that the Federated Shipowners are prepared to
give suitable respectable lads of the poor and middle class
a chance to enter the merchant service on terms of which
even the poorest boy can avail himself, without pecuniary
disability; and I wish the able young manager of the most
powerful trade combination in the world all the success he
deserves in his effort, not only to keep up the supply of
seamen, but to raise the standard of the mercantile marine.

In the early years of the last century, right up to the
seventies, north-country owners placed three to four
apprentices on each vessel, and never less than three. Many
of them came from Scotland, Shetland, Norfolk, Denmark and
Sweden. There were few desertions, and they always settled
down in the port that they served their time from. If any
attempt was made at engaging what was known as a
"half-marrow"[2] there was rebellion at once; and I have
known instances where lads positively refused to sail in a
vessel where one of these had been shipped instead of an
apprentice. Impertinent intrusion was never permitted in
those days. As soon as they were out of their time the
majority of the lads joined the local union. One of the
conditions of membership was that each applicant should pass
an examination in seamanship before a committee of the
finest sailors in the world. They had to know how to put a
clew into a square and fore-and-aft sail, to turn up a
shroud, to make every conceivable knot and splice, to graft
a bucket-rope, and to fit a mast cover. The
examination was no sham. I remember one poor fellow, who
had served five years, was refused membership because he had
failed to comply with some of the rules. He had to serve two
years more before he was admitted. I have often regretted
that Mr. Havelock Wilson did not adopt similar methods for
his union, though perhaps it is scarcely fair to put the
responsibility of not doing so on him. The conditions under
which he formed his union were vastly different from what
they were in those days. He had to deal with a huge
disorganised, moving mass, composed of many nationalities.
At the same time I am convinced that a union conducted on
the plan of the one I have been describing is capable of
doing much towards training an efficient race of seamen, and
I hope Mr. Wilson, or somebody else, will give it a trial.

Since the above was written Lord Brassey, by the invitation
of the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce, has read a carefully
prepared paper, in the Guildhall, to a large audience of
shipowners and merchants, on the best means of feeding the
Mercantile Marine and the Royal Navy with seamen. Lord
Brassey must have been at infinite trouble in getting the
material for his paper, and, notwithstanding the errors of
fact and of reasoning in it, I think the shipping community,
and indeed the public at large, owe him their hearty thanks
for giving so important a subject an opportunity of being
discussed. So far as his advocacy of the establishment of
training vessels for the supply of seamen to the Royal Navy
is concerned, I have nothing to say against it. The lads in
those ships are trained by naval officers, under naval
customs and discipline, and there should be some recruiting
ground of the kind for that service. But Lord Brassey
advocates it for the Mercantile Marine also. He suggests a
plan of subsidy to be paid to the owner or the apprentice,
and that the lad after serving four years, should be
available for service in the Royal Navy. But to begin with,
it may be objected that men trained in Royal Navy discipline
and habits never mix well with men trained in the other
service; their customs and habits of life and work are quite
different to those of the merchant seaman. It used to be a
recognised belief that the sailor of the merchantman could
adapt himself with striking facility to the work of the
Royal Navy and its discipline, but the Navy trained man was
never successful aboard a cargo vessel. The former
impression originated, no doubt, during the good old times
when it was customary for prowling ruffians from men-of-war
to drag harmless British citizens from their homes to man
H.M. Navy, and all the world knows how quickly they adapted
themselves to new conditions, and how well they fought
British battles! But what a sickening reality to ponder
over, that less than a century ago the powerful caste in
this country were permitted, in defiance of law, to have
press-gangs formed for the purpose of kidnapping respectable
seamen into a service that was made at that time a barbarous
despotism by a set of brainless whipper-snappers who gained
their rank by backstair intrigue with a shameless
aristocracy! All that kind of villainy has been wiped out;
and the men of the Royal Navy are now treated like human
beings; and they do their work not a whit less courageously
and well than they did when it was customary to lash God's
creatures with strands of whipcord loaded with lead until
the blood oozed from their skins. There is no need to press
either men or boys to enter the King's Naval Service. It has
now been made sufficiently attractive to obviate the need
for that. Nor is there any necessity for shipowners to be
called upon, with or without subsidy, to train and supply
men for the Navy. They have enough to do to look after their
own manning, and this can be done easily by the adoption of
methods that will break down any objection British parents
may have to their sons becoming indentured to steamship
owners, who will find work for them to do, and who will have
them trained by a kindly discipline, paid, fed, and lodged
properly; but still, if they are to be thorough men, there
should be no pampering. Unquestionably, then, the place for
training should be aboard the vessels they are intended to
man and become officers and masters of. No need for
subsidised training vessels; and certainly no need for a
national charge being made for the benefit of shipowners,
who have no right to expect that any part of their working
expenses should be paid by the State.

As an example of how sympathy is growing for the
apprenticeship system, Messrs. Watts,[3] Watts & Company, of
London, have for many years carried apprentices aboard their
steamers, and the grand old Blythman who adorns the City of
London commercial life with all that is ruggedly honest and
manly, has just purchased, at great cost, a place in
Norfolk, which his generous son, Shadforth, has agreed to
furnish, and then it is to be endowed as a training-field
for sailor-boys. The veteran shipowner is well known by his
many unostentatious acts of philanthropy to have as big a
heart as ever swelled in a human breast; but, knowing him as
I do, I feel assured that his philanthropy would have taken
another form had he not been convinced he was conferring a
real national benefit by giving larger opportunities to
British lads to enter the merchant service.

I give two other notable examples of success because of the
care taken in selecting the boys and the care adopted in
training them. Mr. Henry Radcliffe, senior partner of
Messrs. Evan Thomas, Radcliffe & Co., of Cardiff, has taken
a personal interest in boy apprentices for years. His
experience of them has long passed the experimental state,
and his testimony is that this is the only way the merchant
navy can be adequately and efficiently maintained.

Daniel Stephens, senior partner of Messrs. Stephens, Sutton
& Stephens, which firm has carried apprentices for a number
of years, is a sailor himself, who has had the good sense
never to try and hide the fact that he was trained amid a
fine race of west-country seaman, and he is proud to be able
to say that he has been training boys for years with uniform
satisfaction. He relates with obvious pride that one of his
boys, a coal-miner's son, seven years to a day from the date
of joining his firm as an apprentice, sailed as chief
officer of their newest and largest steamer.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: A "half-marrow" was a young man who was trying
to become a seaman without serving his apprenticeship.]

[Footnote 3: During the passage of this book through the
press, Mr. Watts, senior, has passed away.]

THE END.

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