Owners, however, always aimed at getting employment over the winter months in the coasting trade to France or London, and when freights were depressed beyond paying point they did not hesitate to lay them up until the White Sea and Baltic season came round again. It frequently happened that this course had to be adopted, and the ports all along the coast became blocked with idle tonnage, and the little towns overcrowded with seamen, who, as a rule, stuck to their ships and did odd jobs, without pay, until the time came for them to be again engaged in active service. It was customary for the captain and mate to specially look after the vessels when laid up so that no harm came to them, and they were expected to do so without remuneration. The honour and pride in those earlier days of having command or being mate of even a leaky old craft was very pronounced. Each brig, brigantine, or schooner, carried three or four apprentices. These lads were allowed 10s. per week, which was called board money. The owners, it may be presumed, found it cheaper to make this arrangement rather than have cooking aboard while the vessel was laid up; but though an allowance was made for food, it was a standing instruction that at least two out of the four boys should sleep aboard the ship, and as soon as she was put into commission none but the oldest apprentice could have the privilege of sleeping ashore. This personage, by the way, was looked up to as a kind of Mogul even by his commander, but especially by the younger apprentices. He claimed the right indeed to chastise a wayward youth with the rope's end, and when very bad offences occurred, a double punishment was inflicted by keeping the little delinquent on deck in the cold at night, until his superior thought fit to pardon him. On the other hand, I have seen a mate soundly thrashed by this same person for striking a young boy during the process of a voyage. Such were the peculiar ethics of this class of seamen that, while they conceived it to be their duty to uphold the dignity of discipline when they were in supreme control of the little colony of apprentices during the time the vessel was laid up in port, they would not brook undue physical interference with their co-apprentices on the part of the chief officer when in active commission. Sometimes the stay in port would last three months. The master and mate were in attendance every day, and in order that their berths might be retained, the sailors came aboard on fine days, repaired sails, running gear, standing rigging, scraped and tarred the holds out, scraped masts, painted yards, scrubbed bottom, tarred and blackleaded it, and, in fact, when the time came to fit out for the spring voyage to the Baltic, the little vessels looked as trim and as neat as it was possible to make them, and there was little left to do except bend sails and take stores aboard.



Nor were the apprentices allowed to be idle. Each day they had to wash decks when the tide was up, and although it may seem a very small matter to refer to, it is worthy of note that the drawing of water by the youngest boy was the occasion of much interest to the onlookers, who always congregated in large numbers on the quays when anything of this sort was being done. The bucket which supplied the water was stropped with rope so that it did not injure the side of the vessel; great care was observed that no harm came to the planking, no matter how old the craft might be. The boy was expected to draw with such rapidity that the person who was throwing the water along the deck should not have to wait. It was considered quite an art to throw the water properly, and also to supply it, and it taxed both the strength and the deftness of the youngster; many a wigging he would get in the process of training even in this small matter.

The two youngest boys took week and week about in keeping the forecastle clean. It was insisted that the floor should be spotless. This was enforced by the oldest apprentice, and he had to account to the master if it were not as he wished it to be. They of course assisted the men during the period of inactivity, but on those days when no work was being done by the sailors it was usual for the mate to give them so many nettles to plait: that is, five or seven rope yarns plaited into seizings for bends in hawsers, mooring chains, and ropes. Sometimes the mate was a person of artistic taste, and in that case they would be given bucket strops or man ropes to graft, or turkheads and grafting to work on to some deck arrangement or yardarm, and bunt gaskets to work with marline. Indeed, the course of training was so systematic and so perfect that these young fellows long before their time had expired could do anything that a sailor might be called upon to do. To be taunted with laziness was a grievous indictment. The average lad of that period would do himself physical injury in the effort to avoid such a stigma. They prided themselves on being the pupils and under-studies of the finest sailors in the world; and so they were. When the time came round for the spring fleet to fit out, there was great commotion amongst the little community. The crews emulated each other in the effort to make their vessels look smart, and the distinction of being first ready for sea claimed a prominent share of their ambition. They knew also that they would be subjected to the stern criticism of the female population, the limitations of which would not necessarily be confined to wives and sweethearts, or even relations.

Neither men nor women found companionship in books. If the women read anything, it was what the newspapers said about shipping movements, and it is safe to say very few concerned themselves about that. So their mental energy found an outlet in the gossip of things nautical. They knew by instinct almost when a vessel was thoroughly cared for, and although they might not be able to call things by their proper names, they never liked their husbands or sweethearts to have any hand in, or association with, an untidy vessel. Hence, to secure approval from their women critics, these sailor men and apprentice lads would strain every faculty to have sails stowed in a cloth, that is, stowed so that not a wrinkle could be seen anywhere. The youngest apprentice furled the royals and staysails, two other boys the topgallant sails, and all the crew, except the master, the larger square sails. The yards were squared by the braces. The lower yards were made to correspond with the topsail yards by means of the lifts, every rope was hauled taut, and every coil round the belaying pin was made strictly uniform. Every end of a rope had to have what is called a cross-whipping to prevent the end from becoming a tassel. A well-worn, though authentic story, which bears on this, did service many times in those days of nautical rectitude. A gentleman was brought from another district to our little port to serve as chief mate aboard a hitherto well-kept brig, and his chief characteristic was in neglecting to conform to one of the great essential nautical principles by allowing everything to get into disorder; warps and rope ends were allowed to go without whippings until it became an eyesore and a subject of strong condemnation. His wife, who did not conform to the orthodox faith, began to draw comparisons, and vigorously proclaimed that her husband's taste was a thing to be emulated. "Look," said this incensed lady, "at the fringes and tassels. Do they not look better than having things tied up like whipcords?" But her aesthetic opinions did not prevent her husband's services being dispensed with.

I have said that some of these small vessels were in the St Lawrence trade carrying timber from Quebec, and grain or timber from Montreal. They usually went out in ballast in order to make two voyages during the season, and there were very few that did not succeed in doing it, provided they kept free from accident. The spring voyage was fraught with great danger owing to large fields of ice and icebergs drifting out of the St Lawrence across the Banks of Newfoundland. Sometimes the spring fleet would be fast for days, and many of them got badly damaged in the effort to force a channel through the ice-field, while some got so badly crushed and damaged that they foundered. That was a real danger at the beginning of the season, but it did not compare with the danger of encountering the terrific westerly hurricanes that swept over the Atlantic in the fall of the year. We speak sympathetically about the six and seven thousand ton steamers that tramp across during the winter months at the present time, and yet it is less than fifty years since the whole of that trade was done by tiny brigs and barques who leaked and worked like Russian prams, but were handled with an ability that saved both them and their crews many times from destruction. Every autumn some of them became waterlogged, and not a few were never heard of after leaving the port of loading. The owner of an old brig which I knew very well was induced by the high rate of freights from Montreal to fix her to load a cargo of heavy grain from that port. Some of the owner's friends expostulated with him on the danger of sending so old and small a vessel to the St Lawrence so late in the season. "Old?" said the owner, "hasn't she had new decks? And you call her small! What about Drake's ships that he sailed to the Pacific Ocean and all over India with? Why, the largest wasn't half the size of mine! No, gentlemen, ships were built to go to sea, not to lie and rot at the quays." So to sea she went, and arrived at Montreal none too soon to assure the completion of her loading and sailing before the winter set in. She was, however, quickly loaded, and sailed on her homeward voyage. A quick run was made to Cape Breton, and thence through scores of "Codbangers" right away to the edge of the Banks of Newfoundland. Anchors, boats, hatches and everything else were made secure in anticipation of a wild passage. The studding-sail booms and other spars or planks were lashed at each side of the hatchways in order to break the weight or fire of the sea before it tumbled on to them. This was the old-fashioned plan of protection, and I hope it is still practised. I have often had recourse to it myself both in sailing vessels and steamers. There was no Plimsoll mark in those days, and this cockle-shell of a vessel was literally loaded down to the scuppers. A westerly hurricane struck her just after crossing the Banks, and she was run so long before it that to attempt to heave to meant certain destruction.

The whole length of two hawsers were put out at each side of the taffrail, and as the mountains came roaring along, towering far above the stern of the little ship and threatening her with extinction, these hawsers broke the wrath of the rollers, and made them spread into masses of prancing foam. The captain and crew said they would never have been able to scud before the hurricane but for their influence. She arrived at Queenstown a complete wreck having been literally under water or covered by it from leaving the Banks until they passed the Fastnet; bulwarks were gone fore and aft; boats were smashed, but the hatches were intact. The captain had been so long without sleep and proper rest that he had lost the power of sleep. His nerves were so badly shattered, and his physical endurance so completely exhausted, a new captain had to be sent to relieve him, and the poor fellow never really regained his normal state afterwards. I have often heard him say "it was death or glory; scud, pump, or sink," which was one of the common phrases used by seamen in describing circumstances of this nature.

Stories more or less sensational are written from time to time of the terrors of a passage from Liverpool to New York aboard one of the White Star or Cunard liners, or even a passage on an ordinary ocean tramp, and although I would not under-estimate either the danger or the discomforts of either the crew or the passengers aboard one of these, I am bound to say they can only form a meagre conception of what it must have been like on one of the diminutive frail sailing crafts that built up the supremacy of the British mercantile marine. No one can really imagine the awfulness of the work these vessels and their crews had to do except those who sailed in them. This vessel, like many others of her class and size, did useful work in her time in building up our trade with other parts of the world. Distance and danger were no obstacles to the crews who heroically manned them. They feared nothing and dared everything. Their pride of race was inherent. They aimed at upholding the fine traditions of their nautical forbears, and contemptuously ignored the right of other nations to a place on the high seas. It was their dominion, and their prerogative therefore to monopolize them. Uneasy, ill-informed, political propagandists and commercial theorists would do well to ponder over what it has cost in courage, in vital force, in genius and in wealth to build up an edifice that represents half the world's tonnage. This structure of national strength has been erected without the aid of subsidies or bounties, and it may be not only maintained without them, but grow still greater if it is left alone to pursue its natural course under a system that brought us out of commercial bondage into a freer air over fifty years ago. That system has been the secret of much of our success, and once we embark on the retrograde course of protection then that will be the beginning of our mercantile decadence. Is the heritage not too magnificent, too sacred, to have pranks played with it?

THE END

THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD., NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.



BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

"WINDJAMMERS AND SEA-TRAMPS."

With Six Full-page Illustrations by Thomas Runciman.

"The special attractiveness of the volume arises from the fact that the author began as a cabin-boy, worked his way up to master, and is now a leading steamship manager, and that he has been at the pains to epitomise his experiences and state his views."—Fairplay.

"In Windjammers and Sea Tramps, Mr. Walter Runciman, sen., has put together memories and information drawn from many years' experience of the British mercantile marine, mostly in sailing vessels."—St. James' Gazette.

"His yarns are chiefly of the things that took place a generation ago, when there was far more brutality on ocean-going ships than there is in these more enlightened days."—Daily News.

"Mr. Walter Runciman, sen., has given the characteristic title, Windjammers and Sea Tramps, to a little book of recollections and opinions on the merchant service. His pages are full of experience and rich anecdotage, and smack refreshingly of the sea."—Manchester Guardian.

"Mr. Runciman packs together a surprising amount of information on our merchant service, and his modest hope that 'he has succeeded in making the book interesting' is very fully justified."—Saturday Review.

"To all lovers of the sea, to all those whose hearts go the merrier for the sight of a ship or a yarn with an old salt, this book will come a little sadly, and bring regrets for the old days and the dead traditions. Not many men now living can remember the old sea order."—The Speaker.

"Mr. Walter Runciman is a practical sailor. He has had experience of the sea in many capacities, and this lends weight to his opinions on matters connected with the mercantile marine and interest to the various yarns which he has to spin."—Pall Mall Gazette.

"Every self-respecting Briton knows that a windjammer is a sailing vessel, and the book before us, written by a man who 'went in at the hawse-hole and came out of the cabin-window,' should commend itself to a maritime nation."—Birmingham Gazette.

THE END