INSTRUCTIONAL ANTI-SUBMARINE COURSE FOR MERCHANT OFFICERS AT GLASGOWINSTRUCTIONAL ANTI-SUBMARINE COURSE FOR MERCHANT OFFICERS AT GLASGOW
Adoption of the convoy system has brought a host to our gangways. Our war staff was more than doubled in the few weeks that followed the sinister April of 1917. If, at an earlier date, we had reasonable ground for complaintthat our expert knowledge of our business was studiously ignored by the Admiralty, apparently they did not rate our ability so lightly when this old form of ship protection was revived. The additions to our staff included a large proportion of our own officers, withdrawn from posts where their knowledge of merchant-ship practice was not of great value. In convoy, measures were called for that our ordinary routine had not contemplated. The shore division of our new staff aid us in adapting our commercial sea-gear to the more instant demands of war service. They 'clear our hawse' from turns and twists in the chain of our landward connections. Repairs and adjustments, crew troubles, stores—that on a strict ruling may be deemed private matters—became public and important when considered as vital to the sailing of a convoy. In overseeing the ships at the starting-line, indexing and listing the varying classes and powers of the vessels, the convoy section have no light task. To the longshore division, who compose and arrange the integrals of our convoys, we have added a sea-staff of commodores, R.N. and R.N.R., who go to sea with us and control the manœuvres and operations of our ships in station. For this, not only a knowledge of squadron movements is required: the ruling of a convoy of merchantmen is complicated as much by the range of character of individual masters as by the diverse capabilities of the ships.
It was not until the spring of 1917 that Admiralty instituted a scheme of instruction in anti-submarine measures for officers of the Merchants' Service. We were finding the defensive tune difficult to pick up as we marched. The German submarine had grown to be a more complete and deadly warship. Sinkings had reached an alarming height: a spirit almost of fatalism was permeating the sea-actions of some of our Service. Our guns were of little avail against under-water attack. Notwithstanding the tricks of our zigzag, the torpedoes struck home on our hulls. If our luck was 'in,' we came through: if we had bad fortune, well, our luck was 'out'! A considerable school—the bold 'make-a-dash-for-it-and-chance-the-ducks' section of our fellows—did not wholly conform to naval instructions. In many cases zigzag was but cursorily maintained; in darkening ship, measures were makeshift and inadequate.
Schools for our instruction were set up at various centres, in convenient seaport districts. At the first, attendance was voluntary, but it was quickly evident to the Admiralty that certain classes of owners would give few facilities to their officers to attend, when they might be more profitably employed in keeping gangway or in supervising cargo stowage. (The fatalistic spirit was not confined to the seagoers among us.) Attendance at the classes of instruction was made compulsory; it became part of our qualification for office that we should have completed the course.
Although our new schooling occupies but five days, it is intensive in its scope and application. The cold print of our official instructions has its limitations, and Admiralty circulars are not perhaps famous for lucidity. More can be done by a skilled interpreter with a blackboard in a few minutes than could be gathered in half an hour's reading. At first assembly there is perhaps an atmosphere of boredom. Routine details and a programme of operations are hardly welcome to masters accustomed to command. In a way, we have condescended to come among our juniors, to listen with the mates and second mates to what may be said: we assume, perhaps, a detached air of constraint.
It is no small tribute to the lecturer that this feeling rarely persists beyond the opening periods. Only the most perversely immovable can resist the interest of a practical demonstration. The classes are under charge of an officer, R.N., who has had deep-sea experience of enemy submarine activities. Often he is of the 'Q-ship' branch, and can enliven his lectures with incidents that show us a side of the sea-contest with which not many are familiar. If we are informed of the deadly advantage of the submarine, we are equally enlightened as to its limitations. In a few minutes, by virtue of a plot on the blackboard, the vantage of a proper zigzag is made clear and convincing. Points of view—in a literal sense—are expounded, and not a few of us recall our placing of look-outs and register a better plan. Following the officer in charge, a lieutenant of the Submarine Service dissects his vessel on the blackboard, carefully detailing the action in states of weather and circumstance. The under-water manœuvres of an attack are plotted out and explained in a practical way that no handbook could rival. The personal magnetism of the expert rivets our attention; the routine of under-seafaring gives us a good inkling of the manner of man we have to meet and fight at sea; we are given an insight to the mind-working of our unseen opponent—the brain below the periscope is probed and examined for our education.
Nothing could be better illustrative of the wide character of our seafaring than the range of our muster in the lecture-hall. Every type of our trade appears in the class that assembles weekly to attend the instructional course. We have no grades of seniority or precedence. We are sea-republicans when we come to sit together in class. Hardy coasting masters, commanders of Royal Mail Packets, collier mates, freighter captains, cross-Channel skippers, we are at ease together in a common cause; on one bench in the classroom may be seafarers returned from foreign ports as widely distant as Shanghai and Valparaiso.
For instruction in gunnery and the use of special apparatus we come under tuition of a type of seaman whom we had not met before. If the backbone ofthe Army is the non-commissioned man, the petty officer of the Royal Navy is no less the marrow of his Service. Unfortunately, we have no one like him in the Merchants' Service. As Scots is the language of marine engines, the South of England accent may be that of the guns. That liquid ü! "Metal adapters, genelmen, lük. Metal adapters is made o' alüminium bronze. They are bored hoüt t' take a tübe, an' threaded on th' hoütside t' screw into th' base o' th' cartridge case—like this 'ere. Genelmen, lük. . . ." His intelligent demonstration of the gear and working of the types of our armament possesses a peculiar quality, as though he is trying hard to reduce his exposition to our level. (As a matter of plain fact, he is.)
The instructional course closes on a note of confidence. We learn that even 'inexorable circumstance' has an opening to skilled evasion. We go afloat for a day and put into practice some measure of our schooling. At fire-control, with the guns, we exercise in an atmosphere of din and burnt cardboard, aiming at a hit with the fifth shot in sequence of our bracket. (An earlier bull's-eye would be bad application of our lectures.) A smoke-screen is set up for our benefit, and we turn and twist in the artificially produced fumes and vapours in a practical demonstration of defence. A sea-going submarine is in attendance and is open to our inspection. Her officers augment the class instruction by actual showing. Every point in the maze of an under-water attack is emphasized by them in an effort to impress us with the virtue of the counter-measures advised. It must be hard indeed for the submarine enthusiast (and they are all enthusiasts) to lay bare the 'weaknesses' of his loved machine. We feel for them almost as if we heard a man, under pressure, admit that his last ship was unseaworthy.
THE LOSS OF A LINERTHE LOSS OF A LINER
EARLY in November 1914, on return from the sea, I was invited to join His Majesty's Forces.
". . . An' I can tell you this, mister," said the sergeant . . . "it ain't everybody as I asks t' join our corps. . . . Adjutant, 'e ses t' me this mornin', 'Looka here, Bates,' 'e ses, 'don't you go for to bring none o' them scallywags 'ere! We don't want 'em! We won't 'ave 'em at any price,' 'e ses!. . . 'Wot we wants is proper men—men with chests,' 'e ses!"
I felt somewhat commended; I trimmed more upright in carriage; he was certainly a clever recruiter. I told him I had rather important work to do. He said, with emphasis, that it must be more than important to keep amanout of the Army—these days! In sound of shrieking newsboys—"Ant—werp fallen! British falling back!"—I agreed.
I asked him what he did with the men recruited. He was somewhat surprised at my question, but told me that, when trained, they were sent across to theFront—he was hoping toreturnhimself in the next draft. He thought all this talk was needless, and grew impatient. I mentioned that the men couldn't very well swim over there. He glared scornfully. "Swim? . . . Swim!. . . 'Ere! Wot th' hell ye gettin' at? You gotta hellova lot t' say about it, anyway!"
I explained that my business was that of putting the troops and the guns and the gear o' war across; that the drafts couldn't get very far on the way without our assistance. He glanced at my soft felt hat, at my rainproof coat, my umbrella, my handbag—said, "Huh" and went off in search of a more promising recruit. His broad back, as he strode off swinging his cane, expressed an entire disapproval of my appearance and my alleged business.
Good honest sergeant! His course was a clear and straight one. He would hold no more truck with one who wouldn't take up a man's job. His "Huh" and the swing of his arm said plainly to me, "Takin' th' boys across, eh? A —— fine excuse, . . . a rare —— trick! Where's yer uniform? Why ain't ye in uniform, eh? You can't do me with that story, mister! I'm an old Service man, I am. I been out t' India. I been on a troopship. I seen all them gold-lace blokes a-pokin' their noses about an' growsin' at th' way th' decks wos kep!Huh!A damn slacker, mister! That's wot I think o' you!"
The sergeant's attitude was not unreasonable. Where was our uniform? Where was any evidence of our calling by which one could recognize a seaman on shore? A sea-gait, perhaps! But the deep-sea roll has gone out since bilge-keels came to steady our vessels! Tattoo marks? These cunning personal adornments are now reserved to the Royal Artillery and officers of the Indian Army! Tarry hands? Tar is as scarce on a modern steamer as strawberries in December! Sea-togs? If there be a preference, we have a fondness for blue serge, but blue serges have quite a vogue among bankers and merchants and other men of substance! Away from our ships and the dockside waterfront, we are not readily recognizable; we join the masses of other workers, we become members of the general public. As such, we may lay claim to a common liberty, and look at our seafaring selves from an average point of longshore view.
. . . The sea? Oh, we know a lot about it! It is in us. We pride ourselves, an island race, we have the sea in our blood, we are born to it. Circumstances may have brought us to counting-house and ledger, but our heart is with the sea. We use, unwittingly, many nautical terms in our everyday life. We had been to sea at times, on a business voyage or for health or pleasure. Weknew the captain and the mates and the engineers. The chief steward was a friend, the bos'n or quartermaster had shown us the trick of a sheepshank or a reef-knot or a short splice. Their ways of it! Port and starboard for left and right, knots for miles, eight bells, the watches, and all that! We returned from our sea-trip, parted with our good friends, feeling hearty and refreshed. We hummed, perhaps, a scrap of a sea-song at the ledgers. We regretted that our sea-day had come so quickly to an end. Anyway, we felt that we had got to know the sea-people intimately.
But that was on their ground, on the sea and the ship, where they fitted to the scheme of things and were as readily understood and appreciated as the little round port-holes, the narrow bunks, the cunning tip-up washstands, the rails for hand-grip in a storm. Their atmosphere, their stories, their habits, were all part of our sea-piece. Taken from their heaving decks and the round of a blue horizon, they seemed to go out of our reckoning. On shore? Of course they must at times come on shore, but somehow one doesn't know much about them there. There are our neighbours. . . . Yes! Gudgeon's eldest boy, he is at sea—a mate or a purser. He has given over wearing his brass buttons and a badge cap now: we see him at long intervals, when he comes home to prepare for examinations. A hefty sort of lad—shouldn't think he would do much in the way of study; a bit wild perhaps. Then Mrs. Smith's husband. Isn't he at sea, a captain or a chief engineer, or something? He comes among us occasionally; travels to town, now and then, in our carriage. A hearty man—uses rather strong language, though! Has not a great deal to say of things—no interest in politics, in the market, in the games. Never made very much of him. Don't see him at the clubs. Seems to spend all his time at home. At home! Oh yes; wasn't it only the other day his small daughter told ours her daddy wasgoinghome again on Saturday!
In war, we are learning. There are no more games; contentious politics are not for these days; the markets and business are difficult and wayward. We are come to see our dependence on the successful voyages of Mrs. Smith's husband. His coming among us, from time to time, is proof that our links with the world overseas are yet unbroken, that there may still be business to transact when we turn up at the office. Strangely, in the new clarity of a war vision, we see his broad back in our harvest-fields, as we had never noticed it before. He is almost one of our staff. He handles our goods, our letters, our gold, our securities, our daily bread. His business is now so near to us that——
But no! It cannot properly be done. We recall that thereisone way for our ready recognition when we come on shore these days. We cannot appropriatea longshore point of view, we cannot conceal our seafaring and merge into the crowd. Thereisa mark—our tired eyes, as we come off the sea! True, there are now, sadly, many tired eyes on the beach, but few carry the distant focus, the peculiar intentness brought about by absence of perspective at sea. We cannot adopt a public outlook owing to this obliquity in our vision, we are barred by the persistence of that vexed perspective in our views on shore.
Still, the point may be raised that only in our actual seafaring are we recognized. We are poor citizens, nomads, who have little part with settled grooves and communal life on shore. The naval seaman is a known figure on the streets. His trim uniform, the cut of his hair, the swing of a muscular figure, his high spirits, are all in part with a stereotyped conception. He is the sailor; Mercantile Jack has lost his tradition in attire and individuality, he has vanished from theherdwith his high-heeled shoes, coloured silk neckerchief, and sweet-tobacco hat.
In the round of shore communications there is exercise for assessing a measure of the other man's work: a large proportion of success hinges on easy fellowship, on an understanding and acquaintance not only with the technics of another's trade, but with his habits and his pursuits. All trades, all businesses, all professions have relations, near or distant, with the sea, but to them our grades and descriptions are dubious and uncertain. For this we are to blame. We are bad advertisers. We are content to leave our fraternization with the beach to the far distant day when we shall retire from the sea-service, 'swallow the anchor,' and settle down to longshore life. We cannot join and rejoin the guilderies on shore in the intervals of our voyaging. We preserve a grudging silence on our seafaring, perhaps tint what pictures we do present in other lights than verity. The necessary aloofness of our calling makes for a seclusion in our affairs: we make few efforts to remedy an estrangement; in a way, we adopt the disciplinary scourge of the flagellants, we glory in our isolation. If we share few of the institutions that exist for fellowship ashore, we have made no bid for admittance: if the tide of intercourse leaves us stranded, we have put out no steering oar on the drift of the flood. We are somewhat diffident. Perhaps we are influenced by a certain reputation that is still attached to us. Are we the prodigals not yet in the mood to turn unto our fathers?
Stout old Doctor Johnson enlarged on the sea-life—of his day—with a determination and no small measure of accuracy. "Sir," he said, "a ship is worse than a gaol. There is in a gaol better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of being in danger.When men come to like a sea-life they are not fit to live on land. . . . Men go to the sea before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession." At least he admitted the possibility of some of us coming tolikea sea-life, though his postulate conveyed no high opinion of our intelligence in such a preference.
We have travelled far since the worthy Doctor's day. Not all his dicta may stand. There is still, perhaps, greater danger in a ship than in gaol, but Johnson himself admitted that "the profession of sailors has the dignity of danger"! For the rest, our air has become so good that invalids are ordered to sea; our conveniences are notably improved, our ships the last word in strength and comfort. Our company? Our company fits to the heave of our sea. If we have middling men for the trough, we have bold gallants for the crest. We draw a wide range to our service. The sea can offer a good career to a prizeman: we can still do moderately well with the wayward boy, the parents' 'heart-break,' the lad with whom nothing can be done on shore. Steam has certainly given a new gentility to our seafaring, but it cannot wholly smooth out the uneven sea-road. If we lose an amount of polish, of distinguished association, of education in our recruitment, we may gain just that essence that fits a man for our calling. Our company is, at any rate, stout and resolute, and, without that, we had long since been under German bondage.
THE MERSEY FROM THE LIVER BUILDINGS, LIVERPOOLTHE MERSEY FROM THE LIVER BUILDINGS, LIVERPOOL
The war has brought a new prominence to our sea-trade. The public has become interested not alone in our sea-ventures, but in our landward doings. The astonishing fact of our civilian combatance has drawn a recognition that no years of peace could have uncovered. Not least of the revelations that the world conflict has imposed is the vital importance of the ships. Our naval fleets were ever talked of, read of, gloried in, as the spring of our national power, but not many saw the core of our sea-strength in the stained hulls of the merchants' ships. They were accepted without enthusiasm as an existing trade channel; they were there on a round of business and trade, not dissimilar to other transport services—the railways, road-carriage, the inland canals, the moving-van, the messengers. They were ready to hand for service; so near that their vital proportions were not readily apparent. Perhaps the greatest compliment the public has paid to the Merchants' Service lay in this abstract view. One saw an appreciation, perhaps unspoken, in the consternation that greeted the first irregularity in delivery of the oversea mails. Then, indeed, the importance of the ships was brought sharply home. It was incredible: it was unheard of. Mercantile practice and correspondence had outgrown all duplications and weatherly precautions; the service was so sure and uninterruptedthat no need existed for a second string to the bow. Bills of exchange, indents, invoices, the mail-letter, had long been confided to sea-carriage on one bottom. Pages could be written of the tangled skeins, the complex situations, the confusion and congestion that were all brought about by extra mileage of an ocean voyage. Fortunes, not alone in hulls and cargo, lie with our wreckage on the floor of the channels.
The sea-front suddenly assumed an importance in the general view, as the drain on our tonnage left vacant shelves in the bakehouse. Commodities that, so common and plentiful, had been lightly valued, were out of stock—the ships had not come in! Long queues formed at the shop doors, seeking and questioning—their topic, the fortunes of the ships! The table was rearranged in keeping with a depleted larder. Anxious eyes turned first in the morning to the list of our sea-casualties; the ships, what of the ships? The valiant deeds of our armies, the tide and toll of battles, could wait a second glance. Not all the gallantry of our arms could bring victory if our sea-communications were imperilled or restrained; on the due arrival of the ships centred the pivot of our operations.
Joined to the fortune of the ships, interest was drawn to the seamen. A new concern arose. Who were the mariners who had to face these deadly perils to keep our sea-lines unbroken? Were they trained to arms? How could they stand to the menace that had so shocked our naval forces? Daily the toll rose. Savagery, undreamt of, succeeded mere shipwreck: murder, assassination, mutilation became commonplace on the sea. Who were the mercantile seamen; of what stock, what generation?
To a degree we were embarrassed at such new attention. The mystery of sea-life, we felt, had unbalanced the public view. Our stock, our generation, was the same as that of the tailors and the candlestick-makers who were standing the enemy on his head on the Flanders fields; we differed not greatly from the haberdasher and the baby-linen man who drove the Prussian Guard, the proudest soldier in Europe, from the reeking shambles of Contalmaison. Indeed, we had advantage in our education for a fight. Our training, if not military, was at least directed to mass operations in contest with power of the elements: torpedo and mine were but additions to the perils of our regular trade. If the clerk and the grocer could rise from ordered peaceful ways and set the world ringing with his gallantry and heroism, we were poltroons indeed to flinch and falter at the familiar conduct of our seafaring. We felt that our share in warfare was as nothing to the blaze of fury on the battle-fronts, our sea-life was comparative comfort in contrast to the grisly horrors of the trenches.
With universal service, opportunity for acquaintance with our life and our work was extended beyond the numbers of chance passengers. The exodus oversea of the nation's manhood brought the landsman and the seaman together as no casual meeting on the streets could have done. Millions of our country-men, who had never dreamed of outlook on blue water bounded by line of an unbroken horizon, have found themselves brought into close contact with us, living our life, assisting in many of our duties, facing the same dangers. In such a firm fellowship and communion of interest there cannot but be a bond between us that shall survive the passage of high-water mark.
THE MASTER OF THE GULL LIGHTSHIP WRITING THE LOGTHE MASTER OF THE GULL LIGHTSHIP WRITING THE LOG
OF all trades, seafaring ever required a special governance, a unique Code of Laws, suited to the seaman's isolation from tribunal and land court, to the circumstance of his constant voyaging. On sea, the severance from ordered government, from reward as from penalty, was irremediable and complete. No common law or enactment could be enforced on the wandering sea-tribesmen who owned no settled domicile, who responded only to the weight of a stronger arm than their own, who had an impenetrable cloak to their doings in the mystery of distant seas. The spirit and high heart that had called them to the dangers and vicissitudes of a sea-life would not brook tamely the dominance and injunction of a power whose authority was, at sea, invisible—and even under the land, could carry but little distance beyond high-watermark. To the bold self-enterprise of the early sea-venturers, the unconfined ocean offered a free field for a standard of strength, for a law of might alone. Kings and Princes might rule the boundaries of the land, but the sea was for those who could maintain a holding on the troubled waters. Were the 'Rectores' not Kings on their own heaving decks, their province the round of the horizon, their subjects the vulgar 'shippe-men,' their slaves the unfortunate weaker seafarers, whom chance or the fickle winds had brought within reach of their sea-arms? The sea-rovers were difficult to bridle or restrain.Spurlos versenktmight well have been their motto—as that of later pirates. No trace! The sea would tell no tales. They were alone on the breadth of the ocean, no ordered protection was within hail, the land lay distant under rim of the sea-line. Blue water would wash over the face of robbery and crime: the hazards of the sea could well account for a missing ship!
Reverse the setting and the same uncharity could similarly be masked. In turn, the humanity the seamen contemned was denied to them. Driven on shore, wrecked or foundered on coast or shoal, the laws they scorned were powerless to shield or salve the wreckage of their vessels, to save their weary sea-scarred bodies. 'No trace' was equally a motto for the dwellers on the coast: blue water would wash as freely over their bloody evidence, the miserable castaways could be as readily returned to the pitiless sea: an equal hazard of the deep could as surely account for missing men!
Only special measures could control a situation of such a desperate nature, no ordinary governance could effect a settlement; no one but a powerful and kingly seafarer could frame an adjustment and post wardens to enforce a law for the sea. When Richard Cœur de Lion established our first Maritime Code, he had his own rude sea-experience to guide him. On perilous voyaging to the Holy Land, he must have given more than passing thought to the trials and dangers of his rough mariners. Sharing their sea-life and its hardships, he noted the ship-measures and rude sea-justice with a discerning and humane appreciation. In all the records of our law-making there are few such intimate revelations of a minute understanding as his Rôles d'Oléron. The practice of to-day reflects no small measure of his wisdom; in their basic principles, his charges still tincture the complex fabric of our modern Sea Codes. Bottomry—the pledging of ship and tackle to procure funds for provision or repair; salvage—a just and reasonable apportionment; jettison—the sharing of another's loss for a common good; damage to ship or cargo—the account of liability: many of his ordinances stand unaltered in substance, if varied and amplified in detail.
The spirit of these mediæval Shipping Acts was devoted as well to restrainthe lawless doings of the seamen as to check the inhuman plunderings of the coast dwellers. The rights and duties of master and man were clearly defined: in the schedule of penalties, the master's forfeit was enhanced, as his was assumed to be the better intelligence. For barratry and major sea-crimes, the penalty was death and dismemberment. All pilots who wrecked their charges for benefit of the lords of the sea-coast were to be hung on a gibbet, and so exhibited to all men, near the spot where the vessels they had misdirected were come on shore. The lord of the foreshore who connived at their acts was to suffer a dire fate. He was to be burned on a stake at his own hearthstone, the walls of his mansion to be razed, and the standing turned to a market-place for barter of swine! Drastic punishment! Doubtless kingly Richard drew abhorrence for the wrecker from his own bitter experience on the inhospitable rocky coast of Istria!
Little detail has come down to us of the means adopted to enforce these just acts. Of the difficulties of their enforcement we may judge a little from the character of the seamen as presented by contemporary chronicles. . . .
"Full many a draught of wyn had he draweFrom Burdeux-ward, whil that the chapman sleep.Of nyce conscience took he no keep.If that he foughte, and hadde the heigher hand,By water he sent hem hoom to every land."
. . . Thus Chaucer; but Chaucer was a Collector of Customs, and would possibly assess the stolen draught of Bordeaux as a greater crime than throwing prisoners overboard! From evidence of the date, Richard's shipping laws seem to have been but lightly regarded by the lords of the foreshore. In the reign of King John, wrecking had become a practice so common that prescriptive rights to the litter of the beaches was included in manorial charters, despite the Rôle that . . . "the pieces of the ship still to belong to the original owners, notwithstanding any custom to the contrary . . . and any participators of the said wrecks, whether they be bishops, prelates, or clerks, shall be deposed and deprived of their benefices, and if lay people they are to incur the penalties previously recited."
It was surely by more than mere chance the churchmen were thus specially indicted! Perhaps it was by a temporal as well as a spiritual measure that Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, strove to remove a reproach to the Church. He founded a Guild of sea-samaritans, a Corporation
"of godly disposed men, who, for the actual suppression of evil disposed persons bringing ships to destruction by the shewing forth of false beacons,do bind themselves together in the Love of our Lord Christ, in the name of the Masters and Fellows of Trinity Guild to succour from the dangers of the sea all who are beset upon the coasts of England, to feed them when ahungered and athirst, to bind up their wounds, and to build and light proper beacons for the guidance of mariners."
An earnest and compassionate Charter: a merciful and honourable Commission.
In this wise was formed our Alma Mater, the ancient guild of shipmen and mariners of England. Subsequent charters advanced their titles as they enlarged their duties and charges. In 1514, Henry VIII confirmed their foundation under style of . . . "Master, Wardens, and Accistants of the Guild or Fraternity of the Most Glorious and Undivided Trinity, and of St. Clement, in the Parish of Deptford Strond, in the County of Kent." Some years later, the 'accistants' were subdivided as Elder and Younger Brethren, the Foundation being familiarly referred to as the Corporation of Trinity House.
In early days, their efforts were directed in charity to stricken seafarers, in humane dispensation, in erection and maintenance of sea-marks, in training and provision of competent sea and coast pilots—a line of endeavour directed by the Godly Primate, in his Commission. Beacons were built on dangerous points of the coast, keepers appointed to serve them, watchers detailed to observe the vessels as they passed and restrain the activities of the wrecker. The magnitude of the task, the difficulties of their office, the powerful counter-influences arrayed against their beneficent rôle, may be judged by an incident that occurred as late as little over a hundred and twenty years ago. . . . "When Ramsgate Harbour, as a port of refuge from storm and stress, was intended, and the business was before Parliament, a petition from the Lord of the Manor tended to accelerate matters. He represented to the House, while the Bill was depending, that,as the wrecks on the coast belonged to him and formed a considerable part of his property, he prayed that the Bill would not pass!"
Established in charity for the guardianship of the coasts, the Brethren of Trinity passed to a supervision of the ships and the seamen. Although a closely guarded Corporation, qualifications for entry were simply those of sea-knowledge. The business of shipping, if more hazardous and difficult on the sea, was less complicated in its landward connections than is its modern conduct. The merchants were well content to be guided in their affairs by their sea-partners, the men who actually commanded and sailed the ships. The voyages, ship construction, refitment and victualling were matters that could only be advised by the skilled seamen. Jealous for professional advancement, theBrethrenof Trinity held their ranks open only to skilled master seamenand to kindred sea-tradesmen—the shipwrights and rope-makers. While attracting leaders and statesmen to the higher and more ornamental offices, control was largely vested in the Elder and Younger Brethren—technical advisers, competent to understand sea-matters.
In no small measure, the rise and supremacy of our shipping is due to their wise direction and control. They were the sole machinery of the State for control of the ships and the seaman. Survey and inspection of sea-stores, planning and supervision of ship construction, registry and measurement of vessels, had their beginning in the orderly efforts of the Brethren. Examination of the competence of masters was part of their duties—as was their arbitration in crew disputes. They licensed and supplied seafarers of all classes to the 'King's Ships,' tested their ordnance and examined the ammunition. Their reading of the ancient charter of their foundation was wide and liberal in its scope—"to build, and light proper beacons for the guidance of mariners" was their understanding. In construction and equipment and maintenance of sea-marks, in licence and efficient service of their coastal pilots, they carried out to the letter the text of their covenant; in spirit, they understood a guidance that was less material if equally important. Their beacons were not alone standing structures of stone and lime, but world-marks in precept and ordinance, in study and research. They held bright cressets aloft to illuminate the difficult seaways in the paths of navigation and science of the seafarer. They placed facilities for the study of seamanship before the mariners and sought to advance the science of navigation in line with the efforts of our sea-competitors. The charts and maps of the day—most of them being rude Dutch draft sheets—were improved and corrected, and new surveys of the coastal waters were undertaken at charge and patronage of the Brethren. Captain Greenville Collins, Hydrographer to Charles II, bears witness to their high ideals in presenting to the Corporation the fruits of his seven years' labour in survey and charting of the coast. The preface to his work is made noteworthy by his reference to the practice of the day—the haphazard alterations on the charts that brought many a fine ship to grief.
". . . I then, as in Duty bound (being a Younger Brother) did acquaint you with it, and most humbly laid the Proposals before you; whereupon you were pleased not only to approve of them, but did most bountifully advance towards the charge of the work. . . . I could heartily wish that it might be so ordered by your Corporation, that all Masters of Ships, both using Foreign and Home Voyages, might be encouraged to bring you in their Journals, and a Person appointed to inspect them; which would be a greatImprovement of Navigation, by imparting their Observations and Discoveries of the true Form and Prospect of the Sea Coast . . . and other dangerous Places. . . . And that those Persons who make and sell Sea Charts and Maps, were not allowed to alter them upon the single Report of Mariners, but with your approbation; by which means our Sea Charts would be more correct and the common Scandal of their Badness removed."
In all her enactments and activities, our Alma Mater ever preserved a worthy pride in her sons. Enthusiasm for a gallant profession, patronage for advancement in sea-skill and learning, a keen and studied interest in whatever tended to elevate and ennoble the calling of the sea, were her inspiring sentiment. Even in wise reproof and cautionary advice, her words were tempered by a brave note of pride—as though, under so many difficulties and serious dangers, she gloried in our work being worthily undertaken. In charge to the seaman, Captain Collins continues his kindly preface:
"It sometimes happens, and that too frequently, that when Ships which have made long and dangerous Voyages, and are come Home richly laden, have been shipwrecked on their native Coast, whereby both Merchants, Owners, and Mariners have been impoverished. All our neighbours will acknowledge, that no Nation abounds more with skilful and experienced Seamen than our own; none meeting a Danger with more Courage and Bravery . . . so a Master of a ship has a very great Charge, and ought to be a sober Man, as well as a skilful Mariner: All Helps of Art, Care, and Circumspection are to be used by him, that the Lives of Mariners (the most useful of their Majesties' Subjects at this juncture) and the Fortunes of honest Merchants under his Care may be preserved."
"It sometimes happens, and that too frequently, that when Ships which have made long and dangerous Voyages, and are come Home richly laden, have been shipwrecked on their native Coast, whereby both Merchants, Owners, and Mariners have been impoverished. All our neighbours will acknowledge, that no Nation abounds more with skilful and experienced Seamen than our own; none meeting a Danger with more Courage and Bravery . . . so a Master of a ship has a very great Charge, and ought to be a sober Man, as well as a skilful Mariner: All Helps of Art, Care, and Circumspection are to be used by him, that the Lives of Mariners (the most useful of their Majesties' Subjects at this juncture) and the Fortunes of honest Merchants under his Care may be preserved."
AT GRAVESEND: PILOTS AWAITING AN INWARD-BOUND CONVOYAT GRAVESEND: PILOTS AWAITING AN INWARD-BOUND CONVOY
For over three hundred years, our Alma Mater flourished as the spring of our seafaring—a noble and venerable Corporation, concerned solely and alone with the sea and the ships and the seamen. The Brethren saw only one aim for their endeavours—the supremacy of the sea-trade, the business by which the nation stood or fell. Nor was theirs an inactive part in all the long sea-wars and crises that reacted on our commerce. Before a navy existed, the stout old master-seamen of Deptford Strond were charged with the sea-defences of the capital. The new naval forces came under their control at a later date, and we have the record of an efficiency in administration that showed prevision and thought well in advance of that of their landward contemporaries. Piracy, privateering, the restraints of rulers and princes, were dealt with in their day. At critical turns in the courses of our naval conduct, it was to the steersmen ofTrinity that the Ministers of the State relied for prompt and seamanlike action. The 'sea to the seamen' was the rule. Adapting their resources to the needs of the day, the Brethren were held fast by no conventional restraint. They assisted peaceful developments in trade in the quieter years, but could as readily mobilize for war service under threat of invasion, or turn their skilled activities to removal of the sea-marks to prevent the sailing of a mutinous fleet. In the long and stormy history of Trinity House there were many precedents to guide the action of the Brethren on the outbreak of war. As guardians of the sea-channels and the approaches to our coasts, they manned these misty sea-trenches on the outbreak of war in 1914. Weaponless, by exercise of a skill in pilotage and a resolution worthy of great traditions, the Trinity men have held that menaced line intact. That little has been said about their great work is perhaps a tradition of their service.
We are parted now. The Merchants' Service is no longer a studied and valued interest of the ancient corporation. In an assured position as arbiters between the State and the shipping industry, the Trinity Brethren could combine a just regard for the merchants' interest with a generous and understanding appreciation of the seamen's trials and difficulties. If for no other reason than the record of past endeavours, they should still control the personnel of the Merchants' Service, in regulating the scheme of our education, the scope of our qualification for office, the grades of our service, the essence of our sea-conduct. But in the fickle doldrums of the period when steam superseded sail as our motive power, we drifted apart. Shipping interests have become complicated with land ventures, as widely different from them as the marine engine is from our former sail plan. In 1850 the Merchants' Service was placed under control of the Board of Trade; we were handed over to a Board that is no Board—a department of the State with little, if any, sea-sentiment, and that is sternly resolved to repress all our efforts to regain a voice in the control of our own affairs.
Ifwe may claim the ancient Corporation of Trinity House as the Alma Mater of the Merchants' Service, we may liken our comparatively new directorate, the Board of Trade, to our Alma step-Mater—an austere, bureaucratic dame, hard-working and earnest, perhaps, but lacking the kindly spirit of a sea-tradition. She is utterly out of touch and sympathy with a sea-sense—her arms, overstrained perhaps by the tremendous burden of charge upon charge that comes to her forsettlement, are never open to the seamen. Sullenly, we resent her dictation as that of a usurper—a lay impropriator of our professional heritage. Under her coldly formal direction, we may attend our affairs in diligence and prudence, but for us there is no motherly licence; she has no pride in our doings (if one counts not the vicious insistence of her statistics)—we are only the stepchildren of her adoption, odd men of the huge and hybrid family over whom she has been set to cast a suspicious, if guardian, eye. While Trinity House was concerned alone with the conduct of shipping and sea-affairs, our new controllers of the Board of Trade have interests in charge as widely apart as the feeding of draught-horses and the examination of a bankrupt cheesemonger. We are but a Department. The sea-service of the nation, the key industry of our island commerce, is governed by a subdivision in a Ministry that has long outgrown the limits of a central and answerable control. Instead of settlement by a contained and competent Ministry of Marine, our highly technical sea-conduct is ruled for us in queue with longshore affairs, sandwiched, perhaps, between horse-racing and the period of the dinner table.
"The President of the Board of Trade has intimated to the Stewards of the National Hunt Committee that . . . it is not possible to sanction a list of fixtures for the season.""Mr. Peto asked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the decision of Mr. Justice Rowlatt . . . in which judgment was given for the plaintiff company, owners of the steamship X——, sunk in collision, due to steaming without lights.""The President of the Board of Trade announces modifications of the Lighting Order during the present week, one effect being that the prohibition of the serving of meals in hotels after 9.30 p.m. is temporarily suspended."
"The President of the Board of Trade has intimated to the Stewards of the National Hunt Committee that . . . it is not possible to sanction a list of fixtures for the season."
"Mr. Peto asked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the decision of Mr. Justice Rowlatt . . . in which judgment was given for the plaintiff company, owners of the steamship X——, sunk in collision, due to steaming without lights."
"The President of the Board of Trade announces modifications of the Lighting Order during the present week, one effect being that the prohibition of the serving of meals in hotels after 9.30 p.m. is temporarily suspended."
Perhaps we were rather spoilt by the pride that was in us when our seafaring was ruled by the appreciative Brethren of Trinity, and it may be as a repressive measure of discipline the Board of Trade extends no particular favour to our sea-trade, and has indeed gone further in being at pains to belittle our sea-deeds, and disparage a recognition of our status. Our controllers are anxious that their ruling of award and reward should suffer no comparison. For gallantry at sea, the grades of their recognition may vary from the Silver Medal (delivered, perhaps, as in a recent case, with the morning's milk) to a sextant or a pair of binoculars.
In 1905 a very gallant rescue was effected by the men of the Liverpool steamerAugustine. The crew of a Greek vessel were taken from their foundering shipin mid-Atlantic under circumstances of great peril. Not only was boat service performed in tempestuous weather, but the officers ofAugustinethemselves jumped overboard to try to save the Greek seamen, who were too far exhausted to hold on to the life-lines and buoys thrown to them. The King of Greece, in recognition of the gallantry and humanity displayed, signed a decree conferring on the British master and his officers the Gold Decoration of the Redeemer.
A general view would be that this was an award quite appropriate to the services rendered, an expression by the Greek Government that they wished to place the names of the gallant savers of their seamen on the Roll of their Honour. Our Board of Trade objected. Through the Foreign Office, they appear to have informed the Greek Government that such distinguished awards were unusual and might prove a source of dissatisfaction in future cases. Possibly they viewed the appearance of a ribbon on the breast of a merchant seaman as an encroachment on the rights of their own permanent officials. The awards were not made; silver medals were substituted, which Captain Forbes and his officers, learning of the Board's action, did not accept. On a later occasion the same unsympathetic influence was exercised; the Russian Order of St. Stanislaus was withdrawn and replaced by a gold watch and chain!
In supervision of our qualifications as masters and mates, the Board of Trade has followed the lines of least resistance. It is true that they have established certain standards in navigation and seamanship that we must attain in order to hold certificates, but the training to these standards has never been an interest of their Department. While our shipmate, the marine engineer, has opportunity in his apprenticeship on shore to complete his education, we are debarred from the same facility. Apprenticed to the sea at from fourteen to sixteen years of age, our youth bid good-bye to their school books and enter on a life of freedom from scholarly restraint—a 'kindergarten' in which their toys are hand-implements of the sea. There is no need to worry; there is no study required for four years; a week or two at the crammer's will suffice to satisfy the Board of Trade when apprenticeship days were over. And the fault does not lie with the 'crammer.' Scholarly and able and competent, as most of them are, to impart a better and more thorough instruction, the system of leaving all to the voyage's end offers to them no alternative but to present the candidate for examination as rapidly as possible. Sea-apprentices of late years did not often share in a scheme of instruction afloat. Rarely were they carried as complements to a full crew; for the most part they were workmen in a scant manning—'greenhorns'—drudges to the whim of any grown man. In a rough measure, the standard of such seamanship as theygatheredwas good—else we had been in ill case to-day—but it was without method or apprehension—asmattering—the only saving grace of which lay in the ready resource that only seafaring engenders. The exactions of a busy working sea-life left little leisure for self-advancement in study; the short, and ever shortening, intervals of a stay in port provided small opportunity for exercise of a helping hand from the shore. By deceptive short cuts that gave small enlightenment, by rules—largely mnemonic—we passed our tests and obtained our certificates. On shore, the landward youth fared better. The spirit of the times provided a free and growing opportunity for the study of technics and advance of scientific craftsmanship. The Navy took full advantage of this tide. The Board of Admiralty saw the futility of the old system of sea-training, having regard to the complete alteration of the methods in seamanship and navigation. Naval education could no longer be compensated by a schedule of bugle-calls and the exactitude of a hammock-lashing. Concurrent with a sound sea-training, general education was insisted upon. Zealously Admiralty guided their youth on a path that led to a culture and appreciation of values, wide in scope, to serve their profession. If it was essential, in the national interest, that the general education and sea-training of naval officers should be so closely supervised, it was surely little less important that that of the merchants' officers should receive some measure of attention. But for the private efforts of some few shipowners, nothing on the lines of a considered scheme was done. No assistance or advice or grant in aid was made by the Board of Trade. While drawing to their coffers huge sums, accumulations of fines and forfeitures, deserters' wages, fees, the unclaimed earnings of deceased seamen, they could afford no assistance to guide the youthful seaman through a course of right instruction to a better sea-knowledge; they made no advances to place our education on a less haphazard basis. It may be cited as an evidence oftheirindifference that a large proportion of unsuccessful candidates for the junior certificates fail in a test ofdictation.
With our entry to the war at sea in 1914, the same indifference was manifest. There was no mobilization or registration of merchant seamen to aid a scheme of manning and to control the chaos that was very soon evident. Despite their intimate knowledge of the gap in our ranks made by the calling-up of the Naval Reserve—accentuated by the enlistment of merchant seamen in the Navy—the Board of Trade could see no menace to the sea-transport service in the military recruitment of our men. It was apparently no concern of theirs that we sailed on our difficult voyages short-handed, or with weak crews of inefficient landsmen, while so many of our skilled seamen and numbers of our sea-officers were marking time in the ranks of the infantry. Under pressure of events, it was not until November 1915 they took a somewhat hesitating step. This was their proclamation; it may be contrasted with Captain Greenville Collins's preface.