Page:The Blight of Insubordination.djvu/21

13 Austrian Lloyds, the Rubattino boats all employ them in large numbers, while the German "Hansa Lines" to Calcutta, m January last year we were indisputably informed, had at that time on their own account upwards of four thousand Lascars — principally engine-room, stokehold, and servant ratings—in their employ. On the Lascar's continuous discharge sheet it is quite commonly found that the particulars of service relate to a foreign ship. This is done openly, and without let or hindrance further than the captain of the foreign ship entering into a bond of a fixed amount for each person, for their proper treatment and return to the port of engagement. So we not only throw open our ports to all comers, but even provide the indispensable material for them to compete with us in the nation's staple industry! This, however, is a question for the Indian Government to decide upon, and practical politics would probably favour the larger field for the enterprising Indian seaman. Chinese, Japanese, Malays, and other exotic Asiatics figure largely in the personnel of our present day merchant service; with these, however, we are not; as much concerned as with the natives of India, though the cause and effect of them all is of one and the same kind. The Lascar or Asiatic seaman is engaged on Lascar agreements, common to them all.

Before the Suez Canal was opened in 1869 both the P. and O. and the B. I. S. N. Companies had Eastern services, of steamers partly manned by Lascar crews, for in the year 1860 they were reckoned at 335 persons only.

On the opening of the great waterway, trade routes for India were soon altered, and round the Cape for passengers to India and the Far East has been a thing of the past for many years. The Bed Sea became and remains the great highway to the East. Steam and the propeller are to be held entirely responsible for the altered conditions that now prevail, and the disappearance from the Eastern seas of the Country-wallah, Buggalow, Dhow, and all other crazy country craft, may be directly charged against the eternal "jiggle of the screw," to say nothing of other tremendous strides that machinery and labour saving appliances of every kind have made in a few years, and which appear destined in the not very remote future to be the means of sweeping from the face of the waters, unless pleasure vessels, sailing craft of every kind. The science and art of shipbuilding was never better known or exploited than at present, and time, not mileage, it is now the fashion to quote when estimating intervals between places, bridged only by the world of waters, the dark blue sea!