Page:The Blight of Insubordination.djvu/31

23 "7th.—That there is no inducement for gentlemen to send their sons to sea in a merchant ship, owing to the lack 'of discipline of which I speak, which is the cause.of the rough state of things generally on board. 'This lack of discipline ruins' a good boy in many cases, and only the hard-gilled ones are tempted to stick at it. Hence it is that so few gentlemen are found (except in the leading liners) in the merchant navy. And yet it.is most desirable that the masters and officers of a merchant ship, as well as being practical men, should be gentlemen, and something should be done to induce young gentlemen to remain in the profession, that the necessary improvement may be effected in the near future.

"8th.—That seamen go to sea in a merchant ship ill-clad and with no proper 'rig-out' for a voyage, and when you want them off Cape Horn, or in cold weather, they are 'laid-up' under the plea of sickness, and the master has no legal power to get them out! On my last. voyage as chief officer in the ship Tenasserim, bound to Callao, when off Cape Horn, seven men out of a crew of fourteen before the mast were laid up from this cause at one time." Another reason for ships being lost.

It is not necessary to follow the project of this scheme, which puts merchant seamen directly under Government control, to its conclusion—anyone interested in it could obtain a copy from the author through the medium of the Navy League—yet there are parts that we consider so important that 1 would be an injustice to pass them by unnoticed. After describing the detail the text continues:

"Such a measure would greatly improve discipline, and the frequent touch with the Navy would be the means of making the seamen of the merchant service such a powerful body of well trained, well disciplined

slows, that not only that result would be greatly improved, but the Navy would be so strengthened that no foreign power could ever hope to break it. Then, truly, Her Majesty's Navy might be considered our great and first line of defence. For desertion abroad a seaman should be punished with imprisonment for not less than six months, loss of his ratings, and dismissal from the Reserve if it was thought necessary to go to the latter extreme. As this would prevent him from getting another ship on the same rating, as well as deprive him of all his marks, desertion would not be indulged in to any extent abroad; and in consequence it would be seldom necessary to ship. Some will probably say that when all the merchant ships are manned there will be very few to man the Reserve Squadron with. But when we observe the numbers always hanging round our seamen's homes, and on drill in the drill ships all throughout the year, in the different seaport towns of Great Britain, it will be seen that this is not the case. Then, again, it may be contended, as Clark Russell has already said, who was himself, I believe, a mate of a ship, 'that the foreign element in our ships is in the way forthe putting into effect such a scheme as this, and that we