Page:The Blight of Insubordination.djvu/61

53 crew of perhaps twenty to thirty or more men is often enough found. This class of man works like a Trojan; is invariably of the kind the Yankee critic fired at; satisfies nobody, but earns all he gets in a vain endeavour to do more than he is equal to. Someone suffers where this sort of thing obtains, and we write with very fair knowledge of the system. This is not so much the point we wish to discuss as the fact that a cook, when engaged as such, is not generally furnished with proper assistants in the same way that obtains on the Lascar manned steamer of the ordinary carrier type. The passenger steamer is not in our province just now. To state a case and explain this properly: the vessel we now command is allowed a crew of fifty-six men. Of these sixteen are Europeans on the ordinary European Articles; the remaining forty are Lascars on the Lascar Agreement. Of this number, seven, including the European steward who runs them, are actually cooks or servants, four of them being cooks pure and simple, although the chief cook invariably engages as chief cook and baker. On the other hand, a British vessel with the ordinary European crew is allowed a cook, in a general way, if the number runs up to about thirty or so, or even less than that. When the numbers increase to forty there is probably still only one cook, and even up to fifty or more the chances are that the cook will have no more assistance than he can get out of a boy, probably a first voyager. The cook, under these conditions, does not have a lovely time, for where the ordinary watch and watch system still obtains it means one man constantly at his cooking pots serving up to the different groups as they come along in twos or threes and carry away themselves whatever it may be their luck to receive for the meal they certainly require, and have perhaps worked for. An overworked cook is not likely to worry much over appetising dishes unless compelled to, and the people of least consequence in the food spoiler's estimation suffer accordingly. There is even 4 worse state of affairs now in vogue, though happily we have no experience of it, yet firmly believe it to be true, as our information is gathered from reliable sources. It is well known now that some vessels owned somewhere in the north of England and the Bristol Channel are contracted out to provision dealers, who not only put on board the stores for the voyage but the steward and cook as well. The former, sometimes acting in the dual capacity, has control of the whole of the commissariat, and is on articles at a mere nominal wage—probably a shilling a month—and is paid actually by results from his real employer, the provision dealer. This is playing the game very low indeed,