Page:The Blight of Insubordination.djvu/65

57 different parts of the United Kingdom and Shipping Offices and Consulates abroad in dealing with crews get a very fair knowledge of the exaggerated ideas of power and importance that sometimes obtain in many of those places. Shipmasters are quite alive to this, and send in their log books made up to the time of arrival, with nothing to be affixed but the final stamp and signature. The characters of the crew are already inscribed against their names, from which it is copied on the seaman’s discharge, "if the seaman desires it!" In one well-known Liverpool Company that employs some thousands of hands in their services, it has always been an established rule to write up the report of character of the crew with “‘G.”’ for all and sundry, unless in those cases where even that doubtful value was not deserved, and the "Dec." had perforce to appear instead. But why, in the name of all that is reasonable, 1s it left to the seaman’s sweet will and pleasure to decide whether he will or not have his discharge endorsed with the characters allotted to him by the shipmaster who furnishes the information under compulsion of the law? The inference is that a good character will never be omitted from the discharge, while a doubtful one—"decline to report" will never be accepted while it is left to the whim of the seaman. Under the system of continuous discharges now in vogue these will tell their own story, if the spaces provided are properly cancelled at the time of discharge. If discharges are of any value at all, there should be no option in the matter in the merchant service, any more than there is in the Royal Navy or the Army.

In some of the late shipping deals of last year and of this, many of the shipmasters and officers concerned in the change of ownership must have been considerably shocked at the very cool manner in which they had been left. Flattering themselves in many cases on the name, fame and stability of the firm who condescended to patronise them, and where many of them had spent perhaps the greater part of their lives, their simple loyalty deserved a better or more kindly fate than merely to be started off again under the new régime of the stranger and money-grubber, old and young alike, on a fresh footing. Service of many years goes for nothing. One has no right to expect anything under such conditions when it is a mere question of being paid for services rendered, but the object lesson provided in some of the cases is certainly interesting. We called on one of the shipowners concerned who was retiring from shipping with about a modest million to his credit. In the course of conversation we were soon reminded that the British shipmaster and officer of to-day does not, from this