Page:The Blight of Insubordination.djvu/83

75 a patriotic side, from which we have endeavoured to approach it to show that, unless something is done to arrest it, what was once a large body of British merchant seamen will soon be wiped off the face of the waters and become practically extinct. It may be, and probably is, quite true that what has been said of the men generally can only apply to a certain portion of them—that they, like all other large bodies of individuals, have their good and bad qualities. Granted that such is the - case—and we feel that it is so—still the few bad eggs spoil the whole basket required in a ship. The good men find ready and constant employment in the mail services and liners generally, coasters, and the type of vessel beloved of W. W. Jacobs—such as are left of them—in his inimitable sea stories. The remainder find, or try to find, employment on vessels of the general trader class, and go off to places wherever the seven seas may lead to, with people of all nations for their shipmates and messmates; for to find a British ship with an entirely British crew is one of the things hardly possible in these times of free trade in sailors. The Board of Trade anticipate this, for the Articles in present use have a column with the caption "Nationality," in place of what was formerly "Town or county where born," in the detail of description of the person who engages. It is of vessels such as these that Mr. Consul Keene alludes to in his report, and these would be the crews that we would have to worry over if there were no Lascars to man the Eastern fleets. It has been suggested that shipmasters are a good deal to blame in the matter for the trouble that happens with their crews in port. This we deny, for it merely represents the opinion of those who see in the average shipmaster a very objectionable sort of person, who fails to make use of the powers he 1s supposed by statute to have, but is not firm enough to exercise. This is not the experience of those who go to sea for a living, who, when trouble occurs, must have recourse to the civil law to redress whatever happens, and who more often than not finds himself snubbed and sat upon for his pains.

Here we may ask why the regulations for maintaining discipline as sanctioned by the Board of Trade in pursuance of Section 114 (2) of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 are to be carried out in the manner described and submitted for decision to the superintendent of the mercantile marine office before whom the crew will be discharged? We have four specific offences, the fine for each of which is five shillings. In the case of number three, a second and subsequent offences, it is ten shillings. The whole procedure is subversive of the best