Page:The Blight of Insubordination.djvu/93

85 salvage corps, railway services, stevedoring, and in all sorts of places where a handy man is useful. Without going into the question of climates that are sultry, which make objectionable work more objectionable still by reason of its exhausting effects on the person, what really is to be expected when ships are what they are, and the work as we describe it? In these times the attractions for a sea life are all in favour of the Royal Navy, where the system of training from the time of joining produces a very different seaman from the same kind of material to start work with that goes to the merchant ship, where there is no training to be had worth the name; where every ship and every shipmaster is different from the next. Life in the Royal Navy may not be exactly all of the beer and skittles order, as viewed from the point of the seaman or the fireman. They are infinitely better off than their brother who ekes out a precarious life in the merchant ship, for their service is continuous; their earnings, if less per month, will probably be greater at the end of the year, to say nothing of the greatest of attractions, the pension when the service is ended. If the merchant seaman is better off as regards food than his brother in the Navy, it may be a point in compensation. Considering, however, the merchant seamen's demand of "Feed the men better" and the recent re-arranging of affairs for feeding the men in the Navy, there may not be so great a difference as some would expect. The only point to attract a well-educated lad to a life in the merchant service as a seaman is the possibility of attaining to the dignity of a command, after years of strenuous effort, when he will take what is offered him, and be thankful for small mercies, for so easy is the road to become a certificated shipmaster, and so keen the competition for the command of every ship.

The great Napoleon is said to have once remarked that every soldier of his army carried in his knapsack a Marshal's baton.

You cannot allure the boys of Great Britain to a life on the ocean wave in the merchant service with the inducement of a title being stowed away in the sailor boy's bag. Commerce, generally, is well in evidence when these are being shelled out. Those to adorn the merchant service cannot get past the shipmanager's chair. They never go seaward.

British seamen for British ships is a very proper sentiment, and he who will take on the task to bring it about will deserve well of his country. There are many things to consider in affairs of such magnitude. If there has been a falling off in the numbers of the native born in the merchant service during the last few years, there is a quid pro quo in the increase of the Navy's personnel, which is really out of all proportion to it.