111.1. MEN OF THE SEA. , Ma. DAVID HANNAY has brought
together, in a delightful little volume, certain articles from Blackwood's Magazine. The connecting thread is a slight one, but where each separate bead is so good this is a matter of small moment. On his third page there is a quotation from Gibbon, which might serve as a motto for the book : " Much learned trifling might be spared if our antiquarians would condescend to reflect that similar manners will naturally be produced by similar situa- tions!' Mr. Hannay never loses sight of this truth. The type he describes is common to all nations and all ages, because it is in every case the product of similar circumstances. No doubt these creative circumstances have been present in very various degrees. In 1597 Essex told the Privy Council that his ships "were furnished with men of all occupations, that never knew any rope, many of them, nor ever were at sea." Under Queen Anne Parliament made distinct provision for recruiting the Navy from "divers dissolute and idle Persons, Rogues, Vaga- bonds, and sturdy Beggars," who " do continue to wander up and down pilfering and begging through all Parts of the Kingdom." And in 1823 Capt. Griffiths complained of "the mass of discontent and impatience, generated by a forced association with the refuse of our gaols, convicts, vagabonds, thieves
all who from want of character could not procure employment." In both Services unfitness for any other mode of earning a livelihood was esteemed the natural qualification of a soldier or a sailor, and this lasted longer in the Navy than in the Army, because the men were in ships and the ships were mostly at sea. "Out of sight out of mind" is true even of men's vices. But for all that the sea character leavened even this miscellaneous mass. " There is a universal type of the seaman, with excellent differences according to time and race, but essentially the same." Mr. Hannay puts his finger on one of the causes which has made the sailorman a sealed book to most of his countrymen. "He cannot realise that the things we wish to learn are just those daily thoughts and to him common incidents which are not worth telling, or are the painful passages be does not love to talk of." Mr. Hannay was once for some time in the, company of a sea fisherman on the ChanneL The man had strained himself for life in a shipwreck by forcing his way through the in- rushing water to save his brother who was lying hurt in
• Ships and Men. By David Hannay. London: W. Blackwood and Bons. Os net.] the cabin. Yet when he told the story to Mr. Hannay, " the wreck was dismissed with a mere mention that it bad happened." But a dispute with a stationmaster who " did not know that the possession of a fisherman's medal entitled a shipwrecked man to a free ticket," and " how he finally bested the obtuse official by craftily taking cover in a coal shed and jumping into the train as it was starting, on the off aide, was told with enormous prolixity.' " So far as the world knows the sailor, it knows him where he is least like himself—on shore.
The most interesting of Mr. Hannay's chapters, because the one which to the majority of his readers will have most novelty, is "The Indiaman." Down to 1834 the East India Company had in its employ a body of officers and seamen wbo formed a force half-way between a merchant fleet and a navy. They "went out desirous to trade, but prepared to fight for freedom to trade." For more than two hundred years they played a great part not only in building up the vast fabric of the Company's trade, but also in making India British. The very first voyage showed of what stuff these men were made. In 1603 two ships, the 'Dragon' and the ' Hector,' met with storms in the South Atlantic on their homeward voyage. The rudder of the Dragon' got unshipped and the sea was too high to allow of its being rehung. Some of her crew would have left her to drift and made their way home in the Hector.' But Captain Lancaster, who commanded the Dragon,' would neither abandon his ship nor risk inflicting loss on his employers by keeping his consort in company. The 'Hector' was sent home bearing this letter to the Company: "I will well strive with all diligence to save my ship and her goods, as you may perceive by the course I take in venturing mine owne life, and those that are with mee. I cannot tell where you should looke for me, if you send out any pinnace to seeke me, because I live at the devotion of the winds and seas." It is pleasant to know that in the end all went well. The storm abated, the rudder was rehung, and Captain Lancas- ter lived to reach home, to be knighted and to become a director of the East India Company. " Of such as he was its Maritime Service from first to last—steady practical seamen, who sought prosperity by peaceful means, if so it was to be obtained, but in whom there lay a manful promptitude to meet any hazard which came in the day's work, because it was in the day's work."
The volume is made up by some articles on Napoleon. Mr. Hannay plays the part of Advocatus Diaboli with great satis- faction to himself. At the worst, he says, Napoleon was " a mere mesa-room cub," at the best " the hero of melodrama." But, whatever may be the judgment of history on Napoleon in grasping too much, the list of conquests which a little modera- tion would have enabled him to keep, and the permanence of the internal reorganisation for which France is his debtor, will survive Mr. Hannay's iconoclastic enthusiasm.
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