THE BRITISH SEAMAN
By H. M. TOMLINSON
SOME 'years ago—years before the.fateful August— the Kaiser was to visit us, but he had not arrived, • because of fog. I was in Portsmouth at the time. Also And then again there was, once on a time, a maritime street called Rateliff Highway. Merchant seamen fre- quented it, for they landed near, straight from their ships. They were what were known as " typical sailors." Let us dismiss that notorious street with this popular little story about it. It seems that a sailor, early one morning, was observed trying not to be obvious while cruising along clad only in a newspaper. He had been flung out. " Hullo, Jack, you're under short canvas," a mate reminded him.
" Well, a bit close-reefed like, as you might say. But wait a minute. „There's a beggar coining up astern under, bare poles." • Such a, mass of . legends and luscious stories have gathered round Barnacle Bill that now we cannot see him, though we still accept him. The fact is he is no longer at the jolly heart of it, and has not been for a long time.. past. Even the Admiralty had better forget its Nelsonian days, if it can. They are not only astern, but out .of. sight. From Whitehall, where the reality is too frequently unguessed,, and tradition and phantoms impel rhetoric and .patriotism, perhaps a bluejacket may seem much, the, same silly and rollicking figure as ever, easily led or misled, and fated to get drunk or get drowned. Yet Vshould have thought that anyone . could have guessed,.though he knew not one seaman, that the modern shipman„ to be able to live, must, have the trained brains of a, mechanic. A .ship, of course, is. a complicated engine, and she demands technicians for her welfare, who have been brought up to care for the delicacy of little switches and things which could do an enormous amount of harm if mishandled by a rollicking hearty. Besides, seamen are as well accustomed as clerks to the use of schools, newspapers, libraries, and the radio. They belong to this age of science like everybody else, and share in the use of exploring intelligence released by the war. There is not an inch to spare for the capering of Cordial emotions in a modern ship, whether warship or liner. And a bluejacket is as likely as his admiral to understand the trend of world polities ; as he is British, he will hold as tenaciously to whatever opinion education and the logic of events have given him as he would to his Oar in uncertain waters.
Among our new potent and universal engines the lustiness of the hairy man has no survival value. A more alert and delicate, some might say a more dangerous, intelligence, is taking the place at sea of the barnacle mind. When looking recently at the faces before me of the men forming a large part of the crew of one of our latest warships, the difference between them and those I knew in the past startled me. Evidently these were more sensitive and civilized fellows. They ran more to nerves than to bone. I would not have addressed those lean masks—irony was lurking there—in casual and full-blooded eloquence, not for any consideration. They would not have laughed, because they were too well under control ; and by control I do not mean, without qualification, discipline imposed from without. You would have to be a good man to be their trusted leader. I ought to have known beforehand, without the evidence, that the training necessary for fine adjust- ments to recondite machines, and the use of the intelli- gence to solve mysterious refusals in the running of electrical gear when there is no time for leisurely con- templation, were as likely to have as quickening an effect on wit in a ship as in a workshop ashore. Brawn is of less use than formerly ; and barnacles arc absolutely inappropriate, even in fun. I might add that not once in that warship did near a word, or a rasp in a command, that would have rimed the touchiness of a nervous understrapper ; the business of the ship ran almost noiselessly, as by a common understanding. That, too, looked to me rather like a levelling up.
It is the same in the latest liner ; on deck, in the engine rooms, and in the departments of the purser and steward, there is another generation of men. They are as far from the affable figure, heroic yet lightly touched with imbecility, who used popularly to represent the late tradition of the Red Ensign, as they arc from the subjects of Dibdin. The essential qualities doubtless are the same—one's national prejudice was always for having British seamen about when things were going hard ; or Scandinavian. Yet I should say they share with the rest of our younger people a critical understanding of reality, without sentiment enough for one stanza of a song, which at times is too cruelly acute for the liking of their elders. Their capacity for reverence for names and tradition could be overstated.
Some well-advised critics, on the other hand, are sure that few real British sailors are now alive ; most of them, we are told, went out with the sailing ship. It is fair to say to this that most of the men who kept these islands fed during the War, and transported and maintained the armies, were nearly all trained in steam. They knew little more of sails than men in a garage. However, they did better than we ought to have expected, when we remember what their pay and conditions had been. • They completed their task ; their performance was superb ; and they were then forgotten. "
They were forgotten ; and that, and the present state of the merchant service, do not encourage us in the hope that we may rely on the continuance of the high quality of their service. - As' things' are now in the mercantile marine, when certificated officers are glad of a chance to get to sea in the forecastle, it would ruin life's oppor- tunity for a proniising lad to 'bind him as -a cadet, because by all the present omens of the profession he might get his certificate as master-mariner one week, and he glad, a year later, to sign on as • a deck-swabher, if he could find nothing to do ashore.
If we value the distinctive character of the British seaman; • which has served -for the purpose of - joyous ballads, and would be always a modest assurance of the maintenance of food supplies and raw Material- to indus- trial islanders=a national asset which, iflOst, could not be re-created in a hurry—then it would be wise to own up to. it that as things look • at present- no father who knew anything of shipping affairs would encourage his . boy to go to sea. Anything but that.
Previous page
