Jack Afloat and Ashore. By R. Rowe. (Smith and Elder.)—"
The average Jack," says the author, who has well proved his right to be heard on such topics, "seems to be neither the 'injured innocent' his thick-and-thin advocates make out, nor an unredeemed scamp, as others represent him." This is Mr. Rowe's thesis, and he makes it out. He tell'a Jack's story just as he has heard it, and a very strange story it is. Here is one experience of a man who was in the maintop of a water-logged vessel for seven days :—" Every day but one we sighted sails, and they saw us, but would not come nigh us. There was an American liner had to haul up her yards to run clear of us." Here is another:—" Whaling I've been, sperming and Greenland ; and I've been in the slave-trade,--Chinese slave-trade. Well, what are coolies but slaves ? Oars mutinied twice. Put a hundred of them in irons. All died ; 150 died together." And here's a third, which speaks -well for the economy of Yarmouth workhouse :—" Fifty shipwrecked sailors in all,, and there we were for eleven days. The first day they gave us a round of bread-and-treacle each, and afterwards potatoes, and now and then a bit of meat, and a bucket of small-beer amongst the lot. They wanted us to take 2s. apiece, and tramp back to Sunderland up to our knees in snow." "How Wrecks are Caused," "Rescue," "Ratcliffe Highway,' "Sailors' Homes," "Training-ships," are among the subjects discussed. A fairer and better-informed statement of the case as it stands between the sailor and his employer one could not find.
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