apprentice, and with whom the apprentice might be willing to serve, until the completion of his term, and that these school ships should be inspected and receive grants from the State according to their efficiency.
No doubt the system of apprenticeship affords the best means of training boys for a service in which fitness can only be acquired during early life. But the success of the system of training boys for the Royal Navy, recommended by the Commission on Manning the Navy in 1859 (of which I had the honour to be a member) is so far questionable that I think some other mode of obtaining the requisite supply of seamen for the navy might have been adopted which would have been more efficacious and much less expensive.
For instance, "a self-supporting pension fund for the benefit of seamen, as suggested by the Manning Commission of 1859 might," they said, "prove of great value in creating a tie to bind the British seaman to the Merchant Service of his own country,"[1] and would, I venture to suggest, if properly organised
- ↑ There is no use hiding a fact which my experience on this Commission and elsewhere has too clearly revealed. It is this, that the officers of the Navy as a rule (there are exceptions) are much less inclined to the amalgamation, under any circumstances, of the seamen of the merchant service with those of the Royal Navy than the officers of the Army are to coalesce with the Volunteers. They desire, and it may be due to their patriotism, to have a large standing navy, as large in peace as in war if they could get it; while they do not care to be troubled with the drilling of relays of seamen from the merchant service when they can obtain young men expressly trained, solely at the expense of the State. They do not, or will not, understand the vast natural resources this country has within itself—far greater than any other countries,—or, indeed, than nearly all other countries combined, available in the hour of need.
