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"Sailor! the word means little now. When I first went to sea—early sixties—the sailor was a sailor'; there are but few left. A simple, in some ways childish, fellow, true to his shipmates, and to be relied upon in an emergency. He loved grog too much; a teetotal sailor was an Anomaly. The seaman of to-day may be more steady, but he is not such a loveable man as his predecessor, for, though more sober (let us Allow so much) he is in other ways changing for the worse in these democratic times. Democracy in the abstract is all very well on shore, but at sea the life of all on board often depends on instant, unquestioning obedience; a ship must be ruled conservative—the competent must govern, not the multitude. By latter-day 'grandmotherly' legislation this has been made almost impossible; Jack is too much petted and the shipmaster too much hampered. In old times the able seaman was supposed to know his work; how to hand reef and steer, though even then there were good and bad. But the incompetent had to suffer; it was no uncommon thing for the boatswain to bring a man aft on the quarter deck and report; that he could not do his duty; if, on enquiry, this was found proved, the fellow was promptly disrated to ordinary seaman, and his pay reduced in proportion. Steam has changed all that, and the seamen who remain are so scarce that we have to put up with what we can get. Every able seaman could heave the lead and get bottom in five or six fathoms with the ship going seven to eight knots: you would have to look far for a modem seaman who could do this; in consequence, a steam shipmaster has to stop his vessel if he wants a cast of the lead. …… As I have said, the old time sailor loved his grog; it really seemed as if he would do anything for drink. The crew was never capable of taking the ship out of dock; we invariably employed a shore gang to navigate her as far as Gravesend and moor her there. In Calcutta it was no better …… Our most sober men were then—as now—the Scandinavians and Americans. Of these last we had a good sprinkling towards the end of the war, the Confederate cruisers having driven the Yankee ships from the seas. Your American seaman would drink, certainly, but he knew when he had reached his limit, and did not drink to get drunk …… Most of our men, however, were Britishers, and those of them who were in or past the prime of life, say forty years old and upwards, had started their sea career shortly after Waterloo, when ocean steamers did not exist; many of them had served in the Royal Navy, or the 'Merchant Service,' as the old East India Company's fleet used to be called. They were thus sailors in the full acceptance of the term, and differed but little from the men of Nelson's day. Scarcely a man of them but could sing a song or dance a hornpipe. As a race they are gone, never to return. …… Jack's love of grog was often the measure of his estimate of his acquaintance …… But with all his faults the British sailor (in which I include the irishman) is the only one you can rely upon in a really tight pinch. Lascars (natives of India) have been much belauded in late years. They are utterly useless in a sailing ship when a real emergency occurs. The pilots used to tell us that if one of their brigs
