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effort made to induce boys to enter the merchant service to train for and remain as seamen of the seaman rating class, for since the abolition of the compulsory apprenticeship system, in the period of transition from sailing vessels to steamers, most of the boys who have gone to sea as apprentices were bound under indentures and premiums, with the intention of becoming officers and masters. Of course it would not be expected that all boys who wished to go to sea could take on anything so expensive, as in large numbers of cases it was a matter of pounds, shillings and pence with the parents, who probably could ill afford to spare what it cost to provide the scantiest of outfits. Wage-earning in these cases was the immediate and principal consideration, and ready employment was easily found in the coasting vessels, where they sometimes remained, but more often going farther afield when properly broken in.
Boys thus started off at sea, given a fair average intelligence, and the most elementary education, were quite on a par for presenting themselves for examination, for the first certificate granted by the Board of Trade, with those boys who had been more expensively provided for. Four years’ sea service, a good and sober character, and the possibilities of the merchant service were open as much to one as the other.
Thus there are two general sources from which the young sailors who eventually become officers are obtained, even though there are special training ships on the Thames and Mersey and the still more expensive scheme of Lord Brassey’s in the seagoing ships Hesperus and Harbinger. This throwing of the service open to all comers—for the foreigner was and is on equal terms—is entirely responsible for the flooded condition of the market, where masters and mates sell their services “In open competition among themselves; and is also responsible in measure accordingly for fewer seamen of the A.B. and petty officer rating. It is quite common for men with mates’ and masters’ certificates to have to ship before the mast, in the struggle for existence, for, once committed to a sea life, i in the words of Consul Longford ‘‘other openings are practically closed to him, and for better or worse he is bound to it as long as he lives.” Many would probably have had an infinitely happier time had certificates not been for them, and the best interests of discipline would thus have been spared many & painful shock, for it came to pass upwards of four years ago that my Lords of the Admiralty by an Order in Council issued to commanders of Royal Naval Reserve drill ships, that no lieut., sub-lieut. or midshipman be permitted to drill—except with ‘special permission—whose last service in a merchant
