“BARNACLE BILL”

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 101, 23 January 1935, Page 14

“BARNACLE BILL”

Gone, But Not Forgotten NEW TYPE OF TAR Under the Red Ensign Such a mass of legends and luscious stories have gathered round Barnacle Bill that now we cannot see him, though we still accept him, writes Mr. H. E. Tomlinson in “The Spectator.” 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 unguesseij, 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 I should 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 ..-witches ano 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 politics; 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. A New Type. 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 1 knew in the past startled me. Evidently these were more sensitive and civilised 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 adjustments to recondite machines, and the. use of the intelligence to solve mysterious refusals in the running of electrical gear when there is no time for leisurely contemplation, were as likely to have as quickening au effect on wit in a ship as in a work-shop ashore. Brawn is of less use than formerly: and barnacles are absolutely inappropriate, even in fun. I might add that not once in that warship did I hear a word, or a rasp in a command, that would have rawed 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 are from the subjects of Dibdin. The essential qualities doubtless are the same —one’s national prejudice was always for having British seaman 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. Outlook for Officers. 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 opportunity for a promising 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 be glad, a year later, to sign on as a deek-swabber. 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 industrial islanders—a national asset which, if lost, 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.