"MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS."

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3483, 5 September 1882, Page 4

"MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS."

(London Daily Telegraph.)

I was in the neighborhood of Wapping on Saturday last at the shop of a ship-chandler. It was growing late in the evening when there came in a needy-looking man with something bulky in a canvas bag, which from its shape, and connecting it with chandlery, I took to be cheeses. I was not long left in doubt however. Addressing the worthy chandler, he began, ' Can I persuade you, master, to buy a couple of ' But the other took the words out of his mouth — ' A couple of iife-buoys ? No thanky, , said he, impatiently ; 'I've had the last one I bought of you on band this three months.' ' It ought to have sold, too,' replied the life-buoy man, despondingly ; ' it was a very good one, I remember.' ' I dare say it was, but that don't make aha'porth of difference. Good or bad, people won't buy 'em.' And then, turning to me, he continued, ' I do assure you, sir, strange as it may seem, that if I was to offer the article we are speaking of to the first seaman that passed on his way to his ship at a quarter what it cost me, it is twenty to one against his buying it. I'd lay forty to one, if the conditions were that he carried it openly through the streets to where his vessel was lying. More likely than that, if a seaman was seen with a belt or a buoy, his own shipmates would chaff him more unmercifully than anyone else. Ask this man here. He can tell you more about it than I can.' ' I was just about to remark to him, , I replied, ' that I should have thought a much readier way of disposing of such goods would be to deal with those who need them at first hand —to go down to the docks and aboard the outwardbound vessels and offer the buoy or belts to the crew and to the passengers as well.' The life-buoy maker was a sa:l looking old fellow, but he grinned at the last observation of mine. ' I think if you tried it once, sir, the chances are you would fight shy of the experiment ever after,' said he. ' I know them that have tried it and been sorry they did. Some of the captains and mates even ara dead set against life-buoys. You would think, by the way they treat anyone who makes an attempt to introduce such things on board their ships, that they were inventions for drowning people instead of saving them from drowning. They'll cuss and swear at yon something awful, especially them in the coasting trade, who you'd naturally think would be more glad than anyone to have a belt or a buoy by 'em. ' Be off !' they'll say, ' unless you want to be pitched over the side. We ffant something that will make the men stick to the ship when she's in danger of going down, not such darned things as them to encourage them to give you the Blip when you're most in trouble.' And you'd be lucky if you didn't have something shied at you if you didn't get off the vessel as quick as you could. They aint particular how they serve you if they're of the rough sort, and only last year a man I know, in my own way of business, he went aboard a ship that was lying in the London Docks, not to try and sell a buoy, but to take one to one of the crew who had bought and paid for it, and just as he got on deck he met the second mate, who was one of the unfeeling sort I'm speaking of, and who up and spoke to him so pleasant that the man thought he was going to do a stroke of business with him. He asked the price of the buoy, and handled it, and wanted to know what weight it was calculated to keep afloat in the water. ' Could it keep you afloat, do you think ? ' he asks him, quite affable, ' I'd take to it as comfortable as going to bed,' says my friend, ' if there was occasion.' ' Then here goes to make you comfortable, you confounded Mother Carey's chicken,' says the second mate, turning all of a sudden fierce on him, and chucked him into the river and the buoy after him. Course ha only got a ducking, and was able to scramble ashore, but even such little things as that pints to the sort of spitef ulness there is amongst those who are prejudiced against life-buoys." The shipchandler said there was no call for them or for cork belta either worth speaking of. Put it roughly that five thousand persons—seamen and emigrants—left the port of London daily, on short or long voyages, and he, the ship chandler, could lay a pound to a shilling if it could be proved that not more than one in a thousand were provided, on their own account, with either life belt or buoy. The shipchandler spoke like one whose knowledge of the subject justified his expressed opinion, but I was loth to believe, without further inquiry, that he had not somewhat exaggerated the facts of the case. I must confess to having a kindly regard for life-buoys. It dates back now some sixteen years —to the time, indeed, when the mail steamers, the Wye and the Ehone, with many other vessels, were completely wrecked in a terrible hurricane off the Island of St. Thomas. On that occasion a life-buoy was marvellously instrumental in saving a little lad who was one of the few survivors. When the ship was dashed to pieces on the rocks, and the suddenly engulphed crew were struggling in the troubled waters, in the midst of splintery wreckage, little Jack Bailey, who was clinglingtoa frail spar, saw at a short distance off an able seaman who was breasting the waves with the help of his life-buoy. Jack was doing his best to make towards the man, when all in a moment the latter uttered a shriek, and, throwing up his arms, his body slipped through the buoy. The waters thereabouts abounded with sharks, and the probability is that the man was nipped off at tho waist by one of those rapacious monsters. Anyhow, it was an accident by which the cabin boy benefited The now empty buoy was drifted towards him, and he managed to slip his head and shoulders through it and to secure the lashings to his body. But the storm still raged, and lie was carried out to sea, and at length, buffeted and benumbed, he became insensible, and knew no more about the matter until many hours after, when he was roused to consciousness by his naked body rasping against the shingly beach. I met young Jack aa he was landing from the Douro at Southampton, his only luggage being tho precious buoy that had so miraculously saved him, which be was taking home as a present for his mother. He went with two others of the rescued crew, and had a quiet little dinner at Morgan's Hotel, where Jack told me his story, and, bearing out the truth of it, there on tho yellow paint of the outer canxas was the impress of the back of Master Bailey's head and his hair where it had rested while, senseless a3 a log, he was beating about in that sharky ocean. And it is worth mentioning in connection with the unaccountable negligence manifested by seafaring folk to provide themselves with a cork float, that of the whole crew of young Bailey's ship only seven were saved, and of these four swam ashore with life-buoys on their bodies. In order to ascertain how far the astonishing statement the shipchandler had made was correct, I paid a visit to the largest manufactory of apparatus for life-saving at sea; and it scarcely needed more than the very first remark made by the head of the firm in answer to my question to corroborate my first informant. ' You may guess,' said ho, ' how littlo in favor life-buoys and everything of the kind are in every branch of the sea service, and, I may add, tho river service as well, when I tell you that with all our business transactions with the shipping interest, including Admiralty and Trinity House, the Board of Trade, the Eoyal Humane Society, the Thames Conservancy, and the Eoyal Lifeboat our nnnual

; receipts from all these various sources do not amount to more than one-half of our yearly account with one of our customers —a pickle merchant—for bottle-corks and bungs.' Questioned as to the foolish fear of being ' chaffed' tbat prevailed amongst seamen as regards their including such simple lifesaving apparatus in their ordinary equipment, he replied that what I had been told was exactly true. He informed me, moreover, that he had caused it to be made generally known that the firm were prepared to provide as many cork belts as might be required for any vessel; to supply handy chests to stow them in ; and to send someone each time a ship returned to port, to overhaul the chests, and make good all necessary repairs, at an uniform charge of one shilling per belt or buoy per annum, and in not one case in fifty had the offer been accepted, the chief objection being the strange one tbat all such contrivances had a tendency to make passengers unnecessarily anxious and nervous, and to foster timidity in the crews. They are, it is said, tempted to abandon a vessel when, if they knew that if the vessel were Jost they would undoubtedly be drowned, they would be induced to use their utmost endeavors to stick to her to the last; whereas, according to the simplest teaching of common sense a crew would certainly have greater confidence and cooler courage to stand by their ship until her last chance was gone, knowing that her sinking did not necessarily involve theirs also. The sailor who, on joining his ship, took with him with his other traps a cork belt would lead such a life on its account among his shipmates that probably, for peace and quiet sake, he would be driven to pitch the objectionable articlft overboard. It was the same years ago even with the lifeboat crews. It was regarded as contemptible among the dauntless fellows who manned such craft to wear the jackets provided for them, and it was not until considerable loss of life in consequence had taken place, and the authorities insisted that on no occasion, even when merely out for practice, should a lifeboat man put off without wearing his cork jacket, that the humane provision was universally adopted. I was sorry to hear that the unpardonable apathy prevails amongst those who are responsible for the safety of steamboat passengers on the Thames. When, nearly four years since, the Princese Alice went down off Woolwich, ond more than 600 lives were sacrificed, the shocking occurrence stirred the heart of the country with a thrill of horror, and as with one voice the people asked why all such vessels should not be compelled to carry, in some shape or other, life-preserving appliances sufficient to keep, afloat their full complement of passengers, should they be in danger of drowning. The prompt answer given by those accustomed and competent to deal with such matters, was to the effect that there was no reason at all why such humane provision should not be made ; that such contrivances existed in the handiest possible forms, and that, at the expense of a very few pounds each, every passenger-carrying steamer plying on the river, might be secured against the possibility of such a catastrophe as attended the loss of the great saloon steamer. I was shown a Parliamentary Blue Book—bulky enough almost to contain a full list of all who have been drowned since the commencement of the present century —full of the evidence of i experts and witnesses who were examined i by the commission appointed ; and the upshot of it all was it was strongly recommended that immediate stepe should be i taken to make it compulsory on the proprietors of river steamers to provide every vessel with ample life-saving apparatus of an approved pattern. Just about the same time the Eurydice capsized in a squall, and all hands were lost except two, and of these one wore a life-belt and the other was supported by a buoy. This of course strengthened the popular conviction that it would be nothing short of criminal negligence to defer carrying out, forthwith, the suggestions of the Princess Alice commission of inquiry. But there have been no river wrecks of any great importance since, and the alarm and excitement subsided. After all the fuss and commotion, nothing at all has been done, and it is next to certain that, in the unfortunate event of a crowded Thames steamer suddenly sinking in midriver to-day, the percentage of lives lost would be quite equal to that which made so memorable the disaster above mentioned.