STEAM AND SAIL

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 38, 14 February 1930, Page 15

STEAM AND SAIL

MODERN SAILORS

BRITISH TRADITIONS UPHELD

Why all this talk about British seamanship becoming decadent because Old England has not a windjammer in commission? In fairness to those men of the Navy and Merchant Service, who, in ships of the new era, are upholding the highest traditions of British seamanship as worthily as they ever were upheld, all sentiment should be swept aside, and the plain facts faced, says a writer in the "Sun NewsPictorial." The very plainest of facts is—that British seamanship was never more efficient than it is at the present day, in spite of the fact that nowhere on the high seas does a British flag trail from the masthead of a windjammer. But the Old Flag flies from the mastheads of more than '20,000 steamers, more proudly, perhaps, than it ever flew from a windjammer's masthead . The only rope the average steamer A.B, sees is the berthing hawser—so of what earthly use would a knowledge of the hundred and one ropes aboard a windjammer be to him? Again, the only piece of canvas the steamer man sees, apart from awnings and wind chutes, is that sowed round some unfortunate who has died at sea, so why. waste a couple of years before the must learning about sails? SAILING SHIPS OLD-FASHIONED. This is the year 1930. Sailing ships are old-fashioned and out of date, and the men that sail them might be likened to the gripmen of our few remaining cable trams. When the latter are moved to an electric tram, although they have been trainmen for years, they have to learn all over again, how to run a tram; a new, faster, and better tram. So it is with the windjammer man. ■ When he goes aboard a steamer, be he officer or A.8., he has to settle himself in an entirely new sphere of seamanship, a sphere where wind and wave, storm and calm, matter nothing. The ship—a new, faster, better ship, goes on through all. • . Romance must give i)lace to Progress, and although it is indeed a sad thoughtEngland has no use for sailing ships. If she did she would have them. It is absurd and unfair to say that the crews of steamers do not know their jobs —seafaring. The steam man knows all that is required to get his ship along, and the real steam man—the stoker—does more hard, work in an hour than the ■windjammer man does in a voyage. Anyhow, apart from the men o£ .our present-day Navy and Merchant Service, British seamanship will never become decadent while there are such things as yacht clubs. " ■ - ' ' • THE BASS STRAIT TEST. Take the" Bass Strait yacht race. What finer example of. seamanship could you find anywhere else in the world, now or 100 years ago, than that displayed by the crews of the tiny craft that recently fought and defeated Bass Strait in its worst possible mood. And, with the exception of four men out of 30, those crews were all amateur. They put away their pens, their books, their forceps, their plans, their samples, their picks and shovels and other tools of trade and took those yachts out to fight Old Man Bass Strait—just as a hobby. No professional -, windjammer men could have done better^ No Bucko mate was needed to stand on the wave-swept deck with a knotted fist and a twisted visage and hurl among other things threats and abuse at the crew. The crews worked at risk of life, and joked about it. Through a terrific torm there amateur seamen who only 'go aboard their boats at odd weekends, and then pnfy in season, brought their yachts to safety. So : why worry about British seamanship becoming decadent? . . .