THE SAILING SHIP.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 308, 2 November 1910, Page 2

THE SAILING SHIP.

A thing of Life and Character

Of all tho beautiful and noble things that have come from man's brain and hand, none is more beau:iful or more noble than a full-rigged ship. She is something so much more than a mere contrivance for netting about on the face of the »vaters : she is a thing of life and :baracter with fancies and tricks and little individualities of her own which Dnly her true lovers and the sea that knows all things it carries on its bosom ever discover.

There was never yet a master of a well-found sailing ship who did not love every plank and jope of the gracious thing committed to his charge and feel her as much an individual as himself.

Perhaps the captains of to-day are really as fond of the iron monsters they command as were their predecessors of the sailing epoch, but the affection cannot be quite the same in kind. The vast machine which carries ;rom shore to shore a couple of thousand people at a time, or that other and grimmer sea-keeper instinct with such tremendous potentialities of death, have their personalities as wel] as the beautiful old craft that used Sod's wind alone. But they are masculine personalities at the best. They lack the sweet feminine waywardness of the sailing ship, and the mere fact that they can perform their luty with a certainty she never knew, ind need no coaxing in the perfection 3f their strength, has robbed them of much romance.

If a man wants to know the sea—and perhaps there is nothing much better worth knowing—he must not ;ry to be ferried across it as quickly is steam and steel can -take him. He must take passage on a sailing-ship, and be thankful that his- leisurely voyage occupies a year of his life. He will have, in all probability, to put up with hard fare and some real Sanger, but he will come to understand what weather can he, what are the thousand moods of the sea, and before his own eyes will he spread the wonder and the romance which tie has hitherto only known from Dooks. —London "Globe."