OLD JACK'S APPEAL

Otago Witness, Issue 2814, 19 February 1908, Page 87

OLD JACK'S APPEAL

By W. CLARK RUSSELL.

I There is not a more pathetic figure than an old, worn-out, starving sailor ; a man ■« ho has been at sea for about 50 years, who has stepped ashore broken in health, pemless, too infirm to work, yet eager I to die m harness sooner than go to the , woikhoufce. Among the operatives of the 1 globe he stands alone as a toiler. His agreement with his employer was that, if called upon, he must work for 24 houis in the day. He has sweated at the winch, , he hae laboured in the choking hold, he j has dangled aloft with 6lush-pot and tarpot under roasting sun 6. He has fought the snow- -darkened parallels of the Horn |am d leagues of mountainous icebergs. He I has puffeied thirst and hunger, the tlurst ard hunger of the sea. He has been delirious with fever in the gloomy, soh- | bing forecastle, unwatched, uncared for. His food throughout has been the ironhard junk, the brine-toughened pork of the harness-cask, the biscuit alhe with the , weevil, the "duff" of coarse dark flour, 1 and the slush of the galley coppers. His ■wage of £3 or so a month has fed the slop chest and tobacco case at sea and I the crimp and boarding master ashore. I Captains and mates cannot save money in i the British merchant service. How shall j a man before the mast save out of wages which are not tho6e of an errand boy? and whose temptation,? after months of enforced abstinence at eea have tenfold the malignant charm of tlie seductions of life tor those who live on the land? The sailor steps on shore an old man. Nobody wants him ! rie has devoted the manhood of his life to fetching and bringing for a nation that must be fed and whose commerce grows. What home has he? Is it the highway and the ditch? Is it the barn or the haystack where he is a trespasser? What eye view* him in l his rags as one who has beheld God in the tempest and witnessed His might in the headlong surge? who has seen His glory in the sunset and praised His mercj' in the ocean rescue? But it is not the human heart that is cold. We neglect becaaise we do not know, because. w~e have no skill to pierce into things hidden, because we lack the imagination that is the parent of the melting impulse. The British public should at least understand what is meant by the term " British sailor," though it may bul imperfectly gather the natuie of his calling, the imperial obligation of it, it 6 quintessential value in the life of a people who cannot quit their count rv without breasting that ocean which, with the sailor, safeguards the land, but which without the 6ailor is fraught with the menace of famine and destruction. There stands a short walk from the Rher Thames at Belvedere a handsome mansion. Acres of swelling limd shaded j by trees and tender with broad spaces of \erdure stretch round about it. From the upper windows you witness a prospect of English beauty. The river coils between its banks and breaks into gleaming lengths polished as quicksilver here and there. And now the giant hull of an ocean steamer shows, and now the paint-e<! canvas of a stemming barge, and now the lotty tracery of a full-rigged sliip towing up or down — a vision of delicate film-like heights w hose null is hidden. This bright and picturesque house, once the seat of an English family of distinction, has been transformed by the magic wand of British charity into'a home for aged British mariners. It is known wherever our commercial flag flies as the Royal Alfred Institution. The kingdom boasts no nobler charity. Aged and penniless sailors alone are here received. Here are they fed, clothed, lodged ; their wants — body and soul — are tenderly ministered to. They have done their work. Time has struck from their bowed backs the burden of ungrateful labour. But Time has done no moie. The winged fiend of the glass and 6Cythe ha<s passed on, and those that Lave been smitten are left to the mercy of man. Must these poor old fellows appeal to their countrymen in vain? Consider : they are of the one race of mon to whom we owe our daily bread, and in whose fearless spirit, now as in the pa6t. we recognise the foundation and the perpetuation of our Empire. Few scenes of life are charged with more pathos than 6uch as may be watched in this home for aged sailors. The loneliness of the seaman's orphan strikes a deep chord of emotion. But life stretches before the child ; be the road long or short, the Star of Hope, Tadiant always to the young, illumines the way. But the old homeless, penniless, fast-decaying sailor ! What is his hope until the claybarriers of the grave are passed and tie spiritual light of God bathes the released soul? Such thoughts visit you when, for example, you take your stand in the large dining hall and see a long table flanked by aged men who await the conclusion of the grace before meat to fall to. A j blind man of 80 is fed by a man of 88. j They Lave been shipmates. Here is a man who was in the Kent wlien she was burnt. Here are men charged with recollections of the transports that conveyed soldieis to the Crimea and to India in the Mutiny. Yonder is a master mariner. He munches with toothless jiums. He is 78. and his face is gentle with resignation, but glim with the fortitude of the Christian's heart. His wife- died 20 years ago ; lie lost two sons at sea ; he had a comfortable home; but his 6ight failed him. he had to abandon his tailing ; his slender savings \anished. and he was reduced to the high-road and hawked bootlaces. This he will tell you with a moist eye and a sad smile. *'" What should I do — what would all these poor old fellows do — -without this home? 0! sir, there is a God. His ey© dwells on the poor and afflicted ; He blesses those who help them, who soften sorrow, who feed the hungry, -who kindle the light tliat enables trie aged poor to go to their graves without stumbling, without dropping by the way to be found a corpse in a ditch." The prosaic* of this institution are

these — but the deep 'ttimaiiity of the noble charity may be read into them. Since it 3 establishment in 1867 2300 d-estitute and deserving gailors have been permarently relieved. But the Royal Alfred, irj additon to giving a home to the ajred sailor, pays annual sums to men who, for want of tpace in the building, cannot be housed at Belvedere. Time. <is the prism distributes its coloured radiance, ■does the institution scatter its beautiful beneficence far and wide among the aged sailors of this realm. But hundreds who are in bitter distress, who are old and blind and crippled, ivho cannot obtain employment— and w hcee case is rendered moie hopeless by the Compensation Act, which obliges employers to be very cautious in their selection of labour. — these hundreds are denied the doles received by others because the institvjtion ha 6 not furds to enable it to enlarge its sanctified sphere of help. This is the aged British merchant sailor's appeal to the country of his birth, to the people for whom he has toiled. \\ ho will help him? or rather, •who will refuse him 1 ' Not the ship-owners who have builded up their magnificent industry \>y his help. JCot the student o£ the ocean traditions of thsse islands. Not those who have fathers, brothers, 6ons at sea. Not those who, seated by the Christmas fireside, reflect upon the perils of the deep, upon the hardships of the life, upon the essentiality of the sailor's duty if our commence is to be continued and' our millions are to bo fed. Lifting his trembling hand to his brow and speaking in a voice broken by time and years of bawling m gales of wind, poor " old Jack says : " Gentlemen of Britain and likewise all you ladies, if you will send whatever sums you may think proper to help me with, to Mr J. Bailey Walker, Royal Alfred Institution, 58 Fenchurch street, E.C.. my prayer, until death releases me, will be. ' May God love their warm and generous hearts, and be theirs the sailor's blessing — good nights and happy di earns.' "