The Old-Time Sailer and the Modern Tramp

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 62, 4 June 1927, Page 21 (Supplement)

The Old-Time Sailer and the Modern Tramp

(Written for THE SUN by

FRANCIS YEW.)

.. O who can speak, the joy he feels As o’er the foam his vessel reels And his tired eyelids slvmib’ring fall lie rouses at the welcome call of — “Larboard watch, ahoy 1” HEY come no more as they did in the beauty of their snowy wings, JTb) I heeling to the breeze until they showed their copper sheathing flashing in the sun, or leaping before a stern wind with their bowsprits stabbing skyward and the trucks of their tall masts pencilling patterns across the clouds, as they rounded North Head to drop anchor in the haven of the Waitemata. For the days and the ways of the sea have changed, and with them the ways and the fashions of the ships and of the men who man them. Never now do you see the spectacle of the stately square-riggers with their clipper bows, their sheering hulls, their tapering masts and spreading yards, and their swelling canvas, sail upon sail, come gliding like beautiful wraiths into the harbour. Never do you hear the chanties of the old deepwatermen echoing over the waters, the rattling of the blocks as yards are lowered and sail clewed up, the active figures of the crew running up the ratlines, and out upon the foot-ropes to furl the canvas and make all snug and shipshape when the cable has clanked out its length and the ship comes to anchor after her months of travel.

There come in their place the tanklike hulls, the squat funnels, the steel ■decks of the engine-driven tramp, salted and rusted with spray, begrimed with the smoke of her fires, her decks perchance piled with lumber that towers above her bulwarks until she looks anything but a ship. In reality she is not a ship; she is a mechanic-ally-propelled container of merchandise. You may contrast her with the ships of the past and disdain her; but she plays her part in the business of the world; she is the “old reliable”; she “gets there.”

Sentiment must go by the hoard in an age of speed. The sailing ships were good to look upon, but they were not always dependable. Though some of them were almost as speedy as the fastest steamers of to-day, with favourable breezes, their voyages were lengthened by adverse weather, they were crippled by storms, and too often, overwhelmed by wind and wave, they went “with many brave hearts, asleep ’ in the deep.” Beautiful as they were to look upon; they were by no means always beautiful to live upon. The men who manned them had hard lives, four hours on deck and four below, watch on and watch off; in bad weather it was often a case of “all hands on deck,” with no shelter from the wind, rain or snow, or from the seas that came pouring aboard to drench them, and, maybe, tear them overboard to Davy Jones’s locker. In British ships especially they were wretchedly fed and hard-driven, poorly paid and poorly regarded. Jack of the old-time mercantile marine was “only a sailor” —and when ashore he hid from the world he didn’t know in the low taverns of the port, and got drunk while his money lasted. Then he pawned his clothes and drank the proceeds;

und when there was no more drink to be bought he would ship away again, a half-naked vagrapt to whom the skipper would sell, half-crown shirts for ten shillings and seaboots at four 1 times their value from the slop-chest, and deduct the cost from his miserable wages, so that he would have precious little to draw when he was paid off. There were no seamen’s unions then. Until the Sea Drains Dry Time was when the Port of Auckland ■was a forest of masts, with full-rigged ships, barques, brigs, brigantines and smart schooners from all parts of the world berthed along the waterfront to discharge their cargoes. They have sailed their last voyages; some have been long since converted into hulks, some have gone to the shipbreakers; others are down among the bones o t dead ships. Mighty fires rage in the bowels of the ships that have ,taken their places, fed by sweating stokers or by huge pipes which spray them with oil. Instead of spreading sails above, there are immense engines below, developing the power of many thousands of horses, to drive great hulls to sure destinations, so that departure and arrival may be timed to the minute. Cargoes that used to be worked by hand or windlass are now loaded and unloaded by electric cranes and steam winches, one of which, at one lift, can do the work that used to take a score of men an hour. Ai sea, the crews of these modern ships have no watch-and-w r atch. They work their eight hours on deck, excepting the officers, quartermasters, and engineroom staff, who have four hours ou and eight hours off. The modern sailor is no sailor in the real sense of the term —seaman, if you like, yes—unless you can call a sailor the officer who does his navigation to an inch by tables of figures and appliances which almost do the job themselves. Your modern sailor is a deck-hand, who scrubs decks and washes paintwork, There is no navigation by dead

reckoning, no beating and hauling, no setting and taking in of sail in the ships of to-day. Joseph Conrad, not long before he died, made a trip to America on a great ocean liner. He didn’t like it, with its refrigerating chambers, its deck upon deck, its long corridors iike ! streets, its vast dining saloons and social halls, its shops and its restaurants, its thousand and one mechanical appliances. He said that the sailor had become a factory hand. Thoroughbred salt, he would not come out of the past; he clung to the beauty of the old and refused admiration to the utility of the new. But of what use bemoaning the passing of beauty in ships. The new order is one of service, and there is the knowledge that the “men who go down to the sea in ships” to-day are well-fed, well-paid, and generally well-treated, as compared with the windjammer men of the last century, who —perhaps the best saiiors the world ever knew—were regarded in an ignorant age as something akin to dogs and treated accordingly. It is only now the world pays them homage.