ROMANCE AND REALITY AT SEA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 103, 18 June 1900, Page 2

ROMANCE AND REALITY AT SEA.

Our whilom acquaintance, Mr, T. F. Bullen (author of " The Cruise of the Cachalot"), lectured recently in London on the above subject. He said thit romance was that quality of the human mind whijh differentiated man from the brute, This opinion led him to advise his hearers not to go to the dictionary for a definition, for ho had there found romance describe*.! as The sea should be the mo.st romantic of things, and yet, strange to say, sailors were generally among theleast r lnantii of people. Tliey looked upon it, as n place of hardship. It was frequently w.id tliat the substitution of stuamei> for sailing ships was doing aivaj with all the poetry of the ocean; but he did not take that view, and he held that the sailing ship had a long row to hoe yet. Besides, romances did no! dwell in material things, but in tlieii spiritual side and associations. Ii

sailors and other men would only stud spiritual qualities they would get deal of enjoyment even out of th commonplace. It was rather a wast of sympathy on the part of landsmen t say when the wind was blowing: " Oil the poor souls at sea." The poor sou were probably sitting under the bul wark smoking the pipe of peace, an perfectly satisfied because there wo nothing to do. —(Laughter.) The poel 1 had libelled the sea. They called it desert waste, but it was infinitel more fruitful than the earth, and not drop of it ever rested. One of th thiugs of which Solomon confessed hi ignorance was the way of a ship in th sea. An old captain to whom Mr Bullen had mentioned thij passage re marked : " Well, I did not know Solo raon wes a seafaring character—bu he's just hit it. I'vo been in commini of my ship for thirty yearc, and I don' know all of her ways yet." The thinj

that most embittered the siilor'a sou was a berth on an under-banded bh-badly-fed vessel, cn which stru.'glinj with the saib in a giln \va< »1 j most bat'.le, murder, and sudden death • Sometimes all hands wero just c~m pattufc to bond hilt' the inainsnl in tim weather. How they did it in bac weather he hardly kuew ; but they did Lies were told about it on shore. Il was said that mechanical appliances hid greatly reduced the seaman's labour, but he never heard of a mechanical appliance that could go aloft, and he maintained that the Bailor's work it as 75 per cent, harder than it was thirty years ago. Having referred to the number of foreigneis in our merchant service as a national danger, qnd suggested that all British seamen, including those who had abandoned the sea, should be registered to take charge of our ships in case of war with a great Powor, he showed a picture of the Turbinia, and proceeded to lay it down that the hero of tho present day was the marine engineer. More than one deed that only won three lines in tho newspapers Droved the assertion. Moreover, there was as much sympathy between an engineer and his engines as between a mother and her baby.—Duuedtii iltar.