The Sailor's Home
D. WATERS’S talk on improvement in fo’c’sle con- * ditions in. his series Ships and Shipping, illustrates the value of radio talks in collecting information on out-of-the-way subjects. Landsmen know vaguely what the bad old fo’c’sle life was like in steam as well as sail, but they might go for years without realising in detail just how bad it was-in Mr. Waters’s jus-
tified word, "shocking." As a class, sailors are not articulate. The talk made me _ wonder just how far radio might be -accelerating social reform. It is difficult to think of some 19th Cen-
tury scandals lasting so long if there had been ‘broadcasting to bring the news of them right into the -home. It was a grim picture of life in the worse-conducted steamers that Mr. Waters painted; the cheerlessness and lack of comfort; the bare bones of living, in a cramped space; meals often eaten on the knees after the food had been carried over an open deck half the length of the ship. Yet the grimmest part of the talk told of the work of the firemen wha drove those luxury greyhounds of the Atlantit, the Mauretania and Lusitania, with coal at 25 knots. Behind the facade of ‘passenger lounges and the prestige of high speed, there was plain hell. A description to that effect was given me once bya man who had been a steward in the Mauretania. As late as 1933, a steward in a big English liner (apparently Atlantic) said this to J. B. Priestley of his life: "Bad quarters. Working all hours. And no proper food and nowhere to eat it." It was very pleasant to hear Mr. Waters tell of the improvements (there have always been good ships): abolition of the fo’c’sle; single and double berth cabins; and comfortable, well-equipped mess-rooms.
Some listeners must have recalled Gilbert’s naval fantasy of long ago: A feather bed had every man, Warm gone and hotwater can; Brown Windsor from the captain’s store; "A valet, too, to every four. The joke has become reality for the
Merchant Navy.
A.
M.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 667, 18 April 1952, Page 10
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348The Sailor's Home New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 667, 18 April 1952, Page 10
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