These remarks do not, of course, apply to cases of
disaster from stress of weather. In fogs there must be delay, though
not necessarily danger.
In these days of lamentation over the degeneracy of the British
seaman, my experience may be accepted as a contribution to the mass of
evidence on this vexed question. I have not been surrounded by such
smart seamen as can only be found on a man-of-war, but I have no
ground for general or serious complaint. Many of my crew have done
their duty most faithfully. In emergencies everybody has risen to the
occasion, and has done best when his skill or endurance was most
severely tried--
'My mariners,
Souls that have toiled and wrought and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine.'
It is always in stormy weather that the good qualities of the British
seaman are displayed to the greatest advantage. The difficulty is to
keep up his interest and energies in long intervals of fine weather,
when nothing occurs to rouse him to an effort, and the faculties of
the seaman before the mast, no less than those of his officer, are
benumbed by the monotony and isolation from mankind, which are the
gravest drawbacks of a sailor's life. It is in these dull moments that
men are tempted to drink and quarrel, that officers become tyrannical,
and their crews insubordinate, or even mutinous.
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