Part 21

At this juncture somebody who might have been the manager came sniffing curiously about me; the man went on with his work, and I moved off. Before quitting the yard, however, I walked over to the other vessels—the incomplete ones, I mean—and had a look at them. Here I found precisely the same kind of workmanship and material—the frames full of cracks and flaws, the rivet-holes roughly punched, and not a single hole corresponding with the holes behind; the “landings” yawning and waiting to be prized and warped and severely strained into their places by the rivets. I am not writing learnedly; I am avoiding all technicalities, as I wish the land-going public who know nothing about marine terms to understand me. Neither do I assert that this shipbuilding yard which I inspected is a typical one. But this much I will say, and as a man who has some small knowledge of the power and fury of the sea in a time of tempest—that were I a forecastle-hand and had to choose between one of these brand-new, A 1 iron steamships of from two thousand to three thousand tons gross and one of the old coasters which have long since been condemned and rendered impossible, I should be perfectly content to let the toss of a coin decide for me, satisfied that, so far as security at sea goes, there would be just as much promise of my speedy dissolution aboard such a brand-new steamer as aboard the sieve-like old coffin. It is not hard to understand what a reproach this kind of vessel is to us as a maritime nation and how it has come about. The same fierce competition that covers our tables with butter made of fat, and coffee made out of old beans, is covering the ocean with the sort of ships I am writing of. The problem is now how to build the cheapest steamer to carry a maximum cargo on a minimum draught of water, and to pass the surveyors as fit to go to sea. The shipbuilders are not to blame. They will do good work for good money; but if good money be not forthcoming, though some kind of work be expected, then they will give you frames which are only fit to sell for old iron; the workmanship will be mere “clagging,” the plates will be wrenched and warped into any kind of abominable fit by the rivets; the whole structure and the lives of the people who commit themselves to it will be made to depend upon points which no honest shipwright would dream of reckoning as factors in the binding and holding powers of the fabric; and the false and frail contrivance, doctored up and smothered over with paint, will be launched with all haste, and the next order proceeded with at once.

Therefore, in so far as the loadline is designed for the protection of the sailor against the rapacity of those owners who would load their vessels down to their waterways, if they could only manage to make them float at that, there must always be a most unpleasant quality of insufficiency in the controversies the subject has excited, so long as they exclude consideration of the kind of vessels which are launched month after month and year after year from many shipbuilding yards. The absurdity of painting or nailing a loading disc upon the side of a vessel which is to a strong well-constructed ship what a cheap suburban villa built with nine-inch walls is to a house in Grosvenor or Berkeley-square, struck me forcibly, as I stood the other day looking at the flimsy metal skeletons which, when plated with thin sheets of iron and loaded with the dead weight of coal and freight and engines, are to confront and give battle to the terrible sea. I shall be asked if no protection is afforded the sailor against the deadly risks such shipbuilding as this involves by those marine surveyors, whose duties as inspectors are very clearly and precisely laid down for them by the authorities they represent? I answer, let those interested in the subject make a tour of inspection for themselves—slip in quietly, as I did, into those shipbuilding yards where cheap steamers are manufactured, and judge with their own eyes to what extent I am inaccurate in affirming that a proportion of the ships which are built in this country are renewing with tenfold disgrace those maritime crimes which were supposed to have been ground out of our civilization, and reviving with tenfold horror those peculiar forms of marine disasters which were hopefully assumed to have been shelved along with the old wooden craft.

And now let me say here a few words on the subject of marine surveying.

If there be one class of responsible men more than another who should be wholly above suspicion, who should be possessed of a moral courage equal, under all circumstances, to the unbending and unfaltering discharge of the duties accepted by them, they should consist, one would think, of the men employed by Lloyd’s and the Board of Trade to inspect the construction of ships, and to pronounce upon their fitness as sea-going fabrics. You have only to consider what is involved in the duties of marine surveyors to appreciate the high and extraordinary character of their obligations. Upon their capacity to distinguish between good and bad work, and upon their courage as judges to whom their employers entrust the exercise of the widest possible discretion, practically depends the life of every human being who goes to sea as a sailor or as a passenger. Of course, the difficulties of the vocation, humanly speaking, are not hard to understand. We may appreciate the embarrassment a surveyor labours under in having to condemn the work of a shipbuilder with whom he is on very friendly terms, to say no more. The temptation to inspect any other part of the fabric than that which imperatively calls for condemnation must, under certain circumstances, be very great. But let all this be freely admitted. Life is more precious than class sensibilities, and if an evil is to flourish only on the condition that nothing is said about it, most of us will agree that it is high time to cultivate candour, in that direction at least.

I have no hesitation in saying that a large proportion of the marine surveying of the day is one of the most glaring, as it certainly is the cruellest, of the shams of the period. Samples of work are passed which, were there the least sincerity and conscience in the minds of those who decide upon them, could under no possibility have left the yards in which they were produced. Men, women, and children are sent to sea in structures which never would have been permitted to quit the only place they are safe on—I mean the dry land—had the surveyors put any shadow of honesty into the duties they are appointed to discharge.

“Look,” said a gentleman to me the other day in a shipbuilding yard, “Look at that faulty work there! is it possible that Mr. —— (naming the surveyor) means to pass it?”

The surveyor stood at a distance; the gentleman called him and pointed out the defective work. The surveyor seemed surprised, and shook his head. “Ah,” said he, “that is too bad. I shan’t be able to pass that.” But he _did_ pass it, for the gentleman some days after wrote to tell me that the faulty points had not been remedied, and that the ship was to be launched just as she was.

“What,” cries an American writer, in a Yankee shipping journal, “What of the _Ismailia_, _Bernina_, _Bayard_, _Homer_, _Stamfordham_, _Telford_, _Zanzibar_, _Toxford_, _Sylvia_, _Surbiton_, _Joseph Pease_, and the forty British steamers which foundered last year, and scores of others which have gone to Davy Jones’s Locker?” We are constantly boasting of the vastness and sovereignty of our mercantile marine; but we shall have to acquire a new theory of bragging if we are to reconcile our self-complacency with such plain-speaking as this, which comes to us in our own tongue from across the seas.

“Far less need of hospitals, did they use us well, Were this forecastle of ours fit wherein to dwell. Ships are coffins nowadays, life is but a toy, ‘Jerry’ murders millions, Board of Trade ahoy!”

sings the contemporary sailor; but there is very little use in his shouting “Ahoy,” if the only response he gets is the appointment of men who, filling offices designed for his protection, deliberately ignore their most grave and great responsibilities and lure him, by what are absolutely false representations, into committing his life to unseaworthy ships. Unhappily in marine topics public interest is only to be awaked by reiteration. But let it be remembered that it is not only Jack’s life that is jeopardized by our new shipbuilding departures. The subject is one that concerns every living being that crosses the ocean or who has friends at sea. The sailor, we know, is an abstraction. Nautical as we are as a people, we barely take count of him unless as a stage show, or as the pig-tailed Jack Pudding of a romance. But when we think of passengers we think of our friends and of ourselves. Is the loss of the _Clan Macduff_ still within living memory? Everybody was much shocked at the time by that dreadful wreck. But shore-going people would have been more shocked had they taken the trouble to master the meaning of the Wreck Commissioner’s finding, when, by absolving the owner from all responsibility on the grounds that the vessel had been passed by a Board of Trade surveyor, he practically decided that the Board of Trade, through the official who certificated the _Clan Macduff_, was answerable for the dreadful disaster that befel her. At this rate what assurance have the travelling public, leaving sailors out of the question, that their lives are in any degree cared for? Apparently the Board of Trade are not to be reached if one of their servants passes a ship which goes to pieces as an ill-built, crazy machine in the first gale of wind she encounters; whilst the owner of the sea-coffin becomes an irresponsible being on the merits of a certificate cunningly courted and fraudulently given. If the Wreck Commissioner’s law be sound, then the criminality of certificating unseaworthy ships is intensified by the fact that it secures the owners against all penalties. Of course, both the Board of Trade and Lloyd’s act with perfect sincerity. They appoint the best men they can get for the trifling wages they give to do certain work, and it is not their fault that some of these men should prove unfaithful. But since nothing can be more certain than that the whole system of marine surveyorship, as we have it, is deceptive, blundering, and in a high degree obnoxious to human life and property, is it not about time that we set to work to invent some better method for guaranteeing, so far as shipbuilding workmanship and material go, the lives and property of the hundreds and thousands of people who go to sea as sailors and passengers? No society nor Government department has a right to subject men invested with powers made solemn by their involvement of precious life to the temptations to faithlessness which surround the marine surveyor.

“How on earth did the builders manage to get that cruelly ill-built vessel passed?” was asked not long since.

“Why, sir,” was the answer, “by taking care that the surveyor saw her through no other medium than a bottle of champagne.”

A glass of liquor may cost a hundred lives; but the surveyor still keeps his place, and draws his little salary, and goes on passing bad work, with every shipwright in his district sniggering over the man’s complaisance. Is it a system proper to denounce? I think it is; and no disinterested person who is in the secret but must deplore it as deeply dishonouring to the highest and most opulent and fertile branch of British industry, and as a species of legalized and truly rank conspiracy against the lives of passengers and sailors.

I have briefly referred to the case of the _Clan Macduff_; it will serve my purpose to give a more particular instance of marine surveying as I found it reported at length in one of the shipping journals. The brig _Scio_ was a wooden vessel built in 1839, and she was still afloat in 1881. She was the property of a Mr. Blumer Bushell, of South Shields, who had purchased her for £110, probably quite as much as she was worth. She was docked and repaired at a cost of £336. Her first start, after leaving the doctor’s hands, was unfortunate, for she went ashore at Kunda and damaged her keel. This was repaired, £84 being spent upon her. Next voyage she went to sea with a crew of eight hands, and a load of four hundred and twenty-nine tons of coal, her registered tonnage being a trifle over two hundred and sixty-five. Scarcely was she at sea when she was found to be making water. The master’s attention was engrossed by the job of pumping, in the midst of which the wind breezed up hard, the vessel fell off, the mainboom jibed and broke in halves, one piece of which, falling upon a boy, struck him down dead. The leak increased, and the crew compelled the master to run for Leith Roads. Here the vessel was placed on the mud, and caulked as high as nine feet of water around her would let the irons go. Thus soldered, she started once more, and plumped on to Inchkeith. She was towed off after discharging fifteen tons of cargo, and was docked with four hundred and fourteen tons of coal in her bottom. A portion of her crew now refused to share any more of her fortunes, so they were discharged and others shipped in their room. Once more this noble brig proceeded, but had not put fifteen miles betwixt her and the land when the crew came aft in a body, swore that the water was coming in fast and must presently drown the ship, and begged the master to put back. This he did, in the face of a strong head wind, which obliged him to beat up the Firth of Forth in short tacks. By-and-by a squall came along and blew the lower fore-top-sail out of the bolt-ropes. Soon afterwards the _Scio_ struck on some sands off Buckhaven, but managed to beat over them. The master said he now wanted to haul his brig off the land, but that the men refused to turn to. The crew denied this, but, let the truth be what it would, not long after the vessel had beaten over the sands she went ashore somewhere north of Kirkcaldy, on which the crew very sensibly got out. Such is the picturesque history of a brig which no man will believe could by any possibility have been found afloat in these days of the stringent Merchant Shipping Act, and of surveyors appointed by the Board of Trade to stop rotten vessels from proceeding to sea. It was declared at the re-hearing—for a good deal of litigation was generated by this dismal old brig—that two shipwright surveyors, who were officers of the Board of Trade, inspected the vessel whilst under repairs, visiting her several times and pointing out what should be done. Yet you will have observed that the _Scio_ never quitted the dock without all hands going to the pumps, only to knock off in order to come aft and request the skipper to put back to save their lives. And, as if this most unimpeachable testimony to the value of Board of Trade surveying was not of sufficient weight, there comes a Mr. Turner into court with samples of the timbers and planks of the wreck which he had inspected on the beach, and this gentleman deliberately declares—pointing to the samples as he speaks—that, from the survey he made of the wretched old hooker’s remains, she was unseaworthy.

There is no arrogance in pretending to wisdom after the event has happened. The surveyors might affirm what they chose, but we, having the end of the story under our eyes, are at full liberty to say that no declarations that the brig was seaworthy can make her seaworthy in the face of the water that ran into her bottom, and that kept the crew pumping and hurrying back to land to save their lives. Theories are excellent things in the absence of facts; but when a fact comes in the road the biggest theory must make way. The pumping and the putting back are the most satirical commentaries which can be imagined on the declarations of the Board of Trade surveyors. What is their notion of seaworthiness? Is it pumping morning, noon, and night, and all hands imploring the skipper to put his helm up and try back? If it be not that, if, on the contrary, they define seaworthiness to consist of a tight, well-found craft, how are they going to reconcile the results of their survey of the brig _Scio_ with the results of her attempted voyages?

I quote this example of surveying because it is illustrative of the worthlessness of the supervision practised by the Board of Trade under the present system of protecting life and property, and because it is typical of much of the work that is done in that way by the men who are paid to look after the interests they represent. The land-going justices who sat at a re-hearing of the first investigation absolved the owner on the grounds that he did all that he could to render his brig seaworthy—that is to say, “taking into consideration the precautions taken by the owner, under the surveillance of the Board of Trade surveyors at Shields and at Leith, and having all the work executed by practical men of long standing, the Court could come to no other conclusion than that set forth in the judgment.”

But what said the assessors, the nautical element in this investigation? “We do not concur in this judgment ... and will furnish our own report.” That report is the only endurable supplement to the justices’ annex that could be devised. The writers declare that the brig was not properly and efficiently repaired, and that she was not in a good and seaworthy condition when she left Leith; “that, in their opinion, the _Scio_ was in all probability in a worse state when she left Leith on November 26th than when she left the Tyne on the 2nd.” They deny that the owner used all those reasonable means in opening the _Scio_ out and ascertaining her exact condition which, as a practical man, he should have known a vessel of her age required, “and which he had such ample and available means of doing in his own dock, thereby neglecting to ensure her being sent to sea in a seaworthy condition.”

The whole story bears out this decision; and, the assessors’ judgment being unquestionably correct, what are we to think of the surveyors who could allow the brig to go to sea leaking like a sieve and then come into court and speak well of the vessel on the grounds that they had superintended the repairing of her and had even pointed out what should be done? In this case, happily, no lives were lost; the brig went ashore and her people left her. But, suppose she had gone down and drowned her crew out of hand, would not the Board of Trade, in the person of their representative, have been morally guilty of the death of the men? Assuredly they accepted the responsibility of that brig being in a fit condition to go to sea, as they accept the responsibility of every vessel which their representatives pass being seaworthy. This consideration ought surely to give significance to the system of supervision they now practise; and to make them ask themselves whether, having regard to the weight and solemnity of their self-imposed obligations, they have any right, as servants of the public, to persist in multiplying the perils of the deep by a sham and hollow method of inspection. There is not a shipmaster in the country who is not sensible of the necessity of a speedy reform in this matter; and there is not a passenger who would not eagerly join in the cry for reformation were even but a very little bit of the truth published in language which should be intelligible to the landsman.[79]

Footnote 79:

This was written five years ago. In five years, at the present rate of living, many changes happen; yet I do not find a single statement made in this paper that I can expunge or modify as a fact of to-day, as it was a fact five years since.

_FRENCH SMACKSMEN._

I will not say that the Chinese junk is a handsomer and handier ship than the three-masted top-sail lug-rigged French smack that hails from Boulogne or Gravelines or Calais; but, viewed from a distance, they are not at all unlike. In truth, the horizon of these seas really offers nothing more gaunt, primitive, and cumbersome than the French lugger-rigged smack with her immensely round bows, great spring forward, raking pole-masts crowned with fantastic vanes, brown sails almost as square at the head as at the foot, and cut with an inclination towards the bows like those of a junk, showing more freeboard than many a seven hundred ton steam collier goes to sea with, her decks full of men dressed in a queer kind of blouses, huge sprawling boots and immense earrings, six sweeps or long oars perhaps over either side, an old man steering, and half a dozen women in red or blue petticoats and handkerchiefs tied over their heads, bustling about—the whole of them, from the ancient chap at the tiller to the small boy gutting fish on the forecastle, talking at once, and dropping their various jobs of sweeping, repairing nets, stringing fish, and the like, to gesticulate.

Where do all these people sleep? How do they manage to stow themselves away? I once counted twenty-three men, women, and boys aboard a French smack that certainly did not exceed five and twenty tons. Three or four men—two of whom probably might be youngsters—would have been thought as many hands as that smack wanted had she been an English vessel. And yet, numerous as those French men and women were—and the ladies lent a hand, pulling and hauling with the rest—they worked their ship so slowly and laboriously, and made so much noise, that any one would have supposed she was under-manned and all hands abusing the skipper for putting to sea without a proper complement. The wind was an inshore breeze, and they had to beat out of harbour. It was enough to make one split one’s sides to see the fellows tumbling and floundering over one another whenever the helm was put down. Every man seemed skipper, bawled out orders in a lingo compared to which the accents of a Newcastle pitman excited by whisky would be considered chaste music, and I looked to see half of them in their frantic hurry topple overboard. It so happened that at the particular moment when the Frenchman had rounded on the starboard tack for the purpose of making another board so as to fetch the open water, a large passenger steamer was entering the harbour at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour. The men on the pier roared to the French smack to get out of the road. “Yash, yash!” answered the old fellow at the tiller, waving his hand, but he never shifted his helm, either not understanding what was said, or else supposing that the steamer would go clear of him. What followed happened in a breath. The steamer could not stop her way, though her engines were by this time reversed and the wheels sending a whole surface of foam sluicing towards her bows; her sharp stem took the Frenchman right amidships, there was a crash of splintered wood, and, the vessels immediately going clear, I saw that the unfortunate smack was cut down to the water’s edge.