Windjammers and Sea Tramps

During recent years I have had the opportunity of listening to many speeches on nautical subjects. Some of them have not only been instructive but interesting, inasmuch as they...

The seamen of the fifties and sixties were grievously superstitious. They viewed sailing on a Friday with undisguised displeasure; and attributed many of their disasters when on...

If the oceans of the world could speak, what marvellous tales of heroism they could relate that are hidden in the oblivion of their depths. Sailors generally are singularly reti...

It is a noteworthy fact that many of the featherbrained, harum-scarum captains endeavoured to man their vessels with men who had been trained in north-country colliers. These me...

When I first went to sea, and for many a long day after, I used to hear the sailors who were more than a generation my seniors, talking of the wages they received during the Rus...

The present-day sailor has a princely life compared with that of his predecessors of the beginning and middle of the last century. Those men were ill-paid, ill-fed, and for the...

At the present time there is much writing and talking as to how the merchant service is to be kept supplied with seamen. Guilds, Navy Leagues, and other agencies of talk have be...

The signing on and the sailing from Liverpool or London docks of these vessels were not only exciting but pathetic occasions. The chief officer usually had authority to pick the...

Nothing is more comic than the sailor's aversion to the person nautically recognised as the "sky-pilot." I have known men risk imprisonment for desertion, on hearing that a pars...

It was a bad day for Spain when Philip allowed the "Holy Office" to throw Thomas Seeley, the Bristol merchant, into a dungeon for knocking down a Spaniard who had uttered foul s...

As soon as the vessel was moored in a home port, decks cleared up and washed down, the mate intimated to the crew that their services would not be required any longer; and those...

I always feel inclined to break the law when I see a West End or any other dandy on a theatrical stage libelling the sailor by his silly personification: hitching his breeches,...

The average seaman of the middle of the nineteenth century, like his predecessor, was in many respects a cruel animal. To appearance he was void of every human feeling, and yet...

In those days the deep-sea shipmaster looked upon the collier skipper as his inferior in everything, and regarded himself in the light of an important personage. His bearing was...

Amid the many sides of the average sailor's character there is none that stands out so prominently as that of bravery and resourcefulness. Here is an instance of both qualities....