A PILOT'S LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 12, 13 July 1935, Page 6

A PILOT'S LIFE

hooghly; aristocrats

THOUSAND A YEAR

No pilot can take command of- a ship, according to the "Notices to Mariners," where it is laid down that a pilot is only there to help the' master with his local knowledge, says a writer in the "Manchester Guardian." Such is the law, and after thirty years at sea I find no law which is broken more than this one. Pilotage requires a special knowledge,, special training, and special-ability...-It does not necessarily follow that because a man is a good shipmaster he will make a good pilot. It is true that the majority of pilots, have been masters, or at least mates, but they have had to learn a new way of seafaring before they became efficient pilots. The need for sea training is becoming less evident every year. Liverpool pilots get their sea senses, or legs, by working aboard the pilot boat oft Point Ly'nas before they do a year or two at sea. At one time the Liverpool pilots took you right up to Manchester, but the-Canal has had its own pilots for many years now. Glasgow pilots.must have a master's certificate and must have served as mate or master of a vessel of a certain tonnage before they can start learning to be a Clyde pilot. This can be taken as the general qualification for all other pilotages around our coasts. Pilotages have become localised today, and there is no competition. In some ports the big steamship lines retain a particular pilot, but even that custom of many years' standing is dying out. Pilots no longer have to go searching off the Lizard or westward x>f the-Sallies'for .ships; ships come-to them at their recognised pilot stations. There is- no argument as to the price of service. A pilot's service is paid for on a definite scale. .THE OLD DAYS. It was. not always so. In my early days at sea'pilot cutters from all the Channel ports cruised off Land's End, Elbe, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Dunkirk. Pilots boarded you far down channel, and the Bristol Channel pilots looked for' their ship west of the Scillies. At one time it was customary when leaving'one port for another in Britain or on the Continent to employ a deep-water pilot to take you round the coast. Only foreigners who have, never been in our waters before do that today. The old skippers of windjammer days, who spat blood at the thought of anyone but themselves giving an order aboard their ships, looked upon pilots as a necessary evil; your modern shipmaster looks upon the pilot as a welcome blessing and hands .over the charge of his ship with thanks and confidence.. Any old shellback can tell you stories''of Liverpool pilots being taken across the Western Ocean to New York and of American pilots being brought back again in the days of the packet-ships, and even later, because the weather was too bad to disembark them at their pilot stations. The general public have an idea that pilots are. highly paid, but if one considers the great responsibilities they have one might come to the conclusion that they are not paid enough. There are about three hundred pilots attached to the Port of. London; their earnings range from £1000 to £650 gross a year. These are the deep-water pilots who take ships to sea from Gravesend. The river pilots make less. The average earnings of the pilots at other ports are a good deal less. THE HOOGHLY SERVICE. The aristocrat of all the pilot services is the Hooghly pilot, whose salary is somewhere in the region of £1200 a year; and he deserves it, for there is : no more difficult pilotage than, and no pilotage with so many changing conditions and dangers as, the Bengal pilot service. A finely descriptive and excellent account of this service has been written.by a Hooghly pilot, Mr. M. H. Beattie, who first joined the service in,1878 as a boy fresh from a training ship at-home. Mr. Bealtie takes us. through all the phases of pilotage on this river, Which is never the same to navigate. The hand-lead of the leadsman is the weapon of a Calcutta pilot. They say that the Ganges washes down enough silt to its many mouths every year to build a Great Pyramid, and the Hooghly gets its share. The problem of the Hooghly pilot is to find where the silt is deposited eaqh tide; it'never seems to be in the same place. two tides runningl.. Where you expect to find-plenty" of water ■ you may find little to spare in navigating a ship. THE VOYAGE OUT. Mr. Beattie explains all this. He starts his book with his voyage out to Mad"ras, where the Hooghly pilots joined the P. and O. ships in the old days, and not at the brigs station off the Sandheads. He tells of comedies and tragedies in his many years, of the river service, and has written a book which will amuse and at times thrill the general reader and delight all seamen. The brigs which he'joined as a leadsman in his boyhood have now been replaced by palatial yacht-like steamers, but they are still called "the brigs" by all the seamen of these seas. We have long wanted a book of the Hooghly pilotage, and now Mr. Beattie has given us one which is all we had hoped for. My own experience of the Hooghly was a period of over two years' regular trading between South African ports and Calcutta. Y/e. arrived ofl! the Sandheads regularly from Rangoon every three months, so I know a little of the difficulties with which a pilot has to contend, and I know a little of their arrogant. pride; but I forgive them that as I also know a little of their ability and worth. Merchant-service seamen always speak of the Hooghly pilots as snobs. Well, perhaps. But are we not all snobs, more or less? Still, there were stories of Hooghly pilots giving up their £1200 a year and joining the R.N.V.R. as seamen in the war years. I believe these stories, knowing the type of "men in the service.