OUR MERCHANT FLEET.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 148, 22 June 1917, Page 3

OUR MERCHANT FLEET.

LECTURE BY MR. C. H. POOLE, M.P.

The stirring history of the British mercantile marine, and the no less stirring exploits of British sailormen in the present war. were the subject of a lecture delivered last night by Mr. C. 11. Poole. M.P.. at the Leys Institute before a large audience. Mr. T. W. Leva. president of the Institute, presided.

Mr. Poole, who spoke from a thorough first-hand acquaintance with the sea, ships and sailormen, in various parts of the world, devoted the earlier part of his address to the romance of British shippinfr in the sailing days. an<t before loiif.' infected the audience with his own evident affection for the sailing ship and the tough old salts who carried the British merchant Hag into the remotest corners of the seven seas. Beginning with the bluff-bowed semi-na\al vessels renowned under the name of Kast-India-men, lie described many peculiar maritime customs of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including the payment of masters and mates to a large extent in percentages on passage-money. allowances of space for the. .carriage of private cargo, and the right to use valuable matting and rattan as "dunnage " for protecting the ordinary merchandise carried —privileges which were known to net a skipper Cri.lHH) a trip. Many EastIndiamen. the lecturer explained, reached the limit of size for wooden ships, but for long the standard size was 4!) l) tons, line explanation of this was that ac cording to law every vessel of more than .">OO tons bad to' carry a chaplain. A curious counterpart of mercantile conditions in the present war was to be discovered in the annals of the year ISO:;, when ".lolm Company" lent' the

liovernment 10.000 tons of "shipping for six months, free of charge, siinplv for the purpose of guarding tbe Channel. In those days. when fust French frigates and privateers abounded in many seas, the armed Fast Indiamen sailed at night witli no lights of any kind, and even the boatswain's pipe was not sounded. When the Kast India Company's monopoly of trade with tbe Kast was abolished 1 after an existence of two centuries new life was given to the British mercantile marine, and the old leisurely era gave place t., that of the last, tea clipper. Meanwhile the transatlantic trade had grown to great proportions, and in the early forties began the building of the magnificent fast sailing ship-. built with the lines of racing yachts. that made British seamanship renowned as never before. 'The speaker went on to deal with the marvellous sailing records put up by such famous clippers as the Rainbow. Sea Wit.-h. Thermopylae. Red .laekct. and Dreadnought, and their worthy American competitors in the trade after the repeal of the navigation laws in ISP.I. lie recalled memories of the famous sailing ships trading to Melbourne. Sydney and New Zealand iv later years, and told a number of stories of the men who manned and navigated them. Referring to the cruelly hard conditions on the "windjammers" of those days. Mr. Poole remarked that if the crews had been as well treated as the prisoners in modern New Zealand gaols it would have been impossible to make then) leave their .-hips, lie al-o (raced the growth of steam, and paid a tribute to the type of Scotch marine engineer described iv Kipling', >r e . Andrew's Hymn."

Dealing with the part played liv the merchant service in the present war. Mr. Poole observed that the nation had always assumed that the siiilorman would do his duty, and that assumption had never proved wrong. .Not „ single British crew sin,-,, the war broke out had refused to put to sea until the reeenl trouble over Ramsay Mac Donald. | Applause.) The loyalty of the merchant service had been taken for granted in practically all former wars, and its services, though little proclaimed, had been immense. In this war its performances overshadowed all that it had done in the past, and it was now entitled to something hotter than the older appellation, "the left, arm of the Navy "