A DREAM COME TRUE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 144, 19 June 1926, Page 21

A DREAM COME TRUE.

MEN WHO RUN SHIPS. HOW THE CREW FARES. (By PILGRIM.) (No. V.) During the informal concert in the s-.loon one night, our best tenor was in the middle of one of those silly old songs of the sea, when in the background a steward entered with come of the table silver. It was one of the many songs about the joys of a sailor's life, the "larboard-starboard-port-your-helm-loose-your-rud ler-hands-yo-heave-ho" type, which one suspect are written by landsmen. The steward's face was completely impassive; he appeared to take no interest whatever in thte romantic nonsense. The humour of the situation struck more than one of us. We thought of last year's strike about the £9 a month wage (which is more than the steward gets), life in the forecastle, and the long monotonous and often unpleasant duties of the steward. The little scene in the saloon seemed symbolical of the contrast between the landman's ideas ofsea life *nd the reality. Something more than ideas are involved, however. There is indifference. How many travellers really think seriously about the conditions and pay of the men who take them across the seas, from the officers on the" bridge, to the stokers in the bowels of the ship, and the stewards, who attend to their wants? The modern trend in shipbuilding encourages this ignorance and indifference. In the older ships you were brought into some contact with the crew. You occasionally met firemen and greasers in the alleyways, and you might even get a glimpse of the engines on your way to the cabin. In the new ships the engines are completely shut off from the passengers, and of the crew, none perhaps comes within their ken save the stewards and an occasional deck hand. Yet all these men have their world, and it would be a good thing if all travellers were put in the way of knowing something about it. Let every traveller who can make it his business to go into the stokehold, and penetrate to that mysterious »part where the crew sleep in the nose of the ship. To see these places is an education. The forecastle of a mod m liner is a much better place to live in than the forecastle of a sailing ship. It is dry and well lit, and though many men are crowded into a compartment there is a fair amount of room. Of course, some ships are better than others, but some are much worse. It is a common mistake to think of the mercantile marine in terms of the passenger liner. Really, tbe liner is in a minority; the tramp steamer, and the small one at that, forms the bulk of the service. Conditions in some of these ships must be very hard. Even in a large ship, +here may be some that in the landsman's opinion call emphatically for improvement. These crowded forecastles must be very hot in the tropics, and in bad weather they receive the first and strongest fury of the sea. There is also a lack of privacy; for one thing, watches sleep together, and men off duty are disturbed _y the movements of their comrades. And the men eat and sleep in the same room except those stewards who take their meals in the pantries, (in the tropics those pantries may not be very inviting places). A great need'is a -room for- meals and recreation, apart from'the sleeping quarters. __ot_er trouble in some of the older ships is that to get from the forecastle to duty, a seaman or a steward has to cross an open deck swept by the sea. It has to be conceded that improvements have been made and that to find room for better accommodation in a ship carrying- passengers and „ large cargo is not always easy. It is, however, not creditable to the British Mercantile Marine that some of these improvement have been introduced by foreign services. Stewards are a class apart. No poet that I know of has sung their praises or described their life. Masefield, who served before the mast, has written in a much-read poo_a that he will go down to the sea again, and all he asks is "a tall ship and a star to steer her by." Can one imagine" a poet saying he is going down to the sea again to clean' out cabins and carry food to travellers? Stevenson made a sea cook a famous character in fiction* but apparently it was left to that clever young Australian, Mr. Dale Collins, to make a largesize villain of a mere steward. "Ordeal" is an appropriate book to read on shipboard. It tells of a party of men and women in a schooner yacht in the Pacific who get into the clutches of their steward. Years of servitude among wealthy travellers, acting on a base disposition, moves this steward to take charge of the ship and inflict incredible tyrannies on the passengers. To turn the tables on the class that has ordered him about for so long is the highest joy he can conceive. The book closes in a stroke of* very telling irony. After escaping from the horrors of this madman's tyranny, the travellers are rescued by a great liner, and the leader of the party, finding that the stewards are a little slow in bringing drinks, remarks that the only thing wrong with the ship is the service. Though the lesson of his experience was lost on this man, it may do some over-particular travellers good to read "Ordeal." The steward is a hard-work-ing, obliging workman, who does unpleasant jobs and puts up with treatment from crochetty, selfish people that would strain the patience of most of us. We should not be surprised if he makes a success as a- waiter, or a club steward, or a hotel manager ashore; afloate he has had a severe training in the management of materials and people. He is a very human person, the steward, with his own opinions and experiences, a shrewd sense of humour at times, and often —strange though it may appear—family responsibilities. His hours are very long' and his pay poor. Less than £9 a month with broken' time is no great wage, is it? He gets tips, of course, but they vary with the ship, the season and the class of passenger he serves; and, like the seamen, he often haa broken time: that is to say, he signs off on arrival of his ship at the home port and may have to put in some days or weeks in idleness. A new crew (with the exception of departmental heads) is signed on for every voyage, and a man may not be able, to afford to wait for his ship; and the ship's officers may have to handle new men every trip. On some runs at any rate, a man loses two months' wages a year on the average, which is a serious matter in a wage of £9 a month or less.

Dr. Johnson said that going to sea was like going to gaol, with a chance of drowning added. The conditions of the seaman's life have greatly improved since his day, yet the question is often suggested: Why does anyone go to seat To-day we think it extraordinary that _ten ehould hare been found to work

the old sailing ships on miserable wages and in wretched conditions. Think of going aloft round the Horn to furl frozen sails, grappling with them with numbed, bleeding hands on a swaying spar. Yet men did this, and took a pride in their work. Some years ago a middle-aged A.B. shipped for his first voyage in steam in a New Zealand liner. Off the Horn the steamer passed a sailing ship that had been trying for weeks to round that point of storm. This sailor lpoked at her with admiration. "That's a sailor's job," he said. "You're not a sailor here; you're only a paintscrubber." At the end of his contract he went back to sail; the steamer must 1 have been more comfortable, but he preferred his old work and had a touch of the artist's contempt for the mere tradesman. Probably there are many sailors who would not thank us for pitying them. It is their job and they do it, and it is a good thing for landsmen that this is so. The landsman, however, can at least be grateful to them for keeping the wheels of commerce moving, and when he reads or hears of their grievances, be mindful of the hardships of their lives. A future generation may be just as critical of some conditions of the seaman's life to-day as this generation is of conditions in the old days of toil.