THE HARDSHIPS OF A MERCHANT JACK.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12508, 22 May 1906, Page 9

THE HARDSHIPS OF A MERCHANT JACK.

By J. E. Patterson. It appears that the Bishop of Gibraltar has been telling the Nice supporters of tho "Hock" Minion to Seamen that the Merchant Jack's food ami sleeping quarters are no better than they wero hfty years ago. Ho even has double that the latter are now so gocd as they were then. - In addition, a worker in St. Andrew's Waterside Mission, writing to a contemporary on the .bishop's utterance, says ho could "describe the food and tho cooking thereof in language which woidd shock the taste of his readers." With the above as proof, tho following keynote experiences may be given more credence than they would otherwise receive. ~.■,. ■, 1 wan in a steam "tramp' that adventured her dithering plates into the Mediterranean when the Baltic ports woro frozen up. Her name was White Rose. Chunk of Coal would have suited her butter. She was a "Tynesider" of 1100 odd tons; tho worst bad-weather packet I ever trod. Besides, it seemed to be in the log-book of her rough destiny to have foul weather whenever she crossed "the Bay." On the third day out from Swansea "salt horse" was served to all hands for'ard. (In nearly all "tramps" only the cabin and engineers' tables get fresh provender after the second day out.) Ite offence was rank—l mean tho beef's. It smelt to heaven. At least it smelt the men out on deck, they cursing it nnd its purveyors, the "old man," and the owners, incidentally to the far antithesis of heaven. But' tho whole of thus was only incidental. The re.il trouble, was: Who should bell the cat by fetching out tho offending joint, and almost equally insulting soup into which the beef had been dipped for the sake of flavouring, and present them to "the old man"? This duty whs thrust on to elderly Bob Gudge. "He and a young A.B. went into tho fo'c'sle for the offenders. Just then two pallid devils from tlio vessels hades appeared from their fo'c'sle, loaded wirh what tuey were then supposed to bo eating. Let mc state _it briefly and simply—they were "goin aft";" their language did more than smell to heaven. The Hose, as we called her, because of «-v.r inherent love of brevity, was then wallowing her way through "the Bay." with .1 fine nor'-wester on lier starboard beam. And she could wallow. She had the proud reputation cf having rolled her fore-yardarms, port and starboard, dip-and-dip, into tlie Bay of Lyons—-v. here Nelson iost the Vanguard's foremast nnd main and mizzen topmasts, when on his way to the Battle of the. Nile. Oh, she was a nice

"roll-along, blow-along" old girl, was the Rose. She didn't believe in doing things by halve 1 ?. She was a Britisher from her keej to her main truck. She dipped deep and regularly. But so long as I knew her she always rceo again after each dip.

At any ratOj Bob Gudge and his companion came forth with the beef and soup, holding them well away from their line of scent. The liremen had paused to owear, between the break of the fo'c'sle and tho fore-hatch. Bob had an unwelcome job in hand; he went ahead to cot it done, his two watchmates close at liis heels. They got a four-fathom start of the pale devils. Tho Roso went heavily from the wind; thou swung straight back as far. and more determinedly. This was just in front of a

white-topped green wall, a good twelve feet high. She felt her danger, as a fchip always dees at 6uch times, and tried to roll end run away. Her seven and a half knots and tubby bottom were not equal to such an effort; experience might have told her so. Half that green wall fell 6heer over the rail, on and about those weather-eide mutineers against rotten meat. It took them in it.s arms, them and the beef and the soup, like a strong, young, demonstrative mothor takes the chubby cooer from whom she has been absent all the day. The two stokers on the lee deck were equally embraced. All the men were fresh from their bunks, while the breeze and the roller had como po6t-ha6te from the Arctic.

Men, beef from which they jump as if it were a sliark. 6oup, tin platters, wild salt water, ana wider curses, make a fine pandemonium. A real "hardcase" Nova Scotia mate would have danced in sheer uncontrollable delight at that hurly-burly of things, men, and words

Yet the beef—it was like Lady Macbeth's hands. Not all the sweet waters of heaven could take away its stain.

By-and-by, after much blasphemy, grabbing, and gapping, Bob, his companions, and tho two pale devils appeared before "tho old man" on the bridge, where ho and tho mate stood with their sextant* ready for "taking the sun," and from which post of vantage they had watched the watery scnamblo below. The tale was told; but all to no purpose. "The old man" smelt tho meat, and swore that he could detect nothing wrong in it. No, because he had never known what it was to have a Fonse of eniell; of which tho men were not aware. In the face of such calm, simple, incontrovertible testimony to the opposite they could do no more tlmu retire, wondering momentarily whether they were awake or asleep.

But "the old man's" victory was only short-lived, as it should be. Before "tho Bock" wa.s reached tho chief engineer had entered tho lists on behalf of his men—not an uncommon action by a chief at such times, although a mate was never known to do the same for sailors. If such a thing did happen Davy Jones would straightway surrender his dead. To give tlio dry and sickening details briefly, tho pork and the butter were as bad as the beef; and "tho old man'" was to blame. The owners allowed him tho usual cightbenpeneo per man per diem, out ot which ho regularly fed them from the scrapheap of provisions thrown ashoro by deep-water "wind-jammers." He was, a canny Goordy, taking care of the pounds, and knowing that the banker's account thereof would take care of itself. Yet ho was far from being the only nautical Shylock in that respect.. A few years ago there wero hundreds of them, masters and owners; apparently there ia littlo or no improvement, although it must bo admitted that a firm hero and there both feed their men well and have competent cooks. I havo known masters of steam "tramps" running on "time charters," between Black Sea and Mediterranean ports, give their crews fowls, geese, and tho like—because of these Doing cheaper up there than meat was—till tho men flatly refused to do another hand-stir unless they got their "beef and pork, according to tho ship's articlas." But it must ateo bo said that the refusal to accept "another thing of skin an' bone an' feathers" was often due to the fact that if tho fowl w;is boiled it was boiled to rags, anid if it was baked (as oven-oooked food is termed aboard) it entered the fo'c'sle in a half-cooked or a burnt condition. As to tlio enormous importance of reform in cooking aboard shin, have we not, within the past year or two, seen schools started for tno purpose cf teaching ships' "cooks" to cook ? As the old saying graphically expressed it, there were thousands of men in that capacity who "could mot boil salt water properly." Naturally, as tho most uninitiated mind will readily see, in "wind-jam-mers," especially deep-water ones, that make passages of U0 tc 120 days' duration, the provisions must be of a worse, kind than in steam "tramiw" that arc seldom more than a month at seaTrue, one does not hear much nowadays of tobacco-boxes and tho like being made from pieces of lean "salt horse." Yet aboard such ships biscuits full of weevils are as common as tho dogwatch, while evil-smelling beef and pork a,ro a pretty regular occurrence towards tho end of a long voyage. Seeing that few landsmen know it, I may state here that ships' provisions are supplied on a Board of Trado scale, which consists of beef and pork, bread (biscuits), tea and coffee, butter or potatoes, sugar, tlhreo quarts of water per day for all purposes, and half a pound of flour every other day; all these things are regulated by weight, just enough to keep a man in working condition. Most owners, however, are good enough to add marmalade, pepper, and salt as extras—because no man eats his full "whack" of biscuits. Tho evil of the scale need not be dwelt on.

"With regard to the sleeping quarters, what can be said for a bare iron place,, icy in winter and "sweating" in summer ; where paints and oils ar« housed; through which dirty chains and ropes aro dragged daily when in harbour; whore tho platters have to.rcist on the floor for lack of a table, and where water comes through the ports in every heavy head-sea? This is tho usual steam "tramp's" fo'c'ele, and in other ways the small "wind-jammer's" is no better. Again, in the woodwork of many a "tramp's" fo'c'tle vermin ("black jumpers'' and "red crawlers") are so securely fixed that neither tar, caustic soda, paraffin, nor carbolic acid solution will clear them out. Sulphur "smoking," that kills rats by the fccore, has no more effect on them than fresh air has. As for the rats themselves, in many a ship, unless thero be some kind of grain aboard, they will sit on the fo'c'sle floor and eat whatever is thrown to them. In a "tramp" in which I spent five months grain-carrying in tho Mediterranean, the rats were so numerous that a man knocked four off his bunk-edge with the sweep of his arm. At the moment those four ond many others were apparently making a procession overdecks from tho fore-peak—at the head and below the fo'c'sle—to tho forehold, because they could not get through the iron bulkhead

Rats are fond of woollen and worsted materials, and where neither tallow nor ■grain is to bo had they will feed on such things. In one veseel I sailed in, where food for them was scarce, they nightly made for socks, .stockings, mittens, or anything el=o of the kind left about. When the loose articles of this naturo were put away, the rate actually nibbled the cocks on tho men's feet at the latter slept in their hunks. Missiles had to be thrown at them to drive thorn away. In fact, when tho vessel came into cold latitudes, all hands had to resort to 6uch preventive expedients to keep the rats away that tlie story of them would read like an extravaganza.