WORK ABOARD A STEAMSHIP.

Evening Post, Volume LXI, Issue 140, 15 June 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

WORK ABOARD A STEAMSHIP.

1. In an illustrated interview with Mr. Frank T. Bullen, in the Young Man lor j February, we are told that the deepest depth of a great ship is a place unfit for human habitation, Mr. Bullen would have coloured men to do the work; which ho declares is unfit for white men to do — not, as he is careful to explain, because the coloured men have not immortal souls to save,' but because of their heat-accus-tomed nature and their capacity of endurance. Picture this scene in an engineroom during a gale. Science has not yet mastered the problem of regulating steam at sea, and, instead of the "governors" which shut off steam on land engines, the throttle-valve on an engine at sea must be worked by hand. "I have watched an engineer," says Mr. Bullen, "standing on the engine-room floor with the throttle-valve in his hand, while the ship was like a. buck-jumping horse, plunging head downwards, releasing her propeller from the pressure of the sea; and the wonder to my mind has been that, as the propeller lost its grip, the suddenly-re-leased force of steam did not tear the engines from their foundations. That man must stand there perhaps for hours without relief, shutting off steam every time the ship takes its plunge; and. you -would marvel, if you could be there, now a man could live in such a place, in such a heat, and be % equal to such a strain. Such men are the slaves of steam. It is a hard master ashoTe, but at sea . We have called into being a set of conditions that are terrible for -men." "Sanitary authorities," continues Mr. Bullen, "are never tired of saying that you get more air and less ventilation at sea than anywhere else, and there is moral as well as physical truth in -the saying. You get a lot of men gathered together from the four winds of heaven. My little study is bigger than the forecastle in which I spent seven months with ten men, day and night. Over and over again I had seen the lamp burning blue with foul air. In. bad weather where are the men to dry their clothes? Wet clothes, wet deck, a stale smell down below, and all these men huddled together in that small space ! How can such conditions breed a fineness of character'/ I don't know what you can do. If you suggest a remedy the shipowner says you are laying a burden on him which the business won't stand. There was a ship built >?ith cubicles for the men, but I don't know how it worked. Ido know that the great want is privacy, which is as real on a man-of-war as on a merchant ship, and is very hard to bear. The grand old salt — the old British merchant seaman — is gone," says Mr. Bullen. "You will find him occasionally on the coast, which does not attract the foreigner, but in another generation you will read of him only in books. The old romance of a white-winged sailing ship is gone. But there is a new romance. I am looking for" the man to come along and write the romance of the engine-room, to draw us the typical feature of the nineteenth century — the engineer."