A MASTER MARINER

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 19

A MASTER MARINER

MAURETANIA'S CAPTAIN

"I have had ten years in sail, six years afloat "on active service in; the Navy, three years in every type of tramp steamer, including coal, lumber, and ore ships, and- twenty-eight years in first-class jpassenger ships," writes Captain S. G. S. McNeil in "Great Waters: Memoirs .of a. Master Mariner." Ho "mentions these faits in passing in. his chapter on the training required for a modern' seaman, and especially for an officer. "When he re: tired Captain. McNeil was in command of the Mauretania. He was her captain when she broke her own records of,twenty-two years. His account of his experiences in her in. emergencies and bad weather shows how much she has owed to tall square-rigged' masts. They belonged to the ships in which Captain McNeil served as apprentice and junior officer. '• ■ ■

The,younger generation of seaman has no experience in such vessels. Something is needed to_ take its place, as the Navy ,is discovering. Captain McNeil naturally advocates sailing trainingships. ■' It is generally admitted that a sailing vessel fosters the qualities required in a sea: officer better than anything else. : If it is objected that:the modern young sailor would have to learn a great deal that he would afterwards forget, Captain McNeil replies that so does every schoolboy. It is not, however," a. complete. answer. Every schoolboy does not have to endure hardship and risk his life in artificial surroundings. Such would a sailing training-ship be now. Training in square-rig cannot, be revived'because the sailing ship is obsolete' and nearly extinct, j The knowledge that she was so would take the heart out of a sailing training, and a sailing ship handled half-heartedly is a death-trap. The problem of a substitute is important: It is true -that scarcely' any seamanship is required of _the modern deck-hand on ordinary occasions, but that" is all the more reason for. somebody, above all an officer, to possess the neat-handed-ness and power of quick improvisation that characterise a real sailor ; for extraordinary occasions occur sooner or later at sea:: Perhaps the solution is to be found in more boat-work and in apprenticeship in the smallest coasting vessels, in which, whatever the propelling! power, weather and tides'must always be reckoned with, and in "which the traversing of narrow winding channels and the entry of difficult harbours demands ■ constant attention and quiok judgment. Service in such, craft would be attractive to boys, a most important point. ■ Captain McNeil puts himself the question whether he would go to sea if ho was a boy again, and answers: "Of courso I would, but.'not if I were a boy of the present day." There is food for much thought for a nation that depends oh its seamen as Great Britain does in this considered judgment of one of its ablest master mariners. ... ■'..':■ .-..■-..