THIS ENGLAND

Evening Star, Issue 19550, 7 May 1927, Page 2

THIS ENGLAND

XVII.—SES TALK [Written by Edgae Wallace, for the ‘ Evening Star.’] It occurred to me that sailoring had gone a bit out of fashion as the ideal future of small boys and melodramatists. Did not the staff-sergeant, in writing and sketching out the cast of a small drama we were producing for the A.T.A., make this vital note: “Sailors, rollicking, one”? But the sailor, where is he P He has vanished from our midst; he is so shadowy a figure that even the designers of Christmas almanacs hesitate to employ him as a model. No more does he appear with his oleographic smile, clasping to his bosom mothers, aged, one.

We have a Royal Navy somewhere; occasionally we see a bluejacket passing through London on holiday leave. Why he does not appear in London by the battalion once a year and take over the Royal guard for one short month, nobody knows. It isn’t because we don’t like to see him, or that he isn’t as picturesque as the Guardsman. One supposes that somewhere in Whitehall sits a permanent and snuffy official who cannot agree to the expense. But really, I am not writing about the Royal Navy, but of—well, just sailors.

Fashions have changed in the past fifty years, and they who go down to the sea in ships nowadays wear almost anything except plus fours. The swagger liners may carry a few sailorishlooking men with caps and jumpers and bell-bottomed trousers complete, but no more than a toastmaster would go to the races in a scarlet coat would they appear in their off-duty moments wearing the uniform of the sea. A passion for mufti is a curious complex in all who are expected to wear uniform. Have I not seen the respectable first officer of a coasting passenger steamer taking his watch on the bridge in a bowler hat and, a golf jacket? So it is that no sooner is the ship’s company paid off than vanishes the honest blue serge of the sea, and there enters a natty line in gents’ suitings. But the sea remains the same, its wonder and its awe-compelling majesty. And the age-old talk of the sea? I was down in a southern port the other day—a port not a thousand miles from Southampton. In fact, it was Southampton, and I loafed round with an eye for sailors’ homes. Sailors’ homes, says the cynic, are dull places, designed to keep the sailor out of the nice, bright public-houses. There are some which are run upon purely denominational lines, where, in return for a certain mechanical cheerfulness of greeting, you are expected to give a few moments’ thought to your soul’s salvation. _ And there are sailors’ homes which are very cheerful places indeed, and which do not wind up the night with a" service of praise and song. For this is a fact which must be painful. ,to many—that no sailor will ever regard a place as being homelike unless he can get a glass of good ale. Down in Southampton there is caravanserai where stewards meet; and a steward is a something between Lord Nelson and a piastre d’hotel, so that he may converse with you readily and easily on the romance and_ mane of sea travel, and can switch lightly to the relative me .is of son au efeiMii and turbot au gratin. These men talk of the world as though it were High street, Islington. , “ . . . I heard that song sung in Melbourne. . . . No, it wasn’t, it was up at old Dan’s, jn Colombo: “You’re wrong,” said his friend, “it was the night you and me went ashore at Singapore—you remember; it was the night young Carter was took ill through eating chop suey.” There was a deck hand present who remembered eating chop suey without any ill-effect. He was ready to defend chop suey violently. Now, I am not interested in Chinese foods, but I had gone a long way out of my track because somebody had told me that if I went to this establishment —1 refuse to cal! it a club—l should hear real sea talk* So to this licensed house I came and settled myself m an old Windsor chair, and waited till the talk shitted in the direction of adventU“6.' . . her brother married old Tom’s sister—” , „ ~ “That makes him Poe’s uncle,” said a husky voice. But the tale of the seas would outstories of storm-driven windjammers, their canvases blown to rags; of high green seas that came thundering over the foc’s’le. • • •. „. , , ~ “Now, in Australia—” (ah, hero it was coming!) “you have to show a rear light on your bicycle, or you re 'fined. There was a chap, a quartermaster of the Mooltan, who got pinched—” , . “ Not Australia,” protests somebody. “You’re thinking of Tasmama._ 1 knew a cliap who bought three tickets “in a Tasmania sweepstake, and took the second and third prize. He settled down in Australia and married the daughter of one of the biggest bugs in Sydney.” Somebody knew another man who had drawn a prize in a sweepstake—or was it a lottery?—and drank himI self to death in a year. Everybody 1 agreed that he ought to have put a 'Did” anybody remember that White Star steward who came into half a million dollars and “ did it in ’’ racing? Everybody named him. He was one of the legendary heroes of the fleets. The end of the ruined steward was tragic. Ho had been found drowned in a pond; it was only 2ft deep at its deepest pan , , , “ I’ve known a man drowned in Gin of water. ...” The conversation went naturally in the direction of George Joseph Smith, the infamous brides-in-the-bath expert. And from George Joseph Smith to hanging and the advantages of electrocution waa but a step. .1 spoke t.i a steward, a man who had travelled round the world more often than he could recall, who had served in iue Union Castle, the P. and 0., the British Orient, the Cunard, the Camadim Pacific (in both oceans), the Royal Mad, and other lines which 1 cannot remember. ; “Yes, .heie’s no doubt about it, he I said, “ sea life is the best life. It’s 1 healthy and open and free, as the song i S ays. . . . Storms? Well, you get a bit of bad weather, especially in the Western Ocean round about October. And I’ve known it pretty bad in the Mediterranean and down in the Indian Ocean. I remember one day ' when 840 pieces of crockery were ‘smashed! And talking of crockery, when I was in the old Lucania—and ; that goes back a few years—l made six ; trips, across the Western Ocean, and i we never had the fiddles off the table ‘for a minute! We had to serve the | soup in cups. One trip wo never had 1 more than eight people in the dining ' room for breakfast from the mimice s we left Sandy Hook till we went into ' the Mersey. Have you ever been in the Bight? That’s the place for storm-: It was so bad that our h' ad steward cut down the dinner to three coursesoup, joint, and sweets. The -nip didn’t keep still enough to let the blancmanges set. .' -1” Later that night I met a typical salt —a man who gave you the impression that locked up in his bosom were stories compared with which 'Treasure Island’ made rather dull reading. I spoke to him of the sea, its charm and magic. . “Ah!” he said thoughtfully, knocking, out his pipe and.shaking his head. “You’re right there, guv’uor. And

the mysteriousest thing is why they don’t hang them fellows that started •he shipping strike, in Australia! My boy was on a ship that called to coal, and them larrikins and hooligans got him off, and said if he went back To work they d murder him! He got no money—nothing! Had to work his pas* sage homt And now N can’t get a ship for love cr money. Is that right— X ask you? He’s one of the best sailors that ever stepped aboard a ship. I got a fretwork frame of his at home that might’have been done by a artist. And. sing. . . j He’s got a voice like that what’s-his-name, the Eyetalian man. Lor’, bless my life, I had it on the tip of me tongue. . . .” Before I left Southampton I would have given a fiver to hear somebody say “Yo ho!” or “Heave ho!” and any drunken-sailor who had-sung me a sen chanty T won Id-.have put beyond the want of beer for the rest of the year.