RUNNING AWAY

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 February 1934, Page 10

RUNNING AWAY

GRIEVANCE AGAINST WRITERS.

Ex-Sergeant Hyslop, late of the deck police, has a grievance against all people who write stories of the sea. Such people as Defoe, Stevenson, Clark Russell, and Conrad were, and still are, in his view, a menace to the wellbeing of our youths. All bays, according to ex-Sergeant Hyslop, want to run away from their homes at some time or other, and boys who live in our seaports have a greater inducement to do so than boys vzho live in the coun-i try. There are the docks and the ships with a beckoning bowsprit which seems to say to a boy, “Come, I will take you away from the tyranny of your parents and your schoolmaster.” School never, looks so uninviting to an imaginative or adventurous lad as it does from a ship's deck in port; or from a dock shed, with its hundred and one interesting cargoes or spicy smells of foreign lands. School and even the best of homes or parents seem ordinary in the presence of a yarn-spinning old shellback whose seagoing days are over and who has found a job splicing cargo slings and repairing stevedores’ gear in a dock shed. Cargo lumpers are an unromantic breed and have little time and less inclination to listen to his reminiscences. But the boy, with an imagined eternity of school years ahead of him, is an audience appreciated by any loquacious ancient mariner. No boys' should be allowed in docks, and such books as “Robinson Crusoe,” “Treasure Island,” or “The Wreck of the Grosvenor” should be prohibited by law. Such are the opinions of exSergeant Hyslop, late of the dock police, which brings me to the story of tlib ex-Sergeant’s son Harry, who ran away to sea in the days when ships were ships and sailormen were sailors.

TOOK AFTER HIS MOTHER. Young Harry must have taken after his mother, for he lacked his father’s dislike for things maritime. Possibly ' the years spent at the dock gates enlarging on the stupidity of seagoing men, or telling drunken sailors to sober up before he would allow them in the dock, may have had something to do with the Sergeant’s objection to the sea as a career for his son; but you couldn’t keep young Harry out of the docks or away from the river. He spent his Saturdays and his holidays ■there. At the age of thirteen he begged his father to let him go to sea. He entreated his mother, but his father was firm. No son of his would be a. sailor. At fourteen Harry stowed away on a Geordic brig. His mother cried, his father swore, but Harry was gone. Thirty years ago there was no rougher or harder school for sailors than a Geordic brig. The trade was heart-breaking. The North Sea winter gales are as strong and the seas as relentless as the gales arid seas of any

other , parts of the world.' The men were sailors to their finger-tips, but uncouth and illiterate. There was no harder training for a youth than a Geordic brig. Harry was beaten and cursed, not because he was a stowaway—stowaways were welcomed in those days,—but because it is the lot of all boys to be Tope’s-ended and cursed. But Harry thrived. He even liked his first" ship and made a second trip on her. His father believed in “lying on Iho bed you have made”; only lie made Harry’s bed harder than ever by telling the captain of the brig :o make life such a misery for the lad

that he would never want to go to sea again. The second voyage was hell for Harry. Fortunately from London to the Tyne and back is a very short voyage, but no shorter than a sailor boy’s memory when he gets ashore’. There all unpleasant memories are forgotten, and only the good times and the manliness of a sailor’s calling are remembered. A month ashore and Harry shipped away deepwater.

BOUND FOR AUSTRALIA. He had no trouble this time. His Geordic brig discharges got him a job on a fine ship—Australia bound. His father gave up protesting. He saw it was no use, Harry would not stay ashore. Four years passed before he saw his son again, his son who wrote glowing letters from China, Japan, Chile, and th,e Californian coast; glowing letters of childhood dreams come true, manly letters which brought tears to his mother’s eyes and pride to his heart. Harry meant to bo an officer. He was studying hard. And then the home-coming after four years of wandering, such a home-com-ing as a shore-reared boy can never have. Strange tales to be told and weird experiences to be- related. Harry no longer a boy as the youths of his age were, but full man size, with the outlook of manhood and the prospects of a western ocean greyhound to command. The sea and the future have no terrors to a man of eighteen who is about to sit for his second mate’s certificate. His examination shattered all Harry’s hopes, t killed his ambition, blasted his life.' (I am using ex-Ser-geant Hyslop’s words). He was colour blind.

Such a. thing could not happen today, for all boys have their eyesight tested before going to sea. But thirty years ago it was common, so I sympathise with ex-Sergeant Hyslop about bis not being the father of the captain of a Western ocean mailboat. True, Harry’s chances of such an exalted position in the Merchant Service were

always rather remote, although I 5 would never think of suggesting that ’ point of view to his father, and further- ■ more I do not agree with him when he i bewails the wasted years of Harry’s ■ life. That he is wrong is proved by 1 tho stories Harry tells of his four 1 years at sea, and tlie contentment of 1 his life to-day as a master plumber. No man’s seagoing years can be said to be wasted who has visited far corners of the world, learned discipline and how to take care of himself. Harry is happy, and thinks little of what might have been, but his father is not. Ex-Sergeant Hyslop haunts the docks, although retired some time now. He sees the fine ships that Harry might have commanded. He sees schoolboys who are going the same way as Harry went, and chases them away from the .wharves and quays. The land of what might have been is more his than his son’s. Harry’s lost four years are among his happiest. They are an asset to him when he is with friends. He is looked up to as an authority on nautical matters. But these years are a tragedy to ex-Ser-geant Hyslop, late of the dock police. (A.H.B. in the “Manchester Guardian.”)