“BARNACLE BILL”

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 February 1935, Page 10

“BARNACLE BILL”

GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Such a mass of legends and luscious stories have gathered round Barnacle Bill that now we cannot see him, though we still accept him, writes Mr H. E. Tomlinson in “The Spectator.” The fact is he is no longer at the jolly heart of it, and has not been for a long time past. Even the Admiralty had better foiget its Nelsonian days, if it can. They are not only astern, but out of sight. From Whitehall, where the reality is too frequently unguessed, and tradition and phantoms impel rhetoric and patriotism, perhaps a bluejacket may seem much the same silly and rollicking figure as ever, easily led or misled, and fated to get drunk or get drowned. Yet 1 should have thought that anyone could have guessed, though he knew not one seaman, that the modern shipman, to be able to live, must have the trained brains of a mechanic.

A ship, of course, is a complicated engine, and she demands technicia.m for her welfare who have been brought up to care for the delicacy of little switches and things which could do an enormous amount of harm if mishandled by a. rollicking hearty. Besides, seamen are as well accustomed as clerks to the use of schools, newspapers, libraries, and the radio. They belong to this age of science like everybody else, and share i i the use of exploring intelligence released by the war. There is not an inch to spare for the capering of cordial ..motions tn a modern .-hip. whether warship or liner. Am! ;■ bluejacket is as likely as his admiral to understand the trend of world politics: as ho is British, he will hold as tenaciously to whatever opinion education and the logic of events hive given him as he would to his oar in uncertain waters.

A NEW TYPE. Among our new potent and universal engines the lustiness of the hairy ■ man has no survival value. A more ' alert and delicate, some might say a more dangerous, intelligence, is taking the place at sea of the barnacle mind. When looking recently at the faces before me of the men forming It’, large part of the crew of one of our 1 latest warships, the difference be- • tween them and those I knew- in the : past staitled me. Evidently these were more sensitive and civilised felI lows. They ran more to nerves than to bone. i 1 would not have addressed those lean masks—irony was lurking there —in casual and full-blooded eloquence not lor any consideration. They I would, not have laughed, because they | were too well under control; and by !control I do not mean, without quulifircation, discipline imposed from with-i [cut. 'You would have to be a good I i man lb be their trusted leader. I ought, to have known beforehand, without the evidence, that the training necessary for fine adjustments to recondite machines, and the use of th" intelligence to solve mysterious i refusals in the running of electrical | gear when there is no time for leisurely contemplation, wore as likely to have as quickening an effect on wit in a ship as in a work shop ashore. Drawn is of less use than formerly: and barnacles arc absolutely inappropriate. even in fun. 1 might add that not once in that warship did I

hear a word, or a rasp in a command.

that would have rawed the touchiness of a nervous understrapper; the business of the ship ran almost noiselessly, as by a’common understanding. That, too, looked to me rather like a levelling up. It is the same in the latest liner; on deck, in the engine rooms, and in the departments of the purser and steward, there is another generation of men. They are as far from the affable figure, heroic yet lightly touched with imbecility, who used popularly to represent the late tradition of the Red Ensign, as they are from the subjects of Dibdin. The essential qualities doubtless are the same — one’s national prejudice was always for having British seamen about when things were going hard; or Scandinavian. Yet I should say they share with the rest of our younger people a critical understanding of reality, without sentiment enough for one stanza of a song, which at times is too cruelly acute for the liking of their elders. Their capacity for revc.ence for names and tradition could be overstated.

Some well-advised critics, on the other hand, are sure that few real Ihitish sailors are now alive; most of them, we are told, went out with the sailing ship. It is fair to say to this that most of the men who kept these I islands fed during the war, and trans- ! ported and maintained the armies, ! were nearly all trained in steam. They know little more of sails than men lin a garage. However, they did better than we ought to have expected, i when we remember what their pay and conditions had been. They completed their task: their performance ■was superb; and they were then forgotten. | OUTLOOK FOR OFFICERS. j I They were forgotten: and that, and I the present state of merchant service, do not encourage us in the hope I that we may rely on the continuance of the high quality of their service. lAs things are now in the mercantile } marine, when certificated officers are ■ glad of a chanco to get to sea in the I forecastle, it would ruin life’s opporj tunity for a promising lad to bind him i as a cadet, because by all the present omens of the profession he might get his certificate as- master-mariner one week, and be glad, a year later, to sign on us a deck-swabber, if he could find nothing to do ashore. If we value the distinctive character of the British seaman, which has served for the purpose of joyous ballads, and would be always a modest assurance of the maintenance of food supplies and raw material to industrial islanders —a national asset which, if lost, could not be re-created i in a huiry—then it would be wise to! own up to it that as things look at present no father who knew anything of shipping affairs would encourage his boy to go to sea. Anything but that.