THE EMPLOYMENT OF LASCAUS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13355, 8 December 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE EMPLOYMENT OF LASCAUS.

Mr. Frank T. ; Boxssr, who recently visited V**- Zealand, in an article in the Illustrated London News differs from the opinion held in Australia. that the manning of British ships by lascars is undesirable. He says: — ■~ , ..'-..'•-' •,;;.. .-. ;

"The question of manning British vessels employed in trading to the Far East with our Indian fellow-subjects is no new one, dating back, indeed, to the palmy days of the East India Company, and it has always excited the keenest controversy between .seamen and officers. But it has ever seemed a curious thing to me that while British seamen—that is; foremast handsshow an easy toleration for the competition of European seamen with them on board their own ships, they should evince such furious intolerance of the lascar—far more, indeed, than 1 have ever seen shown towards the negro from America, whose presence in -the forecastle is scarcely resented at all.

Now the truth about the lascar is that while in the old sailing-ship clays he was hardly, for physical reasons, to be relied upon for the stern duties demanded of him in bleak Northern seas, he has always been exceedingly valuable in his own waters that is, anywhere within the tropics—and has become increasingly so with the advent of steam and the entire change in the work demanded of him.

'•' He is a born seafarer, coming from the coast ports and villages of India, descending from many generations of seafaring ancestors; in fact, one might almost say that there was a lascar caste, except for the difficulty that he is almost casteless, only preserving certain cherished formulae, as regards food, where he is nominally a Hindu. But there are also many Malay lascars who are of the sea, ocean wanderers by descent from time immemorial, and needing practically no training to perform the simple duties required of them in the modem steamship.

" The prime value of the lascar, however, to those responsible for the conduct of our steamship trade to the Far East, is not, as is "so often falsely stated, his cheapness. True, his wages are low and his food is of the simplest, but the saving here is more than counterbalanced by the extra number which,; must "be carried to make up for the lower individual physical capacity. Ho is valuable because of his docility, ms omenability to discipline, and his noi>nt;»y. In the running of modern steamships the old leisurely ways of British seafaring have perforce disappeared, and the conditions of service are by no means relished by the present generation of British seamen and firemen (stokers), most'especially the latter. And as under the present conditions of law at sea the only punishment which can be awarded to a recalcitrant memDer of the crew is to enter his offence in the log, and hope that the shipping-master upon his discharge will agree to his being mulcted in a small —usually two days' pay—it will very easily be seen how the whole machinery of the ship's routine may bo dislocated by the sudden jibbing of a few malcontents upon some real or fancied grievance. In port this danger is very great, especially in Australia, where it has often been found impossible . to get the mailship away to time owing to the fact that the iiicmeu. were drunk and refused to get steam up, or were incapable of doiiij, so.

"Now with Lascars such a condition of things never arises. These natives have their own sub-officers, answering to our bos'uns and bos'uns' mates—Seranges and Tindals, as they are called. These men are responsible for discipline, and do enforce it by. the old primitive -methods. They stand between the white . officers of - the ship and the lascar seamen, so that it is never necessary for the former . to give a direct order to a lascar. In fact, it is not only unnecessary, but undesirable to do so, because the amour propre of thejserang otytindal would be" wounded, and trouble would be very likely to result. An order .gij&tfi&fco the serang in the recognised manner is almost invariably carried out in the most satisfactory way, whereas. if a white officer gave an order to a lascar, and the lascar, bungling it, were reprimanded or struck by that officer, that whole ship's company would probably be in a state of mutiny immediately. I mention physical force, because in dealing with an Eastern native, whose methods are deliberate, and whose language you do not speak, irritation is apt to get the better of an energetic young white man, and, without being brutal, he may behave towards the '".stupid nigger," as he would regard the lascar, much as a hasty parent would to a careless or disobedient child. " ' r

" Now the great quarrel between the P. and 0. Company and the Australasian States upon point is easy to understand. Australasia is practically ruled by the Labour party, whose motto is 'A White Australia,' and whose determination is that, as far aw ocean connections with other countries are concerned, no subsidies shall be paid to any steamship company employing other than white labour. They are all the more keen about this particular feature because so many of their active politicians have been men before the must, and because the Seamen's Union is so very powerful. They retain all their old hatred of the lascar element on board ship, and are determined to eliminate it as far as Australia is concerned.

"The P. and O. Company, on the other hand. are. first and foremost, Far Eastern traders, the Australian trade being but a branch'line. Their ships are interchangeable, as far as the routes are concerned, which they could not be if the vessels on the Australian run were manned by white men only. Besides this they are perfectly convinced of the value of lascars in their trade, and are quite indisposed to be dictated to bv the Australian States as to how they shall carry on their business. Not only so, "but the observations made by their officers of the difficulties besetting the officers of the Orient Company by reason of the behaviour of their white firemen on sailing days in Australian ports have concreted .their convictions that to discard their well-tried and proved lascar crews for the average British fireman would be foolish in the extreme.

"I would only like to add my personal regret that so much opposition is offered to the lascar and so little to the foreign element in our ships, which is growing so rapidly as to be a positive menace to the safety of the nation."