THE SEA, THE MIGHTY SEA.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10721, 19 June 1906, Page 3

THE SEA, THE MIGHTY SEA.

rrs ROMANCE andreality. Deep, deep down m every Britisher's heart is the conviction that it is tlie sea that makes him what lie is. Bo he landsman or sailorman, the consciousness that he owes to the Kea his present proud position and liberty is ever with him. By tho sea and from the sen comes the power his command of the ocean gives him, and he leadß the world to-day m everything that inspires tlie heart of man. But m the midst of our pride of place are wo forgetful? Do we lose sight of the causes that liavo made us masters of tho five oceans. Comes a man from overseas to tell us of the mystic glamor and stem truths of life on the boundless waters, but underlying his interesting and graphic stories of sailing experiences he has a stronger force to gather listeners at his feet. MiFrank Bullen, charming raconteur of nautical incidents and fo'c'sle yarns, has a. determined conviction of the necessity for action to strengthen our hold on what m the. past has been our race's second homeland. Ho unfolds a moving tale of why Britons of the present day do not go tv sea, why tho foreigners are multiplying over English hulls, and what the ultimate end must be, the loss of our dominion oyer the world's waterways. For his message of warning alone the people of the Empire are entitled to thank the great lecturer who is now touring its outer bounds, for whilo Mr Bullen absorbs his auditors with his splendid descriptions of ooean experiences, ho seldom foi^jets to plead the cause of the rank and tile, the hardy sailors to whom , people owe the many luxuries of exist- J ence and on whom some day again may j rest our Imperial existeuoe. "I went to sea not m search of adventure or romance. I went to sea for the | simple and realistic reason that I wanted I something t*..^eat regularly." Mr Bullen is not a studied rhetorician, and has no time 'for the latwired arts of the orator. He speaks with a picturesque directness and naivette of manner that rings with honest forcefulness. A boy of only 11 J ears when he went to sea, he teils his carers straight that his reason for this was not the mystic attraction oi the ocean or any equally' abstruse cause that the old tales invent as excuses. "I went because I would get three meals a day," and m that sentence you have the history of Mr Builen's early life. He had no illusions about the sea, and if it were the "call of the wild" that he answered, or the* roving strain m his blood begot from Rolf, the Norseman, he did not know of it. He went to sea because he was hungry, and the first thing he leanned was who was the biggest fool who wa£ ever created, and 'that was the boy who went to _ea. A youngster on a ship for the first time was, supposed to do things that he had never done before and understand things he had never heard of. Still after getting over these difficulties on a beautiful ' starlit night, with the fine vessel gliding over the restless waves, the beauty of the scene would strike him, but he early learned to keep his thoughts to himself. On one such evening he felt his heart too full for words, and going up to an old sailor he said, "Bill, isn't this a lovely night?" only to receive the crushing reply m a hoarse #u_gle, "I don't know." The food was a horror, and it seemed a miracle that men put up with it, but they knew no better. Mr Bullen gave a gruesome account of the hardness of the ship's biscuits, the weevils and other living things which dwelt therein, and the methods by. which sailors made them palatable. "Once I asked an old salt what they were made of," 6aid Mr Bullen, "only to receive the snappy reply, 'I don't know, and you had better not ask.' How the men kept alive he did not know. Mr Bullen pictured the hardships of the sailors' existence, the .constant hardships and harassing caro while at sea, for a landsman could retrieve a mistake, but if Jack nu_de_an error it was fatal to him, and it was a thousand to one chance it meant the workhouse. In the old days when sailors came home after a 12 months' cruise they were treated fairly well till their money was gone, but after that the boarding house keeper would soon be meeting them with the query, "Have you got a ship. yet.? v As to accommodation, any filtny house m the big cities was- thought good enough for Jack, but things now were improving. Mr Bullen warmly combatted' the idea that with the departure of sailing ships the glamor of the sea had departed. So m tive times of the Romans it might have been said that the romance of the sea lay m the slaves tugging at the galley .oars and m the brutal swish of the lash. The people of those days might just as well nave said 1 that the romance of the sea had departed when base, mechanical sails came into iise. "The romance of the sea will never die while there are men and women," declared the lecturer, who spoke of the great feeling of comradeship winch existed between the old people who" came out m sailing ships to the colony m the fifties and sixties. People now had no conception as they travelled m huge steamships of the hardships of those days. "The British Government have no sympathy for the training of sailors except for the Navy," remarked Mr Bullen, who said there was only one vessel at Home on wliich practical knowledge could be gained by those wishing to go into the merchant* service. In other maritime countries there were numbers of ships for the training of yousng people. Britain did not seem to realise that the merchant shipping and sailors were the backbone,, of her maritime supremacy. Threefourths of her bread and. a half of her meat supply came over seas, and tlnere was no i»e blinking the fact as to the large number of foreigners m British merchant vessels. There were 35,000 of them, and the Government did nothing, but, as usual, hoped to muddle through. Because of. the hard conditions of the sailing life, it was difficult to get Britishers to go to sea, with the result that foreigners were filling their places. If better treatment and condi-' tions were secured, our countrymen would be just as willing to go to sea Mr Bullen spoke hopefully of the sailors' lot on steamships, remarking that- their comfort had greatly increased since the introduction of steam. The lecturer was followed with rapt attention throughout, and was frequently applauded for many a telling point or story. After well on to two hours' entertainment, tlie audience dispersed, well satisfied with their evening with the gifted author of "The Cruise of the Cachalot." "WHALES AND WHALE-FISHING." In this lecture, the hazardous excitements of hunting the Leviathian of the deep are described so realistically by Mr Bullen that the audience is said to follow the lecturer so closely, that they 6eemed to be at one end of a harpoon,' aiid Mr Bullen at the other. This lecture has been given at ..nearly all the large public schools m England, from Rugby and the Ladies' College of Cheltenham downwards. Tho illustrations arc described as sensational.