ONLY A SAILOR'S LIFE.

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 925, 19 September 1896, Page 6

ONLY A SAILOR'S LIFE.

The Drink Demon and the Deep Sea*

The case of the drowning of the young sailor, Robert McLeod, 23 years of age, who met with an inglorious death on Saturday night last by falling into the harbour while boarding his ship, the barque Himalaya, at the Quay- street Jetty, is a story from which half-a-dozen morals may be drawn. The man was drunk at the time, and if we are to adopt the Rev. Isitt's style of reasoning, we must hold the hotelkeeper who supplied him with liquor morally responsible for his untimely end. There is every logical reason for this view of the case, too, for it practically amounts to the same thing as a chemist supplying his customers with sufficient poison to kill themselves, and asking no questions nor keeping a register of the transaction. Were every case of this sort, in which a dranken man falls over the wharf or is knocked down and killed by a passing vehicle, to be sheeted home to the publican who supplied him with the fatal liquor, public opinion would very soon constitute itself a fitting judge of the morality of the thing, and the judgments of public opinion are often more severe in their reprobation than the decrees of the Stipendiary Magistrate.

Bnt this unfortunate yonng fellow's life would have been saved, in all likelihood, if the precaution of placing a rope netting underneath the gangway, between the ship's aide and the wharf, had been made compulsory in this port. In many other places, we believe, it is a port regulation that nettings must be placed under the gangways of vessels lying at the wharves, to protect the members of the crew against themselves. We have often noticed that when the large steamers of the Union Company's, fleet and other vessels are loading or discharging at the wharves, nettings are frequently made fast between the wbaif and the ship's side when ver the hatches are being worked, so that if any package or case happens to fall h< m the sling it will not fall into the harbour, but be caught by the netting. J3ut as common sailors' lives are not of so much value as a sack of potatoes or a barrel of treacle, they don't get any netting. It is the old story of Property more than counterbalancing the valne of Labouring mankind.

Some years ago, a spasmodic attempt was made by the Auckland Harbour Board authorities to get nettings stretched under the gangway of each vessel at the wharves, for the safety of h'fe, as the resalt, if we remember rightly, of a similar fatality to that -which occurred .on Saturday night. Bnt it didn't last long. The shellbacks don't claim anyone's attention, except that of the hotelkeeper, when they have any money, and the Magistrate and Coroner when they get drunk, and the ' old man' i3n't likely to worry much about the ' loafing blackguards ' forward, so that between everyone the inebriated seaman stands a good chance of going to Davy Jones when he returns to his ship from a spree ashore. Aa for coming aboard by the gangway — well, perhaps, Jack thinks that an effeminate mode of boarding his sea-home when he lias got a skinful of colonial beer. But there is no doubt the numerous deaths from drowning which have occurred in this port would have been averted if the Harbour Board had made it a strict rule, punishable by fine, for all vessels at the wharves to have, every evening, stout nettings stretched under the gangway at least.

Some years ago, when the netting agitation was on foot here as referred to already, one of the New Zealand Shipping Company's clipper ships was lying alongside Queen-street Wharf loading for London. Her captain, a big and burly mariner, was as fond of a 'spree' as any of his forecastle hands. He took the precaution to have a. netting always spread under his gangway, and it was well he did bo, for early one fine morning the boatswain, chancing to look over the rail, soon after the sun was up, found his skipper comfortably snoring away in the netting, as calmly as if he had been in his bank. He had come down in a state which showed him two gangways instead of one, and he took the wrong one, with the result that if there had been no netting there, there would have been no skipper next morning, unless a dead one.

Sailormen will be sailormen, and they will sometimes get drunk, but there is no reason why their lives should be regarded as of less value than those of any other workman. But on board McLeod's vessel, the Himalaya, his death didn't seem to be thought oE much account. On Monday those engaged in business abont the wharveß, when they heard of the drowning, naturally expected to see the barque's colours at half-mast, the last sign of respect that could be paid to the ship-mate who had gone. But no half-masted flag was displayed, and it is alleged that the captain of the Himalaya had refused to allow thia sign of regret to be shown. The first mate, with sailorly sorrow for the dead man, had himself had the ensign halfmasted early in the morning, -but the master ordered him to haul it down again, because the mate had done this trifling action without consulting his superior officer! So the Himalaya showed no flag, and the wharf frequenters wondered. Of course it could do the dead sailor no good to flaunt a red rag over his watery grave, but it was a mark of respect at the presence of death, the omission of which the shipmates of the drowned man felt keenly. After all, though, the sailor-rhymester put sailormen's feelings at the fact of a ' hand ' being missing from the ship's company pretty concisely : 'Someone slips from shrouds or mainyard ; block hits someone on the head. What the devil does it matter 'long as someone's safely dead ?' And a sailor who goes on the beer and takes a taste of seaweed and salt water some dark night doesn't, as a rule, receive much consideration. He hasn't got any paternal government to look after his wellbeing to any particular extent, and the Women's Political League hasn't discovered him yet.