Sailing as a Fine Art.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 8, 23 February 1910, Page 33

Sailing as a Fine Art.

By

JOSEPH CONRAD.

"" "

THE other day. looking through a newspaper, I came upon an article on the season’s yachting. To a man who had but little to

do with pleasure sailing—though all sailing is a pleasure—and certainly nothing whatever with racing upon open waters, the writer’s strictures upon the handicap-

ping of yachts were just intelligible and no more. The writer praises a certain class of pleasure vessels, and I am willing to

endorse his praise, as any man who love® eiery craft afloat would be ready to do. I am disposed to admire and love the fifty-two-foot linear raters on the word of a man who regrets in such a sympathetic ami understanding spirit the threatened decay of yachting seamanship.

Of course yacht lacing is an organised pastime, a function of social idleness ministering to the vanity of certain wealthy inhabitants of the country as much as to their inborn love of the sea. But the writer of the artieie in question points out with insight and justice that for a great number of people it is a means of livelihood; that is, in his own words, an industry. Now the moral side of an industry, productive or unproductive, the redeeming and ideal aspect of this breadwinning, is the attainment and preservation of the highest possible skill on the part of the craftsmen. Such skill, the skill of technic, is more than honesty; it is something wider, embracing honesty and grace and rule in an elevated and clear sentiment not altogether utilitarian, which may be called the honour of labour. It is made up of accumulated tradition, kept alive by individual pride rendered exact by professional opinion, and like the higher arts, it is spurred on and sustained by discriminating praise.

This is why the attainment of proficiency, the pushing of your skill with attention to the most delicate shades of excellence, is a matter of vital concern. Practical efficiency of a flawless kind is reached naturally in the struggle Jfor bread. But there is something beyond—a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill: almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art—which is art.

As men of seruplous honour set the note of public conscience in the dead level of an honest community, so men of that skill which passes into art by ceaseless striving raise the dead level of mere perfection in the crafts of land and sea. The conditions fostering the growth of that supreme alive excellence, as well in work as in play, ought to be preserved with a most careful regard lest the industry or the game should perish of an insidious and inward decay-. Therefore, I have lead with profound regret in that artieie upon the yachting season of a certain year that the seamanship on board

racing yachts is not what it used to !>•■ only a few, very few, years ago. The sailing and racing of yachts has

developed a class of fore-and-aft sailors, men born and bred to the sea, fishing In winter and yachting in summer; men to

whom the handling of that particular rig presents no mystery. It is their striving for victory that has elevated the sailing of pleasure craft to the dignity of a fine art in that special sense. As I have said, I know nothing of racing and but little of fore-and-aft rig; but the advantages of such a rig are obvious, especially for purposes of pleasure, whether in cruising or racing. It requires fewer hands for handling; the trimming of the sail planes to the wind can be done with speed and accuracy; the unbroken spread of the sail area is of infinite advantage; and the greatest possible amount of canvas can be displayed upon the least possible quantity of spars- Lightness and concentrated power are the conspicuous qualities of fore-and-aft rigA fleet of fore-and-afters at anchor has its own slender graciousness. The setting of the sails resembles more than anything else the unfolding of a bird’s wings; the facility of their evolutions is a pleasure to the eye. They are birds of the sea, whose swimming is like flying and resembles more a natural function than the handling of man-invented appliances. The fore-and-aft rig in its simplicity and the beauty of its aspect under every angle of vision is, I believe, unapproachable. A schooner, yawl, or cutter in earge of a capable man seems to handle herself as if endowed with the

power of reasoning and the gift of swift execution. One laughs with sheer pleasure at a smart piec of manoeuvring as at a manifestation of a living creature’s quick wit and precise grace.

Of those three varieties of fore-and aft rig, the cutter —the racing rig par excellence—is of an appearance the most imposing, from the fact that practically all her canvas is in one piece. The enormous mainsail of a eutter, as she draws slowly past a point of land or the end of a jetty under your admiring gaze, invests her with an air of lofty and silent majesty. At anchor a schooner looks better; it has an aspect of greater efficiency and a better balance to the eye, with her two masts distributed over the hull with a swaggering rake aft. The yawl rig one comes in time to love. It is, I should think, the easiest of all to manage.

For racing—a cutter; for a long pleasure voyage—a schooner; for cruising in home waters —the yawl. And the handling of them all is indeed a fine art. It requires not only the knowldege of the general principles of sailing, but a particular acquaintance with the character of the craft. All vessels are handled in the same way as far as theory goes, just as you may deal with all men on broad and rigid principles. But if you want

that success in life which comes from the affection and confidence of your fellows, then with no two men, however similar they- may appear in their nature, will you deal in the same way. There may be a rule of conduct; there is no rule of human fellowship. To deal with men is as fine an art as it is to deal with ships. Both men and ships live in an unstable element, are subject to subtle and powerful influences, and want to have their merits understood rather than their faidts found out. It is not what your ship will not do that you want to know to get on terms of successful partnership with her; it is rather that you ought to have a precise knowledge of what she will do for you when called upon by a sympathetic touch to put forth what is in her. At first sight, the difference does not seem great in either line of solution in the difficult problems of limitations. But the difference is great. The difference lies in the spirit in which the problem is approached. After all, the art of handling ships is

finer, perhaps, than the art of handling men.

And, like all line arts, it must be based upon a broad, solid sincerity, winch, like a law of nature, rules an infinity of different phenomena. Your endeavour must be single-minded. You yould talk differently to a coal-heaver and to a professor But is this duplicity'/ 1 deny it. Ine

truth consists in the genuineness of tne feeling, in the genuine recognition of tne two men, so similar and so different, a. your two partners in the hazard of life. Obviously, a humbug, thinking only of winning his little race, would stand t chance of profiting by his deception. Men, professors or coal-heavers, are easily deceived; they even have an extraordinary knack of lending themselves to deception, a sort of curious and inexplicable propensity to allow themselves to be led by the nose with their eyes open. But witn a ship it is not so. She is a sort of creature which we have brought into the world, as it were, on purpose to keep us up to the mark. In her handling, a ship will not put up with a mere pretender, as, for instance, the public will do with Mr. X., the poular statesman; Mr. Y., the popular scientist; or Mr. Z, the popular—what shall we say? anything from a teacher of high morality to a bagman—

who have won their little race. But I would like, though not accustomed to betting, to wager a large sum that not one of the few first-rate skippers of racing yachts has ever been a humbug. It would have been too difficult. The difficulty arises from the fact that one does not deal with ships in a mob, but with a ship as an individual. So we may have to do with men. But in each of us there is some particle of the mob spirit, of the mob temperament. No matter how earnestly we strive against each other, we remain brothers on the lowest side of our intellect and the instability of our feeling. With ships it is not so. Much as they are to us, they are nothing to each other. Those sensitive creatures have no ears for our blandishments. It takes something more than words to cajole them to do our will, to cover us with glory—luckily, too. or else there would have been more shoddy reputations for first-rate seamanship. Ships have no ears, I repeat, though, indeed, I think I have known ships that really

seemed to have had eyes. Or else I cannot uderstand on what ground a certain thousand-ton barque of my acquaintance on one particular occasion refused to answer her helm, thereby saving a frightful smash to two ships and to a very good man’s reputation. I know her intimately for two years, and in no other instance either before or since have I known her to do that thing. The man she had served so

well, guessing perhaps at the depths of his affection for her, I have known much longer, and in bare justice to him I must say that this confidence-shatter-ing experience—though so fortunate — only augmented his trust in her. Yes, our ships have no ears, and thus they cannot be deceived. I would illustrate my idea of fidelity as between man and ship, between the master and his art, by a statement which, though it might

appear shockingly sophisticated. is really very simple. 1 would say that a racing-yacht skipper who thought of nothing else but winning the race would never attain to any eminence of reputation. The genuine masters of their craft—l say this confidently from my experience of ships—have thought of nothing but of doing their very best by the vessel under their charge. To forget oneself, to surrender all personal feeling in the service of that fine art, is the only way for a seaman to the faithful discharge of his trust.

Such is the service of a fine art and of ships that sail the sea. And therein I think I can lay my finger upon the difference between the seamen of yesterday, who are still with us, and the seamen of to-morrow, already entered upon the possession of their inheritance. History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. Nothing

■will awaken the same response of pleasurable emotion or conscientious endeavour. And the sailing of any vessel afloat is an art whose fine form seems always receding from us bn its way to the overshadowed Valley of Oblivion. The taking of a modern steamship about the world—though one would not minimise its responsibilities—lias not the same quality of intimacy with nature, which, after all, is an indispensable condition to the bunding up of an art. It is a less personal and more exact calling; it is less arduous, but it is also less gratifying in the sense of close communion between the artist and the medium of his art. It is, in short, less a matter of love. Its effects are measured exactly in time and space as no effects of an art can lie. It is an occupation which a man not desperately subject to "sea-sickness can be imagined to follow with content, without enthusiasm; with industry, without affection. Punctuality is its watchword. The incertitude which attends closely every artistic endeavour is absent from its regulated enterprise. It has no great moments of self-confidence, or moments not less great of doubt and heart-search-ing. It is an industry, which, like other industries, has its romance, its honour, and its rewards; its bitter anxieties and its hours of ease. But such sea going has not the artistic quality of a singlehanded struggle with something much greater than yourself. It is not the laborious, absorbing practice of an art whose ultimate result remains on the knees of the gods. It is not an individual, temperamental achievement: it is simply the skilled use of a captured force. It is merely a step forward upon the way of universal conquest. 111. Every passage of a ship of yesterday, whose sails were filled eagerly the very moment the pilot with his pockets full of letters had gone over the side, was like a race—a race against time, against an ideal standard of achievement outstripping the expectations of common men. Like all true art, the general conduct of a ship and her handling in particular cases had a teclmie which could be discussed with delight and pleasure by men who found in their work not bread alone, but an outlet for the peculiarities of their temperament. To get the best and truest effect from the infinitely varying moods of sky and sea, not pictorially, but in the spirit

of their calling, was their vocation, on* and all; and they recognised this witM as much sincerity, and drew as rnuelx inspiration from this reality as any, man who ever put brush to canvas. The diversity of temperaments was immense among those masters of tho fine art.

Some of them were like Royal Academicians of some sort. They never startled you by a touch of originality, by a fresh audacity of inspiration. They were safe, very safe. They went about solemnly in the assurance of their consecrated and empty reputation. Names are odious, but I remember one of them who might have been their very president, the P.R.A. of tha sea-craft. His weather-beaten and handsome face, his portly presence, his shirt-fronts and broad cuffs and gold links, his air of bluff distinction, impressed the humble beholders—stevedores, tally-elerks, tide-waiters—as h* walked ashore over the gangway of his ship lying at the Circular Quay in Sydney. His voice was deep, hearty, and authoritative—the voice of a very prince among sailors. He did everything with an air which put your attention on the alert and raised your expectations; but the result somehow was always on stereotyped lines, unkuggestive, empty of any lesson that ona could lay to heart. He kept his ship in apple-pie order, which would hava been seaman-like enough but for it finicking touch in its details. His officers affected a superiority over the rest of us, but the boredom of their souls appealed in their manner of dreary submission to the fads of their commander. It was only his apprenticed boys whose irrepressible spirits wert» not affetced by the solemn and respectable mediocrity of that artist. Thera were four of these youngsters; one the son of a doctor, another of a colonel, the third of a jew.-iler—the name of the fourth was Twentyman, and this is all I remember of his parentage. But not one of them seemed to possess the smallest spark of gratitude in his composition. Though their commander was ’ a kind man in his way, and had madw a point of introducing them to the besfi people in the town in order that they should not fall into the bad company of boys belonging to other ships, I regret to say that they made faces aC him behind his back, and imitated the dignified carriage of his head without; any concealment whatever.

This master of the fine art was a personage and nothing more; but, as I have said, there was an infinite diversity of temperament among the masters of the fine art I have known. Some were great impressionists. They impressed upon you the fear of God and Immen- ' sitv—or. in other words, the fear of being drowned —with every circumstance of terrific grandeur. One may think that the locality of vour passing away by means of suffocation in watee does not really matter very much. I am not so sure of that. I am, perhaps, ‘ unduly -ensitive, but I own that the idea of being suddenly spilt into an infu.- - riated ocean in the midst of darkness and uproar affected me always with al sensation of shrinking distaste. To be drowned in a pond, though it might be called an ignominious fate by the ignorant. is yet a bright and peaceful ending in comparison with some other endings to one’s earthly career which I have mentally quaked at in the intervals or even in the midst of violent exertions.

But let that pass. Some of the master*

Urliose influence left a trace upon my character to this very day combined a fierceness of conception with a certitude of execution upon the basis of just appreciation of means and ends which is tthe highest quality of the man of action. And aa artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expendient. or finds the issue of a complicated situation. There were masters, too, I have knovu,

whose very art consisted in avoiding every conceivable situation. It as needless to say that they never did great things in their craft; but they were not to be despised for that. They were modest, they understood their limitations. ' Their own masters had not handed the sacred fire into the keeping of their eold and skilful hands One of those last I remember specially, now gone to his rest from that sea which his

temperament must have made a scene of little more than a peaceful pursuit. Once only did he attempt a stroke of audacity, one early morning, with a steady breeze, entering a crowded roadstead. But he was not genuine in this display which might have been art; he hankered after the meretricious glory of a showy performance.

As, rounding a dark, wooded poin bathed in fresh air and sunshine, w

opened to view a crowd of shipping at anchor lying perhaps hair a mile ahead of us, he called me aft from my station on the forecastle-head, and turning hi» binoculars over and over in his brown hands, said: "Do you see that big. heavy ship with white lower masts’ 1 am going to take up a berth between her and the shore. Now do you . see to it that the men jump smartly st the first order.’' I answered "Aye. ayv sit -’ and verily

believed that this would he a fine performance. We dashed on through the fleet in magnificent style. There must have been many open mouths and followingeyes on board those ships, Dutch, English, with a sprinkling of Americans, and a German or two, who had all hoisted their flags at 8 o’clock, as if in honour of our arrival. It would have been a fine performance if it had come off; but it did not. Through a touch of self-seeking that modest artist of solid merit became untrue to his temperament. It was not with him art for art’s sake, it was art for his own sake; and a dismal failure was the penalty he paid fol that greatest of sins. It might have

been even heavier, but, as it happened, we did not run our ship ashore, nor did we knock a large hole in the big ship whose masts were painted white. But it is a wonder that we did not carry away the cables of both our anchors, for, as may be imagined, I did not stand upon the order to “let go” that came to me in a quavering, quite unknown voice from those familiar lips. I let them both go with a celerity which to this day astonishes my memory. No average merchantman's anchors have ever been let go with sucli incomparable smartness. And they both held. 1 could have kissed their rough, cold iron palms if they had

not been buried in slimy mud under ten fathoms of water. Ultimately they brought up us with the jib-boom of a Dutch brig poking through our spanker —nothing worse. And a miss is as good as a mile. But not in art- Afterward the master told me in a sort of mumble: "She wouldn’t luff up in time, somehow; what’s the matter with her?” And I made no answer. Yet t'he answer was dear. The ship had found out the momentary weakness of her man. Of all the living creatures upon land and sea it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretences, that will not put up with bad art from their masters.