for these Lascars to get drunk without your seeing them at it?' Another member of the Committee was positively jubilant on Mr. Almond stating that when vessels manned with Lascars arrive in Lidia the men go back to their native villages and then 'come back again after they have had their little spree.' 'Ah!' said the delighted member of the Committee, 'so they go on the spree, do they?' Another member of the Committee distinguished himself by asking Captain Hood how he would like a Lascar crew in the event of war. 'I should be as safe with Lascars as with any others,' was the reply. 'But,' said the cross-examiner, 'suppose you were requisitioned as an armed cruiser?' Here was a poser indeed. (It was no poser, for we are not experienced in armed cruisers—bar the Alabama—up till now.) On the whole nobody will take much exception to the recommendation of the Committee that Lascars should not be employed in high latitudes, though it is patent from the evidence that their inability to withstand cold climates has been grossly exaggerated. Even Sir Digby Murray stated that he had had Lascar crews under him in the sailing-ship trade between Calcutta and Boston; that he had frequently arrived at the latter port in the winter months; and that 'he had never had a smarter crew in all his life.' Surely, too, the antipathy of the Sailors' Union will be somewhat assuaged by the testimony which was offered to the effect that there is no danger of Lascars superseding British seamen, if only because the supply is strictly limited." (The italics are new.)
This article, from our principal shipping paper, is quoted in full for the sake of the general summary of its opinions regarding the subject as adduced from the labours of the last Manning Committee, which sat in 1895-6. The closing remark of the article regarding the supply of Lascars is distinctly misleading, and quite opposed to truth.
Time was, no doubt, in the earlier days of the employment of this class of seafarer, such as in 1860, when according to the Navy League they numbered only 335 persons, that they came from a single village, or at least from contiguous villages, on the Western seaboard of the Indian peninsula. Those men, inherent of the sea, whose traditions and occupation had ever been linked with work on the waters, merely formed, as it were, the advance guard of the mighty hosts that have followed. The townships or villages of Bankote, Dabool, Ratnagiri and many other places along the coast send large numbers of their male population to sea at the present time. So great is the general regard for the men of some of these villages for seamen that the Royal Indian Marine almost "commandeer" the eligibles from one or two places in the district mentioned, and get all they require. Hence the erroneous idea, we presume, that the supply is strictly limited! The service of coasting steamers
