58
worthy one time shipowner's view, compare favourably with the German shipmaster and officer. This bald statement was based on making a passage between Naples and Genoa on a North German Lloyd boat. There is also an increasing preference for German steamers by passengers to and fro from the East, with which, however, shipmasters or officers have little or nothing to do, inasmuch as the better hotel service provided by the vessels of the German nation are the chief attraction, to say nothing of the keener attention to small wants, the cheaper rates, and the band! As this matter has been the subject of considerable controversy in the Press at different times, we would fain ask why most of our principal hotels are under the active management of foreigners? If itis really a fact that the German shipmaster and ship's officer is a better all round man than his British confrère the reason for it being so is not at all difficult to point out and prove. The system of qualifying for the places of mates and masters in the German merchant vessel is very different from the affairs as conducted by the Local Marine Boards in this country of ours. In the first place, the candidate must be a German. The examinations through the various grades require a much higher standard of education to enable him to qualify than is the case as required here for similar places; thus with all the German thoroughness in doing this, as in other matters, there is not, nor is there any possible likelihood of being, anything like the number of certificates issued year for year, taken on the basis of tonnage of that country as compared with our own.
We were told, under two years ago, in the port of Hamburg, by the harbour fathers—a quartette of ancient mariners who superintend officially all shipping affairs of that busy, bustling, well-managed port—that German steamers at that time were under-officered, owing to there being insufficient to go round even with the vessels running at that time, that an officer could rely on an appointment as soon as he qualified. This is a striking contrast to what obtains here, under the policy adopted by the Local Marine Board and sanctioned by the Board of Trade, the policy that the men shall be at once cheap and efficient, and that sufficient are available. If the opinion of the shipowner we have quoted is shared by others as a class—and we hope it is not—we would suggest that they haye got exactly what they in their wisdom have provided for; the Local Marine Boards have been partly under their administration from their first institution, and the evolution of the shipmaster as he is now is entirely of their own fashioning from the standard they created and adopted when the navigation laws were abolished at their
