Page:The Blight of Insubordination.djvu/78

70

seeing that any regulations designed to promote the welfare of the crew were duly enforced if such regulations were in existence. The real truth is, that in Germany they regard a ship, whether subsidised or unsubsidised, as a means of extending trade, and the fact that in the attainment of that end the crew may be the subject of disability or discomfort is not regarded as a very material circumstance. In this country, on the other hand, we proceed to the other extreme. Our Merchant Shipping Act is conceived with a sublime indifference to the fact that we are, as Napoleon said, a nation of shopkeepers, whose very life depends on trade with people across the seas, but with a profound conviction that the seaman is a person who requires to be hedged about with State protection at ever."

In every social organisation the protection of the weak is one of the first duties of the State; this function, however, can be carried to extremes until the weakling—for whose special benefit and welfare it is exercised—is actually protected out of his occupation altogether. This appears to be what is happening now in the present time merchant service. Part 2 of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, relates to masters and seamen. Commencing with section 110, it will be found to run almost steadily through to section 219 in the immediate interests of the seaman; covering everything possible (except providing for sending his mother to sea with him to nurse him); the last eight sections deal with protection of seamen from imposition. Sections 220 to 243 relate more particularly to discipline, some of which we have quoted before. Protection from imposition is really putting it on a bit thick, for the average sailor-man of to-day 1s a very wide-awake chap indeed, and is very much alive to all that he is entitled to, and is just about as keen in looking after himself and his interests as the next one, no matter whence he comes! If all this large number of enactments in the interest of the seafarer have been forced by the abuse of the affairs to which they relate, it shows clearly the vast difference under which the old-time sailor served in contrast to his brother of the present, for they were mostly enacted in times that are past, with a sublime indifference to the rapid changes immediately at hand. Most of these affairs came to pass in times when the sailor was a sailor, of particular and special training, whose place on a ship of those times could not be filled by any casual who happened to turn up for it. They are without doubt a distinct reflection on the manners or customs of the good old times, and a legacy of professional difficulty to men of the moment who are now responsible for the safe conduct and management of a ship under ever varying