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tion of the Redeemer. A general view would be that this was an award quite appropriate to the services rendered, an expression by the Greek Government that they wished to place the names of the gallant savers of their seamen on the Roll of their Honour. Our Board of Trade objected. Through the Foreign Office, they appear to have informed the Greek Government that such distinguished awards were unusual and might prove a source of dissatisfaction in future cases. Possibly they viewed the appearance of a ribbon on the breast of a merchant seaman as an encroachment on the rights of their own permanent officials. The awards were not made; silver medals were substituted, which Captain Forbes and his officers, learning of the Board's action, did not accept. On a later occasion the same unsympathetic influence was exercised; the Russian Order of St. Stanislaus was withdrawn and replaced by a gold watch and chain! In supervision of our qualifications as masters and mates, the Board of Trade has followed the lines of least resistance. It is true that they have established certain standards in navigation and seamanship that we must attain in order to hold certificates, but the training to these standards has never been an interest of their Department. While our shipmate, the marine engineer, has opportunity in his apprenticeship on shore to complete his education, we are debarred from the same facility. Apprenticed to the sea at from fourteen to sixteen years of age, our youth bid good-bye to their school books and enter on a life of freedom from scholarly restraint--a 'kindergarten' in which their toys are hand-implements of the sea. There is no need to worry; there is no study required for four years; a week or two at the crammer's will suffice to satisfy the Board of Trade when apprenticeship days were over. And the fault does not lie with the 'crammer.' Scholarly and able and competent, as most of them are, to impart a better and more thorough instruction, the system of leaving all to the voyage's end offers to them no alternative but to present the candidate for examination as rapidly as possible. Sea-apprentices of late years did not often share in a scheme of instruction afloat. Rarely were they carried as complements to a full crew; for the most part they were workmen in a scant manning--'greenhorns'--drudges to the whim of any grown man. In a rough measure, the standard of such seamanship as they _gathered_ was good--el
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