f Marine, in which we should have a
part.

The Board of Trade has failed us, they have proved unworthy of our
confidence. Quite lately they began to mobilize and register the
mercantile seamen of the country. _Three years and nine months after the
outbreak of war, they sounded the 'assembly' of the Merchants' Service._
Let that be their epitaph!

[Illustration: TRANSPORTS LEAVING SOUTHAMPTON ON THE NIGHT PASSAGE TO
FRANCE]

V

MANNING

SEA-LABOUR cannot be likened to employment on shore. Once signed and
boarded and to sea, there can be no dismissal and replacement of the men
such as may be seen any morning at the street gates of a workshop or
shipyard. Good or bad, we are bound as shipmates for a voyage. Ordinary
laws and regulations cannot reach us in our sailing; we are given the
Merchant Shipping Act for our guidance, the longest and wordiest Act on
the Statute Book, a measure that presupposes a discipline that no longer
exists. Our ships, in size and power--our complement, in number and
character--have altered greatly beyond the views of the Act. That
statute, that in its day may have sufficed to set a standard of law and
order to the moderate crews of our sailing ships, is utterly inadequate
to control effectively the large ship's company of our modern steam
vessels. The men, too, are changed--the sailormen, perhaps, not
greatly--but, with the thundering evolution of steam-power, we have
drawn grown men to the fires, ready-made men, uninfluenced by traditions
of sea-service. We had no hand in their making--in the early years when
discipline may be inculcated and character be formed. The drudgery and
uninterest of their heavy work makes for a certain reaction that
frequently finds its expression in violence and criminal disorder. The
short voyage system and the grossly inadequate provisions of the Act
afford no opportunity to guide the reaction in a less vicious direction.
We hailed as a benefactor to the sea the inventor of single topsails;
the statistics of our sea-fatalities give a definite date to their
introduction. Daily we pray for an inventor to emancipate our stokehold
gangs.

It would be idle to pretend that, as master-seamen, we were not
disquieted by our manning problem, following upon the outbreak of war.
While mobilization of the Army Reserve drew men from all industries in a
proportion that did not affect seriously any one employment, the
calling-up of the Royal Naval Reserve strained