itably to his proper
place, the wrong one goes back to a junior, and less responsible, post
at sea.

It is doubtful if the Naval Service could produce the type required.
Their candidate would be, to a degree, inelastic. He would be an
excellent theorist, a sound executant, a strict disciplinarian; but his
training and ideas would fit ill to the wide range of conflicting
interests, and the shutting out of all manoeuvre, however skilled and
stimulating--but that of securing a maximum of result by a minimum of
effort. Perhaps it was for these reasons our salvage services before the
war were almost wholly mercantile and commercial. Certainly, most
Admiralty efforts in this direction were confined to ports and harbours
where method could be ordered and controlled by routine; their more
arduous and unmanageable cases on the littoral were frequently handed
over to the merchantmen--not seldom after naval efforts had been
unavailing. Among the protestations of our good faith to the world in
time of peace, it may be cited that we made no serious provision for a
succession of maritime casualties; there was no specially organized and
equipped Naval Salvage Service. True, there were the harbour gear,
divers, a pump or two, and appliances and craft for attending submarine
accidents, but their energies were bent largely to humane purposes--to
marine first aid. Of major gear and a trained personnel to control
equipment and operation there was not even a nucleus. Salvage was valued
at a modest section of the "Manual on Seamanship" (written by a
mercantile expert), and a very occasional lecture at the Naval College.
At war, and the toll of maritime disaster rising, the need grew quickly
for expert and special service. There was no longer a relative and
profitable balance to be struck between value of sea-property and cost
of salvage operations. A ship had become beyond mere money valuation; as
well assess the air we breathe in terms of finance. No cost was high if
a keel could be added to our mercantile fleets in one minute less than
the time the builders would take to construct a new vessel. The call was
for competent ship-surgeons who could front-rank our maritime C Threes.
By whatever skill and daring and exercise of seamanship, the wrecks must
be returned to service. Happily, there was no necessity to go far
afield; the merchants' salvage enterprise, like the merchants' ships and
the merchants' men, was ready at hand for adoption.