y trifling fragments with a serious purpose. It is
to show that the seaman has little or no art or part in the poetry of the
seas. I have put down facts, have given what experience I have had of some
of the idiosyncrasies of the forecastle. The poetry of the sea has been
written on shore and by landsmen. Falconer's "Shipwreck" is a clever
nautical tract, written in verse,--or if it be anything more, it is but
the solitary exception which proves and enforces the rule. Midshipmen have
written ambitious verses about the sea; but by the time the young
gentlemen were promoted to the ward-room they have dropped the habit or
found other themes for their stanzas. In truth, the stern manliness of his
calling forbids the seaman to write poetry. He acts it. His is a
profession which leaves no room for any assumed feeling or for any
reflective tendencies. His instincts are developed, rather than his
reason. He has no time to speculate. He must be prepared to lay his hand
on the right rope, let the night be the darkest that ever came down upon
the waves. He obeys orders, heedless of consequences; he issues commands
amid the uproar and tumult of pressing emergencies. There is no chance for
quackery in his work. The wind and the wave are infallible tests of all
his knots and splices. He cannot cheat them. The gale and the lee-shore
are not pictures, but fierce realities, with which he has to grapple for
life or death. The soldier and the fireman may pass for heroes upon an
assumed stock of courage; but the seaman must be a brave man in his
calling, or Nature steps in and brands him coward. Therefore he cares
little about the romance of his duties. If you would win his interest and
regard, it must be on the side of his personal and human sensibilities.
Cut off during his whole active life from any but the most partial
sympathy with his kind, he yearns for the life of the shore, its social
pleasures and its friendly greetings. Captains, whose vessels have been
made hells-afloat by their tyranny, have found abundant testimony in the
courts of law to their gentle and humane deportment on land. Therefore,
when you would address seamen effectively, either in acts or words, let it
be by no shallow mimicry of what you fancy to be their life afloat. It
will be at best but "shop" to them, and we all know how distasteful that
is in the mouth of a stranger to our pursuits. They laugh at your clumsy
imitations, or are puzzled by your strange misconce