d some of them false. But, mostly,
each of them is partly true and partly false: and--'circumstances alter
cases.' The fact is, that life aboard a Bluenose was just what we
might expect from crews that lived a comparatively free-and-easy life
ashore in a sparsely settled colony, and a very strenuous life afloat
in ships which depended, like all ships, on disciplined effort for both
success {94} and safety. When national discipline is not very strong
ashore it has to be enforced by hook or by crook afloat. The general
public never bothered its head much about seamen's rights or wrongs in
a rather 'hard' new country managing its own maritime affairs. So
there certainly were occasional 'hell ships' among the Bluenoses,
though very rarely except when there were Bluenose officers with a
foreign crew.

This was quite in accordance with the practice all along the coast of
North America. Even aboard the famous Black Ball Line of Yankee
transatlantic packets in the forties there was plenty of 'handspike
hash' and 'belaying-pin soup' for shirkers or mutineers. The men
before the mast were mostly foreigners and riff-raff Britishers; very
few were Yankees or Bluenoses. Discipline had to be maintained; and it
was maintained by force. But these were not the real hell ships.
'Hell ships' were commonest among deepwatermen on long voyages round
the Horn, or among the whalers when the best class of foremast hands
were not to be had. Many of them are much more recent than is
generally known; and even now they are not quite extinct. 'Black
Taylor,' 'Devil Summers,' and 'Hell-fire {95} Slocum' are well within
living memory. Black Taylor came to a befitting end. Because the rope
surged at the capstan he kicked the nearest man down, and was jumping
to stamp his ribs in, when the man suddenly whipped out his knife and
ripped Black Taylor up with a New Orleans nigger trick-twist for which
he got six months, though really deserving none.

But such mates and skippers always were exceptions; and, as a general
rule, no better crews and vessels have ever sailed the sea than the
Yankees at their prime. Their splendid clippers successfully
challenged the slower Britishers on every trade route in the world. At
the very time that the _America_ was beating British yachts hull-down,
the old British East Indiamen were still wallowing along with eighty
hands to a thousand tons, while a Yankee thousand-tonner could sail
them out of sight wit