get the second mate and the chief to co-operate--saw off
the funnel halfway, and throw a few ashes about the decks."

Some, ideal.

"She looked just like the model of a ship--and she was spotless."

Some, not what they ought to be.

"I looked and saw her name, _The Duke of York_. I thought to myself, I'll
write to him and tell him about the state of his namesake. She looked like
a wreck."

Some, again, like the _Bonadventure_, standard ships, the hasty
replacements of submarine wastage. The criticism here, of course, had
the severity of domestic familiarity.

"They have these ships made in one piece at the shipyard. When they want
one, they just cut off a length, and join the ends."

"Well, I say the man who designed this ship ought to have designed another
and pegged out."

"Mister, she's a dirty ship."

I detected--it was not difficult--a vague prejudice against wireless.
The wireless operator was foolish enough to have at his fingers' ends
all the tabular details of shipping companies and their vessels, and to
display this dry knowledge in the middle of his seniors' recollections.
His seafaring experience, it may be mentioned, was altogether recent,
and among the elders he would have done better _not_ to know. It was of
course impersonally aired, this prejudice against wireless. First, there
was the view that as ships had hitherto, beginning with the Ark, gone to
sea without the invention, they could continue to do so. Then, the fact
that wireless might save life admitted, the system current was decried.
It seemed that the merchant ships of over 1,600 tons carried wireless
operators and sets, but that one operator to a ship was the allowance; now
one operator watched eight hours out of the twenty-four, and all were
off duty at the same time. So it was believed. "There's nothing in the
Bible," the critic would urge, "to say a ship mustn't be wrecked when all
the operators are off duty."

I had expected music--chanteys, or at least accordions--aboard a
merchantman; but very little was that expectation justified. There had
been a gramophone (and step-dancing), but it was out of action after one
evening's protracted use. It was not often, yet, that I had heard even a
whistled scrap; occasionally the coloured firemen would sing in falsetto.

An epidemic of hair-cutting broke out. Every time I saw the process
going on, the artist was a fresh one; and I was inclined to think that
we are a nation of hair-cutters