Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 15, January, 1859 by Various
page 113 of 318 (35%)
blowing that would take the leaves bodily out of any book short of a
fifteenth-century folio,--this, with the men now reefing and now
shaking out topsails and every other thing, as the gale rages or lulls,
in the hope of working to windward of certain destruction.

The remedy, to be effectual, must touch the seaman's calling. It is of
no use to appeal to his better nature, if he hasn't any. If you make a
drudge and a beast of him, you can't do him much good by preaching at
him. The working of the present system is, that there are afloat a set
of fellows who are a sort of no-countrymen. Like the beach-combers of
the Pacific, they have neither country, home, nor friends, and are as
different from the old class of American sailors as the _condottiere_
from the loyal soldier. Let the navigation-laws be enforced first of
all, and see that the due proportion of the crews of every ship be
native-born. Let the custom-house protections be no longer the farce
they are,--where a man who talks of "awlin haft the main tack" is set
down as a native of Martha's Vineyard, and his messmate, who couldn't
say "peas" without betraying County Cork, is permitted to hail from the
interior of Pennsylvania. Let the ship-owners combine (it is for their
interest) to do away with the whole body of shipping-agents, middlemen,
and land-sharks. Jack will take his pleasure ashore,--you can't help
that; and perhaps so would you, Sir, after six months of "old horse"
and stony biscuit, with a leaky forecastle and a shorthanded crew. Jack
will take his pleasure, and that in ways we may all of us object to;
but, for Heaven's sake, break up a system of which the whole object is
to degrade the man into the mere hack of a set of shore harpies. Do not
leave him in the hands of those whom you are now permitting to combine
with you to clear him out as swiftly as possible, and then dispatch him
to sea. Let the captains ship their own crews on board the ship, and do
away with the system of advances. But, at any rate, do learn to treat
DigitalOcean Referral Badge