42 THE SEA. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE MEN OF THE SEA. 



. The great Lexicographer on Sailors The Dangers of the Sea How Boys become Sailors Young Amyas Leigh The 

 Genuine Jack Tar Training-Ships versus the old Guard-Ships" Sea-goers and Waisters "The Training Undergone 

 Routine on Board Never-ending Work Ship like a Lady's Watch Watches and "Bells" Old Grogram and Grog 

 The Sailor's Sheet Anchor Shadows in the Seaman's Life The Naval Cat Testimony and Opinion of a Medical 

 Officer An Example Boy Flogging in the Navy Shakspeare and Herbert on Sailors and the Sea. 



DR. JOHNSON, whose personal weight seems to have had something to do with that carried 

 by his opinion, considered going to sea a species of insanity.* " No man/' said he, " will 

 be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail : for being in a ship 

 is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned." The great lexicographer knew 

 Fleet Street better than he did the fleet, and his opinion, as expressed above, was hardly 

 even decently patriotic or sensible. Had all men thought as he professed to do probably 

 for the pleasure of saying something ponderously brilliant for the moment we should have 

 had no naval or commercial superiority to-day in short, no England. 



The dangers of the sea are serious enough, but need not be exaggerated. One writer f 

 indeed, in serio-comic vein, makes his sailors sing in a gale 



" When you and I, Bill, on the deck 



Are comfortably lying, 

 My eyes ! what tiles and chimney-pota 

 About their heads are flying ! " 



leading us to infer that the dangers of town-life are greater than those of the sea in a 

 moderate gale. We might remind the reader that Mark Twain has conclusively shown, 

 from statistics, that more people die in bed comfortably at home than are killed by all 

 the railroad, steamship, or other accidents in the world, the inference being that going 

 to bed is a dangerous habit ! But the fact is, that wherever there is danger there will 

 be brave men found to face it even when it takes the desperate form just indicated ! 

 So that there is nothing surprising in the fact that in all times there have been men 

 ready to go to sea. 



Of those who have succeeded, the larger proportion have been carried thither by the 

 spirit of adventure. It would be difficult to say whether it has been more strongly 

 developed through actual " surroundings," as believed by one of England's most intelligent 

 and friendly critics^ who says, "The ocean draws them just as a pond attracts young 

 ducks/' or through the influence of literature bringing the knowledge of wonderful 

 voyages and discoveries within the reach of all. The former are immensely strong 

 influences. The boy who lives by, and loves the sea, and notes daily the ships of all 



* All readers will remember Peter Simple, and how he tells us that " It has been from time immemorial 

 the heathenish custom to sacrifice the greatest fool of the family to the prosperity and naval superiority of the 

 country," and that he personally "was selected by general acclamation!" Marryat knew very well, however, that 

 it was " younger sons," and not by any means necessarily the greatest fools of the family who went to sea. 



t William Pitt, long Master-Attendant at Jamaica Dockyard, who died at Malta, in 1840. The song is often 

 wrongly attributed to Dibdin, or Tom Hood the elder. 



J Alphonse Esquiros, " English Seamen and Divers." 



