POOR PRIMROSE. . 223 



A Committee of the Lower House of Convocation has recently collected an immense 

 amount of statistics regarding- the provision made by private ship-owners for the spiritual 

 welfare of their men, and the result as regards England is not at all satisfactory. In 

 point of fact, it is rarely made at all. The committee seeks to encourage the growth of 

 religion among sailors by providing suitable and comfortable church accommodation at all 

 ports, and urges owners to instruct their captains as to conducting divine seivice on 

 Sundays, and to furnish Bibles, prayer-books, and instructive works of secular literature. 

 Too much must not, however, be expected from Jack. The hardships and perils through 

 which he passes excuse much of his exuberance ashore. It is his holiday-time; and, so 

 long as he is only gay, and not abandoned, the most rigid must admit that he has earned 

 the right to recreation. A distinguished French naval officer used to say that the sailor 

 fortunately had no memory. " Happy for him," said he, " that he is thus oblivious. Did 

 he remember all the gales and tempests, the cold, the drenching rain, the misery, the 

 privations, the peril to life and limb which he has endured, he would never, when he 

 sets foot on shore, go to sea again. But he has no memory. The clouds roll away, the 

 sea is calm, the sun shines, the boat bears him to land ; the wine flows ; the music strikes 

 up ; pretty girls smile : he forgets all the past, and lives only in the present." 



While the chaplain may, and no doubt generally does, earn the respect and esteem 

 of the men, woe to any example of the " Chadband " order who shall be found on board. 

 This is, ill the Royal Navy, almost impossible ; but it sometimes happens that, on passenger 

 ships, some sanctimonious and fanatical individual or other has had a very rough time 

 of it. He is regarded as a kind of Jonah. In a recent number of that best of American 

 magazines, the Atlantic Monthly, the woes and trials of one poor Joseph Primrose, a well-meaning 

 minister who went out to America in 1742, are amusingly recounted. There were, aboard 

 the Polly, the vessel in which he took passage, several of the crew who viewed their 

 religious exercises askance. " These men," says he, " had been foremost in a general 

 indignation uprising that had ensued upon the stoppage of their daily allowance of rum ; 

 which step had been taken on my earnest recommendation. For this injurious drink we 

 had substituted a harmless and refreshing beverage concocted of molasses, vinegar, and 

 water, from a choice receipt I had come upon in a medical book aboard the vessel. The 

 sailors, to a man, refused to touch it, egged on by these contumacious fellows, and more 

 especially by one Springer, a daring villain, who reviled me with bitter execrations. In 

 fine, the captain was obliged, for our own safety, to restore the cherished dram; and I 

 had the mortification to find myself, from that time forth, an object of dislike and 

 suspicion to these men, who were kept within decent bounds only by respect for their 

 master. I became convinced, on reflection, that I had gone the wrong way about 

 this unfortunate piece of business; having, in fact, made a very serious error in the 

 beginning, gentle argument and good example being more apt to bring about the desired 

 end than compulsory measures, these dulling the understanding by rousing the temper, 

 especially among persons of the meaner sort. All my efforts and they were not few^to 

 place im self on a friendly footing with these men were of no avail : they had conceived 

 the notion that I was their enemy, and met all my advances with obstinate coldness. As 

 Captain Hewlett exacted the daily attendance at prayers of every soul on board, these 



