A HUMANISING AGENCY 209 



at sea and forward them, when necessary, for treatment 

 at the London Hospital. 



While writing this chapter I heard a North Sea 

 skipper tell how, when he first went to the Dogger, as a 

 lad, he severely injured his arm. For sixteen weeks he 

 remained at sea, with no opportunity of getting the wound 

 treated, except in the roughest fashion ; there was not 

 time when he came ashore to cure it, and he had to go 

 back to the fleet, a helpless youngster, and let chance do 

 the healing. That is merely one and not a lurid 

 instance of the neglect and suffering of old, in the days 

 when a mixture of turpentine and treacle was reckoned 

 an efficient medicine, and when fine lads and splendid 

 men who had been cruelly wounded in their calling had 

 to endure inexpressible torture in a rolling, wallowing 

 storm-hammered smack or carrier before harbour could 

 be reached and then the flag at half-mast would tell 

 the sorry tale of too late. 



Words can hardly give an understanding of the 

 sufferings and discomforts of the old days that are 

 mercifully gone ; the imagination can scarcely picture 

 the avoidable privations of the toilers who had been 

 seriously or fatally injured. To-day there are, and must 

 be, the terrible accidents that are inseparable from deep- 

 sea trawling the havoc done to life and limb by 

 smashing seas, or charging heavy trunks of fish, and the 

 ghastly limb-lopping or body-cutting that occur in a 

 moment when a wire rope tautens, snaps, and slashes 

 through the air like a colossal knife. But side by side 

 with these grim happenings there are the means of 

 curing some of the results and of lessening or mastering 

 pain. 



M 



