# Littell's Living Age/Volume 179/Issue 2317/Among the North-Sea Trawlers

Originally published in Contemporary Review.
I.
Not long ago, in bitter weather, I stood on the deck of a smack, as the livid sun sank in a whirling trouble of flying spray. The wind blew hollow, and, as the hundred and twenty vessels of our fleet fell into loose order, there came a noise as though a musketry engagement were going on between two great forces. The immense beam of our trawl was twisted on the rail, and then our five hands began with a series of gymnastic operations which were enough to appal any outsider. To see a lithe but heavily weighted fellow spring on the rolling rail and run round with a warp; to see another spring clear over the side and tug at the net; to see the absolute sureness of hand, and foot, and eye displayed while the vessel soared up the steeps of the seas, and made her arrowy plunge downward — all this was impressive to me, for I had never seen violently hard work performed in such weather. Then came the night full of weird sights and strange sounds; an illimitable river seemed to be rushing away under us, and each rolling freshet was marked with intricate streaks of foam; the smacks all round tugged and jerked at their trawls until it appeared that something must go; but the gallant boats tore steadily on, and the sound of their plunging came like a sharp staccato through the enormous ground-bass of the gale. I had spent hundreds of nights at sea, but that particular night was marked for me, because I suddenly gained knowledge which had never been dreamed of by me, and the whole circumstances of a complex social problem started out suddenly before me. It was one of those mystic, immortal nights wherein the whole soul grows stronger and more secure in vision and conviction in spite of physical privation. The roar deepened and the icy cold caught at my breath and numbed me; it is useless to wrap yourself up in swathes of heavy clothing when you are on that desolate sea in bad weather; you must choose between violent exertion and the stifling warmth of the cabin. I had been brooding long until I felt as though all the suffering and all the daring and endurance of a hundred generations of dead seamen were before me. How many thousands perished before means were evolved in the course of years to cheat the inexorable fury of the sea! How many agonies of struggle had passed on that rushing water, and yet our man was singing at the wheel, as though the very ooze under him were not thick with the bones of drowned sailors! Then my mournful poetic humor was interrupted by the prose of a sudden sea which knocked me over and efficiently drenched me. In a little while my streaming clothes were off, and I was shivering in the pleasant softness of dry flannels; then I went to the crew’s cabin, and that flash of new knowledge of which I have spoken came to me. All the fine fellows lay in their hammocks, and each man’s limbs were loosened in a very ecstasy of rest. The mighty Caistor man heaved his great breast gently, and slumbered like a baby; a superb, tan-faced lad lay so still that you might have thought him like the effigy on a tomb but for the rich color of his skin; the rosy, purple-streaked face of the skipper was placid; and on deck the deluges of water came upon us and went bellowing aft with a clamor like a cataract. All those sleepers were quite wet, and they had lain down without being able to find time for such finikin luxuries of change as were necessary to my degenerate carcase.
This was the little suggestion which came so poignantly home to me. I, the ignoble landsman, must needs get into dry clothes after the first sousing; but these good fellows had not only to do without changes, but they must go on, day after day, performing the most violent forms of labor, after taking their small snatches of rest in their soaked and steaming clothes.
At midnight, a hoarse cry from the skipper roused the sleeping men; silently, swiftly, they flung themselves from their hammocks, put on their heavy sea-boots, and went off on deck with all the smartness of drilled man-of-war’s men. No man could describe what followed by using mere words; only the hand of a fine artist could give an idea of the hurry, the reckless toil, the fierce flashing of lights, and the mad rush of waves that seemed like to carry the toilers away. The gale was rising, and the music of the wind in the cordage made my heart tremble, but our fellows did not heed the wind, nor the thunderous volleys of water that hit us; they got the fish from the net, and sat down in that roaring midnight to do the gruesome work of cleaning and packing. Towards two o’clock the gale threatened to tear the canvas off us, and all hands had to struggle for four solid hours until we were reefed down; then the exhausted, streaming fellows went below and lay down instantly, while the water trickled in stray driblets on to the grimy cabin floor. The wind still gathered force until the fleet were blown apart like flying feathers, and a succession of pale-green alps rushed on us under the leaden sky of the sad morning; all day long we were dancing over the swift seas ; we were isolated from every species of human companionship except that which we had among ourselves; but work must perforce go on as usual. That is the life which the smacksmen lead all the year round; in summer the ceaseless strain may not be heeded, but when the smack is like a mere rolling iceberg and the men’s beards are solid icicles, then the pinch comes, and then every human power of endurance must be kept from day to day at the most strenuous pitch.
In the wild days, when the snowstorms sweep along and the ceaseless waves roll savagely, the fishermen work on.
When, at last, after our forlorn tussle, the fleet gathered together once more, I saw a sight more significant than any which met me during the gale. Men with cuts and bruises and dislocations began to arrive on board us, for I was on a mission trawler, and our hospital work only began when the pinch of the gale had passed. Man after man was attended by our deft skipper, and when, in the lull of that evening, a few strangers gathered with us, I noticed that they prayed very hard for the wounded men. Some of them growled out their rough thanks for the help that had been given them. Now, among all these rude fellows whom I had seen toiling, I never heard a rough word or saw a coarse action. I have been enough among sailormen, and, as every one knows, the curse and the blow are tolerably ready with the wilder sort; but these smacksmen seem to be transformed and they exercise a transforming influence on their comrades. There is a change, and these men are not like the fellows I knew twenty-five years ago. It takes rather a long story to make any outsider understand what all this means. It takes a long time to show how a great and beneficent structure has gradually grown with all the still and inevitable force of some strong tree, while the more careless portion of the public have been as unconscious of the growth as they are of the mysterious and gradual thickening of the trees which they pass daily. Unnoticed save by a company of ardent religious folk, a mighty organization has arisen, and people are only just beginning to know what a strange and beautiful work has been done in comparative secrecy. And now for the story of a miracle.
II.
The fisherman of old times — nay, of comparatively recent times — dwelt apart from the world, and I do not think that any human creature could have fared so hardly. Even nowadays when I go among the smacksmen, and see how they live, I wonder with more and more intensity how any class of men can be found to endure such an existence. Every condition of squalor, cold, excessive toil, and danger is known to them, and, during the greater part of the year, they do not know a single pleasure, even of the low sort. Why should they endure such a fate? It is because they know of no other. Many of them leave the parish schools and become apprentices; from that day until their bleak and barren life’s end, they are cut off from the world of men. People think that a voyage to the Cape is rather a long and tedious affair, but the fisherman stays out at sea for eight weeks at a stretch, and, during that time he must be content with alternations of furious labor and mere dulness unless some influence from outside can be made to touch him. For eight weeks the men only have their reeking cabin as a refuge from the deck; and the very name of pleasure would sound strange to them. No one who is inexperienced can conceive the extent of the fisherman’s ignorance even now, and I think that only that same ignorance keeps them from feeling discontented. At their own craft they are consummately skilful; they know the cunning and mysterious ways of fishes; they can read the meaning of every change of wind, or sky, or sea; and they are so heedless of danger that it is sometimes frightful to see them. Then, barring the worst of the weeds from the slum, they are men of superb physique, and their powers of bearing labor and privation are quite without parallel in my experience. This noble set of toilers must be reckoned as only equal to the merest children in knowledge. When they are bad, their badness is brutal; when they are good, their goodness is marked by infantile simplicity. The sailor goes from port to port; the smacksman travels from the desolate banks of the Dogger or Ameland to the quayside of his native town, and then he goes back again —year in, year out. Often on weary afternoons, when the grey sky stooped low and the dim water was lashed by the sleet, I have thought, “What a life!“ Mr. Carlyle boldly asserted that a man is nearer the eternal verities, or something of that kind, when he is at sea; now I should say that the fisher, with his dog’s housing and his dog’s life, is a good deal kept away from the verities, eternal and otherwise, and I should rather not have had Carlyle’s company during the eighth week of his enjoyment of the verities. At the best the smack goes briskly along in smart weather; at the worst she is surrounded by bitter snow and plunging seas. Again — What a life!
Now, there is no Englishman who durst describe the fisherman’s mode of life in days gone by. One of the new school of gentry who write in France might enjoy the work, but he would be obliged to keep his story in his own language, for even Zola’s latest outrage does not picture a state of things worse than that on the North Sea. If you can contrive to talk frankly with an old hand, he will make your skin creep by flat, bald narratives of ancient brutality. Try to imagine a kind of life which combined the horrors of a Liverpool slum with those of the forecastle in one of the ships that Smollett knew, and then you may have some idea of the condition of tile floating villages wherein the fishers lived out their awful lives. In many cases the only entertainment in which miserable brutes could indulge was the infliction of torture on yet more miserable boys. The spread of kindly humanity, and the sharp terror of the rope, have done away with the cruelty, but the memory of that ancient evil is like a bad dream. The men were brutalized. Yes, and what chance had they in life of becoming anything else? Their very existence was ignored. Here was a navy manned by twelve thousand daring but ignorant seamen, and the British nation at large did not know that the twelve thousand embruted toilers existed! Our money was poured out in rivers, and, at the time when Borrioboola Gha was in fashion, we frittered away hundreds of thousands on impossible missions to savages, while thousands of men — British men, with infinite capacities for good — were living in a state worse than any savage of the southern seas, and certainly worse than the state of the happy savages in Uruguay. The strange tiling is that there is no one to blame. The fishermen did not explain their condition, for the simple reason that they could not; they were totally illiterate, and they never travelled out of the groove that connected the smack, the tavern, and the dreary sea. Then the public, who would have been in a fever of sympathy had they known the truth, were totally in the dark. How could the orthodox traveller be expected to endure cold and storm and sordid misery at the tail of the Dogger? Thus the dumb fishermen and the darkened public contrived between them to let the reign of evil last until the year 1881. Now since that time a change has been wrought which has never been equalled since the days of Father Mathew’s crusade. What I am going to tell is no fragment of gushing romance; it is not the dream of a fiction-writing reformer; it is plain fact, which amazes me more and more in spite of my familiarity with every detail. In 1881 Mr. E. J. Mather went out into the North Sea, and bore all the necessary hardships while he passed about among the fishermen. He had been engaged in amateur mission work on shore for years, and his new experience made him sad, and passionately eager to make a change among the multitude who dwelt in the very shadow of night. In the quaint and most moving chapters of his book called “Nor’ard of the Dogger,” he tells all about the dull resistance that seemed to spoil his early efforts, and a judicious reader can see that Mather attacked a task which would have made very resolute men of the ordinary kind turn away with a shrug of despair.
But he was under the domain of one importunate idea; the horror of great darkness that had brooded over him in the midst of the swarming fleets never left him, and he gave himself up to the effort of solving a big and almost terrifying puzzle. Now, his way of proceeding was to rely upon prayer in the first instance, and I am bound to say that, if facts of the solid kind count for anything, his proceedings have been anything but inefficacious. I must explain here, however, that with the spiritual side of the mission work I have nothing to do. I am a journalist — partly political fighter, and partly special correspondent — and I only deal with such secular things as a trained observer may handle with advantage.
Well, Mr. Mather had no money available for the purposes in view, and certainly the two North Sea skippers with whom he discussed his plans had none; but they had a good deal of faith, and they brought that to bear. In a very little while a gentleman advanced a thousand pounds, and with that sum in hand a little smack called the Ensign was fitted up, and she departed from Yarmouth amid the confident jeers of the loafers. There were twelve thousand sailors to be reached as far as possible, and one tiny vessel to do the work. The change which took place was almost past belief; as the smacks returned home, the fishermen brought reports concerning the treatment which they had met with on board the Ensign, and wives and mothers were grateful. A wise benefidence had placed a small dispensary on board the smack, and many a poor fellow was relieved; the men who came for surgical aid were attacked by that process which is quaintly called “saying a word for the Master,” and religious converts became very numerous. When the Ensign ran into Yarmouth again, the crowd cheered her, and that slight indication of a change has been so far followed up that any man would be rather unpleasantly greeted (by the women especially) if he now ventured to speak against the mission.
The subsequent history of the work would sound like a tale heard in a queer dream if I crave it at length; money gradually poured in just when it was most needed, a company of the best men to be found in philanthropic circles allied themselves cheerfully, at his earnest request, with the enthusiastic director; and this was well, for staid business men form the wheels and brake of the engine, while the enthusiast supplies all the steam. The phlegmatic public seemed to wake up from a dream of indifference; various donors presented heavy sums; a few munificent persons went so far as to present vessels; and thus, at this moment, nine splendid, well-found smacks are at work among the fleets, while two hospital ships, which promise to be the finest of all, are on the stocks at Yarmouth.
And now let us see what these vessels have done. As aforesaid, I write mainly of secular things, but I feel it almost a duty to mention one curious matter which came to my notice in our dreary July. An ugly morning had broken with half a gale of wind blowing; the sea was not dangerous, but it was nasty — perhaps nastier than it looked. I was on board a steam-carrier, which I may say, for the benefit of landsfolk, is a low-built, powerful iron vessel that lunges in the most disturbing manner when she is waiting in the trough of the sea for the boats which bring off the big eighty-pound boxes of fish. The little boats were crashing, and leaping like hooked salmon, and grinding against the sides of the steamer, and I could not venture to walk about very much on that reeling iron deck. The crowd of smacksmen who came were a very wild lot, and, as the breeze grew stronger, they were in a hurry to get their boxes on board. Since one of the trunks of fish weighs eighty pounds, I need hardly say that the process of using such a box as a dumb-bell is not precisely an easy one, and, when the dumb-bell practice has to be performed on a kind of stage which jumps like a bucking broncho, the chances of bruises and of resulting bad language are much increased. The bounding, wrenching, straining, stumbling mob in the boats did not look very gentle or civilized; their attire was quite fanciful and varied, but very filthy, and they were blowzy and tired after their wild night of lashing rain and chill hours of labor. A number of the younger fellows had the peculiar street-Arab style of countenance, while the older men were not of the very gentle type. In that mad race against wind and tide, I should have expected a little of the usual cursing and fighting from a mob which included a small percentage of downright roughs. But a tall man dressed in ordinary yachtsman’s clothes stood smoking on deck, and that was the present writer; the rough Englishmen did not know that I had been used to the company of the wildest desperadoes that live on earth; they only knew that I came from the mission ship, and they passed the word. Every rowdy that came up was warned, and one poor rough who chanced to blurt out a very common and very nasty Billingsgate word was silenced by a moralist, who observed, “Cheese it. Don’t cher see the mission ship bloke?” I watched like a cat, and I soon saw that the ordinary hurricane curses were restrained on my account, simply because I came from the vessel where all are welcome — bad and good. For four hours I was saluted in all sorts of blundering, good-humored ways by the men as they came up. Little scraps of news are always intensely valued at sea, and it pleased me to see how these rude, kind souls tried to interest me by giving me scraps of information about the yacht which I had just left. “She was a-bearin’ away after the Admiral, sir, when we passed her. It’s funny old weather for her, and I see old Jones a-bin and got the torps’l off on her “ — and so on. Several of the fellows shouted as they went, “Gord bless you, sir. We wants you in the winter.” No doubt some of my friends would, at other times, have used a verb not quite allied to bless; but I could see that they were making an attempt to show courtesy toward an agency which they respect, and though I remained like a silent Lama, receiving the salutes of our grimy, greasy friends, I understood their thoughts, and in a cynical way I felt rather thankful to know that there are some men at least on whom kindness is not thrown away. The captain of the carrier said, “I never seen ‘em so quiet as this for a long time, but that was because they seed you. They cotton on to the mission — the most on ‘em does.”
This seems to me a very pretty and significant story. Any one who knows the British rough — especially the nautical rough — knows that the luxury of an oath is much to him, yet here a thorough crowd of wild and excited fellows became decorous, and profuse of civilities, only because they saw a silent and totally motionless man smoking on the deck of a steam-carrier. On board the steamer, I noticed that the same spirit prevailed; the men treated me like a large and essentially helpless baby, who must be made much of. Alas do I not remember my first trip on a carrier, when I was treated rather like a bundle of coarse fish? The reason for the alteration is obvious, and I give my very last experience as a most significant thing of its kind. Observe that the roughest and most defiant of the irreligious men are softened by contact with an agency which they regard as being too fine or too tiresome for their fancy, and it is these irregular ruffians who do greet the mission smacks with the loudest heartiness when we swing into the midst of a fleet.
As to what are called the conversions, I can say nothing in the theological way, but I judge by the results which I have seen. I am as impartial as an ancient Roman about religious systems and sects, but I know that good is good, and I know that a sober , gentle, courteous fellow, who prays with passionate self-humiliation, who is tender to wife and children, who never offers to return evil for evil, and who takes pride in being a gentle and law-abiding citizen, is better than a muscular beast who is only proud of his strength. Now, I could run round the fleets and I pick out at least three hundred men who were once something more than inoffensive ne’er-do-wells — they were active and offensive blackguards. These fellows do not ever cant; they have become civilized men, and if their religious exercises do become demonstrative, what of that? They are good in all relations of life; they are fine workmen; and, if they cry for pardon and pity, who shall blame them? If I sneered at one of them, I should never get rid of my sense of shame during life; it would be a crime against humanity. You must rouse strong emotions in order to bring forth the deeper nature of rude and ignorant men; their ideas are all rather crude, and you cannot teach them subtleties. If by any means you can make them good instead of bad, sober instead of bestial, kindly instead of brutal, then really I, for one, do not much care about the means which you use. If anyone can see, as I have seen, one hundred and fifty strong fellows assembled on the deck of a mission vessel; if he can notice the rude but subtle courtesy, the absence of vulgar horse-play, the hearty, merry kindliness that is made manifest among the friends, then he will own, as I do, that a strong civilizing influence has been at work. The æsthetic people have a good deal to say about religious matters nowadays; what would they think and feel if they heard one hundred and fifty of those strong, hoarse voices rolling over the sea as the night falls? The men have the passion of worship, and they sing because that is the best way to free their wild hearts. For miles around the noble chorus is heard on the vessels far and near. Are not the singers better employed than they would have been in the days when a fine Sunday was spent on board the cruising drink-shop? And are not the hearers better for listening to rough sounds of worship, rather than to spluttering curses and sounds of fights and brawling? I think so ; and that is the only way in which the religious work of the mission touches me strongly. Let elegant and cultured persons put the matter as they choose; but here are the points that touch me personally: a dangerous blackguard is reached by religion ; he at once is changed; the point of honor is present in his mind, and he becomes sober, gentle, and devout, without in any way losing his manliness. These converts cling together: they support each other in their “experience meetings,” one man derives strength from another; and, as a matter of fact, this increasing army of religious enthusiasts have so leavened the fleets that the police on shore find scarcely any complaint against a smacksman at any time. They tell their stories to each other, these simple souls; and I would ask any one to observe the exquisite simplicity of the following little tale, which I quietly took down at a time when the speaker did not knew I was within hearing. The man’s low tones thrilled me; his passionate humility moved my heart, and I think his poor confession far more impressive than any merely literary work:—
    It’s just five years since I first tried to take the right road. Some of my friends was goin' on board the Thomas Gray, and they came to my ship, and I didn’t know what they could want me for. But I went with them, and some friends spoke to us about God and His love; and when they was done I felt myself of a sudden so full like of the love of God, that I stood up there and then, and gave myself to God. And that very same night my wife, who is now a good Christian woman, was on her knees prayin’ for me and hopin’ God would make me lead a better life; and before she was done, God came to her heart, and she writes to me, and says that she had found God, and would I try to do the same. And when I got to my wessel I writes to her and says I had given my heart to my Father, and I would try to be a better man, and lead a better life. And her letter and my letter crossed each other, and I gets hers the same morning as she has mine. And she writes and says that she sat down in the kitchen and had a cry for a good long hour, because she was full of joy.
    I was not one of the best, I wasn’t; my home was, as I may say, a hell upon earth, and my children was afeard of me, and they were right, for I was bad and cruel in the drink. But it is all changed now, and I have kept on the good road as well as I could, and we are happy. I trust, my friends, that I shall go on trying to be a good man till the Lord Jesus is pleased to call me, and that is all I can say.
Observe his desire to avoid “fine “talk. I had a funny lump in my throat before he had finished, and the cadence of his voice carried suggestions to my nerves like simple tones from the infancy of music. Another man, who spoke under the influence of an emotion that was awe-striking, told of his escape from a crime that would have brought him to his end. He was fond of his wife, but he struck at her with a knife at a time when he was mad after a long spell of drinking. When he came to himself and found that he had barely missed the poor girl’s heart, he was stunned. I do not want to think more of this man’s piercing pathos; I could not bear it at the time, and I cannot think of it now with composure; but I know that a score and more of good fellows broke down as he went on in his wild self-abandonment, and I know he has been a steady influence for good during a long time. I have noticed symptoms which might signify insincerity, but our men of the fleets are mostly notable for a kind of noble humbleness. Can this be harmful? Surely not. The religious men are carrying everything before them, and the humblest smacksman may now float a flag bearing a religious inscription, without in the least fearing a shower of oystershells such as would have greeted him less than nine years ago. Once more I can only go by results, and this long series of “conversions” has produced effects such as would have been thought incredible before the mission fairly worked its way among the fleets. No sectarian talk is permitted, and the men are usually only addressed by speakers who call themselves Evangelical. They may call themselves Buddhists if they like; I only know that I have seen their work; I have seen a set of ruffianly communities gradually transformed; I have seen things that are worthy and of good report winning reverence instead of mockery; I have seen two great towns turned into quiet, orderly places by the influence of a mission which has indirectly softened the manners of the worst dare-devils on the North Sea. If any set of Buddhists, or Shakers, or Plymouth Brethren, or Zoroastrians can do as much, I will tell them to come and try, and I am sure they shall have my strongest backing.
But most unsectarian and easy-going people will agree with me that the hospital work of the mission is (for folk of our sort) of extreme importance. Years ago I had no conception of the amount of positive suffering which the fishermen endure. I was once on board a merchant steamer during a few months, and I was installed as surgeon-in-chief. We had a few cases which were pretty tiresome in their way, but then the utmost work our men had to do was the trifle of pulling and hauling when the trysails were put on her, and the usual scraping and scrubbing and painting which goes on about all iron ships. But the smacksman runs the risk of a hurt of some kind in every minute of his waking life. He must work with his oilskins on when rain or spray is coming aboard, and his oilskins fray the skin when the edges wear a little; then the salt water gets into the sore and makes a nasty ulcer, which eats its way up until you may see men who dare not work at the trawl without having their sleeves doubled to the elbow. Then there are the salt-water cracks which cut their way right to the bone. These, and toothache, the fisherman’s great enemy, are ailments which may be cured or relieved by the skippers of the Mission smacks. In a single year over three thousand cases have been treated in the floating dispensaries, and I need hardly call special attention to that fact. Twenty-five per cent. of the men engaged in the fleets find their ailments sufficiently painful to necessitate a visit to the beneficent Mission smack, and I may say that I never saw a malingerer come on board. What would be the use? It is only the stress of positive pain that makes the men seek help, and their hard stoicism is very fine to see. A man unbinds an ugly poisoned finger, and quietly lets you know that he has gone about his work for a week with that throbbing fester paining him; another will simply say that he kept about as long as he could with a broken finger. Then there are cases of a peculiarly distressing nature — scalp wounds caused by falling blocks, broken limbs in various stages of irritation, internal injuries caused by violent falls in bad weather. The Mission smacks can always do something even now, but then a heavily injured man must be sent home in the steam-carrier, and I should like people to imagine what that is like. There is no chance of delicate handling while a strong sea is running; the lunge of the small boat must be watched dexterously, and the cripple must be heaved down like a sack. Then, after the cruel ordeal of the middle passage, the sufferer is thrown up on to the steamer, and then comes the two days’ run home. A man suffering from a simple fracture can be discharged in a fortnight, but his work is gone, and he must seek for a fresh berth in a market where the unemployed are very numerous. I grant that the present staff has given an immense amount of relief to acute pain, and the gratitude of poor souls whose wounds and sores have been dressed, is almost piteous; but something more is wanted. Last winter, during that bad time when the rigging of the smacks was filled with solid ice, when the boats were covered in so that an hour’s work with hatchets and boiling water was needed before they could be extricated from the mass of ice, and when the men had to walk on the glassy decks with sacks tied over their boots, one young surgeon kept the sea and dared everything. If any one wants a totally new sensation I advise him to read this young Mr. Grenfell’s account of this trying cruise. Apart from its peculiar literary merit, which is of a rare and undefinable quality, the spirit of the whole thing affected me like an exercise in religion. That one narrative represents Young England at the best; the laughing stoicism, the easy contempt for danger, the resource and skill indicated made me feel rather proud of my country. Mr. Grenfell stuck to his post like — well, like one of our typical English heroes — until he had satisfied his employers and himself; he made perilous trips from ship to ship, and though he gently hints that it is rather awkward to perform operations skilfully when a vessel is plunging, and you have to lash your patient to any handy support, yet he persevered in his merry, stoical fashion, and achieved some results which are now mentioned with bated breath among the fleets. One operation performed on a lad who was quite demented with pain and sleeplessness, has rendered Mr. Grenfell free of the whole community of fishermen. His brilliant successes, attained in the worst season known for thirty years, point out the proper course for the Council of the Institution to take, and I fancy the public will assist when they know the circumstances.
Crusing hospital ships with good surgeons are wanted — that is the crying need at this time of day.
One hospital cruiser will be ready in the late autumn, and some kindly friend has presented a lump sum of £3,500 in order that a second vessel may be built, Last year, while travelling about among the fleets, I came to see plainly that the floating hospital was a necessity, and I found that the director had been hankering for six years after the same notion; the queen supports the scheme proposed, and now only a dead-lift effort is needed to put in practice an idea which, last year, we reckoned as a dream — a dream unattainable. To those who do not go to sea I will give one hint: if a man is sent home on the long journey over the North Sea, he not only suffers grievously, but he loses his employment, and his family fare badly. If he were transferred to the hospital ship his place could be filled for a little while by one of the spare hands whom the mission intend to send out, and his berth would be saved for him. I do not deny that the scheme is rather impressive in the magnitude of its difficulty; but then no man breathing — except Mr. Mather — would ever have fancied, five years ago, that the mission would become one of the miracles of modern social progress, and thus I have learned to believe that even the new difficulty may be conquered. If comfortable folks at home could only see how those gallant, battered fishermen suffer under certain circumstances of toil and weather, they would hardly wonder at my putting forward the hospital project so urgently. By rights I ought to have spoken beforehand about other branches of the mission’s work, but the importance of the healing department has overshadowed all other considerations in my mind. Still it is worth while to speak of the myriad minor ways in which this marvellous agency spreads happiness and comfort among those who were once the least cared for of all the suffering toilers in the world.
Up till very recent years the fishermen were a rather debauched set, and those who had money or material to barter for liquor could very easily indulge their taste. Sneaking vessels — floating grogshops — crept about among the fleets, and an exhausted fisherman could soon obtain enough fiery brandy to make him senseless and useless. The foreigners could bring out cheap tobacco, and the men usually went on board for the tobacco alone. But the shining bottles were there, the sharp scent of the alcohol appealed to the jaded nerves of men who felt the tedium of the sea, and thus a villanous agency obtained a terrible degree of power. I have in a pamphlet explained how Mr. Mather contrived to defeat and ruin the foreign liquor trade, and I may do so again in brief fashion. Our customs authorities at that date would not let the mission vessels take tobacco out of bond, and Mr. Mather was, for a long time, beaten. But he has a somewhat unusual capacity for mastering obstacles, and he contrived to sweep the copers off the sea by the most audacious expedient that I have heard of in the commercial line. A great firm of manufacturers offered him tobacco at cost price, the tobacco was carried by rail from Bristol to London; it was then sent to Ostend, whence a cruiser belonging to the Mission cleared it out, and it was then carried to the banks and distributed among the fleets. A fisherman could buy this tobacco at a shilling per pound; the copers were undersold, and they found it best to take themselves off. No one can better appreciate this most dashingly beneficial action than the smack-owners, for their men are more efficient and honest; the fishermen themselves are grateful, because few of them really craved after drink, and the general results are obvious to anybody who spends a month in the North Sea. We know the Six Governments have seen the wisdom of Mr. Mather’s action, and one of the best of modern reforms has been consummated. The copers did a great amount of mischief indirectly apart from the traffic in spirits. If some of our reformers at home could only see the prints and pictures and models which were offered to hot-headed young men who must of necessity lead a celibate existence, they would own, I fancy, that if the mission had done no more than abolish the traffic in literary and other abominations, it has done much. A few somewhat particular folk object to supplying the men with cheap tobacco, but any who knows what intense relief is given to an overworked man by the pipe will hardly heed the objection very much. After a heavy spell of work, a seaman smokes for a few minutes before the slumberous lethargy creeps round his limbs, and he is all the better for the harmless narcotic. How much the men appreciate the boon may be gathered from the fact that some fifty tons of tobacco are yearly sold among them.
Busy ladies over all the country are constantly knitting for the Mission, and the quantity of articles distributed at easy prices is so startling that I hardly like to quote figures. The vessels are boarded by eager men, and the mufflers and mittens are gratefully bought. Should any one visit the North Sea even in summer, he will soon discover that the imposing boot-stockings worn by the fishermen are almost a necessity of life in the chill, wet nights. The pleasure of the men when they secure a new garment is touching; they cannot well replenish the stock they bring from home, and the handy shop supplied by the mission is a blessing to them.
But, much as I recognize the physical benefits which the mission confers, I value even more the subtle humanizing action of the mere power of sympathy. One good fellow said to me long ago, “Ah! some on ‘em laughs at us when we calls the seagulls the fishermen’s friends. I wonder what they would say if they was out here for eight weeks and only the gulls for company?" You may always see the men feeding the pretty birds in hard weather, and the roughest of them will say, “Pretty Kitty, Kitty. Has the weather found you out?” The loneliness that gave rise to the saying about the gulls is not so oppressive now. The men are proud of the keen interest shown in them, but they never presume, and their quiet kindness to visitors is amongst the most delightful things that I know. Then they are being gradually raised by contact with men of refinement, and the steady improvement in manners is more and more apparent to me each time that I go out to the fleets. The good souls do not want patronage; they are full of fine, simple manhood, and what they take pride in and appreciate is the friendliness of those whom they used to regard in a far-off way as “ladies and genelmen.” Do my readers remember Mr. Peggotty’s roar of delight when Master Davy turned up? Something of the same sort rises from each smack as the vessel with the blue flag glides up, and the hearty good-will shown is something to remember.
I can see some defects, I can see some dangers; but, on the whole, I do not know any charitable organization which is such a triumph of skill and completeness. The vast number of volunteer workers, of course, enables the director and the council to keep down expenses, but nothing could have been done but for the fine ruling faculty which has developed such a fabric in so short a time. A great scholar, who studied the working of the mission, wrote to me, “I am glad that there is something in this wretched world that goes right.” He expressed my own notion exactly. These fishermen are really worth helping. Before long we may need to use all our resources, and here we have a set of such seamen as cannot be matched — no, not even by the New York men in the pilot cutters. They should not be neglected.
My subject is so vast that I have been well nigh in despair over the difficulty of condensation; at every turn I think of something new which seems to require remark; but I fancy enough has been said to give a fair idea of a very beautiful and wonderful social phenomenon. In my youth the East Coast smack was proverbially mentioned among all sailor-folk as the chosen home of filth, cruelty, and all the nautical abominations which smart sailors abhorred. Poor little boys were martyred, for the grown-up men had been reared like beasts, and they behaved like beasts. If a youngster did go overboard on a dark night he was counted no more than a drowned puppy. All that is altered; on the dismal North Sea the kindly modern spirit is slowly spreading, and I look for good days. At any rate here is a mission managed on keen business principles, and those who care to see it at work have merely to take a run out in one of the mission ships, and they will learn within a fortnight that a cynical newspaper writer has given a moderate but accurate account of a lovely and hopeful movement.