Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1897-10-23
SAILORS LOST ART.
NO LONGER DO THE MAN-o'-wAR,s
MEN EMeRoiDER TIDES.


some Queer old Customs Of the service
Disappeared with Them.
Fancy work in the navy is lost art 1t
went out with tho building of the new
feet. over on the receiving ship Vermont
at the Brooklyn navy yard, on the glori-
Gus old Constitution at Portsmouth, n.
H., and scattered on board ships which up
pear in The Naval Register as receiving
ships or as "unserviceable" you can find
gparled and knotted old sailors who, with
huge bowed spectacles and hands Of Curl
GUS shape, knit tidjos, turn out fancy en-
broidered mats and will spin you inter-
JninabIe yarns of the time they made ia
blecloth for tho captains table so many
fathoms long and SO many fathoms wide
He insists on making his own clothes also,
as all good sailors used to do He has q
poor iden Of q sailor who cannot do piece
OF embroidery as neatly as my lady in her
chamber.
He mourns over the degeneracy of the
service, and will tell you, In my day, sir,
the cat-o'-Dine tails lay alongside the Bible
on the capstan every Sunday morning,
and the crew were piped to prayers as reg
ularly as to grog." He has little use for
fashioned, swearing, fighting, drinking
knock down and drag out kind, who was
handy with his knife, his fists, his grog
and tobacco and his needle--a curious
combination, and yet one which carried
the flag Of the United States Victorious
over every sea.
OF all the accomplishments of the old
time sailor that of doing fancy work was the
~ 80 f,fvot, nm t,f
1t went out with tho boarding pike drill,
which was chung to in tho navy of the
United States long after the navy of every
other civilized nation had abandoned 1t as
obsolete. 1t was ten years ago that the
art of embroidery and knitting, the max
Ing of fancy mats and the art of tailoring,
carried to its apotheosis began to be
dropped in the navy of the United States.
New ships, with different sort of routine
work, new regulations as to clothing and
shorter cruises were the causes of 1t.
The old sailor was "sui generis;'' so is
the new, but he is of different type. A
navy sailor is, has been and always must
be of a race apart. The sailor is born of
the exigencies Of the sea service, and as
those exigenoies change so does he. Yet
IN all the ages the true sailor must be
different sort of creature from landsman.
The change from one sort of a sailor to
another sort was sudden in the United
States navy because the building of the
new navy was thing conceived and car
ried out in so short time. In the old
navy a sailor used constantly to handle the
complicated mazes Of the rigging of the
wooden ships. His eye was trained in
looking at n network of ropes to see Just
what function each one had in the whole
scheme, and the threads stretched over q
frame for making piece of fancy work
were never more complicated than the
mass ofropes aloft on full rugged man
of-war. 1t was part of his trade to knot
and splice Gas it Is to some extent now,
but nothing to what it used to bel, and in
his leisure moments it became easy for
him to make the most delicate and beauti-
full pieces of fancy work. Yet to lands
man it was the most incongruous thing
imaginable.
The writer remembers once seeing an
old sailor, hardened and scanned and beard
ed, the survivor of many well fought
battle OF the civil war, for nearly half
century tossed about by every sea that
rolls and his face furrowed by the "hard
glad weather" of every cline, come into
the stateroom of an officer on man-of-
war and say, in a voice thatrumbled some
where underneath the ships Keel Here's
a pair o. tides l made ye, sir, :" at the same
time putting down two beautiful pieces OF
fancy work that would have delighted the
heart of the instructors of needlework in
a young ladies' boarding school. 1t did
not seem possible that that old ''Tarpaulin
Jack" had made these things, but he had.
What real sailor used most to glorify
himself in was his embroidery. Sailors
used to make their own clothes and embel-
lish them with the most elaborate and
beautiful needlework Around the wide
collar, at the openings of the little pockets
in the breast, in the corners of the collars
and on the upper part of the perfectly fit
ting trousers there was embroidery, fine,
beautiful, ingenious in design and requir.
ing much time, patience and skill to pro-
duce Then the sailor made his cap, and
in the center of its top he embroidered
again with great beauty and profuseness.
In the old days a ship would bo at sea for
months at a time upon occasions, and
every cruise was long one. When the
routine of the ships work was over, the
sailor had plenty of time for fancy work,
for spinning yarns and for singing songs
of Truxton's Victory" and 1.-THE Guer-
riere Frigate Bold" Now it, is a few
days from port to port, and it is coal ship
and clean up after it, and scour bright
work all the time, when il is not drill with
the guns, or torpedoes, or with some other
newfangled notion about the great floating
machine shop.
The modern sailor does not make his
own clothes They are supplied to him
from the navy yard or by the tailor aboard
ship. There can be no more fancy en-
broidering on his shirt, his trousers or his
cap. The regulations forbid it. All must be
uniform in fact as well as in name. APP
prentice boys are still taught to sew at the
training school, but that is all that is left
TO remind us of the sailors lost art, which
once hourished and blossomed on men-of-
war. AS they can no longer wear fancy
embroidery, they have stopped doing 1t.
AS their clothes are made for them, they
have lost the art Of making them them
selves. AS they no longer have long hours
of leisure for the fla IRRIGATION of tablecloths,
tides and fancy mats, they no longer ex-
ercise their ingenuity and skill in those
ways. The coxswain of the captains gig
may make pretty mat out Of junk for
the captain to step on as he gets into the
boat, but that = about all. An old officer