Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1897-10-09
SAILORS LOST ART.
NO LONGER DO THE MAN-C,-NAR,S
MEN EMBRoIDER TIDES.

l. 4
MEN EMBRoIDER TIDES.
And They Don't Make Their Clothes Any
More-When Wooden Ships Went Out,
Some Queer Old Customs of the Service
! Disappeared with Them.
Fancy work in the navy is lost art. 1t
went out with the 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 ap-
! pear in The Naval Register as receiving
| ships" or as "unserviceable'' you can find
| gnarled and knotted old sailors who, with
| huge bowed spectacles and hands of curl
Gus shape, knit tides, turn out fancy en-
broidered mats and will spin you inter-
minable yarns of the time they made Ia
! blecloth for the 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 o
| poor idea of a 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,
tAC odt-O -Ittio tttl4S i1y dlOuSelto uiio olDi6
on the capstan every Sunday morning,
and the crew were piped to prayers as reg
ularly as to grog.'' He has little use for
! the modern sailor, and believes in the old
| 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
| last to be given up and to disappear forever.
| 1t went out with the boarding pike drill,
| which was chung to in the navy of the
! United States long after the navy of every
other civilized nation had abandoned it 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 it's 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 it.
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 race apart The sailor is born of
| the exigencies Of the sea service, and as
| those exigencies change SO does he. Yet
| in all the ages the true sailor must be a
| different sort of creature from a landsman.
The change from one sort of 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 q sailor used constantly to handle the
complicated mazes Of the rigging Of the
1 Sxn0Gnn ching His troiv in,
| looking at network of ropes to see just
| what function each one had in the whole
| scheme, and the threads stretched over O
! frame for making piece of fancy work
! were never moro complicated than the
| mass of ropes aloft on a full rugged man
| of-War. 1t was part of his trade to knot
| and splice Gas it is to some extent now,
| hut nothing to what it used to be-, 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 incongruoQs 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 a
| 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 a man-of-
| war and say, in voice that runbled some
| where underneath the ships keel, "Here's
| pair o. tides 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-
| duoe. Then the sailor made his cap, and
| in the center of it's top he embroidered
| again with great beauty and profuseness.
| In the old days o ship would be at sea for
| months at 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
TleIo trl2aUe 6OlQ. NOW IL is lew
| days from port to port, and it is coal ship
and clean up after it, and soour bright
| work all the time when it 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 mako 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 fourished and blossomed on men-of-
war. As they can no longer wear fancy
embroidery, they have stopped doing it.
! 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 fabrication 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 IS about all. An old officer
said with a sigh the other day, 81 doubt
| if there is single sailor working with col
| BRED silk in the whole north Atlantic feet
| today ''-NeY York Press