The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1900-08-19
DEEP-sEA SHIP CAPTAINS.
Merchant Trader shippers aud Com
manders of Big Liners.

From the New York Commercial Advertiser.)
Inc captain of a trading steamship
| which plies between New York and Valpa-
raise. Chill. was talking about sailors and
sailirs ships yesterday when he expressed
the opinions that captains of the big ocean
liners, the "greyhounds," hardly deserved
the name OF sailor.
They're seamen all right" he went on.
land I'm not saying that they're not good
navigation officers. They wouldn't hold
their job unless they were, but they're too
soft. They think more OF their gold frills
and furbelows than they do of seamanship.
They spend most OF their time, I hear,
dancing attendance on the lady passengers.
and leave the hard work Of navigating the
vessel to the junior officers OF course in
hard weather they must be on the bridge
that is the captains place then-and
guess the lady passengers are below then,
too.
They have an easy berth; shore leave
all the time ship is in dock, and lots of
perquisites, l hear. such as renting their
cabins TO passengers, and so on. Ihen
they have one week at sea and one week
on shore-everything as regular as clock
work" The captain paused a few minutes
as IL contrasting his berth with that Of
the man in "friils."
with US fellows on merchant trading
have to be on our ships all the time.
They are always in our charge. we carry
very few passengers. and don't have any
time to waste galivanting about the
decks with the girls. We couldn't if
we wanted to, for that matter, because
most of US have our wives aboard all
the lime.
"one line has vessels trading down the
coast TO Punta Arenas in the Straits OF
ha Otb 81 do of n
America to Valparaiso. and all the cap
tains except one are married. and he has
hopes. Nearly every man has his wife
and family with him. We are supposed TO
be on the ship all the time. and are such
a skort time in port, anyway, that We
can't have home any other place than
afioat. When the children get to the
schooling age We send them to live with
friends or to a boarding school. BY the
time they grow up we are getting too
old for service. and it is about time TO
retire, so we look out for shore job.
The company usually gets us nice berth
on shore then. It's hard, though for a
sea-faring man that has spent all his life
on a ship to turn his hand to anything
else.
While we're on shore We are always
supposed to wear uniforms. The only
thing uniform about them is that the
coats must be blue and have brass but
tons The regulations don't say anything
about the cut. We throw off the uniform
when We get to sea and mostly work in
our shirt sleeves. There's lots to do. We
must prepare for the unloading at our first
stop. That's another point where we diff
fer from the ocean liners. The crew of
trading ship must unload the cargo. The
big Atlantic boats have their loading and
unloading done by stevedores. We use
landsmen only when we load. One of the
company's pursers comes aboard at Rio
and looks after the cargo until it is all I'm
shipped. The purser is like the old-time
supercargo. He represents the company
at our trading points and attends TO all
the business details. On tramp trading
vessels all the trading is done by the cap
tain OF the vessel. Fortunately we get
out of that"
The captain knocked the ashes from his
pipe and summed up his feelings as fol-
lows:
There are four grades or classes at sea,
naval officers, captains of ocean liners. who
may be said to be the aristocracy; mer-
charsmen like me- the great middle class.
and the little tradesmen like the tramp
steamship officers Except for the class
distinction we are equal We have all nee
essarily been a. BIS in our younger days
ard have gone through the different rounds
until we became navigating officers. There
WI. are equal. OF course the lot of some
of us fell in soft places. and the lot OF
others in hard, but the LOT of most is
neither soft nor hard, just middling"