The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-01-07
THE UNCHANGING SAILOR.

The Emerson Hough cowboys, the
| Opie Read tramp printers, the Bret
Harte gamblers, the Alfred Henry
Lewis bad men of the West, the Mark
| Twain river pilots, and all the rest OF
| that gallant band of picturesque char
acters who have given high color" to
so much of our literature. are gone for
ever. The world will never see their
fiction, knocking at the door of fame
laments their departure and complains
that the changing conditions under
which we now live preclude all posi-
bility of their being replaced by any
substitutes even approaching them in
point OF interest. And yet, despite the
acters, there still remains one of whom
poets have sung and romancers ro-
manced since the earth was young. We
speak of the "unchanging sea-" and in
a degree it would be eminently appro-
pirate to speak of the unchanging sea-
man, for the man before the mast to-
day in disposition, character and envi-
ronment shows little or no change from
his prototype who toiled on the deck
and in the galleyS of the fleets which
cruiseo in the Aegean Sea.
Ulysses was forced to quell mutinfes
and his ships were delayed by desert
ing sailors, thousands of years before
Jim Turk. Bunko Kelly, Larry Sulli-
van and Paddy Lynch were ever heard
of. The ''color" for sea novel is just
as abundant and just as bright as it
was when the earliest novelists began
making use of it. The Western cow
boy, favorite type in modern novels,
came into existence, developed, de-
clined and has practically vanished
since Dana and Russell wrote their
thrilling tales of the sea. But Jack
London, Morgan Robertson and all the
other writer's of sea stories have the
same material to work on that was
available when the older generation OF
writer's began. Take the daily news
report on marine happenings to the
Portland and Puget Sound fleets alone
for the past week
The American ship w. F. Babcock,
long overdue, drifts into Honolulu with
tales of cruelty at sea, insufficient food
and general warmth on board such
as was always in evidence on the
shot ships which sailed in the Vest
ern ocean in the heyday of American
shipping. The Muskoka, the fastest
sailing ship afoat, comes into Portland |
with a man missing whom the sailors
assert was chased over the rail by the |
master. The Annie Larsen, an insig- |
coaSting "hooker,' has a new |
crew throughout because the master |
extended sea discipline too far beyond |
the ship rail and killed a sailor on the |
dock at Astoria. Seaman Haggerty |
has libeled and tied up the schooner
Polaris at Seattle because the captain
his life and failed to make
the threat good and the steamship
limps into port at Seattle
with some of her crew in irons and
the others still ugly over the unsuc-
cessful outcome of a mutiny at sea.
There is "something doing" all the time
at sea, and there is very little or no
difference in the manner in which it is
lone now and in the old days.
The coming of the tramp steamer
with it new class of labor,
but its firemen coal-passers and deck
swab bers will never develop the indi~
or interest that is noticeable
n the sailor of the SAIL That indi-
7iduaI lives in an environment which
las witnessed but few changes since
ships began sailing the seas. The fore
:astle seems to be a good breeding
place for superstition, grouchiness and
ack of discipline. The efforts of the
nen "behind the mast to correct these
ailings are generally so drastic that
hey are not appreciated. AS a result
| growing GOODNESS between officers
md crew results in hot ship. Pc
usal of court records of almost any
seaport city will disclose the fact that,
ven in this twentieth century, only a
hort sea trip is necessary to supply
,lenty of "color" for sea novel-Ore-
,onian.