With this theory in view, all sorts of nice schemes are set forward for the sailor, and endless are the dull and decorous substitutes for the merriment or sociability of his favorite boarding-house, and wonderful are the schemes which are to attract the nautical Hercules to choose the austere virtue and neglect the rollicking and easy-going vice. Beautiful on paper, admirable in reports, pathetic in speeches,--all pictorial with anchors and cables and polar stars, with the light-house of Duty and the shoals of Sin. But meanwhile the character of the merchant-marine is daily deteriorating. More is done for the sailor now by fifty times than was done fifty years ago; yet who will compare the crews of 1858 with those of 1808?
There are many reasons for this change, and one is Science. That which always makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and which can be made to restore the lost equilibrium in a higher civilization only by the strong pressure of an enlightened Christianity, has been at work upon the sea. Columbus sailed out of Palos in a very different looking craft from the "Great Republic." The Vikings had small knowledge of taking a lunar, and of chronometers set by Greenwich time. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, when he so gallantly and piously reminded his crew that "heaven was as near by sea as on land," was sitting in the stern of a craft hardly so large as the long-boat of a modern merchantman. Yet the modern time does not give us commanders such as were of old, still less such seamen. Science has robbed the sea of its secret,--is every day bearing away something of the old difficulties and dangers which made the wisest head and the strongest arm so dear to their fellows, which gave that inexpressible sense of brotherhood. Science has given us the steamship,--it has destroyed the sailor. The age of discovery is closing with this century. Up to the limits of the ice-fields, every shore is mapped out, every shoal sounded. Not only does Science give the fixed, but she is even transferring to her charts the variable features of the deep,--the sliding current, the restless and veering wind.
The personal qualities which were once needed for the sea-service are fast passing away. The commander or the master needs no longer to lean upon his men, or they to trust in him. He wants drudges, not shipmates,--obedient, active drudges,--men who can be drilled to quick execution of duty, even as in a machine the several parts. The navy is manned after this pattern; but there is a touchstone which sharpens the edge dulled with routine,--the touchstone of war. When the time comes that the drum-tap calls to quarters, and the decks are strewn with sand,--when with silence as of the grave, fore and aft, the frigate moves stately and proud into the line of her adversaries' fire, then it is that the officer and the man meet face to face, and the awful truth of battle compels them to own their common brotherhood. The merchant-service has few such exigencies. The greater the size of the ship, the greater the number of the crew. The system of shipping-offices and outfitters breaks up almost all the personal contact between master and men. They come on board at the hour of sailing. A gang of riggers, stevedores, or lightermen work the vessel into the stream. A handful of boosy wretches are bundled into the forecastle, and as many more rolled, dead-drunk, into their bunks, to sleep off their last spree. The mates are set to the task of dragooning into order the unruly mass. Half the men have spent their advance, and mean to run as soon as the ship arrives. They intend to do as little as they can,--to "soger," and shirk, and work against the ship all they can. The captain cares only to make a quick passage and get what he can out of the crew. Community of interest there is none. Brutal authority is pitted against sullen discontent.