Chapter XIV: The Second Mate (first Steps)

Ever since I began to write upon this subject I have been sorely tempted to try and explain to shore readers what it is that the Board of Trade require of a man who presents himself before them as a candidate for a second mate's certificate. I have hitherto been deterred by the fear of being too technical, and yet I cannot help feeling that I ought to try. That feeling has grown so strong that I can no longer help making the attempt, knowing that every reader has his remedy if he finds that the subject bores him--he can skip the matter altogether. This seems to be the proper place to make the explanation if it is to be made, since it is the first certificate that a Merchant seaman is called upon to take--the threshold, as it were, of his career as an officer.

May I, without suspicion of egotism, take a specific case, the one best known to me, my own? I had been at sea more than double the required time (four years) before I made any serious attempt to prepare for the examination. When I began, my arithmetic was very shaky, and of mathematics I was entirely innocent. My first step was to procure a handbook to the examinations, wherein all the problems were carefully worked out step by step. A "Norie's Epitome of Navigation," which contains all the necessary tables, and a blank book, comprised my educational outfit. I was at the time before the mast, in a comfortable iron barque sailing from New Zealand to Oregon, and thence home. We were a happy crew, young and lively, and the forecastle was, to put it mildly, not an ideal study. But the racket going on around me while I was wrestling with the unfamiliar mental exercises did me good in one direction--it helped me to concentrate my thoughts. I began at the very beginning, with decimal arithmetic, and worked at that until it led me naturally to the use of logarithms. Then I began to get interested, and the work was really a pleasure. Whenever I came to a dead wall I went and asked the mate for an explanation, and he, an amiable little Jerseyman, always did his best to enlighten me. My progress was slow, but fairly satisfactory; and when I shipped for my next voyage before the mast to China, I felt fairly certain that on my return I should be able to face the examiners without any dread of the result.

At that time the programme on the navigation side was as follows for second mate: Multiplication by logarithms, division by logarithms, the day's work. This latter was really a formidable task to me, from its length and complication, and it must have been so to many others, since I was told that there were more failures in it than in any other part of the examination. The day's work is the summing-up of all the various courses made and distances run by a ship from one noon to another, so as to find where she has arrived after all her zigzagging about. In the example set the ship is always supposed to be at starting within sight of some point of land whose position is known. A bearing of this is taken by the compass, and this, with the distance she is off, is known as the departure course and distance. The operation is technically termed "taking her departure," one of the very few purely nautical phrases which have passed into common use in this country. Then follow six other courses, all differing fairly widely, such courses as a sailing ship might be supposed to make with foul winds of varying strength. Lastly comes a current stated to be setting, say, S.S.E. twenty-two miles in the twenty-four hours. This is called the current course. The variation of the compass is given which will be the same for all the courses, deviation of the compass is given which is different for every course, and leeway is occasionally given, which is another disturbing element in calculating a true course. So that each of the eight courses must be carefully calculated, and then the mean of the whole obtained. It is then a simple problem to find at what point she has arrived, which must be done within one mile of a correct result. Then the problem of how to find the ship's latitude by a meridian altitude of the sun (very simple), the time of high water at any given place, a longitude by chronometer, etc. Definitions of terms used in navigation come next, which must be written out more as a test of penmanship and spelling than anything else; an exercise on the sextant, showing the candidate's ability to adjust as well as use it, and the navigation examination is over. As I think I said before, it should present no difficulty to any intelligent school-boy at the age of sixteen, while many would be able to do all the problems by trigonometry instead of by the rule-of-thumb method almost universally employed. For, as the candidate may do the work in whatever way he is accustomed to, it follows that the great majority do it in what, to them, is the easiest way, _i.e._ by the use of such tabular matter as is necessary and very easy to learn.

But once the _school_ work is over the candidate's real trial begins. Now he finds the value of having attended to his business while at sea and the futility of cramming up seamanship from manuals written for the purpose. For the examiners are all old captains, and the examination is _vivâ voce_. In my own case I followed the usual routine. As soon as I came home I went to a navigation school, or crammer's, and paid my fee, not imagining that I should learn anything, but expecting to have what I did know marshalled in the most useful order. I afterwards found that I need not have spent my money. I can honestly declare that in my case, at any rate, I got no good whatever. Indeed, I got a certain amount of harm, which, however, did no damage beyond making a bit of fun, as it happened. One of the last things my crammer did was to test my sight for colour-blindness. It was the first I had ever heard of such a thing; and when he held up various squares of coloured glass between me and the light, I named them promptly according to their shades, having a very keen and acute eye for colour. To my petrified amazement he suddenly slammed the glass into the box he was holding, and said, "You are absolutely colour-blind. Whatever do you mean by inventing all those names for these glasses? There are only two colours here, red and green; the others are white and black." I promptly selected a glaring gamboge glass and asked him what _that_ was. He said, "Green." A bright purple puzzled him for a moment, but was then cheerfully pronounced green also! Secretly I felt sure that there was a blunder somewhere, but I had long learned not to argue with those in authority, so I said resignedly, "Well, I suppose I must take my chance." But I confess I felt very uncomfortable. Then he brought out an amazing diagram of his own invention for teaching the "rule of the road." I had seen the thing before, but carefully avoided having anything to do with it. I felt sure that I knew the rule of the road in actual practice, as well as all the articles, by heart, and the late Thomas Gray's admirable rhymes, and I didn't propose being worried by any old diagrams. However, he insisted, so with a sigh I submitted. And before ten minutes he solemnly assured me that I was a hopeless ass to think of going before the examiners at all; that I didn't know the first little thing about the rule of the road, which was the most important part of the examination, and that my only hope was to go home and sweat it up. As if any man could learn the rule of the road for practical use out of a book ashore! I didn't say anything, but as soon as I got outside I dismissed him and all his discomforting remarks from my mind entirely, amusing myself in various ways unconnected with either navigation or seamanship until bedtime.

In the morning I went straight to the Board of Trade office opposite the Mint, and paid my fee, which is the first step. From thence I was sent into a room where sat a gentleman with a boxful of slips of coloured glass before him. He began at once testing my eyesight, and a cold shudder ran through me as I realized that if my sight _was_ wrong my career would be permanently stopped. And I could not help reflecting how shameful a thing it was to allow a man to enter a profession without applying so radical a test as to his fitness for it until just as he was about to step up the ladder of promotion. Yet this wickedness still goes on. You may send your son to sea, paying large money for his apprenticeship, and doing all that lies in your power to make him fit for any post, only to find out when he has reached manhood he is colour-blind, and, of course, cannot be allowed to go any farther. It would be _so_ easy to enforce a rule that no one should become a sailor at all who was colour-blind. Well, bearing in mind what my crammer had told me, I began describing the various shades the examiner held up before me as red or green, according as I judged them to be nearest to one or the other. I thought he looked queerly at me, but he said nothing until I called a vivid magenta red. Then he said, "I have never met a more perfect case of colour-blindness than yours." In despair I implored him to listen to me a moment, while I told him of my lesson. His face darkened, and turning to the box again, he held up a slip, saying, "Tell me just what _you_ think this colour is, without reference to Mr. So-and-so." I did, and all was peace. My sight was pronounced perfect.

Thence I went into the navigation room, feeling better, and did very well until I came to the third paper, which, on taking it up to the examiner, was pronounced wrong. I stood still, not knowing what to do. He said nothing, until I asked, "Have I failed, then, sir?" "If you can't get it right you have," he replied. I needed no second hint, returning joyfully to my table and going over it again until I had discovered the error. I was now sure of passing this portion of the examination, because I had carefully trained myself to find errors in examples I had brought to a wrong result, instead of just letting them go and beginning another one. But I had no more trouble. The rest of that part of the exam, passed without a hitch, and I light-heartedly bounded off. I was immediately recalled, however, and told that I must go on with the seamanship now. I had been under the impression that two days were always allowed. But I was wrong.

Feeling rather sick, I was ushered in before a very handsome old gentleman, who was courtesy itself--Captain John Steele. Noticing that I was nervous, he said a few pleasant words on ordinary topics, just to put me at my ease, and then quietly, without any parade, asked me how I would begin to stow a cargo of beer in casks. Question after question followed, without any particular sequence, but in such a manner that it must have been impossible for a book-instructed sailor to have answered them. Then he came to the "rule of the road." Handing me one model of a ship, he took two others himself, and bidding me consider myself at the helm of the ship I was holding, he began to manipulate his models and ask questions. At the expiration of ten minutes he was good enough to say that he had rarely come across any one with a clearer knowledge of this most important part of an officer's education. In thanking him, I could not help telling him of my experience with the schoolmaster's diagram, at which he laughed heartily. Thenceforward the examination proceeded smoothly to its close, which was considerably before the expiration of the time allowed for doing the navigation part only.

With my blessed slip of blue paper in my pocket, which I should exchange for my certificate as soon as the latter was prepared, I returned to the school to tell the crammer my good news. As soon as he saw me come in, he asked, "Have you got through your navigation?" "Yes," I replied. "That's good," said he; "now you must just hammer away at the rule of the road to-night as long as ever you can. If you do, you may squeeze through." I answered carelessly that I didn't think I could do much good like that. "Oh, well," he snapped; "do as you like, of course. Only, don't blame me for your failure." For all answer I handed him the order for my certificate.

As compared with some examinations I know, the above appears a very trivial business, and yet I am firmly persuaded that, as far as the seamanship goes, nothing could be more searching and complete. The navigation part is, no doubt, very easy, even the extra master's examination presenting no serious difficulty to a well-educated lad. That part may be learned--often is learned--without the learner possessing any knowledge of the sea at all. But the other, especially for master, with its searching questions into maritime legal matters, knowledge of the coasts added on to the intricacies of ship-handling under all circumstances of peril, is, I should say, perfect for its purpose, and such as no mere theorist can hope to pass. It may be true--I express no opinion--what I have been told about the laxity of examiners in some outports allowing duffers to slip through, but that is certainly not the fault of the examination as arranged.

And now I must apologize for having taken up so much space over this portion of my subject, and proceed to discuss the second mate's position in sailing ships. Before opening a fresh chapter, however, to which the importance of the matter fairly entitles it, I should like to say that there is an intermediate certificate which may be taken, of a higher grade than second mate, which is for use in small sailing ships which are not compelled to carry three certificated officers. It is called "Only Mate," and is rarely used. Its possession entitles a man to act as mate of a ship of a certain size trading to any part of the world. When an only mate is carried there will also be a second mate, but he need not be a certificated man. In practice he is usually a first-class seaman without any knowledge of navigation in the arithmetical sense, although I have been in two vessels as mate where my coadjutor in each case was a Russian Finn of fine mathematical qualifications, who had never troubled to take an English certificate nor ever practised his knowledge, confining himself solely to such practical seamanship as required doing, and also acting as carpenter and sailmaker. Both these men were perfect treasures, but only found scope for their varied abilities in small ships, where a man must be a jack-of-all-trades. Such men may also be found in the "down east" ports of the United States, and in British North America--seamen in the truest and fullest sense of the word; and I trust it may be long ere the advance of steam leaves them without occupation.