Chapter III: The Master (of a Tramp)

From the liner to the tramp is by no means the great step that might be imagined. Indeed, so fine are the gradations in the quality and positions of steamships that it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line anywhere. For even among tramp steamers undoubtedly there are many shades of difference until we reach the very lowest class of all, run on principles despised by all ship-owners of repute. The hierarchy of merchant shipping, the great floating palaces belonging to such firms as the P. & O., the Cunard, the White Star, and the British India, to mention only a few, and without any invidious idea of selection, fall easily into a class by themselves, association with which in almost any capacity confers a sort of brevet rank upon a seaman. But once they are left, and the lines entered upon to whom cargo is the one thing needful and passengers are merely incidental, we get a new order of things entirely: first of all, a great reduction of speed, for the sake of economy in running; consequent upon this, a corresponding reduction of staff, both on deck and in the engine-room. Yet in the highest class of cargo carriers and the lowest class of ocean-going passenger ships the master's position is still a proud one. His vessel is often of immense size, carrying up to ten thousand tons of freight, and, especially if she be one of the hand-maidens of a great company owning swift passenger ships as well, his salary will be fairly good, though probably fifty per cent. below that of his more fortunate fellows in the liner pure and simple. Also his work will be increased. For there is no difference at sea in the old axiom that the less a man does the more money he gets for it. Still, where he is in a regular trade, as in the highest class of cargo ships he will be, his clerical work connected with the ship's earnings will be almost _nil_, although he may not carry a purser to do the interior accounts of the ship or such matters as wages bills, etc.

It may truly be said that the master of a first-class cargo steamer is in much better case than his brother in some small lines of passenger steamers that could be named. He is better paid, better housed, and has far less worry. Some of those small passenger steamers going (for steam vessels) long voyages are run so economically that the master has hard work to keep up any sort of appearance at all. I knew myself of one firm, which shall be nameless, whose advertisements for passengers were most persistent and alluring, who thought it not shameful to pay their masters £12 a month, at the same time insisting that they should invest at least £250 in the company. Cases like these are very disheartening to the striving seaman. For where the master's wages are kept so low, other economies are conducted in proportion. Such a vessel, say of 1500 tons register, would carry at most three mates and eight seamen. The latter would be mostly foreigners, the work for such a small complement being so hard that home-born men worth their salt fight shy of them. And the officers' wages, unfixed as the men's are, would also be cut down deplorably low. Still, even in such a ship as this the master's clerical work is very small. Agents of the company at each port await the vessel's regular arrival, and see to it that she departs on scheduled time, cargo or no cargo. So that the master has no carking care as to how the ship is paying, no responsibility beyond the navigation and management of the ship herself. He has, of course, to consider his passengers, with no buffer between him and their often querulous complaints and constant questionings, such as his exalted brethren in the big liners have in their purser. He is usually a man who has been passed over in the race, and while his ability is of the highest order, he feels naturally shelved upon a very much lower ledge of his profession than he once hoped to reach.

In command of these small passenger-carrying ocean-going steamers are to be found some of the very best of our merchant skippers, whose worth and merit are so great that their reward strikes one as most shockingly inadequate.

Beneath these comes the tramp proper. It has just dawned upon me in time that often as I have used the word, I have not yet given any definition of it for the benefit of those who I hope will read this book principally, shore people. A tramp steamer, then, is a vessel of large cargo-carrying capacity and low power of engines, built upon the most economical principles, and run likewise. She goes wherever freight is to be had, although usually built for certain trades, and this is in itself a sore point with underwriters, who complain bitterly that they are often led to insure a certain type of vessel on the understanding that she will be trading in such waters as the Mediterranean and the Baltic, but presently find her braving the tremendous seas of the Atlantic. The best type of tramp is built and owned in north-east English ports, where the highest shipbuilding science is brought to bear upon the construction of cargo-carriers that shall be at once cheap, roomy, economical, and seaworthy. And it must be said that many firms up there, by careful attention to tramp building and owning, have made tremendous strides in the direction of safety for the ships, and even comfort for the crews, although of the latter there can never be very much in a tramp. The lowest type of tramp, on the other hand, is one that is built to sell to the first bidder--built so as to pass Lloyd's surveyor, but without one single item in her equipment that can be dispensed with. Such vessels as these merit all the hard words that have been said of them. Very slow, very unhandy, with dens for the crew to live in and upper works of the commonest material, they are always coming to grief. They are mostly owned by single-ship companies, of which the shareholders are generally people knowing absolutely nothing of shipping matters, who have been induced by speciously worded circulars, issued by some deeply interested manager, to invest their scanty capital in these dubious enterprises.

The master of such a ship as this may well feel that his lot is hard. With wages cut down to a point that could only attract a man upon his last legs financially, the manager always endeavours to get some investment, however small, out of the unfortunate master, to give him an interest in the ship. The food and stores supplied are of such bad quality as to make the life very much harder than it need be (in any case it is hard enough), while the number of men carried in proportion to the vessel's tonnage is appallingly small. Yet the master's work is far more onerous than in better ships. In addition to the necessity he is under of nursing his ungainly, low-powered vessel in heavy weather, he is always being sent to fresh places, entailing upon him the acquisition of an immense amount of local knowledge. The purchase of coal in far-away ports, with all the vicissitudes of price to which that indispensable commodity is subject, makes his hair grey and his face wrinkled before he comes to middle age. If he carries a good supply of coal for fear of a rise in price, at his next port he may have to shut out cargo; if he neglects to do so, expecting to be able to buy well and be disappointed in his expectations, he is held responsible. Low freights make him unhappy, although he is powerless to alter economic conditions, for his first duty is to make his ship pay. Worst of all his troubles are repairs. Such vessels as these are peculiarly prone to damage, from their cheap construction, yet any expense incurred abroad for repairs is looked upon as almost a crime. Then there is the necessity laid upon him for the most careful watching of the freight-markets. Although he may secure a good freight on one passage, he may, upon reaching his port, find that freights there are either unpayably low or non-obtainable. And his spirits fall, because he knows how such an experience will lower his average earnings for the voyage.

The qualifications that such a master need have are, although nominally the same as in any other branch of his trade, immensely varied. And it may be taken for granted that a successful tramp skipper is always a good all-round man--something of a diplomat, of a lawyer, of an accountant, of a merchant: all these qualities superadded to his ability to handle his vessel at sea in all weathers, contend with crews of the smallest and of the lowest kind of men, who are as far removed from the popular idea of what a sailor is as day is from night. But such men are of inestimable value to the commerce of the country. They seldom forget that their first duty is to their employers, nor allow the thought of their hard, laborious position to tempt them into neglect of it. Poor fellows! the penalty for want of success is not easy to bear, even though they may be in no way to blame.

These, of course, are the lowest kinds of tramps. But there is an aristocracy among tramp steamers, owned by wealthy firms of high reputation, both for well and carefully built cargo-carriers and generous treatment of their faithful servants. Although these ships do also go wherever cargo is to be found on which a payable freight will be paid, yet the conditions under which the officers serve are very much better. They are not harassed, either, by the fear of making a loss upon the voyage, since such firms will have their correspondents in most ports, who make freight arrangements for the skippers. Between owners and masters in this class of vessel often subsist the most firm friendships, men growing grey in one employ, and feeling always that their faithful service is fully appreciated. Of course the pay is not high, but the tenure is good, and there is always the chance of picking up a tow, a fellow-tramp with broken shaft, or something of a like disabling nature. And this may mean a small fortune, often does so, since the skipper never fails to take a most substantial share of the total award. Besides, there is a prospect, too, that a well-known skipper may, before he is worn out with sea-service, get a comfortable berth as harbour-master, or dock-master, or ship's-husband, or any of the congenial employments for which experienced shipmasters are so eminently fitted. Pilotage, too, may come their way, although this can hardly be looked upon as comfortable retirement after a hard life at sea. But whatever they get as a sort of retiring berth, they may truly be said to have earned it. Unfortunately, many of them must leave the sea with advancing years, having nothing to support them but such scanty savings as they have been able to put by. And as the days when skippers were able to amass fortunes have long passed away, these hard-working seamen are often hardly bestead in their old age--far more hardly than any one knowing their long period of command, but ignorant of their pay, could possibly imagine.

In leaving the steamer-skipper for him of the wind-jammer, as sailing vessels are contemptuously termed by steamer-sailors, a few words may suffice for the ungracious task of dealing with the black sheep. As in all other professions, of course among steamship-masters there are drunken blackguards, who in some mysterious way manage to get and keep command. But the proportion is very small. There is hardly any room for them. The conditions of service are too onerous, the necessity for constant care and forethought is too great, to admit of many worthless men being in command. Especially is this the case in the north-east ports, where every man's goings-on are known and discussed, as villagers dissect one another's business in remote inland hamlets. No; taking them by and large, to use a time-honoured sea phrase, the tramp skippers need not fear comparison with any class of public servants in this country, while for the importance of the duties they fulfil they are certainly second to none.