Chapter III: Introduction

It is curious to observe how thoroughly most of us are the slaves of habit, how limited we are in our imagination and sympathies until something surprising, far-reaching and inevitable upsets our routine, introduces a new force into our life and compels us to take note of fresh interests.

Until the recent war most people took the Mercantile Marine for granted. In a vague sort of way the average person believed in it, but rarely if ever stopped to consider what it meant or whether it had any history. It was sufficient to concede the fact that there were steamers running every week to most parts of the globe, and that passengers and goods could be carried as convenient. But there was not the same enthusiasm extended to the Mercantile Marine as there was to the doings of the Royal Navies; and unless some new mammoth steamship advertised herself by her size, speed or luxury, the Merchant Service was allowed to continue its all-important work unheeded and almost despised.

But then came the sudden change, which gave an entirely different viewpoint. How few of us ever realise our good fortune until it is taken away from our hold! The increasing success of the U-boat campaign, culminating in the enormous sinkings of merchantmen in April 1917, and the consequent shortage of food in the British Isles, caused the inhabitants for the first time in their lives to appreciate all that they owed to the Mercantile Marine. It was then—and not till then—they reminded themselves that the food supplies, which formed the necessities of life, were brought into the country by a service whose very existence had almost been ignored.

Every meal and every food-card, every little inconvenience in regard to hunger, henceforth turned people’s minds back to the prime cause; and those who had been the most ignorant of seafaring matters now began to think in terms of tonnage. From that time the average man and woman and school-child have never ceased to be thankful that we had a marine, whose duty was not to fight, but to keep us supplied with the essentials of existence. Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty recently said that the Mercantile Marine was a branch of that great sea service without which the British Empire would cease to exist. In a normal year, he said, the amount of food supplies forming the necessities of life which are brought into the British Isles and taken out consists of 150,000,000 tons. Without the one service to carry these food supplies, and the Royal Navy to protect the commercial craft on their lawful occasions, the reader can now well imagine how long starvation would be kept away.

Thus we are about to trace the story of a service that is not merely well deserving of our interest and enthusiasm, but is in itself so fascinating that we shall feel almost ashamed that we never conceded so much attention until harsh circumstances compelled us to reflect. In order to maintain our bread and meat supplies, in order to prevent overseas trade from utterly vanishing during those terrible years of hostilities, 15,000 men of the Mercantile Marine perished. That in itself would be a sufficient reason for inquiring into the history of their service; but, quite apart from that, there is the plea that the Mercantile Marine is the older of the two branches of the sea service, for out of it grew the fighting service only years after man had learnt to handle vessels.

Over those far-distant periods when the ancient seaman was groping his way towards knowledge we shall not require to spend much time. In other volumes I have already traced the evolution of the ship from a crude creature to a thing of beauty. Nor shall we need to be concerned with the horrors of war. Our task is the pleasant and glorious study of watching brave men creating a peaceable marine that will be the means of interchanging commerce over seas at first uncharted; bringing back new ideas and then taking out civilisation. All the time it is one big struggle, varying only in kind and intensity. It is one long, strenuous effort to achieve; and because it is all so human it demands our attention all the while, as we sympathise with the incessant attempts to overcome all sorts of obstacles.

The human race springs from the land: consequently all the arts of the sea have to be learnt from the beginning, and this means centuries of experience, many disappointments and enormous faith and courage. But human aspirations cannot be gainsaid. Progress will not be denied. Man is not content to remain where he was, and that is the basis of the whole story. The Egyptians created their Mercantile Marine almost exclusively for the Nile. It was the Phœnicians who felt the overwhelming desire to traverse the Mediterranean, and even to go outside the gates we call the Straits of Gibraltar. The Greeks inherited from the Phœnicians a ship which they modified but little, as the Phœnicians had from the Egyptians.

But whereas the Egyptians were a peace-loving race, and therefore their ships were not built for fighting, we find the Greeks constructing two distinct types of craft, and it is important to get this quite clear at once, as the reader will presently agree. First there was the swift-moving galley, relying chiefly on oars. She was built for the purposes of fighting, and therefore does not enter into our subject. But secondly there was the slow-moving, big-bellied craft, relying almost entirely on her one mast and sail, which was used for the purpose of trade from spring to autumn, and then laid up until the good weather returned once more. Think of her with her great square-sail going across to Egypt to bring back corn, calling at Rhodes on the way, getting caught in terrible weather, but year after year, century after century, doing the same voyages as a new generation of seamen grew up.

So it was with the Roman merchant ships from every March to November, blundering on their trans-Mediterranean voyages as corn-carriers. These seamen were, as always sailors have been and will be, a race apart. In the mind of most people nobody but a fool or a madman ever takes up a seafaring career. Seamen were very scarce and had to be allowed special privileges; and merchants who travelled in their ships marvelled that they could use the stars for finding their way over the dark waters at night. But the transportation of goods over the sea had to be done. The shipowners formed themselves into corporations, and membership was handed down from father to son, much as it is in a fishing village to-day.

One of the oldest professions is that of piracy. In those days a pirate was not so much a sea bandit as a sea adventurer; the Greek word _peirates_ and its Latin equivalent signifying one who _attempts_ or _tries_ his fortune on the sea, much as we speak of the Elizabethan “venturers.” None the less, until the growth of naval power piracy always was the great enemy of the merchant ship; and even in Roman times it at length became so serious that drastic measures had to be taken to stamp it out, only to keep on recurring like a cancerous growth until the age of steam practically wiped it out except in Chinese waters. Over and over again in the following chapters we shall see the innocent, cargo-carrying ship molested in this manner; but, for all that, the seaman’s spirit remained undaunted, and the trade of the world continued to be carried over the seas in spite of these known risks. As it was in the Mediterranean, so it was later on in the North Sea.

From about 580 B.C. right down to the time of the Roman conquest, the Liparian Isles were practically a republic of corsairs. The Ionians and the Lycians were notorious pirates: the Ægean, the Pontus and the Adriatic were the corsairs’ cruising grounds. The Cretans, the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands, the Cilicians, the Carthaginians, the Illyrians and others, also, were the piratical terrors to the Mediterranean merchant ships; and it was only as long as Rome maintained a strong navy that the cancerous growth was kept under, though not finally eradicated. Thus, in those early periods when there was little enough to encourage it, the Mercantile Marine of classical times struggled along, comparatively small in numbers compared with the fleets of fighting galleys, but historically of the highest importance, since from this small flame was to burst a great blaze of light that has illumined the world; spread Christianity and civilisation, learning, exploration, trade and peace. Those little, beamy, single-sail, unhandy craft wallowing in the Mediterranean seas, suffering so much at the hands of pirates, buffeted about by storms and compelled to spend such long periods away from their home ports, were playing a lonely, uphill game; but they were achieving more than they could ever realise in the development of the world. Pioneers of the sea, undertaking the utmost risks, they have made all subsequent centuries their debtors as long as ships continue to be built and the seas shall be traversed. Such, briefly, are the first stage and the very remote period of the merchant ship in its long and glorious evolution of usefulness. Let us now see how, influenced by progressive trade, the Mediterranean continued to develop its shipping.