Chapter XII: The Sail-Carriers

If you set aside the forty years from 1837 to 1877 you cover the period which is unsurpassed for the glories of the sea. It is a period when the Mercantile Marine in every ocean rose to such a standard of seamanship as was never seen before nor will ever be witnessed again. It is a time when the triumph of the shipwright and the skill of the sailor combined to bring about the golden age. Every log-book, ship-illustration or reminiscence that bears on this epoch should be regarded with the utmost care and preserved for the wonderment of posterity, for at present we are living so close to this epoch that we hardly appreciate its worth. Those who come after us will rightly envy us for having seen at least some of the ships and spoken with those who handled them. For it was a time when wooden ships were run by men of iron.

The traditions inherited from the old East India Company after the latter had lost its monopoly in India and China were too noble and inspiring to be dissipated at once. The high grade of officers and men remained for a long time a standard, especially when the captain of an East Indiaman even as late as about 1830 was making anything between £6000 and £10,000 a voyage. So, too, the Blackwall yard still retained its name for building the best ships. And though they had ceased to construct the stately but slow vessels which had been good enough as long as the monopoly lasted, a big advance came in the year 1837, when Richard Green launched the 818-ton _Seringapatam_. She was, in fact, the first of a new order of things. In her the double stern and galleries were abandoned, and owing to her finer lines she became famous for her quick and regular passages to the East, and was destined to be the model for many vessels to follow. It was such men as Green, Wigram, Somes, Dunbar, Baines and others who built up the Mercantile Marine after the East India Company left the sea; for these men saw their grand opportunity, and seized it. Most of these purchased some of the best of the company’s ships. The _Earl of Balcarres_, for instance, was sold for £10,700, and she voyaged for fifty-two years before she became a hulk. The same price was paid for that fine ship the _Thames_; the _Lady Melville_ fetched £10,000, the _Buckinghamshire_ £10,550 and others realised between £4000 and £10,000. In certain cases the company, seeing their approaching fate, began to sell as far back as 1830.

Some of the captains, officers and men from the honourable company were now taken on by these enterprising new shipowners about to enjoy the benefits of free trade. But not more than one-fifth of these “old-timers” changed over to the new régime, at any rate straight away. Why? Firstly, these private owners were not too anxious to employ a personnel who had been accustomed to work in ships where expense had not been of the first consideration. Secondly, some officers thought it beneath their dignity to serve in “free trade” vessels, and in any case their remuneration could not be as high as had been possible during the company’s extravagant existence. So the captains and officers appealed to their late employers for pensions. They had entered the East India Company’s service expecting provision for life, but now they found themselves awkwardly placed. Not without reluctance the company eventually decided to grant compensations to all commanders and officers who had been in their employ for five years from April 22, 1834. Every commanding officer therefore received £1500 and the other officers received proportionate amounts. But, in addition to this, each commander also received £4000 for three unexpired voyages, £3000 for two voyages and £2000 for one voyage, which they would have made had they continued in the service. Nor was that all; for those commanders who had served for ten years were given a pension for life of £250 a year, the chief mates getting £160 a year, and so the scale ranged down to the carpenters and gunners. The only condition was that these assured the company of their inability to obtain further employment, and that any income which they possessed was to be in abatement of these pensions. Thus, to the very end, the old East India Company treated its officers and crews very handsomely, especially when we remember the value of a sovereign in those days.

The _Seringapatam_ was the first of those famous Blackwall frigates which were the direct descendants of the defunct East India Company. The last of the series, also built by Green’s Blackwall yard, was the _Melbourne_ (afterwards well known as the _Macquarie_), launched in 1875. Most of this historic fleet were built at the Blackwall yard, at Smith’s Tyne yard, at Sunderland or in India, but especially at Blackwall. They were all high-class ships which were run in a high-class manner. The discipline was strict, the personnel was excellent, and they were in every way worthy successors of the old monopolists. If you talk to any of the officers still alive who served in these Blackwallers, or read their reminiscences, you will understand at once that it was thought an honour to be allowed into this new service.

These ships differed from any other merchant vessels in that they carried midshipmen and not apprentices. These midshipmen were drawn from the same families who supplied officers to the Royal Navy, and were known as “young gentlemen.” Very often in the case of a country rector who had two sons, you find the eldest going into the Navy and the younger into a Blackwall frigate. If a guardian could get a boy into one of these ships, there was no further cause for worry: a fine career was assured. He went to sea in what were happy ships and he gradually rose in his profession until he was making about £5000 a year in the case of the best captains. The guardian or parent had to pay a premium of £60 a voyage for the young midshipman, but those were the days when the commanding officers were the finest navigators in the world and had time to instruct the aspirant. It was a life totally different from that of a modern apprentice.

For some time the officers in these ships were allowed to wear the lion and crown of the East India Company on their uniform buttons, but eventually the house flags of the companies were substituted. A great deal of the old dignity and semi-naval routine were retained in this new service, with action stations and sail-drill. For they were frigate-built and carried guns, so that they could readily be turned into corvettes and be useful fighting units. In an interesting little book entitled _Reminiscences of a Blackwall Midshipman_, published some years ago, Mr. W. I. Downie remarked with pride: “It was a fine service and afforded a good opening for younger sons, whose elder brothers were in the Army or Navy, but whose parents could not very well spare the means to dispose in the same way of all their sometimes numerous progeny.” He himself joined up in the ’sixties, having considered himself disappointed at not entering the Royal Navy, but lucky to obtain a berth as midshipman in Green’s Blackwall frigate _Trafalgar_, and bound to India. This ship was built in the year 1848, and was of 1038 tons, her construction being of teak.

When lying at anchor with a few guns on her maindeck and her boat-booms swung out and boats in the water, she might be taken for a frigate, even by a seafaring man, but for the house flag at her main. She had painted ports, square yards and enormous whole topsails. In such a ship no officer or man dared address a superior on duty without saluting. It was because of this excellent discipline and semi-naval character that these well-found ships created such a fine pride of service among its personnel. We shall speak presently of the other development in shipping which was to proceed collaterally with the Blackwallers, but it may be mentioned here that the latter frequently used to race in the ’sixties against the clippers met on the high seas. Downie mentions that these frigates often were able to hold the clipper ships, especially in hard winds, for though the Blackwallers had high bulwarks and heavy sterns, which made them in comparison look clumsy, yet underwater they had fine lines.

Every known device was resorted to in the effort to squeeze out an extra half-knot, and the third mate of the Blackwaller would be sent down with a gang of men to roust the lee cable out of the chain locker and range it along the weather side of the deck. The fourth mate would take another gang to pump fresh water out of the lee tanks into those of the weather tanks that were empty. In light winds the hose would be taken aloft to wet the sails—the old dodge of making the canvas hold the wind better. Nor did they hesitate to race even against such flyers as the crack clippers _Taeping_ and _Fiery Cross_, and in one instance they competed with another sailing ship and beat her home by twenty-four hours; and this after racing for 16,000 miles! Yes, they were sail-carriers in those days. The Mercantile Marine was full of expert seamen.

This _Trafalgar_, for instance, carried, besides her commander, five mates, several midshipmen, a full crew, a bo’sun and his two mates, carpenter, sail-maker, fiddler and cooper. The last two would seem strange to a modern apprentice, but the former used to sit on the capstan and fiddle while the hands were heaving up the anchor with an endless “messenger,” and would provide the music for hornpipes danced in the second dog-watch. The cooper was a necessary rating, for casks and barrels were used a good deal, and when not wanted were taken to pieces and reconstructed as required. The midshipmen received their occasional invitations to dine with the captain, as to-day in the naval service. Sundays and Thursdays were the occasions when there was champagne at the captain’s table, and a midshipman thought himself lucky if his turn to be invited occurred on one of these days.

The voyage was begun by the ship being towed out of dock down to Gravesend, where she brought up for twenty-four hours to enable the crew to get over their final shore carouse. The captain—in this case a tall, thin man wearing an eyeglass, himself a scientist and a great authority on the law of storms—would come on board, and the tug would take the ship down to the North Foreland and then cast off. If it was a fair wind the Blackwaller would then carry on down Channel. If it was foul she would anchor and wait for a slant in the Downs. In spite of their sailorlike, alcoholic weakness, these hands were very fine fellows, specially selected, who had sailed in the old East Indiamen or Blackwallers since boyhood, and very rarely did they ever serve in other ships. There was, then, practically continuity of employment, and it is the lack of this which in the twentieth century is the weakest element of the Mercantile Marine.

In these ships there was nothing slovenly, and every one had to be correctly and smartly uniformed. The officers’ cap in those days had the old-fashioned peak at right angles, like that still worn by the officers of the Dutch Navy to-day. Every morning the captain’s steward would convey to the midshipmen the instructions as to what rig was to be worn, as, for instance, in fine weather blue jackets, white waistcoats and trousers. In many other merchant ships there was trouble with the crew, which consisted of a mixture of pier-jumpers, gaol-birds and the riff-raff of all the European ports; but it was seldom that the Blackwall men gave any trouble. Every Sunday there was service on the poop in fine weather, or in the saloon when the weather was bad, and all hands were supposed to attend. In harbour the Blackwall ships always looked smart and clean, with yards squared to mathematical precision like a naval frigate.

As a sign of mourning the custom was to paint all the white parts of the ship a pale blue, such as the white ribbon round the hull, the lower masts, the boats, and so on. There were some ships in which the discipline was stricter than in others, according to whether the captain was more disposed towards man-o’-war fashion. Those ships which ran to India were more strict in their discipline and more formal in their routine than the vessels which sailed to Australia. In the former the passengers consisted chiefly of Army officers and their families, or civil servants going out to take up their appointments, or of consumptives voyaging for their health. But in the Australian ships life was more easy-going, with concerts, theatricals, dances, and even bazaars. In both ships there was a good deal of fraternising and philandering between the younger officers and the eternal feminine, which was natural enough during those long voyages.

The late Captain W. B. Whall, who died not long since, served as a midshipman in the Blackwaller _Hotspur_ during the ’sixties, and fortunately has left behind in his _School and Sea Days_ some interesting recollections. The commander of this famous 1000-ton East Indiaman was Captain Henry Toynbee, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.S., uncle of Arnold Toynbee, the social economist and philanthropist. Whall describes how, after the _Hotspur_ had anchored off Gravesend, the captain would be received on board in true naval style. This commanding officer, who, by the way was uncle to Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the famous scout, will always be remembered for his amazing skill as a navigator. Captain Whall said he recollected on one occasion when the _Hotspur_ had been ninety days out of sight of land, and had sailed over three oceans bound for Calcutta direct, Toynbee came up on deck about 8 p.m. and told the chief officer to send a man up to the foretopsail yard and to order him to look two points on the starboard bow, and he would then see the Lower Floating Light. The hand had barely got his head over the sail when he cried from aloft: “Light two points away on starboard bow.” And this was without having sighted anything since the Lizard!

In contrast to this fine ability of an East Indiaman navigator must be placed the rough-and-ready methods of those fine but ignorant skippers of the fruit-trade schooners which were built and sailed like yachts and went down as far south as the Azores. Often when full-rigged ships were blown by easterly gales from the western end of the English Channel as far west as the Fastnet, these splendid little fore-and-afters would be able to make excellent passages to windward. In old waterside inns of the West country you may still see pictures of these ships with the canvas cut in realistic fashion to obtain verisimilitude. They made wonderfully fast passages, and they were most perfectly handled, but the captains, not being capable always of working out their longitude, used to hail any passing ship and hang out a blackboard with the question: “What is your longitude?”

Such a ship as the _Hotspur_, well manned, well navigated, would go round the Cape and land her forty passengers in Calcutta within three months. They would come aboard at Gravesend with their own cabin furniture, but included in the fare was an ample supply of liquor. Often the charge for a stern cabin for a man and wife would be £300 from Calcutta to England, and the ship would have also probably 500 troops aboard, or a total of 600 souls. The decks would be encumbered with sheep, hay, potatoes, bananas, hen-coops, and yet if any disaster had occurred there was accommodation in the boats for not more than about 100. Whall, who served in these ships for ten years, never once saw a Blackwaller heave-to in a heavy gale. But that was because they were well found and so well manned under the best commanders. In those days the sailor ashore loved his grog too much, and when he left the ship at the end of a voyage with probably £40 on him, he would proceed to get drunk, then perhaps some one in the East End would drug him, and finally, when he awoke up next day he would find himself without so much as a penny. But at sea he was the best fellow in the world, well-disciplined, able to go aloft in the heaviest weather to hand or reef a sail and lay out on a yard. He was an expert at the wheel or with the lead or marlin-spike, and a captain knew that his men could be relied upon from the moment the ship left Gravesend. It was thus that such ships as _Flying Cloud_, _Sovereign of the Seas_, _James Baines_ and _Marco Polo_ could on occasions reel off their eighteen knots, or 420 knots in the twenty-four hours. In fact during the ’fifties the sailing ships could make passages as fast as any mail steamer afloat.

Every one who has had command of vessels and men realises how important is the spirit of emulation and the pride of ship and service. Whall, the son of a rector, remarked that all who served in these ships looked down on the officers of the Liverpool contemporary sailing ships as being less polished and wearing no uniform, though he admitted they were perhaps smarter sailormen than the Blackwallers. In his memoirs _My Life at Sea_, that experienced mercantile officer, Commander W. C. Crutchley, R.N.R., says of a certain renowned clipper ship: “The officers and men of that craft considered themselves very superior beings to those who had not the good fortune to sail under the blue St. Andrew’s Cross; but they, in their turn, were looked down upon by the men sailing in the ships of Green, Dunbar, Wigram and Smith. In those days it would have required a very careful M.C. to give the varying grades of the Merchant Services their due order of preference.”

It was the same at Southampton at one time between the officers of the Royal Mail and the P. & O. Lines, who would not foregather on any account, owing to their mutual jealousies. But those were the days when ship-love and pride of service were more accentuated than to-day. And yet in even some of the contemporary crack steamships there was plenty to find fault with, and Crutchley, who served in the Union liner _Roman_, which ran to South Africa, complains that even in that ocean steamship there was neither engine-room telegraph nor standard compass; for orders were shouted down the engine-room skylight, and the ship was steered from right on the poop, with a binnacle on either side, that on the starboard being the one used for navigating.

[_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._

S.S. “NORTHUMBERLAND.”

2,180 tons, 500 horse-power. Henry Skinner, Commander. About 1871. She was one of Money Wigram & Sons’ Australian steamships. The famous house flag will be seen at the main.]

We have digressed from our main theme in order to show the spirit which actuated the Mercantile Marine at that important period which followed the abolition of the monopoly and saw the numbers of shipyards, ships and mariners rapidly increasing, thanks to freedom and competition. It is now time for us to watch this progress in detail. If we compare the _Seringapatam_ with one of the East India Company’s ships of say 1826, we can see indeed more points of resemblance than of difference. Both are frigates, each has a bluff bow and heavy stern that remind us of the Stuart ships, yet in the new type inaugurated by _Seringapatam_ it meant a daring advance to omit the heavy double stern and quarter galleries. She still retained her ship rig, her white ribbon, her square ports and her high-steeved bowsprit, but in her was the first break, architecturally, with the olden times. The sailing ship was now in a new era.

Even in the very year of Queen Victoria’s accession, Money Wigram launched for the Australian trade the 293-ton _Emu_, for this was beginning to open as an important lane of commerce. And in that same year the yard built such different ships as the 461-ton whaler _Active_ and the 621-ton steamer _Neptune_, the latter for the General Steam Navigation Company. It was a couple of years later that they launched the 852-ton _Earl of Hardwicke_ for Richard Green. This ship was originally fitted with paddles and 100-horse-power engines to be used in calms, but they were found unsuitable and removed in the following year. And then in 1839 they launched the _Owen Glendower_, which was such a splendid sailing ship that foreign merchantmen used to salute her with the respect as for a man-of-war. She was a sister ship of the _Earl of Hardwicke_. In that year, too, they built the Opium clipper _Moa_ for Jardine, Mattheson & Co., though we shall come to the clipper ships presently. Three years later the Blackwall yard launched the two magnificent 1223-ton flush-decked, frigate-built sister ships _Queen_ and _Prince of Wales_, as well as the 449-ton _Sylph_.

[_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._

AUXILIARY S.S. “KENT.”

2,300 tons. G. Fairles Gibbs, Commander. Built and owned by Money Wigram & Sons. About 1876.]

And here we come to another severing of olden ties, for this was the last ship which was ever built by the firm of Green, Wigrams & Green. In the following year the partnership expired, a wall was built through the yard, and the western portion was made over to Money Wigram & Sons, whilst the eastern half became the property of Richard and Henry Green. Sentimentally it seemed a pity that after all those years the separation should have taken place; but, as already foreshadowed, it was bound to come, owing to the difference in interests. The firm had become _individually_ interested in shipowning, and not collectively. Thus Wigram never owned so large a fleet as Green, and where a firm is divided against itself obviously it must come to an end before long. Richard Green and Henry Green went on building and increasing their ownership until the discovery of gold in Australia, when they launched many ships to cope with the rush. Richard Green did not die until 1863, and just before his death one of his ships had made a voyage to China. In his life he did much to improve the Mercantile Marine, and it was he who was the chief mover and first chairman of what was originally known as the Thames Marine Officers’ Training Ship, better known to-day as H.M.S. _Worcester_. In the year 1922 this ship celebrated its sixtieth anniversary, and during its existence has been able to turn out 3000 officers for the Mercantile Marine, of whom so many distinguished themselves during the Great War. Thus, directly through the Blackwall yard there is an intimate connection between the merchant ships of the time of Queen Elizabeth and those liners of to-day.

The two finest ships in the Mercantile Marine of 1851 were the East Indiamen _Marlborough_ and _Blenheim_, owned by Messrs. T. & W. Smith, who had begun running ships to the East soon after the monopoly had gone, in competition with Green and Wigram. It was the gold-diggings of South Australia and Victoria from 1851 onwards which made a sudden demand for shipping passengers out from England: in fact by 1853 the demand was greater than the supply. But the only suitable vessels available for first- and second-class passengers were these famous Blackwall frigates, and the Greens were thus in a position to transfer some of their large fleet from the Calcutta to the Australian trade. Money Wigram, not having yet become a large shipowner, began to build for this Melbourne trade.

The Blackwall frigates were devoid of sheer, had long poops, short maindecks, and were beautifully built of picked teak and oak. Green’s ships were not as sharp-ended as Smith’s or Wigram’s, but Somes’ and Dunbar’s were real old-fashioned, clumsy-bowed craft. The fastest of Green’s ships were the _Alnwick Castle_, _Clarence_, _Windsor Castle_ and _Anglesey_. The fastest of Wigram’s fleet was the _Kent_. The old East India Company’s influence for a time so dominated these Blackwall frigates that dignity, comfort and safety first were rather the mottoes of the fleet, unlike the clipper ships, always snugging down for the night. Some of the best-known Green ships were the 835-ton _Madagascar_, built in 1837, the 852-ton _Earl of Hardwicke_, already mentioned, built in 1838, but afterwards wrecked on the South African coast in 1863; the _Owen Glendower_, built in 1839, the _Agincourt_ (958 tons), in 1841, the _Prince of Wales_ (1223 tons), in 1842, the _Monarch_ (1444 tons), in 1844, the _Alfred_ (1291 tons), in 1845, the _Barham_ (934 tons), in 1846. The _Prince of Wales_ and _Queen_ of 1842 were both 1223-ton ships, the former built for Green and the latter for Wigram at the Blackwall yard. Pierced for fifty guns and flush-decked, they were ready with their crew of seventy-eight each to be turned into naval corvettes at once.

The _Anglesey_, built in 1852, of 1018 tons, holds the record for having made the biggest day’s run by a Blackwaller. This was 380 miles, and her passage from Melbourne to the Start in seventy-nine days with a crew of forty-six was a remarkable achievement. Wigram’s 927-ton _Kent_, built in 1852, was invaluable during the gold rush to Australia. She was one of the crack sailing ships in history, and actually beat the tea-clippers. It was a great innovation when, in 1866 and 1868 respectively, the Blackwall yard built the 1451-ton _Superb_ and the 1458-ton _Carlisle Castle_, for both were of iron, and owing to Richard Green’s prejudice against iron the firm had to wait until after his death to discard teak. The former became a popular passenger ship to Melbourne; and the last of these famous Blackwall frigates was the _Melbourne_, built for the Greens at the Blackwall yard in 1875 as the finest iron passenger sailing ship in the world. Of 1857 tons and 269·8 feet long, her passenger accommodation was excellent—a great difference from the old East Indiamen.

[_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._

S.S. “NORFOLK.”

3,196 tons, 2,500 horse-power. J. Pyne O’Callaghan, Commander. One of Money Wigram & Sons’ Australian ships. About 1879.]

Until 1887 _Melbourne_ sailed regularly to the Australian port of the same name, and was then bought by Messrs. Devitt & Moore, who changed her name to _Macquarie_. In 1897 she was used as one of this firm’s cadet ships, six years later she was sold to the Norwegians and changed her name to _Fortuna_, and these owners eventually sold her, so that now she is used as a hulk in Australia. So ended one interesting period in one of the most important developments of the Mercantile Marine. The combination of personal interest on the part of builder and owner; the great pride in the ship not merely as a money-maker, but as a thing of beauty and queen of the sea; the ability of officers and men serving under a captain who was anxious to maintain the dignity of his line—all these brought about a high standard of seafaring which was thoroughly let down when owners without consciences sent crews to sea in ill-found steam coffin-ships. The fine, historic reputation of the Merchant Service received a shock, the best men were attracted by other walks in life, and so for a while the standard deteriorated. There are many who believe, rightly, that the Mercantile Marine of any country could and should be run with fixity of employment and the same lofty standard as the fighting navies. If that were done, the grade of officers and men would be as high as it was in the days of the East Indiamen. Let it be realised what a nation’s merchant ships mean to the country, and then the public will concede it proper respect and give to that service its best sons.