Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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You have only got to watch the boy from the training-ship on leave to judge that the navy has yet some popularity. Neatly dressed, clean and natty, surrounded by his quondam playmates, he is “the observed of all observers,” and is gazed at with admiring respect by the street arab from a respectful distance. He has, perhaps, learned to “spin a few yarns,” and give the approved hitch to his trousers, and, while giving a favourable account of his life on board ship, with its forecastle jollity and “four bitter,” is the best recruiting-officer the service can have. The great point to be attended to, in order to make him a sailor, is that “you must catch him young.”36 That a good number have been so caught is proved by the navy estimates, which now provide for over 7,000 boys, 4,000 of the number in sea-going ships.

Governments, as governments, may be paternal, but are rarely very benevolent, and the above excellent institutions are only organised for the safety and strength of the navy. There is another class of training-ships, which owe their existence to benevolence, and deserve every encouragement—those for rescuing our street waifs from the treadmill and prison. The larger part of these do not enter the navy, but are passed into the Merchant Marine, their training being very similar. The Government simply lends the ship. Thus the Chichester, at Greenhithe, a vessel which had been in 1868 a quarter of a century lying useless—never having seen service—was turned over to a society, a mere shell or carcase, her masts, rigging, and other fittings having to be provided by private subscriptions. Her case irresistibly reminds the writer of a vessel, imaginary only in name, described by James Hannay:37—“H.M.S. Patagonian was built as a three-decker, at a cost of £120,000, when it was discovered that she could not sail. She was then cut down into a frigate, at a cost of £50,000, when it was found out that she would not tack. She was next built up into a two-decker, at a cost of another £50,000, and then it was discovered she could be made useful, so the Admiralty kept her unemployed for ten years!” A good use was, however, found at last for the Chichester, thanks to benevolent people, the quality of whose mercy is twice blessed, for they both help the wretched youngsters, and turn them into good boys for our ships. Some of these street arabs previously have hardly been under a roof at night for years together. Hear M. Esquiros:—“To these little ones London is a desert, and, though lost in the drifting sands of the crowd, they never fail to find their way. The greater part of them contract a singular taste for this hard and almost savage kind of life. They love the open sky, and at night all they dread is the eye of the policeman; their young minds become fertile in resources, and glory in their independence in the ‘battle of life;’ but if no helping hand is stretched out to arrest them in this fatal and down-hill path, they surely gravitate to the treadmill and the prison. How could it be otherwise? … The question is, what are these lads good for?” That problem, M. Esquiros, as you with others predicted, has been solved satisfactorily. The poor lads form excellent raw material for our ever-increasing sea-service.