So, while the cachalot could have fearlessly challenged comparison with any ship afloat for cleanliness and neatness of appearance, the hands no longer felt that they were continually being “worked up” or “hazed” for the sole, diabolical satisfaction of keeping them “at it.”  Of course, the incidence of the work was divided, since so many of the crew were quite unable to do any sailorizing, as we term work in sails and rigging.  Upon them, then, fell all the common labour, which can be done by any unskilled man or woman afloat or ashore.

Of this work a sailor’s duties are largely made up, but when good people ashore wonder “whatever sailors do with their time,” it would be useful for them to remember that a ship is a huge and complicated machine, needing constant repairs, which can only be efficiently performed by skilled workmen.  An “A.B.” or able seaman’s duties are legally supposed to be defined by the three expressions, “hand, reef, and steer.”  If he can do those three things, which mean furling or making fast sails, reefing them, and steering the ship, his wages cannot be reduced for incompetency.  Yet these things are the A B C of seamanship only.  A good seaman is able to make all the various knots, splices, and other arrangements in hempen or wire rope, without which a ship cannot be rigged; he can make a sail, send up or down yards and masts, and do many other things, the sum total of which need several years of steady application to learn, although a good seaman is ever learning.

Such seamen are fast becoming extinct.  They are almost totally unnecessary in steamships, except when the engines break down in a gale of wind, and the crowd of navvies forming the crew stand looking at one another when called upon to set sail or do any other job aloft.  Then the want of seamen is rather severely felt.  But even in sailing ships—­the great, overgrown tanks of two thousand tons and upwards—­mechanical genius has utilized iron to such an extent in their rigging that sailor-work has become very largely a matter of blacksmithing.  I make no complaint of this, not believing that the “old was better;” but, since the strongest fabric of man’s invention comes to grief sometimes in conflict with the irresistible sea, some provision should be made for having a sufficiency of seamen who could exercise their skill in refitting a dismasted ship, or temporarily replacing broken blacksmith work by old-fashioned rope and wood.

But, as the sailing ship is doomed inevitably to disappear before steam, perhaps it does not matter much.  The economic march of the world’s progress will never be stayed by sentimental considerations, nor will all the romance and poetry in the world save the seaman from extinction, if his place can be more profitably filled by the engineer.  From all appearances, it soon will be, for even now marine superintendents of big lines are sometimes engineers, and in their hands lie the duty of engaging the officers.  It would really seem as if the ship of the near future would be governed by the chief engineer, under whose direction a pilot or sailing-master would do the necessary navigation, without power to interfere in any matter of the ship’s economy.  Changes as great have taken place in other professions; seafaring cannot hope to be the sole exception.