Note 306 — Chapter XVII

The following graphic description of the state of too many of our ordinary merchant vessels when they sail is so true that I do not hesitate to transfer it to these pages. I do so with the hope that the Legislature may direct its earliest attention to the improvement of the lamentable state of things here described, and with the conviction that the first step towards that improvement would be the abolition of the system of advances to seamen: “The ship is about to leave the dock, when the crew, generally of a very inferior description, are brought on board, and, frequently, in such a state of intoxication that they are worse than useless during that day, and the ship must anchor for the night. Next day the motley crew commence work reluctantly, in a thoroughly strange ship, under strange officers, and are strangers to each other. The chief officer has the unenviable task of getting them into order, not having a man that he can depend upon. Yet it is from that strange crew he must select look-out men, helmsmen, and leadsmen during the ten or twelve hours’ darkness of the following night.”—Extract of letter from Captain H. A. Moriarty, R.N., to the ‘Nautical Magazine’ for November 1875.