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ON TliH HKIDOK OF A LINER TUB (CSPTXK JCJ3H BTRS.T OilH'VCUit 01?"
TU BTKAMliil OCEANIC.
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STOW AND MAKE VAST ALL MOVABLE
LASHED BEFORE THE BOAT OOES
' ,EW YORK July. 11 (Special Cor-
rowpondence.) Loud Is the la
ment over the passing of the old-
yJ time sailor. The man ox the
tarry fist and the keen eye for
the weather braces is gone, they tell us,
from the great lanes of the ocean's com
merce, driven to remote seas with the full
rlffger, while stokers and oilers and cargo
lumpers have taken his place on tha great
hips of the world. Many who manned the
yards with htm In the old days are prone
to lament theae degenerate times of steam,
to mourn the departing glories of tho
kys'Uyatder and to say with him:
Permit a tarry sailor to shift his quid and
A4 moping o'er his India ink he spits, and
pipes his eye
as the wordu of the old song have It.
But, after all. It Is'nt so bad as It
eems. The foremast hand on the liner to
day Is, Indeed, a painter and a scrubber of
paint, but so he was on tho full-rigger.
To be sure, he does not have to man the
yards In a gale, for there are no yards to
man; but If ho would rise In his position
be will do wetl to huve had some experi
ence on a sailing ship before he Joins the
liner. Indeed, many of the transatlantic
companies keep a ship for Just that pur
posean old-time training ship, where one
may learn the tricks of the canny sailor
" man, the ways of the full-rlggr, before
he Joins the liner's crew Just as tho United
States navy builds Bulling ships to train
men for Its modern steam wanh!ps. The
foremost liner captains of the day, he men
who command the lcvtthlans of th White
Btar line and the fast flyers of the Ameri
can line, are, without exception, men who
have served their time on one of tho old
full-riggers and aro as well qualified to
navigate a 1.000-ton, full-rigged ship to
China as to bring the JO.OOO-ton liner safely
Into New York. Liverpool of Southampton.
The modern liner Is, of course, first of
all an engineering problem. It carries a
chief and a corps of subordinate engineers
who must know every pulse of the mighty
engines that throb within Its hull. These
know to a dot the steam-making value of
a pound of coal, the distance forward that
every revolution of the churning screw
will carry the ship, every rod and cog of
the complicated machinery, which comes
between the two; Just as the old-time top
man knew the bewildorlng network of
' ropes and blocks and canvas that flapped
and sang In the gale 100 feet above the
reeling deck; All that a shore engineer In
' a great establishment must know, they
' know, and far more. They munt be able
not only to run the machine, but to repair
It at short notloo and on their own re
" eouroe. To them must come the tinker
ing of a valve or a broken minor crank,
er tha shipping of a new propeller tn mid-
mi
andling an Atlantic Liner
7.:
V . . I Si
PARTS ON DECK ARE SECURELY
TO BE A.
ocean. Such Is the engineering problem.
But over-and above this Is the work of ;
tho captain and ciew, who must be navi
gators and seamen such as the old-tlmj '
merchant vcshcI could never have, simply
because It never had such need of them.
The captain and the first, and second
oflicers must first of all be navigators and
tholr problem Is one which takes a quicker
mind and greater Judgment than did tha
working of an old-time merchant Balling
vessel. They do not sail to all tho seaj
of all the world, as did the clipper ship,
but they must cross the stormiest sea In
the world, the Western ocean, in schodula
time and bring tholr thousand or two of
passengers into port, howsoever the temp
est blow or the fog shut down, or tiio
fleets of the northern Icebergs He acrosn
the trade. The old-timer could snug down
and He to for a day or a week If there was
a cyclone tearing the sea In ribbons tha
liner must push through It. To the sailing
vessel captain the chill that warns of Ice
came many hours before the vessel could
be In the neighborhood of the Ice; to tho
liner It may mean only minutes. The cap
tain of the ocean-going passenger vessel
must be as weatherwUe as his old prede
cessor of the sailing ship and for the prob
lem of sails he has that of steam, which
requires, on the whole, still greater sea
manship. Tako the one matter of the ship's
position at any given noon-time. Never did
the Killing captain, sextant In hand, watch
for the sun through the flying scud of
rlo'iJa as does the master of a liner. To
the former his position could not have
changed but a hundred miles or so; the
latter knrws that ho la four hundred or
more east or west of where he was yes
terday noon, and his calculations of dis
tance, direction and current must be so
much the more keon If he would be safe.
Nor docs a liner require less seamanship
at the helm, but rather more, than the
willing vessel. The helmsman of the full
rigger steers by the compass, by the fill
of his sal la, by the feel of the sea on the
helm. He has a doxen checks to help him
keep his course steady. The steersman of
the liner haa only the compass. However
great the strain on the rudder head, no
notice of It thrills up Into his hands. The
wheel turns at a touch and the steam
steering gear responds and takes all the
strain. He haa to keep true to the 'lubber
point, " but he can only guess what the
mTf and wind are dotng to his vessel,
lie has ae towering acres ef canvass to
watch, no feel of the send of the swell on
the Uelm m that he may meet tt or ease
It up tn time to keep the course steady,
lie mtud met it and ease It up by the
instinct of the thoroug'h seaman, his eyes
glued to the awaytnf needle, and only that
r
.4 .
CLEAR1NQ UP
A BOAT DRILL ABOARD A LINER
LI FES A VINO DRILL.
TYPlCAi, TiKAMAN.
Instinct to guide him; and woe to him if
It falls off a point. The liner is running
against schedule time and must keep a
straight course to make it.
Another man on the liner who Is far
more of a seaman than his prototype of
the sailing vessel ever could be Is the look
out. He reaches his perch eighty feet
above the deck, through the hollow fore
mast, and there his duty is to see every
thing and report It. And this Is no sine
cure. His vessel Is rushing through the
sea at the rate of an ordinary railroad
train, a mile every three minutes. An
other liner, coining at an equal rate
through the gray of a storm, must be
sighted a mile away. Even then there la
but Jmlf a minute to pass the word and
get the response from the great snip in
time to clear the danger. Hence much of
the ship's safety at sea depends on the
vigilance and keen sight of the lookouts,
and these men are picked and trained with
special care. Their eyesight must .be per
fect and their knowledge of lights and
signals as good as that of the officers
themselvea Two at a time are stationed
In the swaying crow's nest, and you may
often hear the little toot of a horn at
night by which they announce a light
sighted one toot for a llgnt on the port,
two for one on the starboard, and three
for one dead ahead. So keen la the vigi
lance of theae men that often late at night
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THE DECKS.
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PREPARING TO LOWER AWAYFOli
when the slender horn of the old moon
pokes up In the clear east they note Its
very point and report it as a light, which
Indeed it Is, thouph not one to be reported.
So rapidly does the moon rise that by the
time the officer on the bridge, In response
to this report, has fixed his binoculars on
the light, It Is far enough up to be plainly
recognized as the moon. But the lookout
Is never reproved for this mistake, which
merely goes to show how vigilant he is.
The position of lookout, even on this high
perch, hafc Its dargers, too for, high as he
is, he Is not above the reach of the sea
when the liner Is plunging at full speed
head on to a gale.
The old-time forms and titles hold good
on the liner still. The captain Is still the
captain, of course. There are a first mate
and second officer, a boatswain and boat
swain's mates. There Is "Chips," the ship's
carpenter, and the port and starboard
watch relieve one another on duty every
four hours. Forward, the ship's bell,
strikes the hours for these watches, divid
ing the time from 4 to 8 into two periods
each afternoon, the "dog watches." Thus
both terms and routine survive on the ship
as well as the old-time seamanship on tha
part of the officers and certain members of
the crew.
But how about the ordinary seaman, the
dack hand? Is he not a scrub and a painter
and a smasher of baggage?
He Is, Indeed. The break of day sees
him out with bare legs and long lengths
of hose spouting sea water on the decks
and scrubbing them down from end to end
of the ship. The noonday sun sees him
with paint brush In hand touching up
spots on the booms or painting down the
mast or the deck houses where they will
not smear the parsing passengers. The day
before the ship reaches port he is deep
In the hold sorting out and hoisting up
baggage and he piles it In heaps and rolls
and tosses It about as the ship glides up
to the landing stage or the pier. Some
times that Is all he Is up to. He may be
a dock laborer who has by some chance
gotten aboard ship, but this is not often.
Generally he Is a seaman all through, a
man who has served his years on sailing
ships and has reefed topsails In all seas.
Such men the liners are on the lookout
for at all times and when they get them
they hold them as long as they can, for
the duty of the foremast hand on the liner
Is not confined to scrubbing and painting
and handling of baggage. He must bo
able to handle the ship's boats and is reg
ularly drilled In their management. Ho
Is familiar with the fire drill, too, and U
exercised In It frequently. He must "know
the ropes" and be expert In the handling
(Continued on Page Fifteen)
