James Runciman

“ The æsthetic people have a good deal to say about religious matters nowadays; what would they think and feel if they heard one hundred and fifty of those strong, hoarse voices rolling over the sea as the night falls? The men have the passion of worship, and they sing because that is the best way to free their wild hearts. ”

“ The subsequent history of the work would sound like a tale heard in a queer dream if I crave it at length; money gradually poured in just when it was most needed, a company of the best men to be found in philanthropic circles allied themselves cheerfully, at his earnest request, with the enthusiastic director; and this was well, for staid business men form the wheels and brake of the engine, while the enthusiast supplies all the steam. ”

“ In my youth the East Coast smack was proverbially mentioned among all sailor-folk as the chosen home of filth, cruelty, and all the nautical abominations which smart sailors abhorred. Poor little boys were martyred, for the grown-up men had been reared like beasts, and they behaved like beasts. If a youngster did go overboard on a dark night he was counted no more than a drowned puppy. ”

“ If some of our reformers at home could only see the prints and pictures and models which were offered to hot-headed young men who must of necessity lead a celibate existence, they would own, I fancy, that if the mission had done no more than abolish the traffic in literary and other abominations, it has done much. A few somewhat particular folk object to supplying the men with cheap tobacco, but any who knows what intense relief is given to an overworked man by the pipe will hardly heed the objection very much. ”

“ Then, barring the worst of the weeds from the slum, they are men of superb physique, and their powers of bearing labor and privation are quite without parallel in my experience. This noble set of toilers must be reckoned as only equal to the merest children in knowledge. When they are bad, their badness is brutal; when they are good, their goodness is marked by infantile simplicity. ”

“ After a heavy spell of work, a seaman smokes for a few minutes before the slumberous lethargy creeps round his limbs, and he is all the better for the harmless narcotic. How much the men appreciate the boon may be gathered from the fact that some fifty tons of tobacco are yearly sold among them.
Busy ladies over all the country are constantly knitting for the Mission, and the quantity of articles distributed at easy prices is so startling that I hardly like to quote figures. The vessels are boarded by eager men, and the mufflers and mittens are gratefully bought. ”

“ To those who do not go to sea I will give one hint: if a man is sent home on the long journey over the North Sea, he not only suffers grievously, but he loses his employment, and his family fare badly. If he were transferred to the hospital ship his place could be filled for a little while by one of the spare hands whom the mission intend to send out, and his berth would be saved for him. ”

“ It is because they know of no other. Many of them leave the parish schools and become apprentices; from that day until their bleak and barren life’s end, they are cut off from the world of men. People think that a voyage to the Cape is rather a long and tedious affair, but the fisherman stays out at sea for eight weeks at a stretch, and, during that time he must be content with alternations of furious labor and mere dulness unless some influence from outside can be made to touch him. For eight weeks the men only have their reeking cabin as a refuge from the deck ”

“ One of the new school of gentry who write in France might enjoy the work, but he would be obliged to keep his story in his own language, for even Zola’s latest outrage does not picture a state of things worse than that on the North Sea. If you can contrive to talk frankly with an old hand, he will make your skin creep by flat, bald narratives of ancient brutality. ”

“ I am as impartial as an ancient Roman about religious systems and sects, but I know that good is good, and I know that a sober , gentle, courteous fellow, who prays with passionate self-humiliation, who is tender to wife and children, who never offers to return evil for evil, and who takes pride in being a gentle and law-abiding citizen, is better than a muscular beast who is only proud of his strength. Now, I could run round the fleets and I pick out at least three hundred men who were once something more than inoffensive ne’er-do-wells — they were active and offensive blackguards. ”

“ You must rouse strong emotions in order to bring forth the deeper nature of rude and ignorant men; their ideas are all rather crude, and you cannot teach them subtleties. If by any means you can make them good instead of bad, sober instead of bestial, kindly instead of brutal, then really I, for one, do not much care about the means which you use. If anyone can see, as I have seen, one hundred and fifty strong fellows assembled on the deck of a mission vessel ”

“ A great firm of manufacturers offered him tobacco at cost price, the tobacco was carried by rail from Bristol to London; it was then sent to Ostend, whence a cruiser belonging to the Mission cleared it out, and it was then carried to the banks and distributed among the fleets. A fisherman could buy this tobacco at a shilling per pound; the copers were undersold, and they found it best to take themselves off. No one can better appreciate this most dashingly beneficial action than the smack-owners, for their men are more efficient and honest ”

“ Twenty-five per cent. of the men engaged in the fleets find their ailments sufficiently painful to necessitate a visit to the beneficent Mission smack, and I may say that I never saw a malingerer come on board. What would be the use? It is only the stress of positive pain that makes the men seek help, and their hard stoicism is very fine to see. A man unbinds an ugly poisoned finger, and quietly lets you know that he has gone about his work for a week with that throbbing fester paining him ”

“ Up till very recent years the fishermen were a rather debauched set, and those who had money or material to barter for liquor could very easily indulge their taste. Sneaking vessels — floating grogshops — crept about among the fleets, and an exhausted fisherman could soon obtain enough fiery brandy to make him senseless and useless. The foreigners could bring out cheap tobacco, and the men usually went on board for the tobacco alone. ”

“ The fisherman of old times — nay, of comparatively recent times — dwelt apart from the world, and I do not think that any human creature could have fared so hardly. Even nowadays when I go among the smacksmen, and see how they live, I wonder with more and more intensity how any class of men can be found to endure such an existence. ”

“ Carlyle boldly asserted that a man is nearer the eternal verities, or something of that kind, when he is at sea; now I should say that the fisher, with his dog’s housing and his dog’s life, is a good deal kept away from the verities, eternal and otherwise, and I should rather not have had Carlyle’s company during the eighth week of his enjoyment of the verities. At the best the smack goes briskly along in smart weather ”

“ Are not the singers better employed than they would have been in the days when a fine Sunday was spent on board the cruising drink-shop? And are not the hearers better for listening to rough sounds of worship, rather than to spluttering curses and sounds of fights and brawling? ”

“ Observe that the roughest and most defiant of the irreligious men are softened by contact with an agency which they regard as being too fine or too tiresome for their fancy, and it is these irregular ruffians who do greet the mission smacks with the loudest heartiness when we swing into the midst of a fleet. ”

“ I think so ; and that is the only way in which the religious work of the mission touches me strongly. Let elegant and cultured persons put the matter as they choose; but here are the points that touch me personally: a dangerous blackguard is reached by religion ; he at once is changed; the point of honor is present in his mind, and he becomes sober, gentle, and devout, without in any way losing his manliness. ”

“ Any one who knows the British rough — especially the nautical rough — knows that the luxury of an oath is much to him, yet here a thorough crowd of wild and excited fellows became decorous, and profuse of civilities, only because they saw a silent and totally motionless man smoking on the deck of a steam-carrier. ”

“ The phlegmatic public seemed to wake up from a dream of indifference; various donors presented heavy sums; a few munificent persons went so far as to present vessels; and thus, at this moment, nine splendid, well-found smacks are at work among the fleets, while two hospital ships, which promise to be the finest of all, are on the stocks at Yarmouth. ”

“ Our money was poured out in rivers, and, at the time when Borrioboola Gha was in fashion, we frittered away hundreds of thousands on impossible missions to savages, while thousands of men — British men, with infinite capacities for good — were living in a state worse than any savage of the southern seas, and certainly worse than the state of the happy savages in Uruguay. ”

“ At any rate here is a mission managed on keen business principles, and those who care to see it at work have merely to take a run out in one of the mission ships, and they will learn within a fortnight that a cynical newspaper writer has given a moderate but accurate account of a lovely and hopeful movement. ”

“ These fellows do not ever cant; they have become civilized men, and if their religious exercises do become demonstrative, what of that? They are good in all relations of life; they are fine workmen; and, if they cry for pardon and pity, who shall blame them? ”

“ Unnoticed save by a company of ardent religious folk, a mighty organization has arisen, and people are only just beginning to know what a strange and beautiful work has been done in comparative secrecy. ”

“ Mather — would ever have fancied, five years ago, that the mission would become one of the miracles of modern social progress, and thus I have learned to believe that even the new difficulty may be conquered. If comfortable folks at home could only see how those gallant, battered fishermen suffer under certain circumstances of toil and weather, they would hardly wonder at my putting forward the hospital project so urgently. ”

“ It takes a long time to show how a great and beneficent structure has gradually grown with all the still and inevitable force of some strong tree, while the more careless portion of the public have been as unconscious of the growth as they are of the mysterious and gradual thickening of the trees which they pass daily. ”

“ No one who is inexperienced can conceive the extent of the fisherman’s ignorance even now, and I think that only that same ignorance keeps them from feeling discontented. At their own craft they are consummately skilful ”

“ Since one of the trunks of fish weighs eighty pounds, I need hardly say that the process of using such a box as a dumb-bell is not precisely an easy one, and, when the dumb-bell practice has to be performed on a kind of stage which jumps like a bucking broncho, the chances of bruises and of resulting bad language are much increased. ”

“ But, much as I recognize the physical benefits which the mission confers, I value even more the subtle humanizing action of the mere power of sympathy. One good fellow said to me long ago, “Ah! some on ‘em laughs at us when we calls the seagulls the fishermen’s friends. I wonder what they would say if they was out here for eight weeks and only the gulls for company?" You may always see the men feeding the pretty birds in hard weather, and the roughest of them will say, “Pretty Kitty, Kitty. ”

“ Every condition of squalor, cold, excessive toil, and danger is known to them, and, during the greater part of the year, they do not know a single pleasure, even of the low sort. Why should they endure such a fate? ”

“ The men are proud of the keen interest shown in them, but they never presume, and their quiet kindness to visitors is amongst the most delightful things that I know. Then they are being gradually raised by contact with men of refinement, and the steady improvement in manners is more and more apparent to me each time that I go out to the fleets. ”

“ The Mission smacks can always do something even now, but then a heavily injured man must be sent home in the steam-carrier, and I should like people to imagine what that is like. There is no chance of delicate handling while a strong sea is running ”

“ Then, after the cruel ordeal of the middle passage, the sufferer is thrown up on to the steamer, and then comes the two days’ run home. A man suffering from a simple fracture can be discharged in a fortnight, but his work is gone, and he must seek for a fresh berth in a market where the unemployed are very numerous. ”

“ The vast number of volunteer workers, of course, enables the director and the council to keep down expenses, but nothing could have been done but for the fine ruling faculty which has developed such a fabric in so short a time. ”

“ These converts cling together: they support each other in their “experience meetings,” one man derives strength from another; and, as a matter of fact, this increasing army of religious enthusiasts have so leavened the fleets that the police on shore find scarcely any complaint against a smacksman at any time. They tell their stories to each other, these simple souls ”