Master (maritime)

“ Play actively and gaily; and cherish, without straining, the natural powers of jest in others and yourselves;—remembering all the while that your hand is every instant on the helm of the ship of your life, and that the Master, on the far shore of Araby the blest, looks for its sail on the horizon—to its hour. ”

“ For, according to the proverb, a master at sea is a master at land; and more especially a king of England, seeing he is able, both by whole fleets and private ships of war, at all times to seize on ships sailing by the coast—the westerly winds, which blow for most part of the year on this side of the tropic, giving the English great opportunities to sail out of their numerous bays and harbours at pleasure to infest our navigation. ”

“ He leans on his prong, facing to windward, and gazing straight into the teeth of the light breeze, as he has done these forty and odd summers past. Like the captain of a sailing ship, the eye of the master haymaker must be always watching the horizon to windward. He depends on the sky, like the mariner, and spreads his canvas and shapes his course by the clouds. ”

“ MASTER. Boatswain! BOATSWAIN. Here, master; what cheer? MASTER. Good! Speak to th' mariners; fall to't yarely, or we run ourselves aground; bestir, bestir. Exit
Enter MARINERS
BOATSWAIN. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to th' master's whistle. Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough.
Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND GONZALO, and OTHERS
ALONSO. Good boatswain, have care. Where's the master? Play the men. BOATSWAIN. I pray now, keep below. ANTONIO. Where is the master, boson? BOATSWAIN. Do you not hear him? ”

“ Other mariners also, and other figures, in the vivacity of their actions, the grace of their attitudes, and the life of their expression, make manifest the excellence of this master ; one most especially, who, speaking with others, holds his hand before his face while he spits into the sea, deserves to be remembered. ”

“ Look at the faith of the master mariner—I have often wondered at it. He looses his cable, he steams away from the land. For days, weeks, or even months, he never sees sail or shore; yet on he goes day and night without fear, till one morning he finds himself exactly opposite to the desired haven toward which he has been steering. ”

“ When a young seaman is first made the master of a ship, and is about to set out upon a voyage which he has never tried before, it is the practice for him to seek some old mariner who has been that way, and to ask him for sailing directions. ”

“ Hold hard! let me finish my yarn, sir. He was flaked upon the wharf, and all of us chaps—we was in a merchant ship where the skipper daren't flog us—looked on and swore we'd pound his master if we only caught him alone. Well, would you believe it? when he was cast off, the feller actually walked to his master, knelt down, and, afore everybody, begged he would forgive him for having given him so much trouble. ”

“ That's not quite it, Sir Gervaise, though you have not gone far wide of the mark. Dutton is only a master, you know; and it seems that a master on board ship is a very different thing from a master on shore ”

“ Masters of vessels were often empowered to sell their ships or shares in them. Although we know not where her keel was laid, by what master she was built, or where she laid her timbers when her work was done, by virtue of her grand service to humanity, her fame is secure, and her name written among the few, the immortal names that were not born to die. ”

“ Therefore I feel that it ought to be plainly stated that, remembering the temptation a shipmaster in a sailing ship on a long voyage is subjected to daily, it speaks well for human nature in general, and for seafarers in particular, that those crimes have been so few, so very few in proportion to the number of individuals who have been tempted to the commission of them. It is too often forgotten by those who ignorantly write upon this subject how free from all restraint save that of his own conscience is the master of a sailing ship at sea on a long passage. ”

“ To him I was but one of the crew of the Clearchus, and a whaleman. Smart masters of smart ships have a profound contempt for whalemen as a class, because of their general slackness, I suppose, although those of them who really know feel an equally profound respect for their venturesome spirit. Captain Marshall was the master of the smartest ship I have ever come across, and the condition of his vessel reflected the character of the master, as it always does. ”

“ That little punchy old man, with long grey hair and fat face, with a nose like a note of interrogation, is the next personage of importance. He ought to be called the sailing-master, for, although he goes on shore in France, off the English coast he never quits the vessel. ”

“ The master—as is sometimes the case with masters of very fine ships—was haughty and overbearing, possessed of a highly-exaggerated opinion of his own importance, turning a deaf ear to all the complaints of his crew, and treating them with an impatience and superciliousness of manner which made him heartily detested. The chief mate, an arrant sycophant, taking his cue from his superior officer imitated him to the utmost extent of his ability, with a like result; while the second mate was a blustering bully, whose great pride and boast it was that he could always make one man do the work of two. ”

“ It is very proper that the master should examine the slate, and suggest alterations as to the ship's reckoning, &c., if necessary, but it is important to all concerned, both to the owners, shippers and insurers, on shore, and the crew of the vessel, that the independence of the mate, as the journalist of the voyage, should be preserved. The master, from the power of his office, can at all times make the situation of a mate who has displeased him extremely disagreeable, and from this cause has great indirect influence over him ”

“ It is essential, in order to success as a master here, that a man should be a sailor. That is, in the original sense of handling ships, a fine art, demanding high skill and courage as well as constant practice. A good master nurses his ship under sail with never-ceasing care. If he be ably seconded by his officers, his labour is of course greatly lightened ”

“ As the captain is an oracle in times of danger, the seamen caught every word which was uttered from my mouth; and what they gathered from what I had said, satisfied them that they were in no immediate danger. Nevertheless, the master walked the deck as if he was stupefied with the impending crisis. No wonder, poor fellow; with a wife and family depending upon him for support, it is not to be expected that a man can look upon immediate dissolution without painful feelings. ”

“ So with any other work doing upon the ship or rigging, as rattling down, turning in and setting up rigging, bending and unbending sails, and all the knotting, splicing, serving, &c., and the making of small stuffs, which constitute the day's work and jobs of a vessel. If the chief officer is a competent man, the master is not expected to trouble himself with the details of any of these things ”

“ A quick, alert turn of the head, the lift of shoulders as he walked—arms swinging in seaman-like balance—and the trick of pausing at a windward turn to glance at the weather sky, marked the sailing shipmaster—the man to whom thought and action must be as one. ”

“ Whenever the lead told them that it was prudent to tack, the course of the vessel was changed: and in this manner the seamen continued to employ the hours in patient attendance on the adventurers. The sailing-master, who had spent the early years of his life as the commander of divers vessels employed in trading, was apt, like many men of his vocation and origin, to mistake the absence of refinement for the surest evidence of seamanship ”

“ The chief mate superintends the forward part of the vessel, under the master, and the second mate assists in the waist. The master never goes aloft, nor does any work with his hands, unless for his own pleasure. If the officer of the watch thinks it necessary to reef the topsails, he calls the master, who, upon coming on deck, takes command, and, if he thinks proper, orders all hands to be called. ”

“ From the master down to the common tar, the same nonchallence, the same contempt of danger, frequently pervades the whole crew. Thus, when the master embarks on board a decayed leaky vessel unfit to bear stress of weather; when the sleepy pilot, dozing at the helm, runs the ship on 16some noted rock or lee-shore; or, when the drunken sailor, with a lighted candle, carelessly approaches too near a cask of spirits, or gunpowder; what in the name of wonder can be expected but inevitable ruin! ”

“ A pipe is only fit for the idle-minded.
There’s another thing. Don’t forget that the ship’s master is a greater man than a colonel. You know colonels, don’t you? (All right, all right!) Well, make no mistake about it, master mariners, as a rule, are different. It is long odds that your new master will know his job. If you are nice to him, he may even confess to a taste for your poetry; ships’ masters are like pie, I have found, to little lost children like ourselves who know nothing about ships, but they are perfectly frightful towards those who know all about ships, and know it all wrong. ”

“ Barratrie of the master and mariners can hardly be avoided, but by a provident care to know them, or at least the master of the ship {200} upon which the assurance is made. And if he be a careful man, the danger of fire above mentioned will be the less for the ship; boys must be looked unto every night and day. ”

“ Passing for master at the time I write of was no great ordeal, but it was a somewhat tricky one for this reason—the examiners in seamanship were necessarily old sailing-ship men. It may be presumed that they considered a steamship man as a sort of inferior being, or shall we say a hybrid being—at best a makeshift seaman. ”

“ He quickly showed that seafaring was his natural calling, for before he was twenty-four years old he had become the master of a vessel, showing at an early age a capacity for responsibility and an ability to command other men that marked him head and shoulders above his companions. ”

“ If the master of the vessel be a man of considerate feelings, he will allow the apprentice a little time to get over the dread of climbing, by sending him only into the lower rigging, or no higher than the main or foretop. ”

“ Half the boy’s time is spent in dancing attendance on the master and mates, doing the meanest work on the ship, that is if any work can be called mean, cleaning brasses, etc., and when his time expires often he is unable to put two ends of a rope together in a seamanlike manner.”
At this my heart sank, but the Captain went on:
“You must go in a small ship as an ordinary seaman where every man and boy has to do his share of the work, and then you will soon learn your business, and make a man of yourself. ”

“ A master of a vessel in the foreign trade may engage a seaman at any port in the United States, in the manner provided by law, to serve on a voyage to any port, or for the round trip from and to the port of departure, or for a definite time, whatever the destination. ”

“ The old master, who is a canny man, went down into the cabin and began to talk of the wonderful things which had occurred to his knowledge at sea—how people had been kept alive floating on a spar for a couple of days, and how others had swam a dozen miles or more, or been washed from the deck of one vessel right aboard another, and fallen overboard, and been picked up floating on a grating, or an oar, by a vessel coming up astern hours afterwards. ”

“ Their duties consist in helping their master, who always works with them, in his house or boat building operations, accompanying him in his trading expeditions, assisting in the navigation of his boats, etc. Their masters generally allot them wives from amongst their female domestics, and many of them acquire the affection and confidence of their superiors. ”

“ It is hard to combine and unite these two qualities, the carefulness of one who is affected by circumstances, and the intrepidity of one who heeds them not. But it is not impossible: else were happiness also impossible. We should act as we do in seafaring.
“What can I do?”—Choose the master, the crew, the day, the opportunity. Then comes a sudden storm. What matters it to me? my part has been fully done. The matter is in the hands of another—the Master of the ship. The ship is foundering. What then have I to do? ”

“ But in time both master and servants, brain and muscles, begin to settle down to their business. The master becomes less confused, and gives his orders with more accuracy and less oblivion of details; the servants acquire more vigour, and pick up the instructions with more facility. ”

“ Hints respecting the Conduct of the Captain and his Mates. Having briefly discussed the principal objects respecting the state of the ship, and the precautions necessary to be taken previous to the voyage, we now proceed humbly to suggest a 32few hints proper to be observed by the master and his mates.
1. Having provided all the requisites necessary to the complete equipment of the vessel, it becomes the master to use every necessary precaution against disasters, and to be prepared to meet the event whatever it may be. ”

“ The qualifications of a skilful pilot or master, even for the Mediterranean seas, in those days, required more study and more practical information, than are necessary to render a mariner a complete general navigator, in the present improved state of the science of navigation ”