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OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

OTHER WORKS

BY

FRANK T. BULLEN

THE CRUISE OF THE " CACHALOT "

IDYLLS OF THE SEA

THE LOG OF A SEA- WAIF

WITH CHRIST AT SEA

THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE

A SACK OF SHAKINGS

THE APOSTLES OF THE SOUTH-EAST

DEEP-SEA PLUNDERINGS

A WHALEMAN'S WIFE

SEA-WRACK

SEA PURITANS

CREATURES OF THE SEA

BACK TO SUNNY SEAS

SEA SPRAY

A SON OF THE SEA

FRANK BROWN, SEA APPRENTICE

' BRITAIN BECAME ABSOLUTELY MISTBESS OP THE SEA.'

Frontispiece.

BY

FRANK T. BULLEN, F.B.G.8.

AUTHOR OP
"THK CRUISE OF THE CACHALOT," "THE LOO OP A SHA-WAIF," ETC.

WITH A FRONTISPIECE

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1906

PRINTED BT

•WILLIAM CLOWKS ANP SONS, LIMITED,
I.OXDON AND BKCCLKS, ENOL4ND.

1105312

All riyht* resenej.

INTRODUCTION

THE idea of writing a book, which within the narrow
limits demanded by the hard-pressed reader of to-day
should give a comprehensive view of the various
aspects of our heritage the sea, has been present to
my mind ever since I first dared to address the public
on sea matters. I do not believe that it can be pos-
sible for any one to feel more deeply than I do the
urgent necessity of awakening our people generally to
the importance of the ocean to them, and certainly no
one can more sadly realize the difficulty of the task.
For not only is the subject an enormous one, embracing
as it does every department of science and political
economy, but in its exposition a writer must calculate
upon meeting with that terrible dead weight of apathy,
of taking things for granted, which is characteristic of
the British people generally. There is only one advan-
tage obvious in the treatment of this great subject —
its freedom from controversial topics, the discussion
of which is so often attended with a bitterness that
obscures the vital points at issue. On the other hand
the general reader is very prone to fight shy of books
upon the sea which are not avowedly fiction, fearing
the introduction of technicalities which he cannot
understand, and of which he will not take the trouble
to ascertain the meaning. This consideration was

VI INTRODUCTION

very sternly borne in upon my experience in con-
nection with my book, " The Men of the Merchant
Service." My object in writing that book was solely
to acquaint the general public with the work of our
merchant seamen of all grades, by giving in the most
untechnical terms a description of their various duties,
interspersed with illustrative anecdotes, mostly drawn
from personal experience. Never was a book more
favourably received by the critics; out of hundreds
of reviews, I do not recall one that was not eulogistic,
while many of the critiques in the great reviews were
couched in language calculated to turn a poor author's
head. But still more gratifying was the reception
the book met with from seamen of every grade, both
active and retired. These men are naturally the very
keenest critics of books about the sea, because they
know the subject so well, and are consequently in-
tolerant of amateur writing thereon. Most gratefully
do I record that from all parts of the world nautical
men have written to me, praising the work in the
highest terms ; and chiefly do I remember and cherish
the long letter of commendation which I received
from a man whom I, in common with most of my
fellow-seamen, regard as the greatest all-round mer-
chant seaman of his day, Captain S. T. S. Lecky,
author of " Wrinkles." This gifted man, from a bed
of pain attendant upon the disease which shortened
his most valuable life, was good enough to say that,
finding my book during a period of enforced leisure,
he had searched it with the most jealous care, and
had been unable to find the slightest error of tech-
nique or detail, which, of course, was most gratifying
to me.

INTRODUCTION Vll

But, in the result, I have to say that the sale of
this book, which I take it is the best test of the
appreciation of the public, has been utterly insig-
nificant. It has not gone beyond the second small
edition in seven years, and since by general consent
of all its readers it is written in an interesting way
and has no dry pages, I think it may justly be inferred
that the public do not want to hear about the Mercan-
tile Marine, are entirely indifferent to the status of its
members, and are content to take all its benefits to
them as they take light and air — as coming in the
course of nature, with the management and produc-
tion of which they have no concern. This opinion is
borne out by my experience throughout our islands
as a lecturer on the subject. Talking from the plat-
form, I can always interest my hearers in any phase
of the sea without introducing the slightest element
of fiction; but I cannot induce them to read the
matter up, nor can I ever find any evidence of the
subject having been studied, however cursorily, except
by persons who are, or have been, directly connected
with it. This I cannot fail to lament as being, in
view of the paramount importance of the subject, quite
unnatural and unnecessary, more especially when I
see the intense interest manifested by people of all
ranks and grades of education in games such as foot-
ball, cricket, and bridge, and the amount of earnest
thought expended upon acquiring information con-
cerning them, not only in their present, but in their
past history. Moreover, I know personally working
men who have lavished upon horse-racing an amount
of brain-power that, legitimately applied, would have
made their fortune. Such men will give you, at a

viii INTRODUCTION

moment's notice, the names, pedigrees, owners, riders,
and starting-prices of the winners of all the " classic "
races for a dozen years back, throwing in with mental
exuberance many extraneous details concerning these
events. Yet such men could not, if their freedom
depended upon it, give you the faintest idea of what
the merchant service means to the country at large,
much less to their own particular trade.

This being so (and I have not the slightest fear
of its being questioned), I feel that no apology is
needed for my present attempt to present, in a series
of sketches, the salient points concerning our heritage
the sea, while fully conscious of my many limitations
and scanty equipment for so important a task. In
this respect I may say that I have endeavoured to
summarize in readable fashion the substance of many
most important works upon the sea, and set the
summary forth in the light of personal acquaintance,
in the hope that, without my book being definitely
entitled a romance, it will be found genuinely romantic
in the highest sense.

I have divided the work into sections, of which the
first is the ocean as the health reservoir of the world.
A brief consideration of this title will, I think, con-
vince most readers that it would of itself suggest a most
fascinating volume, and that the attempt to condense
it within the limits of a couple of short chapters was
somewhat hardy. Still, the attempt has been made,
and I can only hope that it may lend itself to a
stimulation of thought about the matter that will
have a great effect. It is also entirely wonderful to
note how the early navigators took to the sea as an
open road, free from the terrors which then beset the

INTRODUCTION IX

caravan, and braved all the dangers of the unknown and
tempestuous deep so effectually that the new method
of communication between the nations which they
established never again fell into desuetude. Also, to
note how, beginning with the commercial idea, sea-traffic
degenerated into piracy ; then into a means of oppres-
sion as a weapon of national warfare, or piracy on a
larger, grander scale ; then gradually through the ages
retraced its career until it became the greatest medium
of trade between the nations, freed from all fear of
piratical onslaught because of the establishment of
navies to protect it. It is no less interesting to note
how, through a long series of events directly depen-
dent upon one another, this little group of islands
in the Northern seas, considered by the ancients to
be right on the borders of, if not within, the regions
of Cimmerian darkness, should gradually grow into
the proud position of the first sea-power in all the
world — not by any accident or inheritance, but by
sheer driving force, both of hard fighting and keen
trading.

It is a wonderfully inspiring theme for Britons,
this growth of sea-power, and one that should hold
a predominant place in the curricula of our schools
of all classes, especially so now, when, as I have
endeavoured to point out with all the emphasis at
my command, we have come to rely entirely upon
that sea-power for our national existence, our means
of living, our daily bread. Not merely as a means of
growing more wealthy, although it is the greatest
factor in national prosperity, but as the one essential
to our continuance as a nation. This cannot too
strongly be insisted upon in these forgetful days, or

I

X INTRODUCTION

too early inculcated ; indeed, it should not be a hard
task to teach it to our boys, for the story is so inte-
resting, so full of thrilling romantic interest, that
even in the hands of the dullest teacher it could
hardly be made dry. Under a proper handling of
the subject, the grimiest little tramp steamer that
ever lumbered across the Channel, deep laden with
the roughest of cargoes, would become glorified, her
sordid trade details would glow with a halo of romance
that would fire the minds of even the most youthful
hearers with a determination to uphold, at all hazards,
that supremacy so laboriously gained. And for the
older learners the story has one special advantage, in
that it is entirely free from the deadening, hamper-
ing influence of party politics. It soars above the
squabbles of party into the clear serenity of national
interest, making all men agree that whatever diver-
gent views they may have upon the means whereby
our sea-supremacy shall be upheld, upheld it shall
certainly be.

The first great aspect of the ocean dealt with is
one that is of world-wide interest, because it affects
the health of man generally. It is the part that the
whole ocean-covered surface of the globe plays in
the dissemination of vital force all over the world.
This is no mere national question, it is universal,
and with its benignant operations man has nothing
whatever to do. Like the vitalizing sunlight, it is
independent of good or evil, civilized or uncivilized
behaviour on the part of man. Freed from his control
in any sense, it is equally free from the consequences
of his folly ; it showers daily benefits upon him, who-
ever he is or wherever he may be, and he cannot

INTBODUCTION xi

contract himself out of those benefits or barter away
his birthright. He can, however, and he ought to,
take the best advantage he can of these benefits, and
not endeavour in his ignorance to shut out the bless-
ings that ocean brings him. In this connection I
have endeavoured to impress upon my readers the
inestimable value of fresh air, which is solely supplied
from the sea. Here, unfortunately, the resources of
civilization have been so misused in numberless
instances that the civilized man is really worse off
than the savage. Heedless of the obvious fact that
the principal factor in healthy life is the free access
to human beings of the ozonized air of heaven, we see
around us people of all classes actually endeavour-
ing to shut out from their dwellings this life-giving
element, blindly choosing to inhale the poisonous
exhalations from each other's bodies and professing
their dread of draught. Fortunately for the race, this
disastrous practice is slowly dying out, although it
is still a matter for keenest wonder to see country
folk, after spending the day in the keen air of heaven,
return to their homes or to public-houses, and there
sit voluntarily asphyxiating themselves and undoing
all the good that they have received during the
day.

This, however, is a matter connected with igno-
rance of the commonest principles of health, and I
have endeavoured to go a little farther and suggest
an acquaintance with the source from which this inesti-
mable benefit, this essential element of life, fresh air,
emanates — the vast open spaces of the deep. There
is yet another and not less important part which the
ocean plays in its capacity as the source of health for

Xll INTRODUCTION

man, and that is as a vast deodorizer. It should be
more generally known than it is, that the free air
of heaven, becoming fatal to animal life after it has
oxygenated the blood of countless millions, is then a
beneficent food for plant life, the green leaves drawing
their substance from it in combination with sunlight,
and so proving Nature's intolerance of waste in any
form. It is more widely known that the solid matters,
the residual products of animal and vegetable life
which are so offensive to the senses and so dangerous
to health if unabsorbed, are in large measure dealt
with by the kindly earth, and there are reconverted
into nourishing food. But it is hardly realized at all
that the ocean receives from the earth an incalculable
quantity of these foul and effete residuals through
the medium of the rivers, and deals with them rapidly
and effectively in mysterious ways, of which, in the
nature of things, we can know but little, though we
may and should know that it does thus deal with
them.

Of the agencies at work by which these mighty
processes for the benefit of mankind are carried on,
I have endeavoured to treat in the chapters on the
winds and currents of the ocean, avoiding, as far as
possible, scientific terminology and long drawn-out
explanations. And when it is remembered how vast
is the field covered by what is known as meteorology,
or the science of weather, it will at once be seen how
scanty and rapid has been the manner in which I
have been compelled to treat this vast, important
subject. The work of the winds, for instance, which
is to convey to the land the revivifying exhalations
from the ocean, to keep up the circulation of the

INTRODUCTION Xlli

aerial ocean, at the bottom of which we live like fishes
in the sea, to consider this exhaustively would be to
write a series of volumes, not a couple of chapters.
Yet I have hopes that a brief survey of what the wind
is doing for us men all over the world, and a vindi-
cation of what is often considered its terrible effects,
will be not only of interest but of use, leading readers
to inquire still further into the workings of this
wonderful, invisible friend of man. I have endea-
voured to cover the whole field, trade winds, passage
winds, and hurricanes of the various oceans, as well
as to touch lightly upon the nature of the work they
are doing and have done since the world began. In
this connection I have had to bring in the clouds as
co-workers with the winds in their beneficent work,
more especially in what, if we consider for a moment,
we shall admit to be, equally with the dissemination
of fresh air, the most important function of the ocean.
I allude to the providing of the fresh water of the
globe.

Here we enter the very laboratory of Nature, open
to all eyes, yet so profoundly mysterious in its work-
ings that the keenest and most patient observers
disagree as to the method in which the bitter waters
of the eea are momentarily converted into sweet,
drinkable fluid and poised high in air, contained
within intangible reservoirs of cloud, ready to be
conveyed by the waiting winds to wherever it is most
needed. It will suffice for us to see the work going
on, and to follow in spirit those amazing argosies of
the air, blessing -lad en, holding on their stately way
across the firmament of heaven towards the parched
and barren lands lying gaspingly awaiting their

xiv • INTRODUCTION

coming. Here, also, there is no selfish consideration
of our own wants, for we, living without the tropics,
are seldom afflicted by drought, although, when such
a state of things does arise, we are apt to realize what
the almost periodical scarcity of rain must mean to
the suffering millions of India. But there is, I submit,
a grand and most highly romantic lesson to be learned
in the contemplation of this ceaseless, silent, constant
transition of this prime necessity of life from the
ocean to the land, which goes on independently of
us and our trivial efforts, although in this case, as
in nearly every other where Nature is working on our
behalf, we may, if we will, aid her by storing up her
products. Of course we cannot store the air, but in
Egypt and in India we are now witnessing the amazing
results of forethought, assisted by engineering science,
in those lands once barren and now tremendously
fertile, simply because the water which was once
allowed to flow unhindered back to its source, the
sea, is held up and distributed over the thirsty land
in time of necessity.

I have also attempted to depict the work of the
storm, of the hurricane, that awful demonstration of
the power of the air, which is qualified to rank with
the terror-striking earthquake and destructive volcanic
eruption. Unquestionably the work of the hurricane
and the ordinary gale is beneficent, although it cannot
be gainsaid that in the pursuance of its high calling
pigmy man is often called upon to suffer. And as we,
in our short-sightedness, are often only able to see
what affects our own immediate vicinity, we naturally
dread these marvellous manifestations of the beneficent
energies of Nature. Now, I am not attempting to run

INTRODUCTION XV

a Quixotic tilt against human feeling ; for who that
has lost a dear one, or his livelihood, can be consoled
by the reflection that it is for the benefit of the nation ?
I have only tried to show, as the Scripture does, that
" all things work together for good," even the " stormy
wind fulfilling His word," and I trust I shall be for-
given for introducing here these ancient words, which
so aptly express the operations of Nature in obedience
to that High directing-power which most of us have
agreed to call God.

In the winds, of course, we have the circulation of
the atmospheric ocean, which, like the circulation of
the blood in the body, is ever active in health for good.
Unlike the circulation of the blood in the body, how-
ever, the circulation of the atmosphere needs no drugs
or physician's advice. It provides its own remedy, if
there is any sluggishness or stagnation, by getting up
a storm or even a hurricane, and the healthful equili-
brium is at once restored. But as there is a circulation
of the atmospheric ocean, so likewise is there a circula-
tion of the watery ocean, although this is far less
spasmodic, far more equable in its flow than that of
the air. Here we have a subject curiously complex.
It is international in its interest as regards the in-
cidents of the tides, peculiarly local in its interests as
regards the currents. And the main difficulty is to
get the average man to discriminate between tide
and current. I have strenuously endeavoured to show
that difference in the chapters on currents and tides,
and can only hope that I have in some measure
succeeded. The steady ebb and flow of tides all over
the world, dependent upon the movements of the moon
and earth, are of the greatest importance to mankind

XVI INTRODUCTION

generally ; but the steady, hardly-varying set of a body
of water in the ocean in any given direction is fraught
with incalculable consequences to the people inhabit-
ing the land upon which that current impinges. Chief
among all these oceanic rivers, both in size and ns
regards its influence upon the human race, is the
Gulf Stream, without which Great Britain and, indeed,
Northern Europe generally would be a desert. I have
endeavoured to bring this fact prominently forward in
the chapter on currents, for I feel strongly that we
should know how it is that this little group of islands
of ours is kept so habitable, so perennially green, while,
in the same latitude, or at the same distance from the
North Pole, in other parts of the earth the land for
half the year, at any rate, is covered with a mask of
ice. This wonderful natural method of preventing
great vicissitudes of temperature is not the least of the
great blessings we British folk owe to the ocean, but
it is one which the bulk of us most thoughtlessly
accept without ever dreaming of what would be our fate
could any cosmic calamity divert the course of this
mighty river of warm water, so that, instead of coming
straight to us from the Gulf of Mexico, it should waste
itself upon the already overheated coast of Africa, or,
by the submergence of the isthmus of Panama, find its
way into the Pacific, a possibility fraught with such
terrible consequence to civilization that it hardly bears
thinking of at all.

I have glanced briefly, too, at the working of the
other well-known and reliable ocean currents and
the work they do, which, though not comparable in
its direct effect upon civilized humanity to that per-
formed by the Gulf Stream, is still of tremendous,

INTRODUCTION XV11

hardly realizable, importance to the population of the
world at large. Some space is also devoted to the
consideration of the temporary currents caused by
gales above or cosmic disturbances beneath the ocean,
and having extraordinary influence upon the weather
of the world, as well as assisting in the great and neces-
sarily contimious work of maintaining the circulation
of the vast body of water constituting at least three-
fourths of the surface of our planet. This immense
subject is so fascinating and so little understood, even
by those who have studied it most deeply, that I have
the greatest difficulty in confining myself to the pre-
scribed bounds of two chapters, with the result I
fear that my remarks will appear somewhat scrappy.
I hope that this will be forgiven me when the object
of my book is remembered.

Then there is the great question of the ocean as a
food supply, the most fertile field known to mankind,
requiring none of his labour to till it, none of his in-
terference to make it produce perennially a store of
animal food sufficient not only to feed the population
of the world, but to supply the needs of its own in-
numerable inhabitants as well. Here we have the
ideal chain of interdependence, a region where, without
man's intervention, there is an abundance so overflow-
ing that the mind reels to think of it. Indeed, it is
beyond our calculations altogether, especially when
we remember how close and intense is the application
needed to make the earth yield her increase for the
food of man, and how enormous is the space of dry
land where nothing is or can be produced. In the
ocean every inch is fruitful, abounding in life, all of
which has its recognized position in the scheme of

XVlii INTHODUCTION

things, so that we may trace, if we will, the pyramid of
life from the minute globigerina to the majestic whale.
Here, again, we have a subject that should be full of
interest to us as Britons, remembering how favourably
we are situated with regard to some of the most pro-
lific fisheries of the world, and how utterly we are
dependent upon outside sources for the great bulk of
our food. It is also well for us to understand ho\v,
owing to the advance of science, we are now able to
bring even so perishable an article as fish over many
thousands of miles of sea as fresh as when it was first
caught, although as yet we have not cared to develop
this side of our food-supply to any extent. It is, I
think, a consoling reflection that, however great the
increase of population may be, there is to be found in
the sea an ample supply for all its needs as regards
animal food, a supply which only requires man's
courage, hardihood, and skill to gather in, and wise
methods of distribution to bring it within reach
of all.

In the chapter dealing with the mysterious un-
known and unknowable depths of the ocean, those
immense profundities whose recesses we can never
penetrate, I have been driven to the exercise of
imagination based upon the scanty facts we have been
able to collect from the results of the various expedi-
tions which have been despatched for the study of
oceanography, notably the memorable voyage of the
Challenger. This, perhaps, is too esoteric a subject for
general interest, and yet it has a fascination all its
own, and its place in the sum of things we desire to
know is a very high one. It is well, for instance, to
know within a little the depths of ocean's abysses,

INTRODUCTION XIX

to realize the falsity of the poetical description of the
" unplumbed . . . estranging sea." It is no longer
unplumbed, and as for estranging, well, I prefer an-
other poet's line : " the seas but join the nations they
divide." Also, the knowledge that so far from the
ocean below a certain depth being a place of absolute
darkness and death, it is everywhere the home of
living creatures adapted to conditions of life of which
we can form but the faintest conception, under almost
unimaginable pressure, in uniform cold, and in dark-
ness only faintly illumined by phosphorescent gleams,
emanating, not, as I read in a journal recently, from
decaying things, for there are no decaying things in
the sea, but from living illuminators glowing with
self-produced and self-sustained light — a strange,
mysterious world, from which man is for ever shut out,
and about which his knowledge must necessarily be
fragmentary and incomplete.

The terrible subject of naval warfare has been dealt
with in the same sketchy manner under the heading
of the ocean as a universal battle-field, a title which
I feel is sufficiently justified by the fact that, with but
few exceptions, all great powers that have anything in
them of stability have found it necessary to maintain
a navy. I have endeavoured to sketch the rise of
naval warfare from the earliest times, pointing out
how eagerly man, having discovered the utility of the
sea as an ever-level road, traversed far more easily and
with less danger than the land in those unquiet days,
grasped at the possibility of making it a place of war-
fare also, rapine and bloodshed being the normal con-
dition of his being ; how the necessity for defending his
merchandise, or the greed of the goods of others, also

XX INTRODUCTION

suggested naval warfare on an ever-increasing scale,
until it became the chosen and most effective means of
preying upon their neighbours, of nations with a sea-
coast ; of its development from the hand-to-hand
warfare, differing only from land fighting in that it
took place on board of vessels, to the invention first
of the ram, and then of gunpowder and cannon. Also,
how, for many centuries, it was combined with sea-
traffic, only occasionally being separated from it by
the fitting out of some piratical expedition on a grand
scale — excepting, of course, the raids of the terrible
Vikings, which seem to have been conceived entirely
for rapine and murder, and never for the purpose of
peaceful trading, yet how from these bloody sea-
wolves sprang the English, the greatest nation of
peaceful traders that the world has ever seen. Then
the gradual differentiation between merchant-man and
sea-warrior, and the establishment of navies for the
protection of commerce, and not for aggression, until
finally there emerges the British Navy, the peace-
keeper of the seas as far as unwarranted attacks are
concerned. It is a thrilling story, however baldly
told, and one which gives every Briton legitimate
ground for patriotic pride, albeit the burden which it
now imposes upon us of some forty millions sterling
per annum is a gigantic one for any nation to bear.
Unfortunately, experience teaches us that we need not
look for any lightening of that burden, but rather an
increase of it, for many years to come, the paramount
necessity of protecting our commerce being absolutely
vital.

Of the last chapter I need not speak, having in the
opening part of this Introduction dwelt with all the

INTRODUCTION XXI

force at my command on what the ocean means to
Great Britain, the subject which I have chosen for
the concluding chapters of the book. Therefore I
have now only to express the hope that, in spite of its
many and obvious shortcomings, the present work may
do something to awaken our interest in and foster our
admiration of our glorious heritage of the sea.

FKANK T. BULLEN.

MELBOUBN, CAMBS.
Oct., 1906.

CONTENTS

1 BRITAIN BECAME ABSOLUTELY MISTKESS OF THE SEA '

Frontispiece

PAGE

THE OCEAN AS THE WORLD'S RESERVOIR OF HEALTH ... 1
THE OCEAN AS THE WORLD'S RESERVOIR OF HEALTH

(continued) ... ... ... ... 22

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN ... ... ... ... 43

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN (continued) ... ... 64

THE CLOUDS ... ... ... ... ... 83

THE CLOUDS (continued) AND WAVES ... ... 104

OCEAN CURRENTS ... ... ... ... ... 121

THE TIDES ... ... ... ... ... 141

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY ... ... 160

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY (continued) 180

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY. I. ... ... 199

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY. II. ... ... 218

THE OCEAN, UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLORABLE ... 239

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD ... ... ... 257

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD (continued) ... 278

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN ... ... 303

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN (continued) 321

xxiii

OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

THE OCEAN AS THE WORLD'S RESERVOIR
OF HEALTH

IN olden days, or rather mediaeval days, it was the
fashion among pseudo-philosophers to speak of the sea
as the primum mobile, the source of all human health
and, in a measure, of prosperity. This conclusion was
arrived at by no process of reasoning ; like so many
other dicta of those days, it was a shrewd guess,
although stated with all the pomp and authority of a
fundamental law which has been worked out and
proved. Yet in this instance, at least, the old
empirics spoke far more truly than they knew. The
guesses of the Middle Ages at the higher uses of
the vast water surface of the globe have become the
facts of our day, and as science extends her boundaries
it becomes more abundantly evident that what we
have of health on land we owe to the " healing of the
sea." In view of the fact that so many highly
educated people among us have a horror of the sea,
regarding it as a dread and dreary expanse of heaving
billows, concealing terrors greater and dangers more
immense than ever the ancients dreamed of, it may be
well for a while to draw attention to the entirely

i B

2 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

beneficent aspect of the ocean's work for man. This
is not in any way altered in value by the fact of the
ocean bearing the aspect which has been dealt with
elsewhere. But it is an aspect of the ocean's work
that is almost altogether lost sight of even to-day,
unless we consider the great rush to the seashore of
our island populations as in some measure a recognition
thereof.

That recognition is, however, of the very faintest
and most unreasonable kind because almost entirely
individualistic. The man who can afford to get away
from his stuffy workshop or office down to the sea-coast
cannot but feel the benefit of the ozone-laden air,
whether he bathes his stiffened limbs in the brine or
not ; but the cases are rare indeed where such an one
on returning to his place of work, realizes that the
benefits conferred upon him and his kind by the sea
do not cease when they have retreated far inland.
Even those who in populous city pent are never able
to get away to the sea or the open country are in-
debted to the sea for the modicum of health that they
enjoy, an all-pervading benefit that, like the rain,
falls upon the just and unjust alike, and cannot be
cornered and sold by even the most American of
Trusts with all their power and greed.

No benefit that the sons of men enjoy receives less
recognition than this. The fresh air, the sunshine,
rain after drought — all these occasionally receive a
meed of gratitude from even the most ungrateful;
but the sea, which modifies and energizes them all, is
rarely thought about. And this, while not to be
wondered at in the case of continental people, who may
hardly ever have heard of the sea even, is almost

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 3

inexplicable in an island folk like our own, who can
never get more than a hundred miles away from the
shores laved by the ministering sea.

These, however, are but general statements, and I
hope now to come to some particulars of the ocean's
wonderful duties, which shall familiarize some, at least,
with its work for them, and cause them to remember
their mercies in this direction if they have never done
so before. Now, it is both seemly and proper to begin
with our own land, this wonderful little group of islands
set in a silver sea, which, from the circumstance of its
geographical position and the constant ministrations
of the ocean, has had so mighty an influence upon the
well-being of the whole world. A word of deprecatory
comment is here necessary. In dealing with the
currents and the winds of the ocean, some little
reference to their influence upon the health and wealth
of nations has been impossible to avoid, and conse-
quently they may appear to give ground for a charge
of repetition. If so, I would ask you to remember,
first, that in order to drive the subject-matter of a
certain great theme into most people's heads it is
absolutely necessary to repeat, and secondly, that in
dealing with so inextricably interwoven a subject as
the ocean in all its bearings upon the life of the dry
land, some little repetition is entirely unavoidable, in
proof of which I would quote the works of all the
great oceanographers, such as Reclus, Maury, Murray,
and others perhaps less renowned but quite as pains-
taking and accurate, with none of whom do I even
pretend to compete. In connection with this same
question of repetition, let me relate an illuminating
experience of my own., I was staying with some dear

friends of the highest intellectual calibre (I dare not
particularize) in the suburbs of a northern city, and on
a Sunday morning my hostess invited me to come with
the family to their church to hear their minister,
whom she described as a perfect marvel of didactic
eloquence. I went, and for the first ten minutes of
the sermon was very pleased. But for the remaining
forty minutes I was intensely bored, because it was
abundantly evident that all the preacher had to say
he had said in the first ten minutes, after that all was
repetition ad nauseam. Upon leaving the church I
was pressed for my opinion of the preacher, and gave
it honestly. " Ah," said my hostess ; " but, you see,
most of us need that plain repetition in order to fix
the facts firmly in our minds, otherwise an average
shallow memory, such as mine, is unable to retain even
a modicum of the discourse." Which saying, although
to my mind savouring of rather sensitive modesty,
set me thinking, and left me with the conclusion
that the lady was not far from the truth of the
matter.

So much by way of preliminary, now to the subject.
What does the sea do for us Britons in the matter of
health ? Well, in the first place, situated as these
islands are on the eastern verge of the North Atlantic
Ocean, we must receive the full force of the westerly
winds, the prevalent westerly movement of the whole
atmospheric mass over full three thousand miles of
open ocean. There is nothing to shield us from its
impact, no intervening land to filter away, so to speak,
some of its benefits from us. Throughout the greater
portion of the year this mild, moist wind flows steadily
towards us from the west, whatever asperity it may

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 5

have originally possessed upon leaving the American
Continent being softened and ameliorated by its
passage over the wide ocean, free from all malarial
exhalations, pure with a purity that only salt can give,
and fresh with a freshness only obtainable on a level
surface constantly in motion and free from the myriad
foulnesses and fcetors of the stagnant land. But the
wind does not work alone. It is aided by the vast
ocean current of the Gulf Stream, whose warm waters
steadily pursue their way unbiassed by tidal waves,
unaffected by cross-blowing occasional gales, and
sending upward continually into the bosom of the
attendant winds its fresh moisture, freed from saline
particles, but impregnated with that mysterious
electrical component ozone which is, without question,
an important constituent of life itself.

Yet, lest the atmosphere over these islands should
become too humid, and our people lose their energy
by reason of constantly basking in a moist, equable
climate, enervating and unhealthful, there are divers
divagations from the direct eastward flow of the
general wind currents. Down from the icy regions
of the Arctic circle, edged by the bitter cold of the
eternal ice, comes the north wind and north-easter,
and our comfort-loving folk complain of the sudden
change, not knowing, or even caring to know, how
entirely good for them is the change; for while we
may know what is good for us, it seldom follows
that we seek that good, and when it is thrust upon
us, we are all too apt to murmur and mutter that if we
had been allowed to order things celestial they would
have been much more endurable. Possibly ; yet who
is there so mad that he would willingly give the

charge of the weather even for one week to the most
gifted of the sons of men ? Sometimes, it is true, a
sudden influx of icebergs, released from their Arctic
prison, will invade the North Atlantic in early summer
and refrigerate the mild west wind so severely that it
descends upon our shores scarcely less frigid than the
blast from its opposite quarter, edged with bitter-
ness from the icy Eussian steppes. Undoubtedly in
such a case individuals will suffer. The patient
agriculturist may see in a night all his hopes of a
good crop brought to naught, and difficult indeed will
it be to convince him of the general benefit conferred
by this bitter blast when he is smarting under the
knowledge of his own particular ruin. Weaklings,
too — young and old — who, lured from protection by
the geniality of the weather, have ventured farther
than their wont, are stricken and die, to the sorrow of
those to whom they were dear, but to the undoubted
benefit of the race. When the wise man said that it
was the hard grey climate that made hard grey
Englishmen, lie did not incur the obloquy of saying
that the Englishmen who were neither hard nor
grey, and could not become so, must be eliminated
by the inexorable forces of Nature; in other words,
they must die early and die often. No, he left that
to be inferred, and unfortunately it is too often for-
gotten with many other things that should be
remembered.

The foregoing remarks, however, only apply to
the often broken British summer, dependent as it is
entirely upon the steadiness of the west winds and the
Gulf Stream. Many hard and unjust things have been
said about it, mostly untrue, and generally by people

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OP HEALTH 7

who have had no opportunity of judging its merits.
When all is said for and against, it remains true that
the British summer, like its winter, makes for health
because of its freedom from extremes. The scourge
of consumption is almost entirely due to the unwisdom
of the people, and not at all to the rigour of the climate.
Even to-day, when hygienic knowledge is growing
from more to more, how frequently do we find people —
in railway carriages, for instance — excluding the pure,
health-giving air, and voluntarily poisoning themselves
with the miasmatic exhalations of each other ! How
many times have I pleaded for one window to be opened
just a little way, only to be told that a draught was
dangerous, deadly, and other skittles of the same kind !
These are the people who spend an ocean passage
wrapped up as if they were in the Arctic, and never
give the lovely health-bringing wind a chance to blow
on them.

It is the principal function of the ocean to give
space for the collection by the winds of ozone, of
oxygen, and hydrogen, all destroyers of disease germs,
all inimical to the waste products of humanity in their
original form ; and it is the prime function of the winds,
when thus loaded with disease- resisting and disease-
destroying germs in the place where alone they may
be produced in all-sufficient quantities, to bear them
swiftly whither they are most needed. What the
chemical process is, by means of which these disin-
fecting or deodorizing gases are generated in the wide
expanse of ocean, need not here be considered any
more than the method by which the wind is raised
which conveys them to their destination. It is surely
sufficient for our present purposes to admit with great

8 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

joy the fact that in the immense alembic of the ocean,
these health-breeding gases are generated, and that
the wind is ready to convey them to the land.

Now, to bring this matter once for all within every-
body's comprehension. Suppose that an immense
number of fairly well educated people could be asked
the question, " What is the first elementary need of
man ? " they would undoubtedly answer, " Fresh air."
Few, indeed, are the folk to-day who do not know that
lack of fresh air kills as swiftly as a knife stab or a
bullet in a vital part. Of course it is strange that, in
the face of this universal knowledge, so many of us
should be content with stale air — tainted air — when
we might have it fresh ; but still more strange to my
idea is the fact that so many people are entirely
ignorant of what fresh air is or where it comes from.
Does the asthmatic, rising in the agony of suffocation,
and flinging open his bedroom window to the night
wind, ever realize to what he owes his relief and whence
it comes? I am safe in saying not once in ten
thousand times. And yet it is so simple : the source
of all fresh air is the sea. The verdant meadows, the
desert wastes, the mountain chains, the inland lakes —
all these are pensioners upon the sea's bounty ; all these
take and do not give, save that the green leaves absorb
a poisonous gas and use it for the plants' upbuilding,
but they do not produce an equivalent blessing as does
the sea. The sea alone of all the earth's expanse is
actually engaged in gathering from all its elemental
resources matter for the service of man. It is a field
untilled that yields ever in richest profusion the
most sacred necessities of everyday life to the world's
inhabitants, and looks for nothing in return. It is,

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 9

indeed, the summum lonum of natural forces, the chief
almoner of the Almighty.

But it may be objected that, important as the
digression is, it is still a digression, for we were con-
sidering the effect of the winds upon Great Britain.
Well, while I admit that to some extent, I must needs
point out that not only does Britain receive incal-
culable benefit from the ministrations of the winds
reaching her from the Atlantic, but that the continent
of Europe is also the recipient of these benefactions
in no stinted measure. Surely it is worth remembering
that Paris, with its most delightful climate, is parallel
to St. John's, Newfoundland, or nearly so, and that
when the latter is masked in thick-ribbed ice, Parisians
are lolling contentedly in the open air on the boule-
vards. Again, leaving Britain aside for the moment,
think of Denmark and North Germany being parallel
with Labrador, that great coast whose very name brings
a shudder, where the few inhabitants do not live — they
endure martyrdom, and look upon those things of life
which we regard as hardly to be endured as their chief
blessings. Yes, Europe is indeed blessed by her
position with regard to the prevalent winds over the
North Atlantic Ocean, and if anything were needed
to call our attention to the fact, it is abundantly sup-
plied by the occasional incidence of the east wind
which comes to us, not health-laden or mollified by a
wide expanse of ocean over which it must travel to
reach us, but filled with cruel energy inimical to life
and comfort by its passage over vast breadths of land.
Even though arising in the frozen ocean, it was not
entirely harsh and hateful when it first struck the land,
but in its passage over Russia, the last traces of

10 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

benevolence were desiccated out of it until it arrives
as a scourge before which even the strongest must
cringe. What it would be did not the North Sea
intervene, let those unhappy dwellers upon Kussian
steppes or German frontiers to Eussia tell Thank
God, we in this country know nothing personally of
their sufferings, as is most evident from the fuss we
make over a few days' frost or an evanescent snowstorm.
Our standards of comfort and good weather are very
high.

Still, bitter as is the blast of the east wind over the
wild steppes, it bears health. We can scarcely blame
those hardly used millions for their ignorance of or
inattention to the most elementary rules of cleanliness
or sanitation. Behold, the universal cleanser, the
deodorizer comes, the wind from the clean sea, and
behind its triumphant path disease germs drop dead,
their career of infernal activity at an end. "Why,
then," those comfortless ones might argue did they
know or care aught about the matter, "should we
deprive ourselves of the simulacrum of comfort we now
and then obtain, by attempts at keeping ourselves
clean, which we regard as a waste of energy ? " Only
it seems such a pity that men should thwart actively
the efforts of the sun and the fresh wind from the sea
to keep them alive by barring out as far as they are
able these two mighty agents of health.

Now, on the borders of the great Mediterranean
sea, which is, after all, but an exaggerated lake of salt
water, the sea does not get fair play for its beneficent
labours. In the first place, there are no regular wind
currents to convey the ozone shoreward, and, in the
next, the circulation of the waters is largely carried on

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 11

beneath the surface, keeping the water sweet indeed,
but not sufficient to accumulate deodorizing energy
for the benefit of the land. It is a striking proof, if
any were needed, of the maleficent influence of the
land that the countries surrounding the Mediterranean,
with but few exceptions, should be so unhealthy, and
that a peculiarly virulent type of malaria should have
received the name of Malta fever. Think of it, malaria
generated in a lonely rocky islet without swamps or
dank undergrowth or jungle, only set in an almost
tideless sea that is powerless to aerate its superheated
and densely populated streets. And in saying this I
am not at all forgetful of the charms of the Biviera.
I only point out what is an undeniable fact, that where
the free motions of wind and current over and in the
sea are hindered from any cause whatever, the adjacent
land irnist suffer because of the lack of those ministra-
tions, which are peculiarly the province of the sea.

Before going any farther south, however, we must
consider the other great function of the ocean with
regard to the land, a function not merely necessary
for health, but absolutely indispensable to life at all,
I mean the providing of the earth with fresh water.
Here a host of minor influences must be remembered
that make for the health and prosperity of a nation,
according as the happy mean in the continual supply
of fresh water is reached. But the first thing to
remember is that all the fresh water in the world is
distilled from the sea. In this day of universal educa-
tion, there are few people in civilized countries who do
not know of the simple chemical process whereby fresh
water is obtained from salt water, but there are almost
as few who give a thought to the mighty fact that all

12 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

over the ocean's wide surface the sun is daily engaged
in raising from the bitter brine of the sea an incal-
culable supply of sweet fresh water, which those swift
messengers the winds are everlastingly hurrying with
to the dry land. This raising of fresh water from the
sea is accomplished in two ways, by evaporation and
by the mysterious and marvellous phenomena known
as waterspouts. The first process is familiar to us all,
the way in which a vessel of water in a dry room will
gradually diminish in quantity, the dry air like a
sponge sucking up the water and holding it in in-
fmitesmal particles, ready to let them fall upon a
sudden alteration of atmospheric conditions. We all
are familiar, too, with the phenomenon of what we call
a damp day, when the air is like a vapour bath, and
everything around becomes clammy and moist. There
may be no clouds laden with rain, yet everything is
wet, and we cannot help feeling that the whole atmo-
sphere is almost as dense as water itself, and only
needs some slight change to let it fall in heavy rain.
In the terms of the meteorologist, the air is at satura-
tion point.

But steady and universal as is this system of
evaporation, and essential as it is to our well-being,
it must needs be supplemented by the raising of
enormous quantities of water almost in bulk, and load-
ing with this prime necessity whole squadrons of aerial
water-bearers, to be propelled by the winds to where
they are most needed. Here we are at once upon debat-
able ground, where scientists disagree most furiously.
As, however, we are not scientists, but only concerned
with facts which interest us, and just incidentally with
their causes, we need not be alarmed. What is certain

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OP HEALTH 13

about the matter is that under certain atmospheric
conditions, and generally within the tropics, the clouds
send down long tentacles to the sea-surface, which we
have agreed to term waterspouts. One of these at its
period of maximum activity bears no bad resemblance
to the trunk of an elephant engaged in drawing up
from the surface of a stream a supply of water. But
the process is entirely different. In the first place,
the elephant's trunk is of solid material, just a living
hose sucking up mechanically water unchanged in its
character. The waterspout is composed of vapour,
transparent, and in constant whirling motion, and the
water, which may easily be seen rushing up at a terrific
rate, leaves the sea-surface salt and arrives in the sky
fresh. How this is brought about no one knows, but
that it is accomplished is a fact impossible to dispute.
So the waiting cloud receives its burden of fresh water,
and is borne upon the wings of the wind landward,
where in due time it meets with obstructing mountain
peaks, or is rent asunder by discharges of electricity,
and deposits its burden of blessing upon the thirsty
soil, into which it penetrates to form springs and
rivers, which, after irrigating the land and assuaging
the thirst of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, finds
its way back in due time to the bosom of the ocean
once more. Here it is purged of the impurities it has
contracted during its course upon earth, and, after
completing its purgation, is once more started on its
career of beneficence.

Of the manner in which this aerial distribution of
water is carried on, of the formation of raindrops, snow-
flakes, and hail, this is no place to speak; it is a
subject demanding a volume to itself. We are only

14 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

now concerned with the fact that our water to drink
and to feed the plants on which we live comes from
the sea, and is brought to us by the agency of the
winds. Of course the quantity of moisture received
by any particular portion of the earth's service varies
greatly, according to its geographical position and its
physical contour, some parts of the earth receiving
water greatly in excess of their needs, and others
suffering continuous shortage, these variations having
an immense effect upon the importance of the country
and the scheme of the world's affairs.

Here, again, we in Britain have been most highly
favoured. We are given to much grumbling about
our uncertain weather conditions, and owing to our
complicated interests, agricultural and manufacturing,
it is next to impossible to arrange that all shall be
satisfied at the same time, yet it is undoubtedly the
fact that to her climatic conditions caused by, as well
as allied to, her geographical position Britain owes her
greatness in the world. When we go further south
along the African shore, we find that excessive rainfall
and steamy heat have produced dense forests, the
home of malaria and kindred diseases, because the
blessed health-giving wind cannot penetrate their dark
recesses and sweep away these poisonous exhalations.
There man's energy is sapped by the enervating con-
ditions of the climate, and so, although the teeming
earth produces wealth in overwhelming abundance,
only a tiny part of it can be utilized, owing to the
dreadful tax imposed upon humanity by the climate.

Moreover, this over-rich belt along the coast arrests
the wind and the rain, leaving the vast interior desert,
a waterless, treeless waste, whereon the fierce sun,

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 15

unveiled by cloud, beats with pitiless force, raising the
temperature to heights almost unbearable by even the
wonderfully adaptable human frame, and rarefying
the air so much that a certain effect of indraught is
created as far away as the open ocean, the cooler and
heavier air rushing in to fill the vacancy created by
the raising of the superheated atmosphere, but being,
as before noted, arrested on its way with its cargoes of
wetness by the steaming forests of the coasts. South
of the equator a better state of things obtains. The
sea breezes find their way farther into the interior, and
although there are still to be found immense desert
spaces as dead as the Sahara, there are mighty rivers
and immense lakes of fresh water fed by the constant
influx of rain-bearing clouds from the ocean. Here
the land is highly diversified. There are climates
meet for all races, fertile land at many elevations, and
it may be that South Africa will one day be the home
of a teeming civilized population, as far removed from
the horrible conditions under which their aboriginal
predecessors lived as it is possible to conceive. But
we must not dispose of South Africa in this summary
fashion, remembering that the immense water privileges
and splendid health conditions it enjoys are due to the
work of the Indian Ocean winds, and not to those of
the South Atlantic, down which we are slowly
wandering.

But for the certain fact that every one knows,
or ought to know, that in Nature there is no waste,
we might be tempted to ask what benefit does the
circulatory system of the winds of the Southern Ocean
afford to mankind ? With the exception of our colonies
in Australia and New Zealand, with a comparatively

16 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

small portion of the great South American continent,
there is no land in their way, no inhabited country for
them to exercise their splendid recuperative and
cleansing forces upon. And the question might per-
haps be justified if the globe were divisible into self-
contained sections, and was not one entity. The work
of the world-encircling winds of the Southern Seas has
its due effect upon all the rest of the globe, which,
after all, is but a small sphere in the cosmic scheme,
and to imagine it sweeping eternally around the globe,
chasing its own tail, as it were, and accomplishing
nothing., is to take a petty and parochial view of such
mighty activities. Best assured that, although we
may not be able to assess it in terms of arithmetic, the
work of the brave west winds of the Southern Ocean
are of the highest importance to the health and well-
being of the globe as a whole, and when meteorology,
or the scienee of weather, has come to its own, we shall
know how and why. For the present we must take on
trust the fact that this immense wind system, the
greatest on our globe, is ever working for the benefit
of all mankind.

But let us now take a long step backward to the
north-western shores of the Atlantic, and see what
effect the oceanic winds have upon the mighty con-
tinent of America. Truly there is here a vast problem
awaiting us, for, as we have already seen, the winds of
the North Atlantic, northward of the tropics, are from
and not to the American continent. So that, speaking
generally, it is fairly safe to say that they do not
exercise much influence upon its health, except in one
important particular, which is that by blowing from the
continent they create an indraught from the westward ;

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 17

they draw, as it were, the immense wind system of the
Pacific over the continent, and thereby keep it aerated.
But with that at present we have no concern, we have
only to remember the work of the Atlantic for Northern
America. Farther south the North-East Trades, plough-
ing across the wide expanse of the Atlantic, strike the
extreme south of the United States, and recurve along
its shores in company with the great current of the
Gulf Stream. But in the nature of things these winds
can have but little effect upon the climate of the
Southern States, which indeed lie in a sort of eddy,
and are consequently insufficiently aerated, having
immense areas of swampy land in which malaria lurks,
deadly and miasmatic, only a short distance from the
coast. And yet Florida, Georgia, and Alabama con-
tain some of the choicest spots of the New World areas,
which are near enough to the coast to get the edge of
the recurving Atlantic winds and receive the benefits
which they bring.

Coming farther south we find the Antilles, lying
like a range of fortresses clear in the fairway of the
Trade Wind and current, and, according to our theory
of the aerating qualities of the oceanic winds, they
should be among the chief sanitoria of the globe. Yet
we must sadly admit that this has by no means been
the case in actual experience. Let us for a moment
inquire why this can be, stating the pros and cons in
a purely impartial spirit, holding no brief for the West
Indies at all. The chain of the Antilles, a series of
peaks of submerged mountains, rising from terrific
depths of ocean, and only showing a trivial proportion
of their bulk above the ocean-surface, extend from
about ten degrees north of the equator to the limit of

C

18 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

the Tropic of Cancer. The full strength of the North
East Trade impinges upon the eastern coast of each
island, and, rising, sweeps over it into the Gulf beyond.
But these islands are nearly all mountainous, and their
peaks arrest some of the immense rain-bearing clouds
borne by the winds, so that their contents are dis-
charged into the humid valleys, and dense, dank
vegetation rises from the fertile soil. Therefore,
although the ground is not swampy, the fecund growth
makes aeration impossible ; and while upon the higher
levels, where the healthful wind has free sway, an
almost perfect climate is enjoyed, in the valleys there
is disease, principally malaria, which exacts a tremen-
dous price from those who venture to live there, in
order to garner the wealth which lavish Nature spreads
broadcast ; for it cannot be too strongly pointed out
that the food of vegetation is the poison of man.

Science, however, has come to man's aid, and shown
how, by a little attention to certain laws, notably a
comparatively recent discovery, that tropical diseases
are nearly always disseminated by insects, such as the
deadly mosquito, these once dreaded regions may be
lived in with almost as complete an immunity from
disease as the wind-swept uplands of more favoured
northern climes, while the highlands of these favoured
islands afford an almost perfect refuge for the weak-
lings who are unable to withstand the searching bitter
blasts of higher latitudes. Whether in the near future
the sense of the community will be favourable to the
idea which now prevails of preserving the unfit and
penalizing the useful for the support of the useless and
dangerous is another matter.

I, for one, look forward to the time when the West

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 19

Indies, as these beautiful islands are erroneously called,
will be the ideal winter resort for those who can afford to
leave the inclement Northern regions during the sun's
sojourn south of the line. Already the enterprise of
great steamship companies is bringing this beautiful
region well within the reach of people of quite moderate
means, and it is pleasant to know that this energetic
prosecution of legitimate business is rewarding its
promoters in substantial fashion.

Our consideration of the climatic conditions of the
countries bounding the great Middle Sea of the West,
the Gulf of Mexico, must be exceedingly brief. First,
because the aeration of these countries from the East
is very slight, the ocean winds having been arrested
in their benevolent career by the great chain of the
Antilles ; and, secondly, because the owners of most of
these countries do, by their gross neglect of all the
ordinary rules of health, deprive themselves of most of
the benefits the ocean winds lavish upon them. As an
instance of this, I would quote the case of the beautiful
city of San Jose, Costa Eica, which is situated in an
ideal position at an altitude of several thousand feet
above the sea, between two oceans, and close to both,
with the result that the climate is about as perfect as
can be found in the whole world, although it is only
about six hundred miles north of the equatorial line.
When I was there a short time ago, I ventured to
remark to my host that, in such a lovely position, both
climatically and picturesquely, I should expect that
the death-rate was abnormally low. He sadly shook
his head, and informed me that, so far from that being
the case, it was the exact contrary, the death-rate being
dreadfully high by reason of the prevalence of typlwid.

20 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

There is no need to comment upon this, it bears its
own commentary, and in view of the fact that the city
has expended about £250,000 upon a reduced copy of
the Paris Opera House, its own condemnation also.
Yet Costa Rica is about the most enlightened and
progressive of all the South American Eepublics, with
the sole exception of Mexico.

The great republic of Brazil and the colonies of
Guiana receive but little assistance from the winds of
the Atlantic, from their unfavourable situation on the
eastern side of the broadest part of the South American
continent. Eichest in natural productions of all the
countries of the world, and favoured beyond most
tropical regions by the nearness of the great centres of
civilization, the vast wealth of these immense regions
has been barely touched as yet. The character of the
rulers has something to do with this in the case of
Brazil, but not so much after all, because the same
causes which make that mighty land so inordinately
rich prevent humanity from taking full advantage of
those riches. The healing winds from the Pacific
cannot penetrate those gigantic forests fostered by
heat and fed by the most copious rainfall imaginable.
Here is a river system, fed from the Andes, which has
not its peer in the world ; minor tributaries here attain
a length and volume equal to almost any of the great
rivers of the ancient (so-called) world. But when that
day has arrived, which seems now to be within measur-
able distance, that the teeming millions of the more
densely inhabited parts of the earth begin to feel the
pinch of hunger, owing to the inability of their own
country to produce sufficient food for their needs,
eager eyes will turn to this continent with its

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 21

incalculable riches, and, despite all its present unfit-
ness for human habitation, it will then be exploited
to the full.

Even now the splendid territories south of it, lying
as they do in more temperate climes, and although
as profusely watered, by reason of the narrowing down
of the great continent, more perfectly aerated, are
receiving yearly an increasing number of the eager
hordes of Europe, principally Italians. These magni-
ficent republics of Argentina and Uruguay are grow-
ing in wealth and population at an amazing rate, and
effete as the Latin race appears to be in Europe, it is
here renewing its mighty youth. Given that sine qua
non of prosperity, good, honest, stable government, no
long time can elapse before these swiftly-growing
republics will demand and take their place among the
great Powers of the world.

THE OCEAN AS THE WORLD'S
RESERVOIR OF HEALTH (Continued)

NOWHERE, perhaps, in the whole world is there to
be seen so pointed an instance of what the land is
bound to become when deprived of the best influences
of the ocean as in Asia. In the broadest part of the
great African continent, it is true, we have a striking
instance of what the land becomes when the sea
breezes cease to blow over it. The great desert of
Sahara, uninhabitable, inhospitable, has, no doubt, its
part to play in the great economy of Nature in that
the fierce heat of the sun, striking upon the un-
watered land, rarefies the air as in a vast oven, and
causes an indraught from the moist heavier air of the
ocean to redress the equilibrium, and thus assists the
beneficent circulation of the aerial currents. But long
ere those helpful breezes have reached the interior so
sorely in need of them, they have been deprived of
their moisture and their coolness, and consequently
this great area is, and will ever remain, barren — unless,
indeed, the splendid dreams of some great schemers
should ever be realized, and by the cutting of a
huge canal, or series of canals, the ocean should be
conducted into this vast waste portion of the earth's
surface.

What stupendous changes in the climate of the
22

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 23

whole world would be brought about by the addition of
so many thousands of square miles of water to this arid
region can only faintly be conjectured, but one thing
is certain, and that is that the vast alteration could
not fail to be beneficial. The immediate probability
is that the great continent of Africa would become
available for colonization by men from temperate
regions, and that the shores of that great inland sea,
another Mediterranean, would be fertile beyond belief,
while the fierce heat and excessive dryness of Northern
Africa would at once be exchanged for a livable
temperature and an agreeable humidity entirely
favourable to vegetation and all kinds of animal life.
It requires, indeed, no great stretch of the imagination,
assuming that what we are told of the favourable
levels of the Sahara for its flooding by the Atlantic be
true, to picture this vast inland sea bordered by
thriving cities and richly cultivated land, while fleets
of steamers would be busily engaged in bearing its
teeming produce from port to port. At present,
however, this is only a dream of the civil engineer,
whose dreams, however, have a knack of crystalliz-
ing into rich reality. The mere idea, though, goes
to prove how entirely dependent the land is upon
the sea for all that makes life worth living or indeed
possible.

But to return to Asia. Whatever the future may
hold in store for Africa in the way of benefits by the
ocean when aided by man's enterprise, Asia can never
hope for any share in them. Those vast arid steppes,
mountain ranges, and barren valleys are, by their
geographical position, entirely removed from any
possibility of becoming habitable by aid of the sea.

24 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

It is true that intrepid explorers, wandering life in
hand over and through these desolate fastnesses, do
occasionally come across traces of an extinct civiliza-
tion, filling the mind with wonder as to what manner
of men they were who thus fought with the sternest
conditions of Nature, and existed amid such terribly
deterrent surroundings. And the conclusion must in-
evitably be arrived at, that climatic conditions there
must for some unknown reason or another have been
better in those far-off, long-forgotten days. But the
life must, in any case, have been barely tolerable, com-
pelling the hardy hordes who raised those long for-
gotten cities to migrate ever westward to the fairer
and more favoured lands nearer the sea. Even in
what we are taught to believe was the cradle of the
human race, Armenia, Northern Arabia, and even
some parts of Persia, we now find so terrible a con-
dition of things climatically that we cannot conceal
our wonder at human beings managing to exist there
at all.

As we go farther East, matters grow worse, and we
see that only nomadic life is possible, a condition of
affairs precluding civilization and keeping the scattered
tribes inevitably down to a level of barbarism. The
record of explorers like Sven Hedin, who have managed
to travel about those truly terrible regions, fill us with
amazement at man's endurance, as well as wistful
wonder as to what could have been the conditions
under which the large aggregations of human beings
whose traces he found could have lived. In short, we
are driven to the conclusions, first, that in the days of
those ancient civilizations which we are compelled to
believe did once exist in Middle Asia, the climatic

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 25

conditions must have been entirely different and more
congenial to human life than they are now ; and,
secondly, that nothing short of a cataclysm restoring
those conditions could again make those regions not
merely habitable, but capable of civilization again.
And this makes Kussia's eager conquest of those
barren wastes the more pathetic in our eyes, and the
question more insistent, Why should she seek to
acquire these vast territories which can never be of
any material value to her ?

It must not, however, be forgotten that this desert
condition of Middle Asia is due entirely to its remote-
ness from the sea. Of all lands with which we are
acquainted, not actually within the frigid zones,
Asiatic Eussia suffers most for its inability to par-
ticipate in the blessings brought by the sea, and so it
serves as the great object-lesson in the value of the
sea to mankind. That magic loadstone which has ere
now caused some of the most inhospitable places of
the earth to become, for a time at least, the home of
a teeming population — the discovery of gold — can
hardly effect the same change in those terrible
regions, so remote are they from civilization, so
tremendous are the difficulties of transport, and so
severe are the vicissitudes of climate.

But when we leave those arid, desolate regions and
come south, where the great open spaces of the sea
lave the shores of the huge peninsula of Hindostan
and the coasts of Burmah and Siam, we see at once a
totally different order of things obtaining, especially
in India, where the influence of the ocean has made
this vast country one of the most fertile and densely
populated in the world. Its condition is in striking

26 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

contrast to that obtaining upon the eastern and
northern shores of the Arabian Sea, with its great
inlets of the Bed Sea and Persian Gulf. There the
sea, being unaided by shoreward winds, has had little
influence upon the land, and in consequence Somali-
land, the Eastern Sudan, Arabia, and Baluchistan are
sparsely populated, and their inhabitant races inured
to the utmost privations that an arid country, serrated
with huge mountains and subject to the fiercest rays
of the sun, can inflict upon them. True, there are
occasionally to be found delightful oases, that by
some happy combination of climatic circumstances are
beautiful and fertile beyond description, as in parts of
Persia, and what we have been led to believe was the
first home of mankind. But there, again, judging
from the mighty ruins that have been discovered by
explorers in the midst of awful deserts, peopled only
by a few wretched nomads, we are also driven to
the belief that vast changes of climate must have
occurred to reduce these regions to their present
desolate condition. Nothing else surely could have
depopulated them and made them so barren as they
now undoubtedly are.

India, however, in spite of its many centuries of
devastating warfare, of the utmost efforts of man to
render of no avail the bountiful gifts of Nature, still
remains a land of teeming populations, a soil that is
annually receiving from the sea the prime necessities
of life — for both animal and vegetable — is probably
wealthier now than in any former part of its history.
Even the habits of the people, who with a dull passive
ignorance resist all the efforts of Western science
to teach them the elementary laws of health, are

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 27

powerless to prevent the healing of the sea from saving
them from that extinction they court. Kemembering,
as we must, the havoc wrought among them by self-
invited pestilence, by the failure of the life-giving
monsoon sometimes to arrive in due time, to the
strange apathy in the presence of disaster so character-
istic of these mild millions, we cannot refrain from
wonder at the marvellously recuperative power of
Nature in keeping the population of India at its present
density ; and this, too, while giving full credit to
our own countrymen for their labours in saving the
Indian in spite of himself, not grudging life or labour
in the herculean efforts to rescue these fatalistic folk
from the apparently incurable habit of lying down
effortless to die. And if it be a good deed to save
human life, to give yourself up freely to the task of
rescuing thousands who do not care for rescue, who
have no will to live or care for the morrow, — if there
be any heroism in these self-sacrificing labours, then
surely the records of the Indian Civil Service are truly
a roll of honour as bright as can be found in the history
of mankind. A certain class of politician, solely for
the basest of party purposes, has seen fit from the
comfortable seclusion of English homes to malign these
men, to belittle their work, to rant about their rewards ;
but I hold it a shameful thing to do. As if any wages
could pay for such service as we have seen rendered
in plague and famine times in India !

But this is somewhat beside the question. These
heroic men would be the first to admit that but for the
aid which Nature has afforded them, principally by the
inrush of the clean rain-laden gales from the sea, their
labours would have been brought to naught, and India

28 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

would long ago have become even as the valley of the
Euphrates or the Peninsula of Arabia. And year by
year the scientific labours of enthusiastic civil engineers,
in storing up the wealth of water which falls from the
skies during the south-west monsoon against the long
period of drought during the rest of the year, con-
joined to the wonderful and elaborate system of affores-
tation which is ever being carefully carried out, is
aiding the beneficent work of Nature, and adding to
India's population and wealth. Of course it is another
and much more difficult question to decide whether
this humane removal of Nature's inexorable checks to
the too rapid growth of the people is working for good
or evil eventually ; but with that, fortunately, we have
here nothing to do.

Crossing the great Bay of Bengal to Burmah and
Siam, we come again upon a continent immensely
enriched by the sea. But at present the very abund-
ance of Nature's provision of water conjoined to the
warm climate renders the country unhealthy by reason
of the density of its vegetation, which prevents the free
circulation of the health-laden winds from the sea.
But even here the hand of the European is gradually
making itself felt in the opening up of this magnificent
land, rendering it more habitable and healthy, and
preparing it to be the abode of an immensely greater
population than it has ever known. But it is at a heavy
cost in life to the white regenerators, whose northern
birth-places have ill prepared them for the struggle
with this dank climate, so full of heat and moisture
that it is like living in a perpetual Turkish bath.
Still, there is here much wealth to be gained, and,
although giant strides have been made within the last

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OP HEALTH 29

half-century, the surface of the country's wealth has
only just been scratched, as it were.

Coming farther south, we have the great islands on
the west of the East Indian archipelago, Sumatra and
Java, which, in spite of their intensely tropical position,
are yet so favourably situated with regard to the sea
that it is marvellous how backward they are still in
point of wealth exploited for the service of man.
Perhaps the fact of their being in possession of so slow-
moving and phlegmatic a people as the Dutch has
not a little to do with this. Indeed, it is almost a
misnomer to speak of their being possessed by Holland,
since it is well known that a very great portion of the
islands has never yet been brought under the sway of
the nominal lords of the country, and desultory war is
ever being waged between the aboriginal owners of
the soil and their Western overlords. As far as health
is concerned, however, these islands will favourably
compare with any other part of the world, their tropical
heat being so finely tempered by the sweet sea breezes,
and their highly diversified contour admitting of the
enjoyment of all kinds of climates, even up to the very
cold.

Farther south, on the same side of the Indian
Ocean, we come to the western shore of the great
Australian island continent, where there is room for
a great nation to assert itself. Australia, however,
can hardly be considered piecemeal, it must be taken
as a whole. It is an amazing country, whose career
is indeed hardly begun. Its climatic conditions are
of the very best, and here the white race can live and
breed without any of the disabilities attendant upon
them in India, Burmah, Malaysia and such places. It

30 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

is true that, in the interior of this gigantic island, most
of the land, remote as it is from the sea, is desert,
arid, and worthless as the Sahara; but the mighty
margin reached by the sweet influences of the various
oceans is vast enough and rich enough to maintain a
population in wealth and prosperity at least a hundred
times as large as it at present carries. It is warm,
even hot, but it is healthy, and every form of wealth,
both mineral and vegetable, abounds, and is easily
obtainable by man. Yet it must be admitted that,
compared with the amazing development of the United
States, and even Canada, its progress is extremely
slow. Were it germane to our subject, it would be
easy to find many reasons, not excuses, for this ; but
they would be far from satisfactory, and would, indeed,
be rather mortifying to our pride.

What, however, we can say with emphasis is that
Australia is geographically, and consequently climati-
cally, one of the most highly favoured countries in
the whole world. It possesses all the qualifications
needed by a land for the making of a mighty nation.
It is hot, no doubt, but by no means unbearably so,
and it is so far from being too humid that one of its
principal drawbacks to prosperity is drought occasion-
ally. But it may be said that in the whole of its
cultivable and habitable area, it is fitted to be the
home of the white race, and there can be little doubt
that in the future it will be the seat of a dense popula-
tion, perhaps even greater than that of its giant sister
British North America, which is now, in spite of its
many climatic disabilities, making such mighty strides
in prosperity. South of Australia, again, is the lovely
island of Tasmania, which might fitly be called the

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 31

•

world's Eden, so exquisite is the climate and so wonder-
fully rich the soil. Its position is ideal, as is its con-
figuration, and yet its population, all whites, and all
passionately fond of their country, is less than that of
one of our overcrowded provincial cities. Its one
handicap is its distance from the world's great markets,
and it must be admitted that this is indeed a heavy
item on the adverse side of the account. It, again, is
a standing proof of how great a blessing to a land is
its being set within the embrace of the life, health,
and wealth-giving ocean.

Farther east and south, set in lonely state amid
the turbulent waste of the world-encircling Southern
Ocean, lies the Britain of the south, New Zealand. I
only know Tasmania by report, although I feel certain
that in my somewhat glowing description of that lovely
island I have done it less- than justice. But New
Zealand I know well, from the Three Kings to the
Snares, and I feel constrained to say that, much as
I love this dear mother- land of ours, of all other
lands beneath the sun that I would choose to live in
New Zealand is the first. In many ways it is to be
preferred before our England. Beautiful as is the
climate of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and South Wales,
due, as I have pointed out, to the benevolence of the
sea, their sweetness cannot compare with the super-
lative qualities of the north island of New Zealand,
which I shall always maintain possesses the most per-
fect climate in the world. We rave about Italy, and,
doubtless, the soft Italian airs are charming, but she
is subject to the sirocco and the mistral, venomous
blasts which find no counterpart in those Southern
islands of the blest. The New Zealander, indeed, has

32 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

within his own boundaries a perfect range of all that
is best in the way of climates. If he desires the hard-
ness of, say, Yorkshire in autumn or even winter,
Southland and Stewart Island can give him what he
calls for ; and if, shivering there, he longs for soft skies
and genial never-scorching warmth, he may reach them
in a few hours. I know of no land beneath the sun
more delightful to dwell in than the northern part of
the north island of New Zealand, and although, alas !
I have no connexion with it in any way, I need no
inducement to sing its praises.

But I feel that now I am getting too far away
from the ocean at present under consideration, and
my only excuse must be that Australia and New
Zealand always seem to claim attention as a whole,
although over a thousand miles of boisterous sea
divides them. Eetrace we our steps to the torrid
shores of Eastern Equatorial Africa, where we shall
find that, in spite of its geographical drawbacks in
point of position, its proximity to the sea and its
tremendous mountain ranges combine to make it far
more endurable as a human habitation than the corre-
sponding portion of South America. In fact, judging
from the reports of those intrepid explorers who have
gaily risked life and limb in opening up this rich
land, there is here to be found a splendid opening for
colonization from Europe, when once the initial diffi-
culties of clearing the land have been overcome, and
the main pastime of the natives — war and its con-
comitant, slavery — has been sternly put down. Here
are immense lakes of fresh water, like those in North
America, and having nowhere else any counterpart,
except in the barren wastes of Asiatic Russia, where

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 33

the vast areas of fresh water known as the Caspian
Sea and Lakes Orel, Balkash, and Baikal remain in
lonely grandeur unused, and apparently, until Russia
is regenerated, unusable. A very different future
obviously awaits the great lakes of Eastern Africa,
and it requires no vivid exercise of the imagination to
picture them bearing an immense commerce, distribut-
ing the amazing wealth of their fecund shores among
the busy population. This prospect, which is daily in
process of becoming realized, is made possible only by
the fact that here in Southern and Equatorial Africa
we have no vast mountain chain intercepting the
lower wind strata from the ocean on either side, and in
consequence these health- and wealth-bearing ministers
can and do range in comparative freedom over the vast
African land, making it habitable and comparatively
healthful for Europeans. And this it is which makes
the British possessions in South Africa so immensely
valuable, apart altogether from their amazing mineral
wealth — the fact that they are eminently fitted to be
the home, not merely the temporary abiding-place,
of Europeans, who may thus by their continuity of
domicile build up a mighty nation, if only they set
about it in a right way.

Strangely enough, however, this does not apply to
that magnificent African island Madagascar, now be-
longing to the French, and, unhappily for them,
sharing the evil reputation of all their other colonial
possessions. Its position is an almost ideal one, enjoy-
ing as it does the impact of the ocean breezes on all its
shores. It is long and narrow, comparatively, and
lying almost north and south, it invites the complete
aeration of the ocean winds. But, except upon the

D

34 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

tablelands of the interior, it is a terribly unhealthy
land, its dense jungles breeding fever of a peculiar
malignant kind. Were it in possession of a colonizing
race, there can be no doubt that in no very long period
its amazing mineral and vegetable wealth would be
exploited, and its exports, at any rate, assume an im-
portant place in the world's trading returns. But as it
is, poor France has nothing to show for her mighty
acquisition in territory but costly expenditure in
money and more precious life, nor does that heavy
account show any sign of diminution as the years roll
on. Here, again, is an example of how Nature, when
unaided by the efforts of man, can make even the
most favourably situated land uninhabitable. Per-
haps the day will come when this splendid island may
be brought to its proper place among the nations, and
allowed to show how large a welcome it can give to
the increasing millions of mankind.

Here, perhaps, it may not be amiss to digress for a
moment in order to call attention to the rubbish that
is so frequently talked about the overcrowding of the
globe. Though not perhaps strictly germane to our
subject, it is sufficiently cognate to excuse a brief
allusion, while its importance merits far more attention
than it usually receives. Taking our own dear land
first, there can hardly be a doubt that, under a really
scientific and careful system of agriculture, we might
not only be independent of foreign food, but that our
land might easily support at least double its present
population. When you travel about this little island
of ours, and see the enormous cultivable areas of land
given up to weeds, and casually growing trees, except,
perhaps, for the grazing of a few sheep, note the

THE OCEAN AS THE BESERVOIR OP HEALTH 35

immense (proportionately) acreage devoted to sport (so
called) which might under cultivation feed thousands
where it now only affords a few fleeting days' pleasure
to dozens, you are irresistibly led to inquire, " Where
is the overcrowding that I hear of? " and you are led
to the inevitable conclusion that the territorial mag-
nate, drawing his revenues from the manipulations
of finance, who selfishly keeps from the people the
land wherefrom they might be fed, and compels
them to buy from the foreigner, is an enemy to his
species.

When, however, we pass to other lands, with their
many millions of fertile acres still untouched by the
hand of man, a very little reflection will suffice to
show us how far from being over-populated is this
globe of ours. I have already spoken of the mighty
area of Australia, with its population only about two-
thirds of crowded London, of the vast untilled spaces
of South Africa, and of the almost limitless fields of
South America, and I feel struck with absolute
amazement at the careless dictum of the ill-informed
croakers who speak of the over-population of the
earth. This, however, as I have said, is purely by
the way.

Turn we now to the mighty Pacific Ocean, whose
enormous area is so sparsely studded by islands, tiny
spots of land, just punctuating that wonderful sea as
do the stars the sky. These beautiful portions of earth
enjoy, as might be expected from their positions, an
almost perfect climate; yet the majority of them,
owing to the nature of their soil, are not extremely
fertile, their vegetable productions being of a limited
order, and not nearly so valuable to man as are those

30 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

of less favourably situated lands. But from the point
of view of health, these islands are as nearly perfect as
can be, and such diseases as the inhabitants suffer from
are of a nature easily preventable, and due almost
entirely to ignorance and natural sloth. When, how-
ever, we turn to the mainland, we see quite a different
order of things prevailing. The Pacific seaboard of
North America, when once the frigid zone has been
passed, is exceptionally favoured by Nature to be the
home of a multitudinous population. It is humid, as
might be expected, since, as everywhere else on the
eastern seaboard of an ocean without the tropics, the
prevailing winds blow right on shore, bringing with
them not only health, but that vivifying moisture so
necessary to vegetable growth.

But here at once we are met by the great pecu-
liarity of America, both North and South — the mighty
chain of mountains which rear their giant heads sky-
wards, and arrest the rain-laden clouds as they pass
inland, making them discharge their contents and
assume a totally different character to what they
bore when they first struck the land. As, for in-
stance, in the northern lands of Manitoba and Assi-
niboia, where, by some wonderful alchemy of Nature,
the bitter winds from the almost Arctic Seas are,
during their passage over the mountains, bereft of
their harsh character, and descend upon the immense
plains, even in winter, with a mildness that is almost
marvellous ; especially by contrast with the plains of
Dakota and Montana, far to the southward of them,
whose weather is very much more severe. It is this
beneficence of climate which has led of late years to
the enormous influx of United States citizens into

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 37

Canada, and their eager taking up of the wonderful
wheat-growing lands of this splendid domain under
the British flag.

Yet it would, indeed, be hard to find a land more
perfectly fitted for the occupation of the white race
than the Washington and Oregon territories which
border the Pacific. Their gigantic rivers abound with
salmon, their vast land areas are perfectly suited to
the growth of cereals when the mighty forests of pine
have been felled and sold, never to grow again ; while
as for health, except for their undoubted humidity, it
would be difficult to find a better country to live in,
except the next state south, the marvellous land of
California. Here, indeed, are to be found in a super-
lative degree all the climatic conditions of which I
wrote so glowingly when considering South Africa. It
would be impossible to find a more perfect climate than
that of California, except perhaps that of Tasmania,
although some parts of Australia and South Africa
run it very closely. And all these wonderful lands
owe their delights to the sea, whose healthful breezes
are ever flowing over them, and bringing in a never-
ending stream those aerial blessings which they so
richly enjoy and seemingly prize so lightly.

Coming still farther south we reach Mexico, which
is, I believe, destined to become one of the great
Powers of the world, if only its present wise govern-
mental rule may be maintained ; for when all has been
said that can be about the bounties of Nature, it
remains true that much depends upon the character
of the inhabitants whether a land, whatever its natural
advantages, becomes prosperous or remains in a state
of nature, like a neglected garden, where the weeds

38 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

choke and prevent the growth of useful vegetation.
And Mexico is certainly one of the most highly
favoured countries that the world can show. Every
form of mineral and agricultural wealth that can be
named is there in abundance, only needing the care
of man to yield up their treasures ; and this, it is
pleasant to add, they are at present receiving, with
the result that Mexico is advancing by mighty strides
to her destined place among the nations.

When, however, we come farther south, we find a
very different condition of things obtaining. Favoured
to an almost incredible degree by Nature, the Central
American lands have long been cursed by the inepti-
tude of their people, apparently unable to value how
goodly a heritage they have, or how highly favoured
they are. They behave, without a thought for to-
morrow, like unruly children let loose in a lovely
garden wherein grows spontaneously all that the heart
of man can desire; and the most pitiful sight of all
to see is the manner in which, by careless, indolent
ignorance, they frustrate the efforts of Nature to keep
the land sweet and healthful. In these wonderful
countries Nature only needs man's co-operation to create
a paradise. She does not get it. Instead, man makes
of the land a sink, takes not the most elementary
precautions against the defilement that an aggregation
of lazy humanity must make wherever they are, and
in consequence these beautiful republics, instead of
being ideal dwelling-places, are hotbeds of disease.
And as if that were not enough to prevent any pro-
gress, the chief recreation of these extraordinary people
is bloodshed in periodical revolutions, the land being
always in a state of anarchy.

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OP HEALTH 39

Farther south, again, we come to the great re-
publics of Peru and Chili, which, in spite of their
national tendencies towards revolution and war with
one another, are certainly far in advance of their
northern confreres. Here, however, though from the
point of view of health their situation leaves nothing
to be desired, it must be remembered that they are
practically confined to exploiting the mineral wealth
of their narrow strips of territory along the feet of
the mighty Andes, the backbone of America. By an
irony of fate than which I can conceive nothing more
romantic, these two practically non-agricultural re-
publics furnish the principal means of agriculture to
the Old World in the shape of guano from the bird-
haunted rocks of the Chincha Islands, and the enormous
deposits of nitrate of soda, discovered by science to
contain the prime necessities of plant life, and for this
purpose eagerly purchased in Europe. Eich as the
two republics are in the more precious minerals, it is
quite safe to say that but for their deposits of these
far humbler materials for agriculture, they would long
ago have ceased to be considered at all as worthy of
a place among the nations of the world. Now, how-
ever, their other mineral resources, of which the rocky
fastnesses of these republics hold great store, are being
exploited to their great profit.

South of these territories again, we come to a land
which is practically barren, and hardly worthy of being
called habitable. It is very sparsely populated, and,
scourged as it is by the wild western gales, against
which it rears its tremendous barrier of mountains,
it offers no inducements to the colonizing powers,
although, doubtless, if, owing to mineral discoveries,

40 OUH HE1UTAGE THE SEA

any attempt upon it was made by European Powers,
the Spanish-speaking republic would soon set up
a Monroe doctrine of their own. Of course these
lands are healthy, they could not be otherwise,
situated as they are in the midst of the vast Southern
Ocean, and freely exposed to all its health-giving
powers.

Now we must make a swoop northward again to
the coast of Siberia, which has a climate analogous
to that of Labrador, its relative geographical position
being the same. It is a bitterly barren land, and its
mighty areas are almost destitute of inhabitants. But
a little farther south we come to the island empire of
Japan, which, although less favourably situated than
our own cluster of islands as regards climate, bears no
bad resemblance to them. Owing to the fact that they
have no great ocean current laving their shores and
bringing from tropical climes a steady influx of warmth,
their vicissitudes of temperature are great, as great as
those of Eastern Canada, and for the same reasons.
Yet, being set as they are in the midst of the sea, and
being, like New Zealand, a series of long narrow islands,
no part of which is any great distance from the coast,
the Japanese territories are wonderfully -healthy, and
breed, as we know, an amazingly virile race, with whom
the world has found that it must reckon very carefully.
The temptation to enlarge upon the climatic conditions
of Japan are great, but must sternly be repressed
because of dwindling space. It must suffice to say
that nowhere in the whole world is agriculture carried
to so high a point of perfection as here, for nowhere
are so painstaking and persevering a people to be
found. Their great drawbacks are the prevalence of

THE OCEAN AS THE RESERVOIR OF HEALTH 41

earthquakes and volcanic outbreaks, which, however,
this wonderful people accept with that calm philosophy
which is one of their strongest features. These cosmic
disturbances, however, have nothing to do with climate,
and the reasons why they are prevalent in one part
of the world more than another is one of the mysteries
of our earth which remains to be solved.

South and east of Japan, the vast empire of China
claims attention, as being, like its inscrutable people,
an anomaly. It alone among nations really owes
little to the sea. It is so vast that it possesses all
climates within its borders, yet, as has often been
noted, its seasonal changes are more regular than can
be found anywhere. And it cannot be called unhealthy,
since, with a total disregard of all sanitary precautions
and an utter defiance of what Westerners understand
of the laws of health, its people are the most prolific
in the world. But China is the land of paradox, the
exception among the nations that must be taken to
prove the rule that the health of the land depends
upon the healing of the sea. But of the vast outlying
islands, such as Formosa and the Philippines, another
set of conditions must be noted. Well within the
tropics, they are also most favoured with ocean winds,
which blow through and through them, and make them
teem with vegetable wealth which has hardly been
scratched as yet. They cannot be called healthy for
the same reasons noted in the consideration of the
other East Indian islands and Madagascar, but one
day, under the fostering care of a wiser race than now
holds them, they will doubtless yield an amazing
increase in their contributions to the wealth of the
world, and their marvellous advantages in the matter

42 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

of oceanic position will be made full use of, to the
enormous benefit of those who then possess them.

South, again, come Australia and New Zealand,
those mighty appanages of the British Empire, with
all their splendid advantages of geographical position ;
but as they have already been dealt with, we may
here omit further mention of them, and conclude our
lightning survey of the ocean as a reservoir of health
for the whole world.

To the ordinary citizen, wind is a factor of life of which
he takes scarcely any cognizance, except it cause him
inconvenience or positive suffering, as when in summer
the high winds blow dust-laden from the direction in
which he desires to go, or in winter, when the bitter
blasts of easterly wind seem to penetrate to his very
marrow, scorning to take his clothing into account,
and making him feel, if he be at all weakly, as if it was
in very truth the lethal breath of the death-angel. As
far as our islands are concerned, this is about the sum
of the landsman's consideration of the wind, unless he
be a cyclist or a motorist. Of course, I do not speak
of sea-farers of any sort as ordinary citizens ; they are
a class by themselves. Even shepherds and farmers
only regard the wind from the standpoint of its snow
and rain-bearing capabilities ; and therefore it remains,
as I have said, true that in these islands wind, as a
factor in his life, is of very little personal interest to
the ordinary citizen. This, however, by no means holds
good in other lands. It would be quite an easy task
to compile a respectable book upon the various winds
of the earth, and the intense interest they have for its
varied inhabitants, from their effects upon human life,
from the sirocco and khamseen winds of the desert
to the chinook winds in the far west of British North

43

44 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

America. To dwellers in those countries or on their
borders, the wind is an all-absorbing consideration,
meaning, as it does, all the difference between life and
death in many cases, and in numberless others making
life worth living, or the reverse.

But it is not with the winds of the land and their
countless local peculiarities and variations that we have
to deal. The winds of the ocean, or rather the watery
world — that is to say, two-thirds of the surface of the
globe — claim our attention as being one of the greatest
factors, if not the prime factor, in disseminating the
bounties of the sea over the land. And, first of all, it
is necessary to remember that mobile and volatile as
the winds of heaven are, and elusive as they have
hitherto proved themselves to be to the earnest and
painstaking prognosticators of weather, they, like
everything else connected with the physical charac-
teristics of our earth, are ruled by certain great laws of
which as yet we have only been permitted a glimpse.
The aerial ocean has its currents, its tides, its eddies,
as the watery one has, but with far more variations, as
might have been expected, considering the difference
between the two elements, air and water. Many of
these currents are fairly regular in direction and
average force ; others are irregular, according to season ;
others are permanently irregular, but in their average
direction and force are stable enough to leave their
effects, say, on the trees of the islands over which they
blow, which show by the direction in which they bend
how they have been coerced during the time of their
growth. These are of the main currents of air. Between
them there are eddies, whirlpools of air, so to speak, and
stagnant or nearly stagnant places where apparently

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 45

the atmosphere may rest undisturbed. But over
the main air currents lie possibilities of tremendous
aerial disturbances, as if Nature resented the even,
equable flow of the wind for any great length of time,
and must needs give it a tremendous shaking up just
to stimulate the circulation. And these catastrophic
events are known, according to their locality, as
hurricanes, cyclones or typhoons, or, in minor cases,
tornadoes or whirlwinds. But whatever their local
appellation, or wherever they take place, the principle
of them remains the same, viz. a more or less whirling
motion against the apparent passage of the sun, or in the
opposite direction to the movements of the hands of a
clock in the northern hemisphere, and with them in
the southern, while the whole whirling area of wind is
borne onward in a given direction, much as the wheel
revolves upon its axis, yet goes forward withal.

But of these violent disturbances more presently,
and particularly in their turn. The place of honour
in the consideration of ocean winds must, I think,
always be given to the Trade Winds of the Atlantic,
not only for their important bearing upon the trade of
the world in the days that have gone, but their wonder-
ful influence upon the health of the countries that
dominate the rest of the world. Let it be remembered
that there are in the Atlantic Ocean two great currents
of air in motion, or wind, one north of the equator,
between 30° N., and that imaginary central line, called
the North-East Trade Winds, and the other occupy-
ing a similar position south of the equator, known as
the South-East Trades. Their names signify the
direction from which they blow continually, with a
little variation, it is true, according to the time of the

46 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

year, but sufficiently steady — especially as it is wind
we are considering — to be called a permanent current
of air. Now, it will certainly be asked, Why do these
great air currents act thus — why, indeed, are they in
being at all ?

Well, without pretending to be scientific, but at
the same time keeping closely to fact as far as it has
been ascertained, the reason of the Trade Wind is this.
Within the tropics the sun's rays pour down fervently
and heat the air, rarefy it, in fact, so that it rises
higher and higher above the sea, leaving room for the
colder, heavier air from the poles to rush in and fill
up the partially vacated space. Now, if the globe did
not revolve upon its axis, the direction of these inrush-
ing currents of air would be from due north and south
towards the equator. But the girth of the revolv-
ing globe increases from pole to equator ; the tropical
surface — often, therefore, like the outside of a wheel — is
moving from west to east faster than the incoming air
from nearer the poles, which, so to say, gets left behind
and is deflected in the direction of east to west. So
that northward of the equator the north wind acquires
an easterly trend, and to the southward of the equator
takes the same bias. Hence these two main streams of
moving air or wind travel more or less steadily in a
north-east or south-easterly direction, and from their
dependency and steadiness they have received the
names they bear of the North-East and South-East
Trades. Of course, there are other factors which enter
into the production of these two mighty air currents,
such as the changeable influence of the heat over the
land, configuration of the land, etc. But these are
the main causes, and, since this is in no sense a

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 47

treatise on meteorology, the statement of them will
suffice.

Now, the North-East Trade, acting upon the surface
of the ocean perpetually, has also an enormous influence
upon the current, is, indeed, the main cause of the
great equatorial current which ever sets from east to
west ; but that will be considered later. What is now
to be thought of is the way in which this wonderfully
steady wind has affected the trade of the world. With-
out it Columbus would certainly never have dis-
covered America, and the amazing development of the
trade of the Old World with the new would have been
delayed for centuries, if not prevented altogether.
Those who have read descriptions of the epoch-making
voyage of the great Genoese will remember how terri-
fied the sailors became when the wind blew steadily
day after day in the same direction, favourable to the
course they wished to steer; for they naturally felt
how impossible it would be for them ever to return
against such a steadfast wind as that. They could not
possibly imagine any counter current of air that would
favour their return, and as they sailed farther and
farther from their native shore, they doubtless felt that
they had bidden it an eternal farewell. It would ill
become us in these latter days, when the self-sacrificing
labours of a host of patient observers have familiarized
us with the conditions obtaining over the whole of the
great waste of the deep, to smile at the fears of these
pioneers of Atlantic navigation. With a little effort of
the imagination we can place ourselves by their sides,
and, entering into their terrors, sympathize with them
to the full.

But once the means of return had been discovered,

48 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

once it was found that northward of a certain parallel
the steady north-east wind did not exist, but instead
there was a region where variable winds, variable both
in force and in direction, but prevalently west, or
directly favourable to return, the great trade route was
established, the whole vast commerce of the western
continent was opened up, and a steady chain of vessels
began to pass between the two worlds, as they were
then thought to be, binding them into one. Still, it
was only a beginning, and much remained to be done
before the wonderful wind system of the Atlantic ever
began to be understood. Besides, it was a leisurely
age — hurried, perhaps, in comparison with that of
the pyramid builders, but, compared with ours, how
sedate and stately in its progress from the twilight of
discovery to the glaring sunlight of full knowledge.
For instance, how great must have been the consterna-
tion of the bold Spanish mariner who first discovered
that below a certain parallel of latitude the steady
north-east wind, upon which he had been taught to
rely, failed, disappeared, and was succeeded by calms
and light airs blowing from every quarter of the com-
pass, heavy blinding rains and waterspouts. Slow as
the progress of those old clumsy craft was at the best
of times and under the most favourable conditions, it
now seemed as if escape from this bewildering environ-
ment of stagnation must be impossible. The sufferers
could not know that they had entered the indeter-
minate region between the two trades, the belt of
equatorial calms, known so well to later generations
of seamen as the "doldrums," a place of dread, yet
to be passed by the constant exercise of watchful sea-
manship and the taking advantage of every slant,

THE WIXDS OF THE OCEAN 49

every favouring air, until the adjacent steady trade
was reached.

This intervening space, whence most of the world's
supply of fresh water is derived by the marvellous
condensing machinery of the heavens, varies according
to the position of the sun north or south of the line,
as the popular phrase goes. That is to say, when the
sun at his meridian appears to be south of the equator,
the belt of calms and variable winds is narrowest on
the northern side of the imaginary line, and vice versa.
As, however, the South Atlantic is of much greater
area than the North, and consequently the celestial
influences we have noticed have so much greater
play, it follows that the South-East Trade Winds
are much more extended in their scope, as well as
much steadier in their force and direction, than the
North-East Trades, so much so that it is by no means
uncommon to find a steady south-east trade carrying a
vessel well north of the equator, even as far as ten
degrees north latitude; and I have known only one
day intervene between losing the south-east wind
which we had carried from within sight of Table
Mountain, Cape of Good Hope, and catching the
North-East Trade Wind, which sent us flying with our
yards braced almost sharp up well into the temperate
zone. But I admit that such an experience is
unusual.

We must, however, turn to the South-East Trade
as experienced by the early navigators. They found
as they neared the land that it became less steady,
while, preserving its general direction, it was gusty
and variable ; but that, of course, troubled them little
once they were in sight of land. In those days of

50 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

imperfect astonomical knowledge it was the great
thing to get hold of the land and sweep along it ; the
sailor having plenty of time, delays were not con-
sidered as comparable with the sense of security which
the knowledge of the proximity of terra Jirma con-
ferred. Our later wisdom has shown us that modifica-
tions of these great air currents are always to be found
according to the relative position of the land and the
season of the year, meaning the relative position of
the sun above, and consequently the incidence of his
heat and its rarefaction of the air, and so we have
borrowed a Persian word and corrupted it to "mon-
soon," meaning " season." This word we have applied
to those modified Trade Winds near the land which
exhibit many marked variations from their parent
atmospheric stream.

To go into these seasonal variations of the prevalent
winds of the Trades would be to impart perplexity to
what I wish to render simple, namely, the great steady
flow of air from the north-east ; and yet I cannot help
pointing out again that, in considering the great
movements of the air and sea currents, steadiness
must always be held a relative term, and what we are
bound to term complexity in view of our many obser-
vations doubtless resolves itself in the great scheme
of the universe into one harmonious whole, obeying
one universal law. What that law is belongs to
quite another discussion, and, being quite unable to
make any pronouncement upon it, I say nothing.
Now, keeping still to the North Atlantic, as being the
home of latter-day navigation, we come to the great
west winds, the prevalent wind, which since the early
days of North Atlantic navigation has been made use

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 51

of to bring ships home to Europe. After long research
I find that the origin of this wonderful wind is as
mysterious as most of the great natural phenomena, if
not more so. It cuts right across, if we may so put it,
the southern flow of air which determines the Trades,
yet everywhere all round the world, where it has ample
room and verge enough outside the tropics, the west
wind blows preponderantly, and the greater the ocean
space the steadier the brave west wind prevails. Yet
here, let me say, that within my own small experience
I have always found it in the Southern hemisphere
with a tendency to veer, that is against the movements
of the hands of a clock, until it came to the south-east,
when it would falter, suddenly shift to north-east, and
then begin to work round slowly to west again in
the same direction.

This, however, is straying far from the North
Atlantic and its extra-tropical winds. The nearest
approach to an explanation of why these winds should
blow so persistently from west or west-south-west is
the converse of the easterly touchjn the Trades. The
hot tropical air descending as it cools to the depleted
temperate zone, whence the Trades were drawn, is
moving faster from west to east than the earth's sur-
face when it descends. As in a circulating boiler,
equilibrium is established, a steady current of air in
one direction is balanced by an opposite wind close to
it, relatively speaking. If this be the case, it is
certainly a cause for wonder that the counter trade is
so much less steady in direction and certain in its flow
than the Trade itself. But perhaps what it lacks in
steadiness of course it makes up for in the violence
with which it often blows when on its proper course,

52 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

or from west to south-west. Northerly and southerly
winds, even with easting in them, blow hard too, but
not for long ; and although the easterly wind will
sometimes persist in a wonderful way, it is but seldom
that it reaches the force of a gale. The westerlies,
however, may not only be depended upon for their
frequency, but for their force, and it is no uncommon
thing for a sailing ship to run very nearly across the
Atlantic before a heavy westerly gale, which seems as
if it could not blow itself out. Still, the west winds
have their zone, and north of it there is little or no
continuity in the direction of the wind ; it may blow
in any direction, and be as violent in one direction as
another. This unsteadiness in the farther north may
be accounted for by the interference of land, which has,
of course, a great influence upon the wind blowing
near the surface of the earth, while the upper currents
obey other influences with which we are as yet but
imperfectly acquainted.

This prevailing wind, before the advent of steam,
had a very great effect upon navigation from the time
of its discovery, making the return passage from the
North American continent always a fairly rapid and
certain one, as compared with the slow and difficult
outward journey, necessitating a great detour to escape
the full force of the opposite gales. Even now, in
these days of high-powered steamships, although they
do not go out of their way to avoid the westerlies, they
are often greatly hindered by them, for it needs no
argument to show how tremendous is the force with
which a great steamship is thrust against by a gale
dead in her teeth. Still, the wonderful regularity with
which these vessels make their passages both ways

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 53

shows conclusively that they have succeeded in bidding
defiance to the winds, and also that they must very
often find what a seaman calls " slants," or alterations
in the prevailing wind. More, it is often the case that
a gale extending over an enormous area, and travelling
at the rate of, say, one hundred miles a day, will be
entered by a sailing ship going in its direction, and as
she is travelling with it she will feel its full force for
several days, with but slight alteration in its direction.
But a full-powered steamship going against that gale
would soon pass across its area and emerge into the
better if unsettled weather in the rear of that gale. I
feel that this statement needs explanation, and yet I do
not want here to go into the intricacies of meteorology.
May I, then, briefly say that all gales outside the
tropics blow in a circular direction, as hinted at in
the mention of huricanes a few pages back. This,
however, "verges on the scientific," which is out of
the question in such a book as this. Yet unless the
law of storms is, however perfunctorily taken into
account, it does not seem possible to understand
anything about the great movements of extra-tropical
winds.

Hitherto I have endeavoured to confine myself to
the movements of the winds over the ocean without
taking into account the influence that the land has
upon them when they come near it. That, however,
is very great, but fortunately can be understood fairly
well by the average landsman, who knows from every-
day experience how different the movement of wind
is in a hilly country to its regularity of force and
direction in a level one. Or, to make the comparison
still more homely, how many variations of wind we

54 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

find in the streets of a town compared with what they
are in the fields, or even in a park which is not too
well wooded. It is very difficult, indeed, in a town to
know what the direction of wind is or estimate its
force because of the way in which it is deflected, flung
into eddies, suddenly increased or as suddenly calmed,
according to the angle on which it strikes obstructions.
All these variations are reproduced on a much larger
scale by the winds of the sea when they come in con-
tact with the land, according to the configuration of
the latter. But what is most wonderful is the way in
which a great gale system approaching with great
force and rapidity the coast of Ireland, let us say,
from the westward, will suddenly be dissipated, calmed
down, and become harmless when it might have been
expected to do enormous damage. On the other hand,
an ordinary breeze circulating quite pleasantly and
sluggishly in a similar direction will, upon meeting
with the coast, suddenly develop into a terrible gale,
devastating the coast and carrying destruction far
inland.

This is hard to understand, but it is akin to the
way in which, when sailing along a deeply indented
coast, the wind will suddenly rush seaward upon a ship
lying in a calm as if some mighty giant had just
awakened and hurled an unseen thunderbolt at her.
It behoves the mariner to use the utmost caution when
sailing near such lands, lest his ship should suddenly
lose her masts, for these blasts come raging down with-
out the slightest warning. Truly the wind is a force
of Nature that is most mysterious in all its ways, not
only because of its invisibility, but because of the
strangeness of its behaviour. One particular instance

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 55

conies to mind which, while easily explainable, is
exceedingly strange to observe. On some of our
vertical cliffs the herbage grows close to the edge, and
sheep graze all along the down, keeping, as a rule, at
a good distance from the danger of falling over. But
when a gale is blowing right dead on shore the sheep
will be found, not, as might be expected, far inland
taking shelter, but close to the cliff edge. Their
instinct teaches them that they will find shelter in an
almost calm strip, for the stormy blast, striking the
cliff face rises, straight upwards, and acts as a barrier
against the wind that would otherwise come horizontally
over the top close to the ground. If the wind were
visible, it would seem to form a sort of covered way,
varying in width from the edge to some distance
inland, and of a height proportioned to the force
of the gale. In the same way a fence composed
of flat palings set at a distance from each other,
equal to their width, will be found to form a per-
fect protection against wind blowing at right angles
to it, a cushion of rebounding air from each paling
preventing any wind from getting through the inter-
spaces.

So as what the wind does on a small scale it will
do on the largest scale imaginable, it will be found
that in the narrower waters of inland seas and lakes
it will be vain to look for steady breezes, and sudden
squalls as well as shortlived but furious tempests will
certainly occur from every quarter of the compass.
The Mediterranean Sea, although of great extent, is
peculiarly liable to these storms, and the early mariners
who in the infancy of navigation sailed that classic
sea, undoubtedly received a first-class education in

56 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

handling their frail craft, every kind of weather being
encountered there, and that at the very shortest notice.
But, then, they were all more or less fatalists, and very
apt, when the weather became too bad or the wind
was contrary, to furl the big sail and let her drive,
feeling that, having done all they could, their fate was
in the hands of the gods, and nothing that they could
do, would do, would make any difference. It will
be remembered that Luke records in his account
of Paul's voyage that "we strake sail and so were
driven."

But it is time to get into the open ocean once
more. The South Atlantic for the greater part of its
area is under the benign sway of the South-East Trades,
which, owing to their much greater scope and freedom
from hindrances, are steadier in direction and more
equable in force by far than their counterpart in the
North Atlantic, the North-East Trades. So steady
and persistent are these southern winds, that they are
often found to continue well to the northward of the
equator, and to reduce that variable space so much
dreaded by all sailing-ship mariners which lies between
the margins of the two Trade Winds to quite a narrow
strip. While, however, this latter state of affairs is
entirely acceptable to the seafarer who is dependent
upon his sails and anxious to get his ship along, it is
doubtful whether it is not evil for the world at large,
for here more than anywhere else is the great reservoir
of the prime necessity of life, rain. Here may daily
be seen the lading of clouds from the broad bosom of
the ocean, not by the almost invisible and slow process
of evaporation which goes on all day and every day,
but by the agency of the mysterious waterspout. This

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 57

is the great waterspout field, and one may vainly
speculate as to how many thousands of tons of pure
fresh water may be seen in one day drawn and trans-
mitted from the broad bitter bosom of the ocean to
be carried away far from the sea and replenish the
springs which feed the rivers of the world and make it
habitable. Of all the uses of the sea to mankind, and
they are many, I suppose there can be none greater
than this, and yet it is an aspect of ocean that very
few people give a second thought to; they seem to
take for granted the existence of some subterranean
machinery for the production of fresh water and the
filling of the ever-flowing rivers. It is so easy to
forget how during a dry season, which will probably
coincide with the more than usually close approxima-
tion of the Trade Winds to each other, the great rivers
will show an almost alarming diminution of their
waters, small rivers will run dry altogether, and wells
will cease to supply water.

Nowhere in all the oceans is there to be found so
pleasant and placid a region as that which lies between
Africa and America south of the line. Within that
vast space, bounded on the south by a fairly well-
defined line drawn from east to west in about 25
degrees south, storms are unknown. The steady gentle
circulation of the atmosphere here apparently needs
no such violent stirrings up as are fairly common in
other oceans, and at all seasons of the year it may be
safely navigated in a small boat. It is a striking
proof of the non -maritime character of the inhabitants
of the West Coast of South Africa, that none of them
in past ages found their way to the American continent,
so easy and smooth is the passage ; at any rate, no

58 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

trace of them has ever been found in America until
the beginning of the accursed slave trade between the
two countries, and that did not commence until after
the Renaissance or in comparatively modern times.
But with the advent of steam this beautiful expanse
of ocean began to be less accounted of. It was the
paradise of the sailor, who often boasted that he could
sail for thousands of miles without touching a brace
except to freshen the nip, i.e. to take a pull so
that the ropes should not be too long bent at the
one spot.

It is an ocean, too, singularly free from obstruc-
tions in the shape of islands. Trinidad, and the rocks
of Martin Vaz, Fernando Noronha, Ascension, St.
Helena: these few peaks of huge submerged moun-
tains rear their heads above its quiet waters mostly
at vast distances from one another, but are quite
unable to do anything by way of disturbing the
majestic flow of the Trades. And in its centre there
is a space large enough to contain a mighty continent,
where now no man ever comes with the exception,
perhaps, of a solitary New Bedford whaler, one of the
half-dozen or so still pursuing this historic trade in
the ocean solitudes. It is, too, the most evenly deep
ocean. Down its centre runs the South Atlantic
ridge which shoals to 7000 feet, but has an average
depth of 17,000 feet. The islands before mentioned
spring almost perpendicularly from such stupendous
depths as these.

When, however, we leave the fairly well-marked
southern limit of the Trade Wind, we enter at once
upon a region of unrest, and what the sailor calls
emphatically " dirty weather," and bid farewell to

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 59

comfortable navigation; for here, between the edge
of the Trade Wind and the westerlies, will be found
all the sailor most heartily desires to avoid. Indeed,
close to the South American coast the squalls are so
heavy and lasting as almost to deserve the name of
small hurricanes, while the suddenness of their on-
coming is not the least of the perils they present to
the seaman. Disaster here awaits the careless mariner,
coming almost out of a blue sky ; security is only to
be purchased by constant vigilance. It is, as it were,
the preliminary schooling for the mariner who is
about to face the great southern sea in all its stern
weather conditions after the somewhat enervating
luxuriousness of the South-East Trade. Yet this
unpleasant region has its compensating advantages.
Calms are rare, and irregular though the winds may
be, the skilful seaman will so utilize them that he
will soon get his ship far enough south to catch the
first push of the brave west winds of the southern
hemisphere.

And now we come to what is, perhaps, the most
wonderful wind in the world, or, more properly, on
the earth's surface. A wind that sweeps, with scarcely
a break, right round the globe. A wind that, in my
own small experience, has enabled a ship to run five
thousand miles at an average rate of twelve knots an
hour, a ship that is propelled solely by the wind. A
wind so steady, both in force and direction, as to
require scarcely any trimming of the yards for a
week at a time, but withal so fierce, so strong, that
everything aloft needs to be of the best, and the
courage of the master correspondingly high to take
full advantage of it. A splendid wind for a strong

60 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

ship and a brave man, but a terrible wind for a
weakling. This has been the great racing-ground for
the clippers in the days when the white-winged fleets
dominated the sea. To this vast stretch of gale-swept
ocean the eager skipper looked hopefully forward
when fretting in the doldrums and irritated beyond
measure by catspaws and dead calms with ever-recur-
ring deluges of rain. As day succeeded day and the
track on the chart showed as a closely set succession
of dots, a paltry forty or fifty miles between each, the
ardent navigator comforted himself by looking for-
ward to the time when, with every square sail set
and tested to its limit of endurance, his gallant ship
would go flying eastward, spurning the shortened
degrees of longitude behind her at the rate of seven
or eight a day.

Ah ! it is a noble sea and a noble wind, but in
order to take full advantage of it certain things are
absolutely necessary. Some of them, such as the sea-
worthiness of a ship and the courage of the master
to carry on, I have already alluded to. The latter
means very much. I have been in a ship running
the easting down under very small canvas, and making
very bad weather of it, shipping tremendously heavy
water over all, and have seen another ship come flying
past, going the same way, with every square sail set
and scarcely shipping any water at all. She passed
us as if we were anchored, much to the disgust of
everybody on board, including the man responsible
for our loitering. Another condition is that the
master shall know just where to strike the happy
mean, the useful parallel of latitude between too
much wind and too little. It has often happened

THE WINDS OP THE OCEAN 61

that an earnest skipper, full of confidence in his ship,
and eager to make a rapid passage, has gone too far
south, not being content with the strength of the
wind he had, and found the wind so strong that he
could not carry sail to it, or carrying the sail to it has
lost his masts, and with them all chance of his making
a rapid passage. On the other hand, a too prudent
skipper has kept too far to the northward, and found
the westerlies so light and variable that his ship could
not do herself justice, and he too lost his passage.
And, in any case, it is a truly marvellous thing that,
in this vast landless region, there should be so steady
and strong a wind available to carry a ship swiftly
round the world ; for as the journey is from America
to Australia eastward, so is the passage from Aus-
tralia to America, still eastward, thrust on that
tremendous ocean journey by the strenuous westerly
wind. This, however, is carrying us too far for the
present, because the great Indian Ocean comes next
for consideration, with its wind systems scarcely less
complicated than are those of its currents. Still,
before leaving the question of the great westerlies
for a time, let us be clearly understood that, in spite
of what has been said of their persistence and regu-
larity, they do not at all compare with the Trade
Winds in the steadiness of flow characterizing the
latter. They obey the law of storms and perform
the usual revolutions about an advancing axis, albeit
their area is so tremendous and their lateral progress
so slow, that it often seems to the navigator as if they
were blowing steadily in one direction for a week or
more at a time, especially if his speed is nearly equal
to theirs.

62 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

Just a little north of 40° S. the westerly winds
begin to lose their distinctive character, and, accord-
ing to the season of the year, become light and
variable. There is, in fact, a line of doldrums between
the westerlies (called by meteorologists "anti-trade"
or "passage" winds) and the southern limit of the
South-East Trade, which is found in the Indian Ocean
as in the South Atlantic and Pacific, but with con-
siderable modifications. Naturally the seaman wishes
to avoid this belt of variables as far as possible, and
thus it happens that when bound to the upper part
of the Indian Ocean anywhere, he keeps within the
influence of the westerly winds as long as he possibly
can without making too great a detour, and then hauls
sharply northward. Yet I have known cases where
daring and enterprising masters, bound to Bombay
between April and September, have hauled to the
northward very soon after passing the meridian of the
Cape of Good Hope, and made the passage through
the Mozambique Channel or between the great island
of Madagascar and the African continent. But such
a course is not usual, and hardly to be recommended
(of course, I am speaking of ships dependent upon the
wind for the propelling power throughout), for the
more intricate navigation, and the greater probability
of meeting with light and variable winds far more
than compensate for the saving in distance. Yet it
must have been used by the early Portuguese dis-
coverers, who would not leave the land unless com-
pelled, and worked their way along a coast without
any reference to the time it took, for time was of
little value in those leisurely days. But it is time
to close this chapter, for the consideration of the

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 63

winds of the Indian Ocean, with all their marvellous
effects upon the well-being of many millions, is far
too interesting a portion of my subject to be entered
upon at the fag end of a chapter.

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN

( Continued)

IN dealing, however casually, with the oceanic and
atmospheric phenomena of the Indian Ocean, it has
ever to be borne in mind how radically it differs from
the other two great water spaces of the world, the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They are both open to
the frigid influences of both poles, which, whether we
are thinking of water currents or air circulation, are
quite sufficient to account for the regularity of their
systems. But the Indian Ocean is open only to the
Antarctic ; at its northern extremity it is bounded
by tropical lands, superheated by the fervent sun,
except where the mighty mountain chains soar sky-
ward and are clothed in eternal snow, these regions
being but a tiny portion of the whole. This being
the case, it needs no amount of scientific education —
scarcely any, in fact, beyond the exercise of ordinary
common- sense — to perceive how entirely different from,
and how immensely more complicated than, the wind
and current systems of the other oceans those of the
Indian Ocean must be.

First of all, consider our old and steadfast friend,
the South-East TradeiWind. Compared with its extent
in the other oceans, it is here very much limited ;
but yet, remembering the peculiarity of the Indian

M

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 65

Ocean, it is fairly regular and reliable over most of
that ocean between its contracted boundaries, only
here it is far more under the influence of the seasons
than elsewhere; in fact, it is so encroached upon
between October and March from the north that it
hardly reaches northward farther than 10° S., whereas
in the Atlantic it nearly always extends to the
equator, and very often well to the northward of it.
Between these seasonal limits, also, its even flow is
exceedingly disturbed at irregular intervals by those
awful storms known as cyclones or hurricanes, which
are more prevalent here than in any other quarter of
the world. This fact is quite sufficient to give the
passage across the Indian Ocean an unenviable repu-
tation among seamen, and to make them feel more
than ordinarily anxious when obliged to be in it
at any time between the months mentioned; for,
although, owing to the unwearied labours of modern
meteorologists, the laws governing these terrible
visitations have been accurately tabulated and minute
directions given to the seamen how to beware of their
approach, how to avoid them, and how to behave when
overtaken by them, certain complications are always
liable to occur which confound the most careful
calculations, and seem to falsify all the instructions
given.

I must just digress for a moment, and apologize
for not having given more space to this subject of
hurricanes when dealing with the North Atlantic, where
about the West Indies these destructive storms may
be expected in any of the three months, August —
October. But there, as will be seen, their area is
exceedingly circumscribed ; also, their period is brief,

F

66 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

and their course so beset with islands, that the pro-
blem of how to handle a ship in them becomes almost
insolvable from the lack of sea room. Also, it must
be said that their ravages on land are terrible, their
course over the cultivated islands being marked by
wide swaths of destruction. But as in their distinctive
features they vary little, if at all, from the cyclones
of the Indian Ocean, the consideration of the latter
may be taken as including a description of them.

It has been pointed out before, very briefly, that
all storms have a cyclonic or circular motion on an
axis, and also a lateral motion, the whole body of
revolving air being carried along in some given direc-
tion. This movement of great bodies of air reaches
its highest speed and most destructive force in the
hurricane, wherein the movement of the air attains
such a velocity that its effects follow very closely
in their dreadful power the other two great natural
disasters of earthquakes and volcanoes. The proxi-
mate cause of these stupendous manifestations of aerial
energy is a combination of accumulated electrical
energy with Nature's effort to restore equilibrium in
a superheated atmosphere. One of the commonest
of weather experiences in our country is the sultry
oppressive feeling on a day in summer when the sky
is beclouded and everybody feels inclined to pant for
breath. All the senses demand relief, and it is felt
that relief can only come through a thunderstorm.
It usually does, and in a very short time, after a heavy
discharge of electricity, accompanied by copious rain
and sometimes fierce squalls, the air is cleared, and
we begin to breathe more freely. On a vastly larger
scale this is the commencement of the hurricane.

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 67

The normal air currents have failed to maintain an
efficient circulation of the superheated atmosphere,
an enormous accumulation of electricity takes place,
and all Nature seems to wait in terrified suspense for
the adjustment of her forces. The sky assumes a
terrible aspect of darkness, with a sort of lurid glow
in it, and the heavens appear to solidify and descend
upon the earth as if bent upon stifling every living
thing. This is all the more dreadful because of its
entire contrast to the usual brilliant clearness of the
celestial vault in the Trades. Usually it is of a stain-
less blue, except near the horizon, where a few fleecy
masses of cumulus clouds float languidly, their lower
edges just slightly darkened, and all the heavenly
bodies glow with intense brightness and splendour.
Presently the normal flow of the Trade Wind falters
and ceases, the mercury in the tube of the barometer,
pumping visibly, falls to an extraordinarily low level
for those latitudes, and suddenly, when the suspense
has become almost unbearable, the hurricane bursts.
All the powers of the air in their highest form of
energy seem let loose at once. The wind blows with
incredible violence, the rain descends in solid sheets,
meeting the masses of water torn from the sea surface,
and blending with them so that it is difficult to know
whether the sufferer is breathing air or water, the
lightning is so incessant and so vivid that the whole
universe appears to be on fire. The noise, too, is
terrific, the roar of the wind blending with the con-
tinuous thunder-roll until nothing is audible but
this element of uproar. All the senses are affected.
Sight is impossible, for what eyes could pierce that
stygian darkness, that dense mixture of air and water ?

68 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

Hearing is out of the question, for no one sound can
penetrate that awful chaos of noise. Even the sense
of smell is dominated by the excess of ozone in the
atmosphere, making it appear as if the air was loaded
with the vapour of sulphur. Remains only the sense
of touch, which realizes the intense vibration com-
municated to everything, even solid rocks, by this
amazing upheaval of the elements, and gives a feeling
of instability to even the most stable objects.

Yet although to the bewildered observer it would
seem as if law and order were temporarily in abeyance,
and that for a time at least the elements had broken
loose from all restraint, in reality law is still supreme,
and the whole mass of the atmosphere, even in its
maddest violence, moves in obedience to universal law.
The storm revolves upon its axis, and proceeds in a
given direction withal according to fixed laws, which, if
the shipman be conversant with, as he certainly should
be, and his ship be manageable, he may gradually
work his way out of that terrible circle of destruction.
Only at times, when the great revolving storm has
reached the end of its ordained path, it may recurve,
and, amid confusion worse confounded, fall again upon
the hapless vessel, whose crew will be well-nigh re-
duced to despair at thus meeting what they cannot
help deeming to be a new hurricane so soon after the
onslaught of the first. But happily this recurving is
most unusual.

Thus it has been seen how heavily the placid South-
East Trade Wind is handicapped in the Indian Ocean,
and how severely circumscribed are its limits compared
to those free ranges it enjoys in the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans. In the hurricane season, that is from

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 69

October to March, there is a vast area between the
Chagos Archipelago, the Equator, and the coast of
Africa given over to calms and variable winds, which
during the rest of the year is fairly covered by the
South-East Trades. And there is also during the
hurricane season an encroachment upon the northern
border of the South-East Trade by a seasonal series
of winds called the north-east monsoons, occupying a
great space, speaking generally, of 10° S. of the equator
and from 70° of east longitude. But this is far
from being a reliable wind, indeed I think it should
all be classed as variable, and not be dignified with
the title of monsoon at all. And now coming north
of the line we find fine weather. It is a bad wind
for sailors bound to India, but the weather has
abundant compensations. The sky is clear, the winds
are light, the ocean serene; in fact, the weather is
all that can be desired at sea. But, alas, on land it
is another story. All over the vast fields of Hindostan
the heavens are as brass, and animated Nature longs
voicelessly for a change. The suffering patient ryot
paces his parched land, the surface of which is
pulverized into finest dust by the fierce sun, and sees
the baked earth open in great fissures, huge dumb
mouths opening up to the irresponsive heavens. He,
with his burned-up crops, endures in patient suffering,
knowing that though the heavens be adamant above
him relief will surely come, even though it be too
late to save his individual life. This tragedy of wait-
ing for the celestial verdict goes on every year,
although it has been greatly mitigated by the labours
of irrigation engineers, and the carrying out of their
great schemes of water storage. Yet even now the

70 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

undue persistence of what we in more temperate climes
call fine weather, meaning the appearance day after
day of cloudless, rainless skies, and the succession of
soft dry winds, means death by starvation to millions
of our fellow-creatures. We cannot sympathize with
them in their dumb patient longing for the change of
the monsoon or understand the immense significance
of the four words flashed across the wires from continent
to continent, " The monsoon has burst." When at last
the change does come, it comes with a suddenness
entirely justifying the use of the last word of the
telegram. The monsoon does burst upon the burnt-up
soil, and the long pent-up rain is borne by the on-
rushing south-west wind all over the gasping country
with a violence that seems as if it would complete the
destruction more slowly wrought by the desiccating
breath of the north-east monsoon. At first the iron-
hard soil refuses to permit the beneficent flood to
percolate and the foaming torrents overrun the land,
roaring down the crevasses which gape everywhere.
The grateful earth swells, revives, and its cruel wounds
close up. The barren-looking stalks of the crops,
which have long looked dead, revive and put forth
their tender green shoots, until in an incredibly short
space of time the whole land is clothed in an emerald
mantle of surpassing loveliness. Man and beast revel
in the delightsome relief, and almost as rapidly as the
vegetable world responds to the life-giving call of the
heavens by girding themselves with fresh strength,
forgetting all their miseries.

But out at sea the sailor mourns, for to him the
advent of the south-west monsoon spells dirty weather,
which never sailor loved yet. In place of the gentle

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 71

breezes and bright skies, the wonderful nightly illu-
mination of the heavens, and all the pleasantness of
steady fine weather at sea, he has now to be content
with tremendous rains, murky skies that seem to
enclose him in a steamy oven, and heavy winds often
rising to gale force. It is a time of dread, especially
for sailing vessels, where the ropes swell so that they
will hardly render through the blocks, and the hands
of the mariners, soaked and made tender by the
incessant wet, become so painful that it is agony to
handle the ropes at all — when pulling and hauling
it seems as if the cordage is redhot. In the Arabian
Sea the full-powered steamships of the mail and
passenger carrying lines, homeward bound, are held
back by the furious thrust of wind and sea, and life
on board seems hardly worth living for the comfort-
seeking passenger, often getting his first taste of
Indian weather.

In the great indentation between Hindostan and
Burmah, especially on what is known as the Coromandel
coast of India, this tremendous visitation of the south-
west monsoon is robbed of all its terrors for the seaman
and becomes mild and pleasant. Because it has already
done its great work, fulfilled its mission of revivifying
the arid, sun-baked plains of India, and emerging
upon the sea once more, its exuberance is thoroughly
subdued, its stores of rain are all expended, and con-
sequently it greets with a gentle mildness the sea
from whence it came so boisterously. But by the
time it has crossed the great Bay of Bengal and has
reached the coast of Burmah, it has regained much
of its original strenuousness and has replenished its
stores of rain, so that it strikes that part of Asia with

72 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

hardly less violence than that with which it first
greeted India.

It must, however, be noted that this rough quality
of the south-west monsoon, so unlike the gentle steady
character of its parent, the South-East Trade Wind, is
not maintained for any length of time. Having
" burst " upon the Indian continent in fury, it soon
settles down and becomes more sedate, although the
" dirty " — that is, the rainy and squally character
of its weather — persists more or less all through
the season. As regards its direction, although it
is called south-west, that being the general quarter
from which it blows, it must be remembered that it
is subject to many local divergences, more especially
when it strikes the East Indian Archipelago, with its
high mountain ranges lying at different angles to each
other, and all having a modifying effect upon the
prevailing winds. This, I think, will be fairly well
understood because of previous references to the effect
upon the wind of intervening land.

And now it is time to enter the greatest of all the
oceans, the vast Pacific, of far greater area than the
Atlantic and Indian Oceans lumped together, a water
space wherein might be dumped all the visible dry
land of the globe and no trace of it remain. The
islands which punctuate this mighty ocean can have
no appreciable effect upon its winds, for with but few
exceptions they are very low, just cays crowning coral
reefs, atolls with occasional evidences of volcanic
agency raising their enclosed islands higher than
usual above the sea-level. But first a word or two as
to the general character of the winds over this vast
water space. Surely never was an epithet less deserved

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 73

than that bestowed upon this, the greatest water space
in the world, the Pacific or Peaceful Ocean. If any
ocean deserved such a name it is the South Atlantic,
where from generation to generation since the dawn
of navigation broke, and for who knows how many
ages previous, the gentle wavelets have been unruffled
by anything more strenuous than a moderate breeze.
I speak feelingly, for of all the seas I have sailed
I know none so intimately as the Pacific, having spent
so many weary months in traversing it to and fro, not
bound anywhere, but just hunting for a section of its
native population, the great sperm whales. To give
it its just due I will freely admit that along the line in
that vast expanse of open sea extending from America
to Asia, no worse weather as regards winds may be
met with than in the Atlantic; but, indeed, that is
not saying much. When we come to consider the
enormous area between the line doldrums and the extra-
tropical region of the counter Trades, or westerlies,
as seamen prefer to call them, which in the South
Atlantic is so sacredly pacific, we do not find anything
like the same stability of weather in the South Pacific
that obtains in the South Atlantic. The awful hurri-
cane is fairly frequent, and the beneficent South-East
Trade Wind is unreliable, given to vagaries unaccount-
able, except upon the hypothesis that the predisposing
causes of Trade Winds, the superheated continents
adjacent, have less power by reason of their absence
on the west and their entirely different configuration
on the east.

Each of the three great oceans of the world has a
character entirely its own. The Atlantic is, perhaps,
the most perfectly amenable to regular meteorological

74 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

variations of the trio, bounded as it is, within reason-
able limits, by America and Africa on the west and
east in the southern hemisphere, America and Europe
in the northern hemisphere, and on the north the
frigid continent. All these exert their influence upon
the winds, and through them the destiny of the nations
adjacent. On the other side of Africa the abnormal
conditions resulting from a hemming-in of the great
Indian Ocean by the torrid northern land has, as we
have seen, given it the special character of the mon-
soons varied by hurricanes, instead of the North-East
Trades, as in the other oceans — its South-East Trades
severely disturbed by hurricanes and encroaching
monsoons. But the Pacific Ocean might reasonably
be expected to bear, in its wind system, a very close
analogy to the Atlantic, and, speaking generally, it
does do so. That is, it has its North-East and South-
East Trades and its anti-Trades, or passage winds,
north and south of them, while they are divided by
the usual belt of equatorial doldrums to the north of
the Equator.

But when we come to particulars, we find very wide
divergences between the winds of the two oceans, and
as we study the matter more closely, we see that it
was unwise to have expected too much similarity
between them, the conditions being so very different.
In the first place, looking northward into the South
Pacific, we see on the west, instead of the great
American continent extending almost down to the
frigid zone and protecting the enclosed ocean from
the boisterous westerly gales, only the great Australian
island and the small New Zealand group, which present
no practical barrier to the fierce sweep of the brave

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 75

west winds below 40° S. Then the Australian land
interposes its mass up to the equator, the whole of its
coasts subject to violent gales, eddies from the south,
where the almost perpetual westerlies sweep along
unhindered. In this stormy character of its coast
Australia differs entirely from South America, which,
from 40° S., at least, to the equator, is practically
galeless, heavy winds, except for an occasional squall,
being almost unknown. Proceeding further north, the
eastern side of the East Indian archipelago compares
fairly well with the chain of the Antilles in the North
Atlantic, but there is an important difference between
the two that will at once strike the observer. The
West Indies stretch across the entrance to a gulf
whose remote extremity is blocked by land entirely,
the East Indian archipelago being distributed over an
ocean through which the wind may freely blow — and
does; for the north-east and south-west monsoons of
the Indian oceans extend far into the Pacific, beiug
felt in the meridian of 150° E., while a north-west
monsoon, ranging from 10° N. to 10° S., and em-
bracing with its influence the three great islands of
Borneo, Celebes, and New Guinea, with their multi-
tudinous offshoots, stretches as far as 160° E. Such
a phenomenon is unknown in the South Atlantic,
where the North-East Trades dominate the whole of
the West Indies, except for local variations, never
extending far from land. And on the other side of
the ocean, where the mighty mountain chain of the
Andes extends through fifty degrees of latitude, there
is entirely wanting that peaceful sameness of wind
and weather which obtains in the corresponding
region of the South Atlantic, bounded as it is by the

7(5 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

comparatively level land of the South African continent.
Gales, with variable winds and heavy squalls, may be
experienced all along this gigantic littoral, where the
winds are baffled by the heaven-exploring summits of
the greatest mountain chain of the world, rising as it
does almost from the ocean's margin, and, by its barrier
to the rain-bearing clouds that endeavour to pass to
the eastward, producing the mightiest series of rivers
on the planet.

But in between these two disturbed areas of east
and west there is the enormous water space of the
South Pacific proper, where the finest weather of the
Pacific may be found. Over, roughly, one hundred
and ten degrees of longitude and thirty degrees of
latitude the South-East Trade Wind is free to wander
undisturbed. No land save a few scattered islands,
none of them of any appreciable area or height com-
pared with the ocean that surrounds them, is able to
hinder the even flow of the steady Trade, and yet its
steadiness is in no wise to be compared with that of
the beautiful South Atlantic wind. Within the very
heart of the Trade are to be found great patches of
calms and baffling winds, as if the vast currents of air,
bewildered at the unhindered openness of their course,
faltered and failed for lack of position. Here, too, are
hurricanes, as in the Indian Ocean, but with far less
apparent reason. The casual visitor to the South Sea
Islands, struck with the halcyon character of these
sunny seas, gazes wonderingly upon the houses of the
natives, strongly moored to stumps of coco palms by
cables of coir rope, spun with immense labour by the
busy fingers of the natives. When he asks, as I have
heard him, " Why do you tie your houses down with

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 77

big ropes like this ? " the gentle native strives to
explain to him the incidence of the awful hurricane,
when sea and sky seem to meet and the whole surface
of the islands appears in danger of being swept off
into space. Not that the South Pacific hurricane is
any more deadly in its force than the East or West
Indian variety, but these low-lying coral-reefs feel its
impact more, since for them there is no shelter. The
mind can hardly conceive the horror of great darkness
which falls upon the islander, whose habitation is only
a few feet raised above the surface of the sea, when the
unimaginably furious hurricane and its attendant
waves come sweeping through the gloom upon his
tiny patch of sand, moored safely, it is true, as far
as the holding of its place in mid ocean is concerned,
but liable to be swept clean by the besom of destruc-
tion surging over its surface. There are many islands,
of course, which are not so disadvantageously situated.
Being of volcanic origin and high in places, the
trembling inhabitants may and do take refuge in
holes and caves in the rocks, hiding there in safety
until the awful crash of celestial warfare has subsided,
and peace once more smiles benignly over the sun-
gilded ocean.

These aberrations of the normal flow of the South-
East Trade are, I think, quite sufficient to deprive the
Pacific of any real claim to its name as against the
South Atlantic, but it is not until we get into the
North Pacific that we find how serious are the divaga-
tions from fine weather indulged in by this peaceful
ocean. It is with seamen generally an axiom that
when within the tropics, either north or south, you
may bend your fine-weather suit of sails, because,

78 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

except for an occasional squall, you will not have
any really heavy wind. But really that remark
only applies to the Atlantic Ocean. As we have
already noticed, during the south-west monsoon in
the Indian Ocean the wind often rises to gale force,
and the weather is emphatically \dirty, while during
the north-east monsoon the dreaded hurricane is
always probable. But in the North Pacific, either on
the American or Asian coasts, the weather is frequently
of as bad a character within the tropics as it is with-
out, excepting, of course, that it is not so cold. From
December to May, on the coasts of Mexico and Central
America, the weather is fairly fine, but during the rest
of the year it is really bad, and the mariner must be
prepared not merely for occasional squalls, but for
frequent heavy gales, extending for several hundreds
of miles off the coast and often lasting for four or five
days, such conditions, in short, as are unknown in
the North Atlantic in the same latitudes. And as the
weather is on the American coast, so it will be found
on the shores of China and the Philippines : unpleasant,
uncertain, and gusty, not to say frequently of gale
force — all of which conditions are only what may be
expected from the physical circumstances of environ-
ment, but all militating against the right of this great
ocean to be called the Pacific.

When we get farther north all the unpleasant con-
ditions of the North Atlantic, the Western ocean of the
sailors, are reproduced and accentuated. The great
oceanic current which sweeps northward along the
Japanese coasts as the Gulf Stream does along the
shores of America produces, by reason of its warm
waters and the cold atmosphere above, the counterpart

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAN 79

of the Newfoundland fogs, making the navigation of
the coasts north of Japan exceedingly difficult ; in
fact, the Kurile Islands, which extend from the
northern island of Japan to Kamchatka, are so-called
from a Kamchatkan word signifying smoke, since they
are nearly always veiled in fog as dense as smoke,
which is thickened by the smoke from active volcanoes.
And since the Japanese stream has not been so fully
warmed as the Gulf Stream by a sojourn in an
equatorial basin, and a cold counter current hugs the
shore from the north, the northern coast of Japan,
Siberia, and the Kuriles are, although not really very
far north, quite Arctic in their temperature, while the
frequent gales that blow make the whole region in-
clement in the extreme, and, from the sailor's point of
view, detestable. Indeed, this part of the North
Pacific may well challenge the corresponding latitudes
in the North Atlantic for the pre-eminence in vile
weather, but fortunately for sailor-humanity it is, com-
pared with the North Atlantic, an unfrequented sea.

The western coasts of British North America,
too, although in about the same latitude as our own
favoured land, are in the winter quite hyperborean
in character, the Pacific current answering to our
Gulf Stream having failed to bring them the warmth
they need from the far distant curves off the East
Indian archipelago, where it begins its eastward
course. But the whole of the North Pacific above
the tropics is a stormy, troubled region, where ice-
laden gales rage over vast sea surfaces, and prevent
the adjacent lands from being pleasant places of habi-
tation, with the emphatic exception of California,
perhaps the most delightful climate in the world.

80 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

Not that I am at all forgetful of the claims of British
Columbia, which in summer is beautiful beyond belief.
Moreover, although it does not strictly come within
the purview of the ocean winds, we must remember
that by some wonderful law of compensation even
the bitter blasts of winter raging in from the North
Pacific are robbed of their severity by the intervening
range of the Kocky Mountains, and descend upon the
fertile plains of Manitoba in mild beneficence, making
that favourite portion of British territory far more
habitable than the bitter wastes of Arizona and
Dakota, far to the southward of them.

This hurried and entirely incomplete survey of
the wind systems of the world may here be brought
to a close, because to deal with it more closely would
be encroaching upon another question of great im-
portance, viz. the effect upon the world of the ocean
in the matter of health, and the all-important part
that the winds play in the dissemination of that
incalculable blessing to the teeming population. But
I think it will be readily understood how inextricably
interwoven all the phenomena of the sea are in their
effects upon the world at large, so that it is not
possible to treat one portion without mentioning the
other. It must also be borne in mind that although
the navigator can never be entirely independent of
the wind, whatever be the mechanical power of his
ship, the direction and force of the winds are to-day
of far less importance to the trade of the world than
they were before the advent of steam, when the passage
of ships from one part of the world to the other was
entirely dependent upon the wind for its success.
Then the prime qualification for a successful seaman

THE WINDS OF THE OCEAX 81

was his knowledge of the winds at all seasons and
in all the oceans, knowledge which in some men
attained an almost superhuman height of excellence.
But, after all, the work of the winds as motive power
for ships was even then of small consideration com-
pared with their work in acting as the lungs of the
world. The vast and regular influences of the atmo-
sphere about the surface of our globe, fraught as they
are with consequences of the highest import to man-
kind, have ever been made the subject of earnest
inquiry by only a very few, and even those who
have devoted a lifetime of closest research into the
causes and effects of the wind have had to confess
that the fruits of their labours have been scanty, while
the laws that govern the movements of these mighty
elemental currents are even now but imperfectly
understood.

Much ignorant ridicule has been poured upon the
work of meteorologists, and a great deal of obloquy,
quite undeserved, has been meted out to them because
of their frequent inability to predict coming storms and
changes of weather. But if those who scoff and jeer
would only pause to consider the difficulties under
which those devoted scientists labour, we should per-
haps hear less of the pseudo wit levelled at weather
prophets. Even to-day the words of Holy Writ re-
main true, and apparently are likely so to remain :
" The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest
the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh
or whither it goeth."

Unfortunately, while the labours of scientific meteor-
ologists, aided by observation of the most carefully
constructed instruments, and a splendid service of

a

82 OUE HERITAGE THE SEA

telegraphic communication, meet with popular ridicule,
the empirical guesses of advertizing weather prophets,
without any other mental equipment than audacity,
still continue to impose upon the public credulity,
and there are enormous numbers of people to-day
who believe that a man without instruments, without
scientific knowledge of atmospheric conditions, and
without telegraphic information of what is going on
over vast areas of land and sea, can accurately forecast
the weather, not merely for days in advance, but for
vears to come.

THE CLOUDS

IN common with nearly all the aerial phenomena,
clouds are accepted by most of us as a picturesque
adjunct to our daily life without our giving even a
passing thought to their work or their influence upon
our existence. Their beautiful, ever-changing shapes,
their evanescence, and the part they play continually
in our determination of our duties or pleasures, make
a superficial impression upon us; but it is only here
and there among a select few that any determined
attempt is made to understand them. The poet and
the painter love them in esoteric fashion, the one
because they pre-eminently lend themselves to poetic
fancy in their mystery, their elusiveness, their celestial
home, and the glamour that always surround that
which we can see, whose effects we can feel, yet whose
forms we cannot determine by touch or any of the
strict laws of sense. The wayward genius of Shelley
has made, perhaps, the most complete picture that
words can produce of the clouds, and at the same
time the most scientifically accurate, which, strangely
enough, in the estimate of most people, is the principal
attribute of true poetry. The poetic imagination has
in numberless cases outstripped scientific research, and
laid down in splendid wealth of allegory and metaphor
laws which have afterwards been tabulated by the

83

84 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

plodding labours of men of science. Some day, I
trust, some painstaking scribe will complete a noble
volume of testimony to the prophetic insight of the
true poets, and award them their meed of praise as the
world's greatest discoverers, men who without one iota
of scientific training, without reasoning or scientific
deductions, have leapt at conclusions profoundly
accurate, and stated them in melodious verse that
has become enshrined in the nation's most precious
literary treasures.

The painter, again, finds in the clouds at once his
greatest inspiration and his despair. The unspeakable
beauties of the heavenly embroideries in their form
fires his imagination and energizes his pencil; but
how can he ever hope to fix their shapes upon canvas
when they are never for a moment the same, and each
succession of outlines is lovelier than the last ! Let
it be set down to the credit of the dauntless human
mind that it perseveres in the face of so great dis-
couragement, for no sooner has he fixed upon his
canvas what his artistic eye has told him is an almost
perfect series of lovely forms than another appears
and clamours to be limned ; and he feels that, do
what he will, he can never be sure that he has fixed
the best. But if this is so with regard to the shape
of the clouds, what about their colour ? Nothing
surely can bear more eloquent tribute to the patience,
the skill, the genius of the painter than the way in
Avhich he has wrestled with the utterly impossible
task of portraying with man-made media the unre-
producible glories of the heavenly panorama. Change
of form in clouds are rapid, yet so gently do they
occur that we can hardly, even while watching them

THE CLOUDS 85

most closely, say how or when the change has taken
place. Yet these changes are slow and their motion
abrupt as compared with those that proceed in the
tinting of the clouds. To watch the tropical dawn
unfolding, from the appearing of the first pale sug-
gestion of light overhead, the first hint of the daily
miracle about to recur, to note breathlessly how the
sombre violet of the night becomes suffused with
nameless gradation of colour, rather an infinite series
of shades than of positive colour, is to the trained eye
at once a delight and a profound sense of impotence,
of inability ever to comprehend what colour is or can
be. Can you not imagine the artist standing palette
on thumb and pencil poised, hardly breathing because
of suppressed excitement, the dauntless human soul
within determined to endeavour the impossible, until
the wearied eye droops in the attempt to convey its
impressions to the receptive brain in the presence of
such fleeting, such elusive loveliness? And as he
gazes entranced there steals into another corner of his
brain the sense of defeat, coupled with the assurance
that, be his power ever so great, his perceptions ever
so keen, he will never be able to satisfy himself that
he has grasped, even remotely, the beauty being poured
out so lavishly before him, and that however far short
his best efforts have fallen of the palpitating reality,
the beholder of his picture will scout it as extravagant
exaggeration.

We are told that the Greeks, though their sense of
form was perfect, had but little perception of the
wonderful gradations of colour. May it not have
been rather that, looking upon the sky, they felt in
their acutely logical minds the utter impossibility of

86 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

ever doing justice to the heavenly colouring with the
poor and limited pigments of earth ? I do not wish
to dogmatize upon so much vexed a question, but I
sincerely put this suggestion forward as a possible
solution. Since their day artists, greatly daring, have
endeavoured to fix upon canvas their impressions of
the amazing beauty of the sky, and some of their
pictures are marvellously beautiful ; but even the best
of them, while filling us with admiration for the power
of the artist, leave us always, as they leave their
creator, with a sense of something impossible of attain*
ment, a great falling short of the true portrayal of
Nature's loveliness. Then after the beautiful con-
sider the terrible — the storm-cloud, the appearance
of the sky before a hurricane, with its lurid glow
as of a mixture of molten metals, and the infinite
network of vari-coloured lightnings threading the
swart masses. Many artists have drawn upon their
imaginations for the reproduction of what they con-
sider the infernal regions to be like ; but all of them
fall very short of the reality of the hurricane sky,
which, only to witness, fills the stoutest soul with an
indefinite dread.

But while I cannot deem it necessary to apologize
for thus dwelling at first upon the picturesque and
aesthetic side of Cloudland, I think it is time to turn
to the natural use and development of these beautiful
adjuncts and auxiliaries to the mighty work of the
ocean. First of all, let us consider the most common,
as well as the most beautiful, form of cloud, the
cumulus. Like a vast and continually changing
mass of wool of the whiteness of snow, this lovely form
of cloud goes sailing placidly across the deep blue

THE CLOUDS 87

of the heavens, restful to the eye, and filling the mind
with the idea of peace. As its name imports, it is
an accumulation of vapour held together by some
mysterious power of cohesion in the atmosphere, at no
great height above the earth, and only to be seen in
its full beauty in fine weather and light winds and
calms. It is essentially a summer cloud, and its full
beauty and charm can only be enjoyed when the sky
is serene and the wind ia not too strong. Perhaps it
is seen in its full perfection in those peaceful regions
of the sea where the Trade Winds blow. All sailors
are familiar with what they call the Trade sky. Over-
head the sky is almost free from cloud, except for
the fleeting mass, like a lonely wraith, passing in
stately fashion across the blue expanse, and, when
coming between the sun and the beholder, giving a
grateful if momentary sense of shade from the fervent
heat of the great luminary. And its shadow upon the
shining sea may also be very clearly followed, owing
to the alteration it makes in the beauty of the glitter-
ing wavelets. But, for the most part, the cumulus
clouds lie piled around the horizon in masses often
called mountainous, but utterly unlike mountains in
their entire absence of angles. Their outlines are of
the softest, roundest, and most intangible. They
appear to be motionless, but a close and careful watch
will show that slowly, almost imperceptibly, but con-
stantly, they are changing their shapes, never, how-
ever, assuming any similitude that is other than
beautiful. Occasionally there will be seen along their
lower edges comparatively straight lines of darkened
cloud, showing the indication of the presence of a
greater quantity of moisture in them than usual to

88 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

form nimbus or rain clouds, of which more anon. The
time to study these clouds is at dawn, when the
heralds of the coming sun touch and glorify them.
At night, in their pure whiteness under the glare of
the silver moon, they look cold, and when they glide
across the face of the satellite they cast quite a gloom
over Nature, which we instinctively resent. Even then
they do not cease to be beautiful, but they do not appeal
to our senses as they never fail to do in the daytime.

They are the lowest of all the clouds, so low in
fact that it is not necessary to scale a very high
mountain in order to get among them and experience
the same sensations as we have when enveloped in
a heavy mist, which is indeed a cloud in contact
with the earth. Sometimes we may see them clinging
around a mountain as if held'to it by some invisible
power of attraction and investing it with something
of their own mystery and impalpability, hiding its
grim outlines, and parting with much of their moisture
for the replenishment of its springs. In many parts
of the world their thus clinging to a mountain is an
infallible sign of bad weather shortly to arrive. A
notable instance of this is the well-known "table-
cloth " on Table Mountain, Cape of Good Hope. For
some time before the coming of one of these tremen-
dous gales, known and dreaded on the South African
coast as the south-easter, a huge mass of cumulus
cloud is seen resting upon the plateau at the summit
of the mountain which gives it its distinctive name,
completely hiding it from view, and sometimes, in-
deed, rolling down its sides as if it would completely
envelop the whole giant mass. Even when the storm
dees commence, the clouds still cling to the mountain

THE CLOUDS 89

as if it had some potent attraction for them which
they were unable to resist, although they may be seen
streaming away to leeward like snowy meteors. And
this phenomenon may be witnessed wherever there are
mountains, in a greater or less degree, according to
their attitude and geographical position.

Next in point of interest as well as beauty comes
the curious cloud-form known to meteorologists as the
cirrus. These are of a totally different character to
the cumulus or heaped-up clouds, whose greatest
height above the earth is estimated at three miles,
and whose form, as we have seen, is continually
changing. The cirrus or " curl " clouds float far above
the cumulus in the region of intense cold and rarefied
air, and are composed of minute ice crystals or spiculce.
It is a curious and beautiful sight to see how steadily
they will maintain their position and shape in the
upper ether when the cumulus clouds are flying along
underneath them, borne upon the wings of the earth
wind, as we may, somewhat fancifully, perhaps, desig-
nate the lower currents of air ; not that the cirrus is
stationary by any means, but its vast height above
the earth makes its motions appear very slow, indeed
almost imperceptible, unless compared with some
stationary object, such as a mountain-peak or a tower.
Streaming over the blue sky in graceful feathery
wreaths, they betoken unwonted movement among
the upper air currents soon to have a disturbing effect
upon the earth wind, and hence are considered by
sailors as sure precursors of storms. In fact, there is a
sea-rhyme of undoubted antiquity which runs —

" Mackerel backs and mares' tails
Make lofty ships carry low sails."

90 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

The mares' tails being the wispy curling wreaths of
cirrus cloud, and the mackerel backs the fluffy little
combinations of cirrus and cumulus cloud that are
known to the weather-wise as the cirro-cumulus.
Few of the celestial pictures presented by the clouds
are more beautiful than that often presented on a
fine summer's day by the mackerel-back clouds lying
in their long rows of fleecy tufts against the delicate
azure of the sky, and giving it a curious dappling of
white and blue, which is exceedingly charming in its
prettiness. And when this arrangement of the higher
cloud-forms obtains at sunrise or sunset, and catches
the sheen of the sun's rays, the effect is gorgeous
beyond all power of words to describe with any ap-
proach to adequacy.

But beautiful and picturesque as are these higher
cloud-forms, it is difficult indeed to say what useful
purpose they subserve, or how they minister to the
great combined work of the atmospheric and oceanic
phenomena. Floating high above the turmoil of the
lower air strata, they appear to the imaginative mind
as dwelling apart in serene aloofness, having no part
or lot in mundane matters. Of course, as they are
a part of our atmospheric system, they must perform
their allotted task in their appointed way ; but what
that task is, or how it is performed, is far beyond our
ken. The work of the cumuli is comparatively easy to
understand, as well as their decorative value, although
one part of that work — the gathering and storing of
electricity — is sufficiently mysterious to puzzle the
deepest thinkers of the world, who, indeed, have not
yet been able to say what electricity is. Most likely
the work of the cirrus is just as important, but until

THE CLOUDS 91

we know what it is, we must be content to admire and
wonder at their marvellous beauty, assured that their
use is no less wonderful. One thing more must be
noticed before leaving this interesting series of cloud-
forms, and that is the important part played by the
low-lying clouds in preventing excessive radiation,
that is, in stopping the heat which has been absorbed
by the earth during the day from the sun's rays from
escaping too rapidly into the air. The process is
familiar to most of us. 3ow often do we say, when
the sky is very clear and the stars twinkle, not a cloud
being seen, " It will be frosty to-night." We realize
the effect while not thinking of the cause. The work
of the cloud is similar to that of the cosy on the tea-
pot (a most pernicious institution, by the way, and a
dire agent of indigestion), or the blanket on the bed
— not to keep the cold out, according to the common
error, but to keep the heat in ; in scientific words, to
hinder radiation. Again, how frequently do we com-
plain, on a cloudy summer day, of the weather being
close or muggy, when we might (and do) wonder that,
the sun's rays being shut out from us, it is not cooler
than usual. Well, in the first place, the vaporous
cloud is co-operating with the moisture arising from
the earth to keep the air damp, while it prevents the
heat from escaping into the upper regions, and so we
are subjected to that most depressing of all physical
conditions, moist heat.

These gentle, amiable forms of cloud are of the
summer, as the lightness of their appearance would
denote. They belong to bright and sunny conditions,
and as such are, however unconsciously, beloved by
us. But as the night is as beneficial in its way as

92 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

the day, and winter as good for man as the summer,
if not so enjoyable, so the less beautiful forms of
cloud which we have now to consider, though un-
doubtedly not so pleasant to any of the senses, have
all their appointed tasks to perform for the benefit
of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, each in his
own order, each perfectly fulfilling his allotted duties,
and as such to be appreciated and admired, if not for
beauty, for utility. Those long, low-lying streaks of
leaden-coloured cloud, which seem to hang so heavily
in the sky without grace of outline or beauty of
colouring, are called " stratus " clouds, a name which
fits them exactly. They belong to the night or the
heavy day, and when they spread over the whole sky
and shut out the gay sunlight, they have a depressing
influence upon the spirits, which is extremely marked.
They are pre-eminently useful in preventing radiation
of heat from the earth, and are seen only in parts of
the world where such a prevention of the escape of
heat is needed. Unlike any other of the lower clouds,
their movement is slow, as slow and imperceptible as
that of the cirrus of the higher regions and its allied
forms. They often form an admirable foil, from a
spectacular point of view, to the beautiful cumulus.
Like a solid sombre base they lie close to the horizon,
and upon them sit airily the fleecy volumes of snowy
cumuli in all their glory of contour and evanescence
of outline. Stern and grim, they impart to cloudland
an appearance of stability, which, as it deepens into
gloom, we cannot help resenting, for whether we will
or no, they depress us with a sense of impending
disaster, which is not at all warranted. And when,
as is often the case on a sultry summer evening, their

THE CLOUDS 93

heavy layers are occasionally shot with lambent light-
ning, the more susceptible portion of humanity looks
fearfully at them as if they were the breeding-place
of heaven's artillery, and does not pause to ascertain
whether there be any ground for apprehension.

But it is when they overspread the sky by day or
by night that they exercise the profoundest influence
upon mankind, or, indeed, the animal kingdom gene-
rally. An overcast day, whether in summer or winter,
affects us more than we imagine, or, if we did, would
care to admit. It is true that this disconcerting
phenomenon is sometimes due to what is known as
a high fog, generally in summer producing a dark
day; but in any case its effect is the same. It is,
then, hard to realize that only a few thousand feet
above our heads there is brilliant sunshine, and that
the hiding of the glorious light is only temporary.
Undoubtedly this overspreading of the sky with a
pall or pallium of cloud is an important factor in
weather-breeding ; but we unscientific folk do not
reason about that, we only feel, and if any one were
to reason learnedly upon it to us, the probability is
that we should listen listlessly, and, shrugging our
shoulders discontentedly, wish disconsolately that it
would clear up.

Sometimes, indeed, the stratus breeds a feeling of
positive terror. I remember very vividly on one
occasion, when becalmed in mid- Atlantic on a night
in January, homeward bound from the Gulf of Mexico,
a great sheet of stratus thus overspread the sky.
It crept across from east to west, gradually hiding
the blue vault, with its myriad points of light, until
we were wrapped in what I could only think was

94 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

Egyptian darkness, that which might be felt; and
with that darkness came silence so profound that the
creak of a block or the flap of a sail, unnoticeable at
other times, became a noise and startled us. Alarmed,
the captain gazed earnestly at the barometer, but it
remained steady, gave no sign of any approaching
change. Men spoke in whispers, as if afraid of being
heard by some one. Parti-coloured flames of elec-
tricity played about us now and then, and in the
intervals between them the darkness seemed so tan-
gible that we were tempted to reach upward and see
if it might be touched. It was a night of terror, of
fear of the unknown possibilities of the weather, and,
above all, of the lightning which played about us
incessantly and threatened us, as we thought, with
the firing of our cargo of cotton. But, behold! to-
wards morning, the heavy black pall, which had
apparently been shutting us in with terrors impos-
sible to define, gradually rolled away, the shy stars
peeped out, and the ineffable glories of a perfectly
clear calm night at sea were revealed. There was
practically no wind throughout the whole affair, and
no rain at all.

Yes, the stratus is a harmless cloud, if unpic-
turesque to the last degree, and bearing the same
relation to the decoration of the sky by the cirrus
and cumulus as the good, dark, newly-upturned soil
does to the loveliness of the blossoming hedgerow.
Yet I cannot help thinking that when the stratus
and cumulus combine, and the dark heaviness of the
former infects the fleecy whiteness of the latter, we
get the most useful as well as the most threatening
in appearance of all the clouds, the nimbus or rain-

THE CLOUDS 95

cloud. Now, in meteorological terminology a nimbus
cloud is one which is not only dark, even black, but
from which rain is actually falling. Now, although I
have not the least desire to question the conclusions
of Luke Howard, Clement Ley, and others who have
made clouds the principal part of their life study, I
feel that the last clause of this definition of a nimbus
cloud is superfluous and really unwarranted. For
instance, who that has ever been in Malta in the
summer and seen the mighty masses of rain-laden
cloud passing over the parched island without shed-
ding one drop of their priceless contents, could fail
to understand that although these celestial reservoirs
were indeed nimbus clouds the rain was not actually
falling, and for some curious reason refused to fall
where it would do an enormous amount of good?
Often I have wished that it were possible to send a
shell laden with high explosives soaring into the
bosom of one of those vast clouds, and make it let
fall its flood of blessing upon the fertile land which
lay white and arid beneath, yet ready to be clothed
with living green in a few hours at the touch of the
literally golden rain. Only it is a daring thing to
meddle on such a grand scale with Nature's opera-
tions. Such an interference might possibly result
in whole terraces of laboriously piled-up soil being
washed away by the tremendous impact of the de-
scending flood, leaving only bare rocks to greet the
hapless peasant; for rain is one thing and a cloud-
burst is another, as many unfortunate farmers have
found to their bitter cost.

Which brings us to a consideration of the most
important cloud-form of all in its effects upon the

96 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

services to mankind, the cloud we have just men-
tioned, the nimbus. It is not the least of ocean
mysteries, the way in which its bitter waters are
suddenly, in a few minutes, converted into sweet,
drinkable fluid and elevated into the sky by thou-
sands of tons. There it is received and retained by
immense reservoirs of mobile shape, of entirely in-
tangible material, and conveyed by the agency of the
winds to those regions where it is needed. Pause a
moment and think of the utter marvellousness of
this miracle. The civil engineer planning the water
supply for a town must needs employ for the storage of
the water the strongest material and the utmost skill
in using that material, water being at once so weighty
and so insidious in its never-ceasing efforts to escape
from the confinement against which it rebels. More-
over, unless the engineer can find a source of supply
higher than the site of the town for which he has to
provide, he must of necessity instal, at tremendous
cost, vast pumping machinery, not only for the col-
lection of the water but for its distribution. And,
again, his sources of supply are liable to failure, to
contamination, to being tapped — very likely quite
unconsciously — by the engineers of rival or similar
schemes. Compare these costly hindrances, these
laborious preparations, with the simple ease of
Nature's inexhaustible supply. In the first place,
consider the celestial reservoir itself. There is no
matter for wonder in the fact of an enormous quantity
of water floating about in the sky in the form of
vapour as in the cumulus cloud, for really the mois-
ture in them is of the character of gas. But the
nimbus cloud, although of the same intangible, tenons

THE CLOUDS 97

nature as any other cloud, can and does hold, as in
a vast bag, a mass of solid water hundreds of tons,
yea ! even thousands of tons in weight, and, propelled
by the wind, carries it for enormous distances until
some external force, such as collision with a mountain-
top, the rending force of electricity, or the atmo-
spheric concussion of the thunder, splits the impalpable
envelope apart and lets its contents fall.

Now in this there is no flight of fancy ; the fact is
indisputable, and if any confirmation of it were needed
it would be found in the often-recorded cases of small
fish and immature frogs which have been carried for
immense distances in the bosom of a cloud as in an
aerial lake, and then let fall, scattered over the land
to the utter amazement and often superstitious fear of
the beholders. What is even more wonderful, if that
be possible, is the manner in which the water of the
ocean is raised in such masses to such a tremendous
height into the air; also how, in the brief space of
time occupied in its transmission, that water is robbed
of its salinity, becomes fresh and sweet. It is quite
easy for even a low order of intellect to comprehend
how, by the process of condensation or evaporation,
the solid matter in the sea, the saline particles, are left
behind, while the purified vapour rises into the air
under the influence of the sun's heat. But this throws
no light upon the much-debated question of the water-
spout, of the way in which a previously prepared cloud
sags down to the sea and extends a long hollow pillar
of its own material downwards until it makes a juncture
with the waters beneath, agitated in sympathy with
it. I have touched upon this matter before in these
pages, but offer no apology for referring to it again

H

98 OUE HERITAGE THE SEA

as being one of the most important, as well as one of
the most mysterious, operations of the deep sea.

Let me briefly recapitulate the process in the most
superficial manner, which is all any one can do, since
the inner workings are hidden from our eyes in the
arcana of Nature. All the conditions being favourable,
one of them being obviously a great amount of solar
heat — since the development of a waterspout never
takes place in cold weather or at night — a collection
of clouds approach the sea. There is little wind, for
it is obvious that a swiftly-driven cloud would be quite
unfit for the leisurely sucking up of a great mass of
water, and the dark masses of specially prepared
vapour lower over the surface of the comparatively
smooth sea. It would appear, too, as if the sea was
specially prepared in some strange fashion for what is
about to take place, for whenever or wherever the long
pendant or tube of cloud approaches the sea surface,
the latter becomes violently agitated in a circular
direction, looking, indeed, as if it were striving to
reach upwards to the sky. Quite a mound of water
appears, to the summit of which the pendant of cloud,
which has apparently excited this sympathy, presently
reaches and joins itself, when immediately the process
begins. There is now a flexible column reaching from
sea to cloud, so flexible indeed that it may be seen
swaying about ; so tenuous that through its walls the
water may be observed rushing upwards with a spiral
movement as plainly as if the observer were watching
the operations of a gigantic pump whose receiving-
pipe were of glass. Only in this case there is no
spasmodic pulsation of the water such as a pump com-
pels, there is a steady upward movement in obedience

THE CLOUDS 99

to some irresistible suction. While this is going on,
the lading of the cloud above is clearly evident. It
spreads, grows baggier, blacker, and more threatening
in appearance, until at last its limit of storage capacity
being reached, there is an automatic cessation of the
great machinery. The tube dwindles rapidly until it
becomes a mere thread, then continuity ceases — I can-
not use the harsh word " break " in this connection — and
with that cessation of the juncture between sea and
cloud, there is a closing up of the pipe, almost a
hermetic sealing as it were, and the disconnected tube
shrivels away until at last it is even as a mere excres-
cence upon the bottom of the sagging cloud above.
Presently even that is smoothed out, and, like some
richly-freighted argosy, the cloud sails majestically
away upon its beneficent errand.

Accidents happen, of course ; what situation is free
from them ? Sometimes a sudden shock of lightning
or thunder will break the tube in the middle of its
work, and cause a terrific return of the raised water
to the sea with a roar like that of Niagara. This is
occasionally brought about by human agency, and
proves conclusively the amazing tenuity of the cloud
which can yet sustain so vast a weight of water.
The master of a vessel, nervous for the safety of his
ship, in close proximity with the waterspout, will cause
a gun to be fired, not necessarily at the spout, but in
any direction, and in the concussion of the atmosphere
the radiating air-waves strike against the water-laden
cloud column, break it, and all the mass of water, both
raised and in process of raising, returns to the sea with
a tremendous crash. The idea may be a very fanciful
one, but I have often wondered whether it might not

100 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

be possible to trace the ruin and misery of the in-
habitants of some inland town or village enduring a
water-famine to the nervous act of some petty skipper
fearful for the safety of his ship, who, by some such
act as I have described, has destroyed the celestial
water-bearers whose mission it was to supply that far-
away community with the indispensable gift of water.
The idea does not seem so far-fetched after all, does
it?

But let us now picture the great assemblage of
clouds, laden with water, moving majestically off on
their appointed errand. They have to run the gauntlet
of many dangers to their unpurchasable cargo. The
willing winds bear them swiftly upon their way, but
in their passage they may and often do collide with
each other, and spill the treasure back into the already
overwealthy sea ; or a thunderstorm may occur with
the same effects ; or a failure on the part of the wind
to maintain its force may cause the cloud to delay
until it gradually melts away ; or borne straightly
towards its destined goal, it may at the last moment
be diverted otherwhither, and expend its valuable load
where it is not wanted. Yet such is the magnitude of
the provision made, that the occurrence of these many
accidents matters little. Nature, in her arrangements
for the life and health of the world, is lavish beyond
belief. She provides millions of eggs in the fish in
order that about five per million shall survive; she
covers the fruit trees with such a wealth of blossom
that if all of it fruited the trees would collapse, in
order that ten per cent, of the promise shall be hailed
as a good crop ; and she loads the nimbus clouds of
the tropics with countless millions of tons of water for

THE CLOUDS 101

the service of the earth, in the firm knowledge that
one per cent, of the total provision will be utmost
abundance for the need of every living thing.

But let us watch this homeward hastening cloud.
Is there any magnetic sympathy between it and the
source of yonder great river, issuing first in a trickling
stream from the bosom of a great mountain on the sea
coast ? At first we are tempted to say, " .Ridiculous !
these matters are ruled by law, the law of averages ;
but here the law of chance plays a conspicuous part."
Perhaps so, but I for one would fain hold the fantastic
idea that the cloud is a conscious messenger of good,
and that from the time of its loading in the doldrums
it is steadily bent upon reaching a given spot where
its cargo may be discharged, just like the faithful ship
informed by the spirit of her master, and hastening
homeward with her load of food for the hungry,
unthinking, and ungrateful people. True or not, the
fancy is a favourite one of mine, and I believe is quite
an innocent play of the imagination. Let us, then,
imagine the still laden cloud in the firm embrace of a
strong shoreward wind, being hurried straight to its
destination. There rises before it a range of mountains
which it hails as its goal. They mark the conclusion
of its life work. To this end was it born; for this
one purpose has it existed ; and now its reward, the
successful accomplishment of its mission, is at hand.
Hurried onward with ever-accelerating speed, it pre-
sently reaches the serrated peaks of the mountains,
and is rent asunder thereby, while its precious burden
goes foaming downward into the hidden springs, from
whence it will presently emerge to bless and preserve
the inhabitants of the country below.

102 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

This is the mystery of the rain-cloud and the
watershed from whence all the water that we must
have is derived. And hence it is that I have per-
sistently spoken of the nimbus cloud as being the
most important of all the ocean's auxiliaries. Of
course, it will be seen that without the aid of the
wind to convey it to its destination, it would be of
no avail, any more than it would have its being at
all but for the beneficent sun. But it would be a
long and somewhat dull process to trace the inter-
dependence of each of the meteorological phenomena.
We can only deal with them one at a time, and just
hint at the way in which their influences depend upon
the aid they receive from one another. Perhaps I
may here again allude to the work of the nimbus
as applied to India — only briefly though, because I
have already, in a previous article, gone into this
great question at length, and repetition, although
partly unavoidable in a work of this kind to some
extent, must be kept within the smallest possible
limits. Still, the work of supplying the otherwise
arid plains of India with their prime necessity, water,
and the strikingly spectacular way in which this is
effected, will excuse some repetition. The imagina-
tion dwells fondly upon the fact of those many
millions of very poor people dependent upon the
cultivation of the soil for their daily food, scanty and
unvarying as that is, awaiting in almost breathless
suspense the coming of the deliverer, the advent of
the south-west monsoon, with its burden of rain-
carrying clouds, from the remote and lonely ocean.
In like manner, too, but without the sympathy of
human interest, we can picture the cattle, the beasts

THE CLOUDS 103

of prey, all the wild creatures turning longing eyes
to the heavens, which are hard and bright as burnished
steel above their heads. And under all the thirsty
land, mother and provider, waits dumbly, helplessly,
looking indeed as if it would never again bear green
leaf or brilliant fruit.

Far out at sea, in that mysterious region remote
from the ken of these waiting millions, the celestial
machinery is at work, countless thousands of tons of
sweet water are being drawn upwards from the exhaust-
less ocean, ready for conveyance eastward to where
they are so sorely needed. But ready though the
burden may be, it must await the means of locomotion,
must tarry the coming of the south-west wind. And
there that mighty mass of water hangs in the sky,
black, forbidding and threatening in appearance, yet
in reality laden with life for millions of human beings
as well as the countless hosts of lower creation. At
last the marching orders arrive, the breeze springs up,
the waiting masses begin to move in orderly battalions
across the vast concave of the sky. Courage, per-
sisting ones ; patience, famishing ryot in your distant
burning fields, relief is at hand, coming faster than
any human agency could provide it, for it is being
borne upon the wings of the wind. And in a few
hours, when the precursors of this mighty army of
blessing strike the shores of the waiting land, and,
with a prodigality only seen in the operations of
Nature, begins to pour down its revivifying floods,
there flashes from end to end of the waiting continent
the glad message of life, even from the gates of the
grave, " The monsoon has burst."

THE CLOUDS AND WAVES (Continued}

IN closing the previous chapter I practically ex-
hausted the list of all the main cloud-forms, having
purposely left the work of the most important of
them, the nimbus or rain-cloud, until the last. And
in what I stated about its work for the Indian con-
tinent, the reader may see what it is doing on a
somewhat lesser scale for all the countries of the
world to which it has access. Where it cannot reach,
as in the Saharan desert and the awful solitudes of
Asia, the land is barren and must so remain. It
would be merely monotonous to adduce instances of
the rain-cloud's work in other parts of the world,
because the same thing happens continually, with a
few local differences due to the configuration of the
land. All that remains, therefore, is to note the way
in which the various forms of cloud are torn and
twisted and amalgamated by the stress of the wind,
or, in the absence of the wind, how they pile them-
selves up, sometimes until for days together they
seem to interpose a solid barrier between the surface
of the globe and the beauties of the clear ether above.
Very wonderful and awe-inspiring is the appearance
of the clouds before the commencement of the westerly
gale in the North or South Atlantic Ocean, let us

101

THE CLOUDS AND WAVES 105

say. Mighty masses of combined cumulus and nimbus
clouds pile themselves up, packed closely together in
the western semicircle of the sky, while the eastern
half is clear, or comparatively so; but the clearness
is pale, and the bright blue gradually fades away.
The wind falters variably, and presently dies quite
away. Then the watchful seaman will presently note
a gradual lightening of the dense masses along the
western horizon, growing steadily brighter and more
defined until there is the beginning of an arch through
which the stars, if it be night, may be seen. A little
puff of wind is felt, just a suggestion of what is coming.
The arch extends upwards and sideways, while the
mass overhead marches forward until it occupies most
of the sky while still preserving its definite outline.
The wind gradually freshens until quite a stiff breeze
is blowing and the appearance of the heavens is the
reverse of what it was a few hours before, for now it
is the eastern segment that is overcast while the
western half is clear.

But this is only temporary. As the wind
strengthens to a gale, only a filmy haze will over-
spread the western sky; and then there will appear,
in rapid succession, troops of clouds of sombre hue
and ragged outline, low down, and being driven in
hot haste forward. The violence of the wind tears
them into fragments, which combine, and again are
disintegrated so rapidly that the eye can hardly
follow them. And the lower portions of these tor-
tured masses of vapour, which seem, in very truth,
to be almost on a level with the sea, fly along in wisps
and tufts with that tremendous rapidity which their
generic name sufficiently indicates the flying "scud."

106 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

So low are they, that when the gale has become suffi-
ciently furious to tear off the crests of the waves and
whirl them upward in masses of smoky spray, there
is a mingling of salt spray and fresh vapour, forming
what is known to the sailor as " spindrift." So inti-
mate is the commingling that oftentimes the sailor,
aloft upon some errand of securing a loose end, finds
that even at that giddy height he can taste the brine
in the air. He is really breathing a mixture of cloud
and spray flung upward thus high by the energy of
the impetuous gale.

Of the hurricane clouds I have already spoken,
that terrific combination of vapours which have been
consolidated by the accumulation of electricity until
the sky above seems to be scarcely less tangible than
the sea beneath. And, indeed, in the height of a
tropical hurricane it is not easy to say where sea
and sky meet, so tremendous is the disturbance of
their equilibrium, and so intimate is their association.
These clouds have a character all their own, being
seemingly akin to the awful gloom that hovers over
the summit of a volcano which is about to belch forth
fire and poison upon creation. But in their appear-
ance only. Undoubtedly the hurricane clouds, fearful
and terror-striking as is their aspect, are entirely
beneficent in their effect upon the world at large.
During the performance of their duties they destroy,
and that upon a large scale (of course, I speak of
them in conjunction with the wind) ; but the life that
they take in the performance of their tremendous
duties is infinitesimal in amount compared with the
life that is saved by their aid. Perhaps, however, it
is unfair to credit these clouds with so much, since

THE CLOUDS AND WAVES 107

they are only an adjunct to the hurricane, which, as
a whole, is such a great factor in the work of restoring
the sick atmosphere to health.

And with this, I think, we must close this brief
review of the clouds of the sea, which, cursory as
its glance at these interesting and beautiful pheno-
mena has been, is, I fear, quite long enough to
exhaust the average reader's patience. It is a subject
which has been very voluminously dealt with scien-
tifically, and with good reason, for the clouds and
their work are full of importance to life on our planet.
But this is not, as I have often said, in any sense a
scientific treatise, and so we must here bid farewell to
the clouds, and, descending again to the ocean itself,
devote a little space to a consideration of the waves.

Of late years the phenomena of waves have been
considered by scientific observers with the utmost
care, but their scrutiny has by no means been confined
to the waves of the sea ; indeed, these interesting
movements of the water surface are the least important
among waves. Sound waves, light waves, heat waves,
ether waves, afford a wonderful field for speculation
and minute research, and the result of this research
has been some of the most interesting, useful, and
beautiful discoveries of our time. But our only con-
cern at present is with the waves of the sea, which,
like the clouds, have long been beloved by the poet
and the painter for their wonderful beauty of form and
colour. Nor have we to consider what are popularly
known as tidal waves, because we are about to deal
with them in the chapter on Tides. We have to deal
with the waves whose causes are the winds, and whose
size and force and appearance are directly in proportion

108 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

to the influence exerted by the wind upon the sur-
face of the ocean. It is a curious fact that even the
fiercest of conflicting currents, unaided by the wind,
is unable to produce more than a series of eddies,
certainly nothing important enough to consider as
waves; but even a moderate breeze blowing across
the set of a fairly strong current will suffice to raise
what sailors significantly call an " ugly " sea, meaning
one that does not run truly or regularly, and is
therefore dangerous.

Before going any farther, however, it will be well
to point out in this connection the nautical use of the
word "sea." The sailor scarcely ever uses the word
" wave ; " why, I do not know. Instead of saying that
a heavy succession of waves were running up from
the sou'-west, he says that a heavy sou'-west sea
was running. He never says the waves were high
or breaking, but that the sea was high or breaking,
the ship taking heavy seas aboard, strong wind and
following sea, and so on. Therefore if in what follows
I drop into the vernacular and use the word " sea " in
its nautical sense, I hope it will not be misunderstood.

I suppose that everybody knows that the cause
of all ordinary waves is the pressure of the wind
diagonally along the surface of the water. When
there is no wind the sea surface is smooth and glassy,
but always more or less undulatory, as if with the
gentle heaving of some gigantic breathings far beneath.
This is called the swell, sometimes in the calm follow-
ing or preceding a heavy gale forming huge knolls of
mirror-like water, and causing a vessel to roll or pitch
heavily, and sometimes so slight as to be hardly
perceptible, unless an attempt be made to steady a

THE CLOUDS AND WAVES 109

ball upon the smooth surface of a table on shipboard,
when the effect of the swell is at once evident. For
this reason there is a large amount of poetic licence
in the verse of the old ballad —

" No stir in the air, no swell on the sea,
The ship was as still as ship might be ;
Her sails from heaven received no motion,
Her keel was steady in the ocean."

When the wind rises there is at once to be seen a
series of tiny ripples like irregular furrows along the
hitherto smooth surface, infant waves that under the
glowing sunlight look wonderfully pretty. The wind
increases, and with it the size of the wavelets, which
presently fling from their miniature crests little
feathers of sparkling spray that glisten like showers
of diamonds in the sunshine, producing the many-
dimpled smile of ocean spoken of by the Greek poet.
Very curious and interesting, too, is the behaviour
of these wavelets when the wind is uncertain in its
direction and irregular in its force. They rise and
fall confusedly, showing on a small scale the move-
ments of the broken and irregular sea caused by a
shift of wind in a gale, or the wind blowing across a
strongly-running current, as mentioned a little while
back. If, however, the wind is steady in direction
and increasing in force, the ridges of water rise higher
and the spaces between them grow wider, until at the
height of the gale in the open ocean the sight is
terribly grand, and so impressive that the greatly
exaggerated expressions, "seas running mountains
high" and "mountainous seas," have been and are
still used to denote the presence of waves whose
maximum measured height from the sea surface has

110 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

never been known to exceed sixty feet. Of course,
if to this be added the depth of the trough or furrow
between each wave below the sea surface, we shall get
a few feet more in actual altitude of the wave, but not
much. Still, to the mariner on board a deeply-laden
ship, whose freeboard or height from the water-line to
the deck is only about six feet, or even less, these
seas are quite sufficiently mountainous to cause many
apprehensions as to the ability of his ship to survive
their assaults.

There are few sights at sea more appalling when
in a weak ship, on the long stretch between the great
Southern Capes, for instance, during a westerly gale,
than the way in which the gigantic waves, reaching
from horizon to horizon and towering high above
the cowering ship, come thundering up unceasingly
after her, as if they were bent upon her destruction.
Their energy seems so resistless, their perseverance
so unfailing, and their magnitude so terribly over-
powering, that it needs all a man's confidence in the
seaworthy qualities of his ship to keep him from
becoming afraid. Then the speed of these mighty
waves is so great — that is, their apparent speed. For
here conies the most difficult point of all. Looking
at the waves as they come thundering on, you are
compelled to believe what seems to be the evidence
of your senses, viz. that the whole of the ocean surface
is rushing towards and past you at the rate of about
twenty knots an hour. Yet the fact is, of course, as
a little quiet consideration will show, that it must
be that the movement is as purely undulatory and
non-progressive as is the tightly stretched surface of
a sheet when the point of a stick is pressed against

THE CLOUDS AND WAVES 111

it, and rapidly pushed along it withal. There are a
series of waves on the surface of the sheet, but the
fibres of the material do not progress. The simile
is correct enough ; but oh ! so feeble. For who on
beholding the majestic rush of the storm-wave, even
though he notes the breaking of its huge snowy crest
and the curdling stationary mass of foam where it
passed, can help believing against his better judgment
that the whole mass of water is hurrying on and about
to overwhelm him ? Moreover, the deadly fact remains,
that if the ship be not travelling at a sufficient rate
of speed the waves will overtake her, will break on
board instead of harmlessly astern, and deal death
and destruction all around them. As long as the ship
can " give " before the sea she is safe, but if she lies
sluggishly in its path she must be destroyed, unless
she be as powerfully built as a modern ironclad, one
of which I have seen with clean-swept decks braving
the impact of mighty Atlantic seas with apparently
as little prospect of damage as if she were a rock deep
rooted in the bowels of the earth. Until then I had
thought that nothing could withstand the shock of
a full-powered ocean wave, but now I have my doubts.
I know, of course, the feats performed upon break-
waters in course of construction, of the lifting of
immense masses of stone many tons in weight from
their resting-place below low-water mark, and hurling
them over the top of a pier; but then, of course, a
ship, be she ever so massive, is not a structure built
into the solid earth ; she must have a certain amount
of " give " about her.

But even then there are innumerable instances
where the vessel has not given quite soon enough, or

112 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

quite in the right way. Then she has received the
terrific impact of the wave, and although ever so
powerfully built and immune from damage as to her
solid structure, she has emerged from the immense
turmoil of water swept clean of everything in the
nature of upper works and fittings, let them be ever so
well secured.

As an instance of the amazing frictional power of
the sea, as well as its mighty impact, let me quote
an experience of my own. I was on board a fine
passenger sailing ship, in which we had run from
England in the wonderfully short space of eighty days,
during the last fortnight of which we had been flying
at fully sixteen miles an hour before a tremendous
westerly gale and a corresponding sea. But with
staunchness of ship and fine seamanship we had not
suffered the loss of a rope yarn, as sailors say, until
one night off the southern point of New Zealand, the
Snares, having run far enough, it was necessary for us
to heave-to. Now, this operation is always a difficult
and dangerous one in a gale with a heavy sea, demand-
ing the greatest skill and coolness on the part of the
commander, which requisite in our case was fully
satisfied. All was made ready, and at the propitious
moment the ship was brought to the wind, turning
quickly and easily past the danger-point when the
giant sea rolls squarely on the broadside. But just
as she came up into the wind, the biggest wave I have
ever seen towered up over the weather-bow like a vast
black wall, and, at a yell from the bo'sn, everybody
clutched at some holding-place and held his breath.
Down came the wave on the topgallant forecastle, and
rushed aft along the decks, where its impact stove in

THE CLOUDS AND WAVES 113

the massive front of the saloon, which apartment it
gutted. That was not to be wondered at, any more
than was the loss of the bulwarks and everything
movable, however firmly it was lashed. What was
passing strange was the fact that all the teak-panel-
ling on the sides of the forward-house was smoothed
off as by a gigantic plane.

What the force of the waves when meeting with a
rock-barrier means, has, as far as I know, never been
assessed in terms of foot-tons, nor do I know that the
statement if it were made would be intelligible or even
interesting to most of us. But it is one of the grandest
sights imaginable to witness, during a gale which is
blowing directly on shore, the impact of the waves
against such a tremendous cliff rising sheer from the sea
as is the North Head of Sydney, New South Wales, for
instance. As the mighty Pacific waves, with the accu-
mulated force behind them of the immeasurable storm,
strike against that sheer wall of rock, the whole sur-
rounding land is felt to tremble and quiver, and four
hundred feet above there rises from the turf crowning
the cliff great fountains of spray, forced upward through
the interstices of the rock by the weight of the waves.
But more terrific in appearance is the aspect of the
waves when suddenly arrested in their majestic onward
rush by a submerged reef. Then the wave, meeting
the obstruction in its most massive part, and meeting
it, too, so abruptly, rises in a vast wall of roaring foam,
and hurls itself over the barrier as if it must find some-
thing to destroy. But in spite of the magnitude of
the breakers and the fierceness of their onset, their
power is broken only a few feet inside the reef, and
all is peace. The wild waves of the sea are curbed,

i

114 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

and naught remains of them but hissing foam, which
the exultant gale snatches up and scatters in minute
spray many miles inland, or shreds into spindrift over
the sea beyond.

Immense and awe-inspiring, however, as are the
regular waves of the great ocean, and dangerous as
they must always be to vessels that are weak or badly
handled, they are, by reason of their regularity, far less
dangerous, generally speaking, than much smaller seas
which are irregular and less to be depended upon, as,
for instance, in such restricted waters as those of the
English Channel and North Sea, where a series of true
waves can never be found, owing to the conflicting
currents of comparatively high velocity, which will
not permit the waves to run regularly. When this is
the case, the strain upon a vessel is much increased,
since the impact of the waves upon her does not admit
of her being handled so as to receive it in the best
way for her to resist. It is to a sailor an almost
pathetic sight to see a good ship struggling against
not one, but a host of enemies ; not able to face an
organized opposition for which she may make prepara-
tion, but subject to the all-round attacks of a dis-
orderly mob, each member of which, though acting
independently, has apparently the same end in view,
destruction. No doubt the high, conflicting, and
dangerous seas raised by the opposing action of winds
and currents have been responsible for the fables told
among the imaginative ancients of whirlpools, such as
the Maelstrom, which were popularly supposed to
draw ships down into the bowels of the earth and
eject them, sometimes entire, but more frequently in
fragments some distance away. Eemernbering the

THE CLOUDS AND WAVES 115

size of those craft and their utterly inadequate pro-
tection against the attack of seas which sufficiently
test splendidly marine structures of our day, we cannot
wonder that such stories were firmly believed in. There
can, indeed, be very little doubt but that those tiny
craft were often overwhelmed by the furious broken
seas in such a manner that they disappeared from view,
and only reappeared at some distant spot, generally in
pieces. What wonder, then, that they were credited
with having made a long journey through vast caverns
at the bottom of the sea !

Such dangerous congeries of waves are not, un-
happily, confined to narrow waters ; but where the great
ocean currents, such as the Gulf Stream or the Agulhas
current, glide along and are met or crossed by a gale,
the tumult of the distracted waves is fearful to behold.
There are few sailors experienced in Southern Seas who
would not prefer to meet the mighty but regular waves
off Cape Horn rather than the shorter, less lofty, but
erratic seas of the Cape of Good Hope. And that for
the reason already given, the impossibility of placing
the ship so that she shall receive every wave where
she is best fitted to bear its blow. Let me explain.
Ships are built to breast the waves with their bows, so
that, whether they are driving into the sea, or the sea
is rushing on to them, the result is the same, the bows
rise to the sea. If, however, the ship does not run
away from a following sea fast enough, when it over-
takes her, instead of raising her stern, as it would her
bow, it depresses the after-end of her, rushes on board,
and does damage proportioned to its weight. The
same thing happens, of course, when a vessel tries to
go or is driven by the wind astern against a heavy sea.

116 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

In the case of a steamer such a thing would ,never be
tried. If it were found that she could not keep ahead
of the sea because not able to go fast enough, she
would be turned round (watching a favourable moment
when the sea was running less high than usual), and
then, keeping the engines going slowly, she would be
steered head on to the sea and ride in comparative
safety, if not comfort. A sailing vessel, on the other
hand, can never be held as closely head to wind except
by a cumbrous contrivance known as a sea-anchor,
and never resorted to but in cases of direst necessity,
because of the immense difficulty of handling it with
the scanty number of men carried.

Now it will, I think, be seen by the foregoing that
if the sea does not run true, these seamanlike prepara-
tions will be of little avail, because the seaman can
never tell where his vessel is going to be assailed next.
The use of oil, however, has been and is of wonderful
service in smoothing an angry sea, and much damage
has often been avoided by having canvas bags of oil
trailing over the side, thus keeping a smooth area, a
sort of charmed circle around the ship, outside of
which the waves may rage like angry demons, but
they cannot pass it to do their destructive work. Un-
fortunately, the ships that need this safeguard most
are those which, from motives of economy, are less
likely to be thus provided.

There is another form of irregular sea which is not
produced by the wind blowing across or in opposition
to the current. And this may arise anywhere. It
happens that when a gale has been blowing sufficiently
long in any given direction to raise a heavy sea, and
then suddenly dies away, leaving the waves still

THE CLOUDS AND WAVES 117

running heavily in the same direction. A fresh gale
springs up, and blows with violence from a totally
different quarter, raising a new series of waves in con-
flict with the old ones, and producing a most haras-
sing, disturbing, and dangerous condition of affairs.
Sometimes this will happen in a part of the sea where
there is a current running, which adds to the trouble
of the waters, and then the state of matters is very
bad. Such an experience I once had off the Cape of
Good Hope. We had been struggling for some time
with a gale which was blowing diagonally across the
set of the current, raising an exceedingly ugly sea,
and making the vessel, which was heavily laden with
coal, bound to Bombay, wallow in the midst of the
waves, as if she were a half-tide rock, over which the
sea foamed incessantly. The gale died away very
rapidly, and sail was made in order to get away from
this stormy locality. The wind dropped to a calm,
while the vessel kept tumbling about like a drunken
man; then suddenly the wind sprang upon us from
the opposite quarter, like a lion from his lair, catching
us aback and driving us stern foremost into the seeth-
ing, uncertain welter of waves. For two or three
hours the fate of the vessel and all hands trembled in
the balance. The waves just tumbled on board of us
where they listed, and several immense masses pooped
us, i.e. came on board over the stern. We were so short-
handed that we could not get the sails handed quickly
enough, but fortunately they were old, and they blew
away. At last, when all hope seemed to be gone, we
got the vessel under control, and laid-to as nearly
head to wind as possible, and the wearied crew were
enabled to turn their attention to the pumps, there

118 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

being a little matter of five feet of water in the
hold.

But of all the exhibitions of waves the ocean can
afford, there is none that can compare with that of the
hurricane centre, except, of course, the utterly ab-
normal earthquake wave, which is a cosmic pheno-
menon for which earth and not ocean is responsible.
In the height of a tropical hurricane the wind blows
with such fury that the sea cannot rise, hard though it
may seem to believe. Of course, if the wind were to
blow hard in one steady direction for any length of time,
doubtless the waves would rise to an abnormal height,
running true ; but, as I have before pointed out, in a
hurricane the wind blows round a given centre, and a
stationary object is therefore continually changing its
direction. No words can give the most meagre idea
of the force with which this terrible circling wind is
driving around its axis ; even if experienced, the mind
retains but the faintest impression, quite uncom-
municable by words, of its power. But about the
centre of this vast area of tempest there is a spot of
only a few miles in diameter, a sort of funnel in the
atmosphere, as it were, wherein there is practically
no wind, the opposing masses of air in motion having
neutralized each other's force. Within this calm area
the waves, held down by the enormous pressure of the
wind without it, find themselves suddenly freed from
restraint, free to exert their power. So they rush into
it at mad speed from every direction, and, meeting,
hurl themselves about in vast broken masses as if the
ocean had run mad. The surface of a fiercely boiling
pot filled with water, magnified ten thousand times,
will give a faint resemblance to this amazing spectacle,

THE CLOUDS AND WAVES 119

which, however, is seldom viewed by man, for two
reasons : first, that few ships can live through it, and,
secondly, that it is dark with a darkness that can be
felt. Moreover, at such a time the human heart is
oppressed with a sense of its own utter insignificance
in the scale of things, and rather wishes for a hiding-
place — craves for oblivion. Yet I think the simile
holds good of boiling, only it is the boiling of ocean,
with apparently all the subterranean fires expanding
their energies beneath.

Of the waves consequent upon submarine upheavals,
and resulting in a higher elevation of masses of water
above the ocean level than is otherwise possible, I am to
speak presently in the chapter on Tides, and with these
we may also class massive progressions of the ocean
surface, that are commonly, but probably erroneously,
spoken of as tidal waves. Also of the purely local and
incidental disturbances occasioned by the calving of
an iceberg, the sudden breaking off of millions of tons
of ice in one mass from the protruding end of a
glacier, like the launching of some unimaginably
huge ship without any restraint into deep water.
But these are of such infrequent occurrence, compared
with the everyday wave and swell of the ocean, whicli
are a part of its daily life, as not to deserve more
than passing mention, although to the privileged
beholder they come with a sense of great awe, and
conduce to reverence for the mighty works of
Nature.

In conclusion, it may not be out of place to point
out that, immense as are the manifestations of energy
put forth by all the waves that have been mentioned,
only a few fathoms beneath them the darksome deep

120 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

lieth in profoundest peace. Motion there is, cer
tainly. As the late Admiral Wharton once finely said,
" Of all the myriad tons of water of which the ocean is
composed, not one drop is ever at rest ; " but it is
gentle, hardly perceptible, a circulation of the waters
to which the mobility of the air is furious activity.
But of all the multitudinous causes which go to main-
tain the beneficent circulation upon which the health
of the world depends, none is more important than
that of the waves of the surface of the great and
wide sea.

OCEAN CURRENTS

OF all the means whereby the mighty ocean, regarding
it as a whole, exercises its beneficent influence upon
the earth, none are more potent in their power, more
wide-reaching in their effects, or more interesting to
study than those enormous movements of incalculable
masses of water which we call " currents " and " tides."
Now, at the outset of what must be, in the nature of
things, but a cursory glance at these immense oceanic
phenomena, it is entirely necessary to point out the
difference between current and tide. As briefly and
roughly as possible, a current is like the movement
of a stream which has a slight alteration in its level
from its source to its mouth. It runs in the one
direction because water cannot run uphill, it runs
faster or slower according to the quantity of rain
that falls, and sometimes, when the rainfall has been
excessive, it overflows its banks and makes a series
of temporary currents wandering over the adjacen
country, their direction being determined entirely by
the variations in the contour of the land. But, in
general, the direction of such a stream is quite per-
manent, owing to the physical confinement of its
banks, and therein it differs much from an ocean
current. The parallel is, however, sufficiently near
for our present purpose.

121

122 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

Tide, on the other hand, resembles the course of
a body of water that is regulated mechanically, as by
pumping, and is regularly propelled in one direction
for a certain number of hours per day, and in the
opposite for another similar period, independent of
any considerations of weather, rainfall, etc. Here,
again, the simile is weak and halting, but it must
serve as giving a slight idea of the difference between
tide and current.

Now, as regards the permanent character of oceanic
currents in speed and direction, there is very much
to be said. Indeed, it would appear as if, at the
outset, we must admit that no ocean current is per-
manent in the particular sense with which that word
is used. In a general sense, the great oceanic currents
are permanent, that is, they run continually in the
same general direction and at the same general rate,
only varying either under some great atmospheric or
submarine disturbance. Now, when we say the great
oceanic currents, we mean the Gulf Stream and
equatorial current in the Atlantic, the Kuro Siwo or
•Japanese current and equatorial current in the Pacific,
these Atlantic and Pacific currents being curiously
alike, allowing for the different configuration of the
land and magnitude of the two oceans. The Mozam-
bique current in the Indian Ocean and Humboldt's
current in the South Pacific complete the list of the
great oceanic currents that have received specific
names.

It has, however, been considered that all the great
currents of the ocean commence within the tropics,
and that their primary cause is the enormous amount
of evaporation that is continually going on under the

OCEAN CURRENTS 123

fierce heat of the sun. It has been estimated that
in the tropical Atlantic alone the amount of water
raised annually would represent a cube of nearly
thirty miles in extent, or about 120 trillions of cubic
yards. Of course, an immense amount of this fresh
water falls back again into the ocean from whence
it has been raised, but the bulk of it is carried into
seas beyond the tropics and over the adjacent lands.
Now, to fill the great void thus caused, the colder
and heavier waters of the Arctic and Antarctic regions
continually flow in because they are continually being
augmented by rain and melted ice. In their motion
towards the equator they are assisted by the Trade
Winds from the north-east in the Northern hemisphere
and the south-east in the Southern hemisphere, and
thus they heap up the tropical warm water about the
equator. To escape to its level, which of course all
water must do, this immense volume of warm water*
pressed on either side by the heavier cold banks of
water, takes the line of least resistance, which is
directly westward. Two main causes decide this :
first, the movement of the earth upon its axis from
west to east, and secondly, the easterly winds on both
sides of it. There is another adjunct which we will
come to directly, but at present it is sufficient to
indicate the two main forces.

Now, this mighty body of water, twelve or fifteen
hundred miles wide, flows steadily westward, slowly,
it is true, but with a quite perceptible rate of from
six to twenty-five miles a day, according to the
season. It enters the Gulf of Mexico, washing the
shores of the Antilles, but in no .wise hindered by
them. It flows ;majestically westwards into the Gulf,

124 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

its progress being accelerated as its channel is nar-
rowed, not now by the cold banks of water on either
side of it, but by the barrier of Cuba on the north and
the mainland of Central America, the peninsula of
Yucatan on the south. Presently it meets with an
impassable barrier, the continent of America, staying
its further westward course, and, driven by the irre-
sistible thrust of the great body of water behind it,
takes the only road possible, that is, it turns first
northward, then eastward, returning along the northern
shores of the Gulf with ever-increasing speed. And
now the Gulf Stream is in being. Out of the narrow
Florida Channel pour the superheated waters, struggling
to make their escape from the pressure behind. In
the Bahama Channel, cramped into the breadth of less
than fifty miles, they sometimes attain a speed of one
hundred and ten miles per day, gaining their impetus
for their long journey across the Atlantic.

It is time to drop the plural and speak of the
Gulf Stream as an entity, and one that has probably
had a greater influence upon the history of the world
than that of any other of the physical phenomena
with which we are acquainted. Immediately upon
emerging into the open Atlantic it spreads out and
slackens its speed. Practically following the contour
of the North American coast, but kept well off the
shore by the cold stream pouring southward from
the Arctic, it flows on ever northward and eastward
withal, until, happily for us, it is met by the full
force of the icy current flowing south from Davis
Straits, and deflected so that its main body points
almost directly to these favoured islands. It is a
veritable river in the sea, a river of warm water whose

OCEAN CURKENTS 125

bed and banks are of cold water, and it is to this fact
that we owe our national existence ; for if, instead
of flowing as it does over a bed and between banks
of cold water, it flowed over a shallow bottom of earth,
it would lose its heat so rapidly (earth being a far
better conductor of heat than water) that by the
time it reached our shores it would have none to
give us, and the conditions obtaining in Labrador
and Greenland would be ours. The Thames, the
Severn, and the Clyde would become glaciers, and
all that Britain stands for would be annulled. Of
course, the same thing would happen if, by any cata-
clysm, the course of the Gulf Stream could be changed
— deflected south, let us say — so that it would recurve
to the westward about the Azores.

But, it may be asked, how is it that this great
oceanic river of water pursues its way over so many
miles of intervening sea without losing either its
direction or its distinctive characteristic ? Why does
it apparently obey a different law to that which makes
the equatorial current flow westward ? Has the rota-
tion of the earth upon its axis no influence upon this
eastward-flowing stream? Kemembering that this is
not a scientific treatise, but an attempt to treat the
great question of ocean circulation in a way that shall
be popular yet not misleading, I would remind the
reader, first of all, that cold water is heavier than
warm, and consequently when a body of cold water
strikes a body of warm water it does not, as we might
think, amalgamate at once, but the cold water sinks
as well as pushes the warm water back. But if the
body of warm water has a vastly greater bulk than
the cold, it will not be pushed back, but will continue

12G OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

its flow in whatever direction it is going, without
parting with nearly so much of its heat or spreading
out as it would have done if it had met with water
of only a degree or two lower temperature than itself.
Another reason why that great body of warm water
should pursue its easterly course in defiance, appar-
ently, of the earth's revolution is, that in temperate
latitudes the prevailing winds are from west to east,
and the warm water being always on the surface is
helped along eastward very greatly by this means.
Another complication appears in the fact that salt
water is heavier than the fresh, and it would seem as
if the extra weight of the warm water of the tropics,
where so much evaporation has taken place that the
salinity thereby is greatly increased, would quite
compensate for the increased specific gravity of the
cold water, remembering how much fresher the water
from the Arctic must be, ice and rain and little
evaporation all tending to reduce its salinity.

But these complex factors balance one another in
such a way that the great Gulf Stream flows majesti-
cally on towards us, widening out as it gets eastward
until about the Azores it divides. One branch of it
recurves to the southward to join the parent stream,
and the other trends northward, raising the tempera-
ture not only over these islands of ours, but actually
reaching up into the Arctic seas, and modifying the
rigours of their stern climate. But it is with its effect
upon us in Britain that we are concerned. It cannot
be too strongly insisted upon that but for the Gulf
Stream Britain would be an ice-bound desert. In a
never-ceasing stream of beneficence this vast oceanic
river flows on its unceasing journey, making these

OCEAN CURRENTS 127

islands blossom like the rose because of the tropical
warmth it bears to us across the ocean. Of course, as
I hinted a little while back, this current, although
fairly entitled to be called permanent, is subject to
many disturbances fraught with great discomfort to
us here in Britain. For instance, a long-continued
spell of north-easterly winds will hinder its coming
east, and consequently reduce us all to such a con-
dition of mind and body that we are inclined to ask
despairingly, " Is life worth living ? " An increase in
the number of icebergs calved from the great northern
glaciers, and borne south by the current already
alluded to, will bear into our friendly warm current
such a mass of congealed water that its temperature
will fall rapidly, and we ask ourselves, without any
hope of a favourable answer, Where is the summer ?
What is happening to the poor old world ? And some
of us go so far as to blame the spots on the sun, or,
rather, the rents in his envelope of incandescent gas,
for what, if we looked nearer home, we should find
ample reason. But these experiences exemplify in a
most striking degree how dependent we are in this our
homeland on the regular performance of its functions
by the ocean for the right to live. It is only another
instance of how entirely dependent the British Empire
is upon the sea for its existence. Take it whichever
way we will, we live by favour of the sea, and that
being so, I am always in a chronic state of astonish-
ment that the chief place in our school curriculum is
not given to a consideration of all that the sea means
to us. Unhappily the fact remains, that with a reputa-
tion for practicality exceeding that of any other nation,
I have the greatest possible doubt whether we are not

128 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

the most unpractical nation on earth. We spend more,
far more, upon utterly useless forms of so-called sport
every year than would suffice to find funds for dozens of
technical colleges for the teaching of things that really
matter to us.

Believe me, I am not carping at sport or play, for
I know their value, but I do hate, to see several
thousands of men gathered to witness the performances
of a few gladiators — no, footballers, or cricketers, or
racehorses — each paying dearly in time and money for
his place, and each hoping to recoup himself for his
outlay by a successful bet. It spells decadence of the
worst kind. I listened the other morning to a group
of newsboys at King's Cross station discussing the
prospects of various cricketers this season. They were
all versed to the last detail in the exploits of the men
they were discussing. Their memories were wonderful.
And then I took the brightest, as I thought, of them
aside, and asked him how many counties were included
in the administrative county of London ; and he said,
with a resentful note in his voice, " I don't know what
you're talking about ! "

A journey round the saloon bars of London on any
evening of the year, and a quiet listening to the con-
versation, will elicit the astounding fact that the chief
interest of the manhood of England is vicarious sport,
always with the underlying prospect of winning some-
body's money without working for it. Occasionally a
question of politics arises ; but if so, it means a row,
because nobody knows anything really about the
matter. Such pitifully garbled opinions as they have
(for which most of them are ready to fight) they have
taken from the columns of their evening paper after

OCEAN CURRENTS 129

they have devoured every item of so-called sport
chronicled therein. Their ideas of the great national
issues at stake, irrespective of party, are beyond all
question lamentably, pitifully feeble and ignorant, and
that, not because they lack any of those intellectual
attributes that men should have, but because they have
deliberately chosen to stultify their intelligence by
turning it to things that do not matter.

One word more on this extraneous matter and I
have done. We are almost at a crisis in our national
career — I am not sure that we are not really there —
yet we still find in our great newspapers — leaders and
formers of public opinion — that there are not merely
columns but pages on golf and bridge and racing,
cricket and football, of which it is safe to say that not
one word is calculated to be of the slightest benefit to
any human being, but rather that it all tends to a
complete national degradation.

To return to my subject, without any apologies for
the digression, the place of honour having been given
to the Gulf Stream, as of right, there does not remain
a great deal to be said about other great currents of
the world ; at least, not in an article like this. For
one reason, the main causes of these great currents are
the same, but none of them have the same far-reaching
effects upon mankind. And this has held true since
the dawn of European transoceanic navigation. The
old Vikings who discovered America centuries before
Columbus did so by making almost a coasting voyage
of it from Norway to Shetland or Faroe, thence across
to Iceland, then to Greenland, then to Labrador, and
so south to Markland, which was probably on the coast
of Maine or Massachusetts. And from a consideration

K

130 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

of the set of sub-arctic currents as we know them, it
does not appear that they, the Vikings, owed any of
their success in getting to the westward to current at
all, since all along the route they must have taken the
streams are feeble and irregular. But one thing
appears certain about the epoch-making voyage of
Columbus, and that is that either he or his pilot
decided upon going south first before launching out
westward, and thus they got into both the equatorial
current and the North-East Trade Winds, making their
arrival in the West Indies a certainty at some time or
other, whether they made any calculations or not.

In like manner the return passage was made easy
by their discovery of the Gulf Stream and its accom-
panying westerly winds, which did the same kind of
office for their feeble little ships as the Trades and
line currents had done when they were outward
bound. It was, however, fortunate for them that they
did not sail into the great Atlantic eddy which lies
between the eastward and westward streams, a place
of comparative stagnation, which was early discovered
by the Spaniards, and received the name of the Sar-
gasso Sea. Hither comes all the flotsam of the middle
Atlantic eventually, unless arrested by some shore or
another, and once having arrived, here it remains.
Very few seamen have penetrated to the centre of this
eddy, for even on its outskirts the masses of weed,
the floating fucus of the Atlantic, which has been
called the Gulf Weed, are often so closely packed
together as to hinder a vessel's progress. A glance
at a good atlas, which has a map of the commercial
routes of the world combined with the ocean currents,
would seem to contradict this statement ; but the

OCEAN CURRENTS 131

smallness of the scale upon which these maps are
drawn, and the really great distances between many
tracks that appear to lie closely together, must always
be taken into consideration.

It must be remembered that although in this great
eddy the water has scarcely any lateral movement, yet
the change of specific gravity, owing to evaporation,
causes a constant vertical movement of the waters,
so that, as the late Hydrographer to the Admiralty
almost poetically put it, " not one drop of the ocean
is ever quite at rest." And this is an absolute neces-
sity, for so vast a body of water becoming stagnant even
for a very short time would of necessity develop very
dangerous conditions to the peoples of the earth. I
have myself seen the ocean in one of those great
eddies during a long-continued calm appear to become
stagnant, and it was an awe-inspiring sight. For-
tunately, such a condition of things always rights
itself sooner or later atmospherically by a hurricane,
which, while dealing destruction to any handiwork of
man which it meets upon its terrible path, is in the
highest degree beneficial to the hemisphere generally
in which it occurs.

In the South Atlantic the great equatorial current
is driven by the northward rush of the cold water of
the Antarctic to join the main body pressing westward
to augment the Gulf Stream. But in this great ocean
there is also an eddy in the centre thereof extending
over many thousands of square miles of one of the
least frequented seas in the world, for this space
offers no inducement to the mariner to enter therein,
even those handling sailing ships. The outward
bounders avoid it on the west, the homeward bounders

132 OUK HERITAGE THE SEA

on the east, and as there is no direct trade between
the south-west coast of Africa and the south-east coast
of America, this great space remains unvisited by
steamships either, being left as lonely as the Ant-
arctic. The vast current of this latter great ocean,
while ever tending northward, as might be expected,
to 1511 up with its heavier cold water the immense
space left by evaporation, as before noted of the
North Atlantic, has another mighty force acting
upon it, which virtually transforms it into a world-
engirdling stream, eternally sweeping on its majestic
path round the globe.

Here, as nowhere else in the world, is it possible
to circumnavigate the globe on a given parallel of
latitude without ever sighting land, except perhaps
one or two lonely islands. And as it is equally the
case in the southern as in the northern hemisphere,
that in extra-tropical regions over the sea the prevail-
ing winds are westerly, so it will at once be seen how
in this wide ocean space the whole body of water
must be ever kept marching round the world. Of
course where possible it must trend to the northward,
owing to its superior specific gravity, as, for instance,
where striking the Cape of Good Hope it sweeps
northward along the West African coast as far as the
equator, being there known as the Benguela current.
In the same way it strikes the great peninsula of
South America, and sweeps up its western coast until
it reaches the equatorial currents. It is there known
as Humboldt's current. In like manner it breaks
against the great Australian island at Cape Leeuwin,
and flows northward to form the West Australian
current, and incidentally assists in the forming of

OCEAN CURRENTS 133

the complicated circulation of the Indian Ocean. It
is not without good reason that I call the current
system of the Indian Ocean, with its two great off-
shoots, the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal,
complicated. True, there are complexities in the
Atlantic circulation, but they are simplicity itself
as compared with those of the Indian Ocean, for
here, while there is a vast cold stream bounding
its southern verge and thrusting a chilly flood north-
ward along the torrid West Australian coast, there is
no corresponding force being exerted on the northern
boundary, as in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The East Indian archipelago effectually hinders any
interference from the great equatorial stream of the
Pacific Ocean, and so, bounded by heated land on
every side but one, the Indian Ocean has had to
develop a circulation peculiarly its own, and not in
the least like that of the other oceans.

Again, in developing this singular circulation the
factors have been unusually complex. The evapora-
tion, of course, is enormous, and invites the cold water
of the Antarctic current to rush in and fill the vacancy ;
but there is also the curious atmospheric phenomenon
of the north-east monsoon blowing for about six
months of the year, and followed by the south-west
monsoon. Here let me interpolate what I feel to
be a necessary warning, having found so many other-
wise well-informed people astray upon the point. The
title "monsoon" is derived from the Persian word
mousum, signifying season. (The orthography being
phonetic is doubtful.) It does not mean a necessarily
stormy wind, but a seasonal wind, and to confound
it with a hurricane, a cyclone, or a typhoon is quite

134 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

wrong. These seasonal winds have, of course, a great
effect upon the circulation of this enclosed ocean, but
owing to the great wedge of Hindostan being thrust
down between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal,
they exert it in erratic fashion. In the south part of
the Indian Ocean, the South-East Trade blows with
fair regularity, but its limits are much circumscribed
as compared with their extent in the other oceans, and
in consequence its influence upon the currents is very
much less. Moreover, the Southern Indian Ocean
has the ominous notoriety of being more subject to
hurricanes or cyclones than any other part of the
world, and when these truly terrible atmospheric dis-
turbances occur, they exert so mighty a force upon
the ocean's surface that they upset the regular current
circulation for a long time.

But in spite of all the perplexity of the Indian
Ocean currents, the general trend of them culminates
in a steady stream, which, sweeping southward between
Madagascar and the African mainland, rushes right
round the Cape of Good Hope until met by the great
Antarctic drift again, and being forced backwards,
recurves and runs parallel with the barrier of cold
water to the eastward. It is of incalculable service
to the sailing ships homeward bound from India, who
keep close enough in to the African land to avoid the
counter current, and are thus carried round the Cape
of Storms, no matter what the direction of the wind
may be. It is here known as the Agulhas current,
and under this name is held in affectionate remembrance
by many an old sailor for its invaluable assistance to
him in getting round the Cape and into fine weather
on the other side of that grim promontory.

OCEAN CURRENTS 135

In the Pacific Ocean we have, on a very much
larger scale, of course, a similar circulation to that
of the Atlantic. Only here, between the north and
south equatorial currents, just north of the equator,
we have a counter warm- water current running west,
into the causes and effects of which we need not stay
to inquire, although they are fraught with incalculable
consequences of good to the peoples of Asia and
America. The great fact emerges, that the main body
of the equatorial current flowing west and meeting
with the mighty barrier of the East Indian archipelago
recurves, as does the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, but
not in nearly the same energetic fashion, seeing that
the geographical conditions are much less favourable
to its doing so. But it sweeps northward along the
eastern shores of the Japanese islands until catching
the prevailing westerly wind, and prevented from
running north by the great chain of the Aleutian
Islands, it pursues a steady course across the wide
Pacific until it strikes the shores of British North
America, which it thus preserves from being an icy
desert, being, like its counterpart in the Atlantic,
composed of warm water. But it is not so warm
as the Gulf Stream, not having had the same oppor-
tunities of gaining heat, and also being more superficial ;
nor is it so energetic, dwindling sometimes in its rate
of progress eastward so much that it has to be classed
as variable.

It is, however, fairly certain that by means of this
current early Chinese or Japanese navigators, not
intentionally but perforce, reached America. At any
rate, many scientific investigators have given it as
their opinion that the land of Fusang, mentioned

136 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

in Chinese annals as having been discovered by them
several thousands of years ago, was a portion of Central
America. This brings us to a brief consideration of
the great part played by the main oceanic currents
in the colonization of the world ; not perhaps in the
modern sense of colonization, but as accounting for
the obvious relationship between the inhabitants of
lands widely separated by ocean. This relationship
is, of course, too large a subject to do more than
mention here, and yet I feel I must allude to one
striking instance which came under my own notice.
During my cruise in Polynesia I gained a superficial
knowledge of some of the dialects, but principally
of the Tongan. At any rate, I learned to count up
to ten — ta'ha, ooa, tolu, fah, leema, ona, feetu, valoo,
eva, cow-ongafulu (I spell as I remember, phoneti-
cally). Several years after I was in Madagascar, at
Tamatave, and we employed on board a number of
Betsimasaraka, the aborigines of the islands, the
Hovas being obviously the ruling race of Malay
conquerors, and having no likeness to the real autoch-
thones. One day I heard a native counting, and
to my intense amazement his numbers were almost
identically the same as in Tongan. I asked the Kev.
George Shaw, who was then the L.M.S. Missionary
at Tamatave, if he could explain it, knowing that he
had been in Polynesia; but although he gave me a
very learned lecture upon the interchange of races,
I regret to say that I have not retained any of it,
except the profound conviction that in some way,
unexplainable now, but certainly owing to the set
of the currents of the ocean-drifting canoes with men
in them from one island to another, the similarity

OCEAN CURRENTS 137

of language between lands so widely separated was
brought about.

Only upon this hypothesis can the gigantic mono-
lithic statues in the small Easter Island be accounted
for. There they stand or lie upon their vast rock
platform, a mystery and marvel to all, but to none
a greater mystery than to the present inhabitants,
who are as incapable of such work as toddling babes
would be, and whose history, handed down orally from
generation to generation, bears no record of such
mighty work being carried out. It is beyond question
that, borne by the current from some highly civilized
land (as civilization was then understood), some
wanderers landed on Easter Island, and there followed
their bent towards perpetuating their worship by
erecting these extraordinary monuments. And the
same thing, in varying degrees, may be found in many
other islands of the South Pacific, as well as in lands
widely separated by sea, but obviously closely related
by tradition.

So far we have been considering the great oceanic
currents which are fairly settled in their course and
direction, varying, of course, according to season, and
disturbed by occasional hurricanes, but maintaining
their steady flow. But besides these, there are the
countless unknown currents, the great submarine
movements of the ocean, whose force and direction we
can only conjecture from a knowledge of the con-
ditions likely to produce them, and in consequence of
those conditions fairly steady in their incidence.
Then come the occasional currents, which give more
trouble and searching of heart to the navigator than
any other phrase of his calling, for the mobile mass

138 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

of the ocean is susceptible not only of surface suasion,
such as is exerted by a long-continued gale, diverted
or retarding $r accelerating an immense and well-
known current, but it may be, and often is, affected by
submarine disturbances, such as earthquakes or vol-
canoes, of whose occurrence the mariner can have no
knowledge.

It has already been pointed out that warm water
is lighter than cold, and that consequently a sudden
change of temperature in the bed of the ocean must
cause a corresponding displacement of a large body
of water, in other words, set up a new and temporary
current. This being borne in mind, it will be readily
understood how, if by some great opening in the sea-
bed admitting the cold water into an incandescent
abyss and thereby suddenly raising the temperature
of the lower stratum of water many degrees, the whole
body of water for hundreds of miles around may be
driven or drawn in a totally different direction from
the normal. These immense changes are continually
taking place in some part of the watery world, but, in
the nature of things, they must be unknown to the
sailor, and, let him be as careful as he will, they will
occasionally land him in some disaster, for which he
will be held to blame, but which he was powerless to
foresee and consequently to prevent.

Fortunately for the world, such changes, immense
as they are, have but a comparatively trifling effect
upon the great regular currents of the globe. The
ocean areas are so enormous that, although such a
catastrophe as I have mentioned may temporarily
affect an area of many thousand square miles, that
effect will still be but local and last but a short time.

OCEAN CURRENTS 139

The normal conditions of cold and heat and wind soon
resume their sway, and the beneficent average circula-
tion is maintained from age to age. Nevertheless, in
these days of rapid transit, when the passage of a
steamship between port and port is reckoned by hours,
it remains one of the most important problems con-
fronting the navigator to allow for the incidence of
the current upon his vessel, for it must be re-
membered that, whatever the power and consequent
speed of a ship may be, the effect of a current upon
her remains the same. It is the movement of the
whole body of water in which she floats, and although
her speed may be twenty miles an hour through the
water, if there be a current of half a mile an hour
against her, and it is not known, she will be twelve
miles astern of the position she ought to be by her
course and distance run at the end of the day. And
a corresponding alteration in her position will take
place, no matter what the angle may be in which the
current strikes the ship. As long as the heavenly
bodies are visible and the ship is a good distance from
land, it does not matter, her position can be continually
verified. But when near land and unable to consult
those faithful celestial guides by reason of their being
hidden behind a pall of clouds, the sudden incidence
of a current previously unknown may mean a terrible
disaster, and one too that the navigator is powerless to
foresee and consequently guard against. Of course, if
the commander of a swift mail steamer, let us say,
were empowered, in the absence of celestial observa-
tion, to slow down as well as take a series of soundings
by the patent sounding machine, the danger of running
ashore would be minimized ; but even then on certain

140 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

steep shores it would be very great. Since, however,
time must be kept and risks must therefore be taken,
it will occasionally happen that, owing to the set of a
temporarily induced current, a great ship may be lost,
without any blame attaching to the devoted men who
had her and all that she represented in charge.

THE TIDES

THE last chapter was entirely devoted to a cursory
consideration of the oceanic currents as distinguished
from the regular ebb and flow of the tides. And an
attempt was made to explain the difference between
current and tide, a very lame one, I fear, for most
people cannot help confusing the two, being indeed
satisfied to denominate the movement of any body of
water in any given direction a current, without any
regard to the cause of its movement. But because to
the general public the distinction between tide and
current is exceedingly hazy, I hope I may be forgiven
for again endeavouring to make the difference clear,
not this time by a lame simile, but by an exceedingly
brief recital of the actual facts concerning each.
Current is the movement of a body of water produced
by a difference in specific gravity caused by a difference
of temperature, or change in salinity, or evaporation,
or the drag of the wind along the surface. It is
always more or less local, and in several well-marked
cases it is nearly permanent in speed and direction.
Tide, on the other hand, is caused by the action of the
moon and, in a lesser degree, of the sun upon the
great skin of water covering two-thirds of the surface
of the globe. Four times in each day of twenty-four
hours the drawing power of gravity exerted by these

Hi

142 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

great celestial bodies, either in opposition or conjunc-
tion, causes the waters of the various oceans to advance
upon or recede from the various shores of the whole
world with such regularity that the navigator can
calculate with certainty the time of high water at any
given port with a very small amount of trouble and
mathematical knowledge.

But water being so mobile an element, innumerable
complexities occur, due to local peculiarities, to strong
and persistent winds, etc., and it is the consideration of
these peculiarities that makes the study of the tides so
interesting. Moreover, in many parts of the world
current and tide meet and act upon one another, intro-
ducing further complications, and rendering the sea-
man's task of allowing for the mysterious movements of
the great body of water upon which he floats by no means
an easy one. Yet one more complication, which arises
from the meeting of the incoming tide from the ocean
and the down-rushing torrent from a river. It will
sometimes happen that, owing to an extraordinarily
heavy rainfall, a river will be so full of water as to
rush with much more than its usual impetuosity sea-
ward, and, meeting the ascending flood of salt water,
will struggle to beat it back. That being impossible,
a compromise is effected by the level of the water
rising much higher than usual, overflowing its banks,
and spreading devastation all around. The same
result may be brought about by a gale of wind blowing
directly up a river and aiding the incoming tide by
pushing it inland far beyond the usual tidal limits.
These limits vary, of course, with the amount of fall
or gradient a river has towards the sea ; but whatever
the limit may be, in a civilized country, at any rate,

THE TIDES 143

there is always a great deal of trouble and worry to
the riparian householders when any alteration of it
takes place in excess.

I hope that the very simple theory of the tides
may be borne in mind, viz. that the moon moving
round the earth once in twenty-four hours draws the
whole body of water comprised in the ocean up towards
her by reason of her attraction. In the open ocean
that swelling upwards is so slight comparatively as to
be unnoticed, but when any obstruction of land is met
with, it becomes at once exceedingly evident, its
effects in velocity and height being the more marked
in proportion to the ruggedness and sinuosities of the
coast. Sometimes the sun, which exerts less attraction
upon the sea than the moon, owing to his vastly
greater distance from the earth, pulls with the moon,
producing the highest tides (spring tides) ; sometimes
he pulls at right angles to the moon, and thus nearly
neutralizes her efforts, so that very weak and low tides
(neap tides) are the result, and if the attraction of
these two celestial bodies were equal, there would be
no tide at all. The times of highest tide, or, to use
the queer word which astronomers affect, the " syzygy "
tides, always occur at new and full moon, and if a gale
of wind happens to be blowing in the direction of the
flood at the time, an extraordinary elevation of water
must take place.

Whewell, a great authority upon the tides, has
carefully calculated the speed of the great tidal waves,
and has pointed out how greatly they are affected by
the depth of the ocean along which they travel. His
conclusions are hard to accept by the seaman, for he
says that where the water is five thousand fathoms

144 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

deep this hill of water following the moon moves at
the rate of over five hundred miles an hour, and they
vainly ask how it is they have never been met and
overwhelmed by this terrific rush of water. But as
the wave approaches the shore it is greatly retarded,
it "smells the bottom," as we isay, and its speed
dwindles to fifty and then to fifteen miles an hour,
until it enters the various ports and rivers at quite a
gentle, nay, almost an imperceptible, rate. Of course
this gentle approach varies according to the contour
of the land. Where that is fairly level and its bays
are open, its rivers regular and easy of access, the tide
behaves in genial fashion, and the ebb and flow goes
on almost imperceptibly. But in some parts of the
world, where obstruction after obstruction is offered to
the incoming tide, it rages and foams its way into the
indentations of the land, and its coming and going
are marked by much the same sound and fury as
characterize a mountain torrent, only, of course, upon
a vastly grander scale. Of such places one of the
chief is the Bay of Fundy, in British North America.
The entrance of this gulf is exceedingly narrow, being
almost blocked by the Grand Manan Islands, yet the
opening seaward is very wide. Into this great bay
the tidal wave rolls majestically until it meets with
the obstructing islands, and then it rages and tears its
way between them and the promontory of Nova Scotia
at an enormously accelerated rate. Having poured
through the narrow channel between the Grand Manan
and Bryer Islands, it rushes on until it finds another
inlet inviting it, the Basin of Minas. Into this it
turns at a rapid pace, as if remembering how much it
has to do in the short time allotted to it, when

THE TIDES 145

suddenly it meets with the very narrow strait between
Cape Blomidon and Cape Sharp. Now its fury knows
no bounds. The incalculable mass of water piles itself
up between those two bluffs in its mad hurry to get
forward, until the sight may be seen of dry land only
a few hundred yards ahead of a volume of water deep
enough to float a line of battle-ship. This great wave
rushes up the estuary, filling all the creeks and bays
until it reaches the head of Cobequid Bay, Horton
Bluff, and Windsor. It seems almost incredible, but
it is a fact that at Horton Bluff the tide rises sixty
feet above low-water mark. What that means in the
way of alteration of the physical aspect of the country
during the time of high water almost passes the
bounds of description, as does the volume of water
required to effect that transformation in so short a
time transcend all ordinary calculation. A space of
many hundreds of square miles at eight A.M. is bare and
waterless, a sandy, rocky desert, without apparently
any means of communication, so rugged is the country,
and also without, as far as can be seen, being of the
slightest service to man. Presently, with a deep
hollow roar, as of an approaching earthquake, the
advancing tidal wave comes rushing up the narrow
estuary. In its mad career it seems as if it would tear
up the solid foundations of the earth. And while,
spellbound, the onlooker gazes upon this inrush of
the ocean, ravines become bays, ugly banks are hidden,
towering rocks are submerged, and what was a desolate
impassable region of most forbidding aspect has be-
come a noble expanse of navigable water, whereon may
float the largest ships in the world. And this trans-
formation has taken place shortly after midday from

L

146 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

breakfast time. Viewed commercially, what an amaz-
ing waste of power is here ! The mind almost reels
in contemplation of the potentialities offering them-
selves in this unthinkable mass of water raised to such
a height twice a day by the calm suasion of the moon.
Some day men will find it comparatively easy to set
this lifted mass of water to work on its way back, and
the power that those pioneers will command will make
Niagara but a child's toy in comparison.

But the grand spectacular time in which to view
the invasion of the tide here is in winter. Navigation,
at the best of times very arduous and difficult in those
waters, then becomes impossible, for being entirely out-
side of the beneficent range of the Gulf Stream, this
part of America is, though four hundred miles south
of the latitude of London, so cold that the sea itself
freezes. And were it not for the tremendous changes in
tide level, nothing can well be more certain than that
it would freeze as solidly as do the Arctic Seas. But
the waters do not get sufficient repose for that. Twice
daily that mighty influx of water takes place, hurling
before it the floes and miniature icebergs produced
by the intense cold — hurls them against the land
with thunderous impact, grinding them against the
rocks and each other until the whole agitated sea is
a puree of ice fragments. The interregnum, or, more
properly, armistice of slack water takes place and
the swirl and crash ceases. All is still save for the
crackling of congelation as the half-frozen sea strives
to become solid. Then comes the call of the ebb.
There is a gentle movement seaward and the partial
congelation ceases, the disunited masses begin to cir-
culate round one another. Gradually the movement

THE TIDES 147

grows more definite, its direction more settled, until
the whole mass of half-frozen water is rushing resist-
lessly on its way to the ocean again, leaving behind
it the barren forbidding bed of the great bay to its
misery of loneliness and utter desolation.

In our own islands something of the same pheno-
menon may be witnessed, but on a lesser scale and
without the icy accompaniment. The great estuary
of the Severn — great, that is, for a little group of
islands like ours — lies invitingly open to the inrush
of the tidal wave from the Atlantic, and consequently
the tributaries which pour their waters into this
estuary feel the effect of that wave in a marked
manner, notably the Wye and the Avon. The rise
of the tide at Chepstow is as much as fifty feet, the
highest known in these islands. But this great influx
may easily be explained by a glance at the map.
There is a point of land that juts out just above Port-
skewett, which intercepts the rising flood and turns
it into the narrow channel of the Wye. Fretted by
thus being restricted, the foaming waters rise to the
abnormal height above mentioned, while the Avon
just opposite only gets a fairly normal rise and fall.

The Solway, again, is noted for the impetuosity
of the tides, and it is said that a well-mounted horse-
man on Solway sands, when the tide is turned on the
flood, will have need of all his horse's fleetness to
escape drowning, so rapidly does the tidal wave come
rushing in. But here, the Isle of Man, being moored
like some huge ship right in the fairway, does un-
doubtedly hinder the inrush of the tide, deflecting it
on either hand and taking from it a great deal of its
velocity. And this matter of sheltering, either by

148 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

an island in the way or by some prominent headland
breaking and deflecting the full force of the tidal
wave, will be found to account for the immunity of
all our more prosperous harbours on the west coast
from abnormal variations in the height of their water-
level; for such variations are fatal to regular trade,
being so often disastrous in their effects upon shipping.
On the east coast, of course, no such tidal troubles
annoy. The whole mass of the British Isles inter-
venes to prevent the tidal wave rushing in straight
from its ten thousand mile sweep. It comes, of
course, as it must do everywhere (almost), but it
comes gently, regularly, and unless, as sometimes
happens in the estuary of the Thames, for instance,
it is aided by an easterly gale, it never plays any
pranks upon the shipping in the river or the house-
holders along the banks. But it quietly raises the
water-level and enables the largest ships to get up
to their docks, whose gates are opened punctually to
tide time and closed again before the water has begun
to fall, so that ships of the largest tonnage, safe behind
those massive barriers, may lie afloat and discharge
their cargoes. This utilization of the tides by man
for the docking of ships has been of very great
influence in the history of navigation ; for, while
the smaller vessels may lie aground without any
serious harm to their fabric, it always means much
inconvenience in the handling of their cargoes ; and,
as the incidence of high water necessarily varies in
time each day, there is the annoyance of the tide
serving for handling the cargo in the middle of the
night while the day has been wasted. But the larger
vessels cannot be treated thus casually, and, moreover,

THE TIDES 149

to earn a dividend for their shareholders, must have
dispatch, their daily working expenses being so high.
Therefore, in a port like Cardiff, for instance, with
a great rise and fall of tide, docks are an absolute
necessity. And it is most interesting to a thoughtful
observer to see an entire fleet of mighty ships reposing
in the deep waters of the docks there, while the work
of loading them is going on with the utmost expe-
dition, and at the same time the sea-bed outside the
dock gates is bare for miles, just a great expanse of
mud and ooze. Then, at the appointed time, the
sparkling flood comes gliding in. Gradually it
obliterates all the uglinesses of the muddy flats
with their stale smells, replacing these unpleasant-
nesses by a bright flood of clean sea water. The
tide rises higher and higher, being carefully watched
by those in charge of the docks until the smaller
vessels begin to be "locked" out, for the basin of
the dock is a lock which may be worked without
losing much water from the area of the dock proper.
And all the time the water outside is rising until the
great gates may all be thrown open, and the largest
ships the dock will accommodate may enter and leave,
steaming away serenely over what was only a few
hours before a foul expanse of evil-smelling mud.
This regular flooding of an almost level foreshore
with pure sea water, a natural deodorizer and dis-
infectant, is by no means the least of the services that
the tide renders to man, but as the subject impinges
upon the function of the ocean as a health-breeder for
the whole world, I can do no more than make passing
allusion to it here.

The work of the navigator is, of course, immensely

150 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

complicated by the tides upon a coast like ours ; and
this it is which renders local knowledge, such as is
possessed by the pilot, invaluable, indispensable. The
pilot must not only carry in his head a chart of the
coast, with the distances from point to point and the
shape of the bottom, but he must know how the tides
run in all weathers, how they are affected by the various
winds, and the difference between their rates at the
various times of the moon's age. Now this is know-
ledge which is only gained by experience, and although
many valuable books have been written as aids to the
mariner in respect of the tides' work, it nevertheless
remains true that nothing can give confidence in the
correctness of the course being steered on a dark or
a foggy night like a working experience of those
silent movements of the water. Even with long
experience there are some who never seem to be
perfectly at ease with the tides, as may be seen if
you care to watch the movements of the various
coasting sailing ships on a fine day. One man, by
his almost uncanny knowledge of the streaks of the
tide and how to steer so as to get into them, will be
observed to slip along past all his competitors, his
course being, to all appearance, a most erratic one,
yet perfectly calculated to get the utmost advantage
that the tide can give him, while other men, who have
never mastered more than the broad principles of tide
work, even though their experience may be longer,
must be content to come tailing along behind the
knowing one.

Of course, there is also in certain places the
additional complication of current mingling with tide
and affecting it, and, as the current is liable to be

THE TIDES 151

altered in force and direction by atmospheric con-
ditions obtaining hundreds of miles away, this renders
the work of the pilot more involved than ever. And
nowhere in the world are there to be found more
varieties and vagaries of tide than there are around
these favoured islands of ours, the home of the greatest
oversea carrying trade in the whole world. From the
raging torrents of the Pentland Firth or the Race
of Portland, to the gentle tidal waters of the east coast
and the almost unimaginable inrush of the flood found
in the Severn and Solway, all the ways in which the
moon's influence upon the sea can affect the naviga-
tion of waters near the land may be tested in Great
Britain.

But as if to prove how dependent the tides are
upon the configuration of the land, there is the striking
lesson afforded by the great land-locked Mediterranean
Sea, and more especially the Black Sea, really an
off-shoot of the former. The narrow entrance to the
Middle Sea from the Atlantic effectually precludes
the inrush of the vast tidal waves of the ocean in
sufficient volume to cause such vicissitudes as occur
elsewhere. Not that the Mediterranean is, as it has
so often been called, a tideless sea. On the contrary,
the tide does make itself felt more or less all round the
Mediterranean shores, attaining its maximum on the
coast of Africa, about Tunis, of an amplitude of about
ten feet. On the average, however, the rise and
fall is only about a foot or two. Still, the circula-
tion of this great body of water is maintained by
currents both surface and lower, in some places attain-
ing such a velocity that they have become a part
of classic lore. We need only mention Scylla and

152 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

Charybdis to awaken interest in the minds of every
public schoolboy, though this race of the Strait of
Messina is not much accounted of by the navigator
of to-day, and the strait is crossed several times daily
by a cumbrous ferry-boat bearing a railway train on
its decks.

Strong winds, of course, have their usual influence
upon the tides, setting up quite rapid local currents,
and causing an abnormal raising of the water in
certain places favourably situated for such manifesta-
tions. But as far as the tidal influence of sun or
moon is concerned, the great enclosed basins show,
as might be expected, but little trace of it. They
are aflected undoubtedly, even those great inland
seas of America, with their scores of thousands of
square miles of fresh water, respond to the call of
the moon, and exhibit a tide which, though almost
imperceptible, may still be measured by inches. In
like manner the Baltic, protected as it is from the
inrush of the Atlantic tidal wave, first by the British
Isles and then more closely by Denmark, shows little
tidal variation. In fact, as far as the tides are con-
cerned, it is the easiest navigated sea in the world.
The maximum rise and fall scarcely ever exceeds a
foot ; but here, as in the Mediterranean, the currents
must be watched, especially during and after gales.

Other almost tideless seas are the Bed Sea and the
Persian Gulf, and for the same reason their almost
land-locked condition. But the immense evaporation
that takes place in these inland seas, owing to their
geographical position, necessitates a continual influx
of the ocean to supply their need, and so there is a
steady movement of current in both of them. But

THE TIDES 153

these movements are quite sluggish, for the cooler
water of the Arabian Sea, flowing in to supply the
deficiency caused by the evaporation, is met at the
bottom, its natural place, by the heavy extra-salt
water, and the result is a constant struggle between
the two, resulting in these two seas being the saltest
in the world, as might be expected, seeing how
much condensation takes place, leaving all the salt
behind, and that no rain falls to redress the balance.

An interesting question in the consideration of
the rising of the great tidal waves naturally presents
itself— do these swellings of ocean in their path round
the world never come in contact with each other, with
the effect of neutralizing their forces ? This question
has been carefully studied by acute investigators, and
some very surprising results have been recorded. On
the Irish coast, almost opposite to the Bristol Channel,
where nearly, if not quite, the greatest vicissitudes of
tide in Britain are experienced, there is an utter
absence of rise and fall. The ebb and flow are felt
along the coast, but the meeting of the tidal waves
here produces an equilibrium, and on the shore the
waters remain level. There is another area in the
North Sea where the tidal waves meet and balance
one another so nearly that only an oscillation of a
couple of feet occurs. But the way in which the lines
of coming and going tide curve and recurve in this
part of the sea are so many and so confused that only
the brain of a man entirely at home with the higher
mathematics could keep the run of them. Another
curious result of the meeting of tidal waves is found
in some ports, notably in the roadstead of Havre,
where the period of "slack water," as seamen term

154 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

the period of rest when the tide has reached its
highest or its lowest point, and which is usually only
a few minutes in duration, is prolonged to half the
time of a normal ebb and flow, three hours. Of
course, this prolongation of slack water, to the great
benefit of all concerned, varies in different places, but
it has a very marked effect upon the prosperity of
any port thus favoured, if only those interested are
sufficiently wide awake to take advantage of it.

And now we come to one of the most extraordinary
cases the world can afford of the way in which one
tidal wave can neutralize another, one that causes the
observer to stand and wonder at the amazing develop-
ments of the forces of Nature. It has before been
noted how great openings, like that of the Bay of
Fundy, for instance, lying invitingly in the path of
the incoming tidal wave, do lend themselves to ab-
normal risings of tide, and how perfectly natural it
is that they should do so. Now in South- Western
America, wide open to the south-east, lies the great
estuary of the La Plata river. It is 150 miles wide,
and compared with it the opening of the Bay of
Fundy is but a creek. They both face the same way
— nothing obstructs the full ingress of the Atlantic
tidal wave. Yet whereas, as we have seen in the Bay
of Fundy, the tide rise to the amazing height of
60 feet, in the estuary of the La Plata there is
practically no tide at all. The effect that this
marvellous tidal abnormality has upon the trade of
the country is made evident by a glance at the
statistics of shipping at Buenos Ayres, but the causes
of it are less easy to seek. According to the most
competent observers, this calling of a halt, as it were,

THE TIDES 155

in the great tidal movement is the resultant of several
opposing forces ; but the chief of them is, as I have
said before, the meeting of two oceanic tidal streams
which neutralize one another.

In places like this, and there are many, as might
be expected from the intensely irregular outline pre-
sented to the inrush of the tidal wave in various parts
of the world, the incidence of the winds play a most
important part in arranging irregular risings and
fallings of the tide. Where the ebb and flow are
fairly regular, as has been already observed, a strong
wind will retard or accelerate a tide, but its effect
is exceedingly limited. Where, however, the combat-
ing forces of the tidal waves prevent any regular ebb
and flow taking place, the occurrence of a gale from
almost any direction whatever is sufficient to turn the
scale, and a temporary rush of water in the direction
towards which the wind is blowing will be the result,
generally causing the maximum of inconvenience to
all concerned.

But leaving for a while the actual facts of tidal
incidence and its effect upon commerce, and ascending
to speculation, it is always a matter for great wonder
to seamen why they do not continually meet in the
open ocean with the tidal waves raised by the moon in
her regular revolution round the world. It is natural
to suppose that the swell of water she raises towards
her and draws after her will be of such a size as to cause
grave inconvenience, if not actual danger, to vessels
which meet it in its long course from continent to
continent. Looking upon a conventional diagram
showing the influence of the moon upon the ocean,
it would appear as if the great mass of water raised by

156 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

the attraction of our satellite must, on the open ocean
at least, be sufficient to overwhelm any vessel it meets
on its way. Yet nothing of the kind ever happens.
It is true that occasionally huge knolls of water, travel-
ling at a great rate, are met with far out at sea,
causing panic on board the vessels they meet with, but
seldom do much damage. It is equally true that these
sudden swellings of waters are usually characterized
as " tidal waves," although investigation proves that
they are nothing of the sort — cannot be, because while
the tidal waves are perfectly regular in their incidence,
these great uprisings of ocean are abnormal, and are
therefore undoubtedly due to some cosmic cause, such
as a submarine earthquake or eruption of a deep-sea
volcano. Yet in certain lonely, out-of-the-way isles
of the sea, such as Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan
D'Acunha, there occurs at irregular intervals a sudden
shoreward rush of the ocean, stupendous rolling hills
of water which threaten to engulf the land. No one
who has ever witnessed the occurrence of the " rollers,"
as they are somewhat feebly termed, can have any idea
of their terror-striking aspect. They occur when the
sea is fairly smooth, just furrowed by the usual winds,
and there is apparently no reason to expect anything out
of the common order of things. Then suddenly, without
any warning, will appear in the offing a huge wave
reaching from one side of the horizon circle to the
other, travelling shoreward at a tremendous rate of
speed. Vessels at anchor lie right in its fateful path,
and no seamanship may avail to enable them to avoid
its awful impact. The few minutes intervening between
its first appearance and the shock of its arrival seem
like hours, but they pass ; it strikes, and the bay is

THE TIDES 157

filled with the debris of ships, the shore is a welter of
boiling foam, and the people, gazing spell-bound with
terror, breathe again as knowing the worst. Contrary
to the usual rule of waves, the first of these rollers is
generally the most severe. It is followed by three or
four others, much diminished ; but the damage is done
by the pioneer. Then the sea resumes its normal
aspect, and the observers are left wondering why this
great visitation has come and what is the cause of it,
while seamen call it a tidal wave.

Well, since nothing is known of the origin of
these manifestations — perhaps one name is as good as
another — only, if the tidal wave which rolls round the
world twice in every twenty-four hours were always to
manifest itself in such a fashion, it is safe to say that
very little shipping business would be carried on. No,
the work, the beneficent work, done by the moon, and
in lesser degree by the sun, in raising the waters of
the ocean, is managed in a much gentler fashion than
that. Except under abnormal conditions, such as have
already been outlined, the tides rise and fall. Just
that. The words express exactly the gentle and
unobtrusive way in which these great forces of Nature
act for the comfort and convenience of mankind. But
the terrible manifestation of the " rollers " has been
observed and recorded in its most awful aspect during
an earthquake or a volcanic eruption occurring near the
shore. Then, as if to form the culmination of the
terror on land and in the air, the sea first appears to
recede, to rush seaward, until the secrets of the depths
are revealed, and scenes never before exposed to the
light of day become visible. Great ships are left
stranded where a little while before they floated in

158 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

several fathoms depths of water. Then suddenly tho
waters return in an immense wave, looking as if it
would shut out the sky. I shall not give any of the
estimated heights of these waves, confining myself to
saying that in the nature of things they must be much
higher than those raised by the wind in the most
terrific gale, and their speed must also be much
greater. For the conditions are quite different. It
has been before noted that the drive or drag of the
wind along a water surface produces, accelerates, or
retards currents, but it never excites the surface to
any great rate of speed, while the furious waves
have a very short range, doing hardly more, indeed,
than rise and fall.

In the shoreward rush of the earthquake wave or
volcano wave we have a sudden movement of the whole
body of water of incalculable force and tremendous
velocity, because, in the first case, there has been an
upheaval of the sea-bed at its margin, and the waters
have had perforce to roll backward, seaward, and pile
themselves up in a heap, as it were. But when the sea-
bed subsides again, of course that mighty mass of water
seeks its former level with all the vehemence that might
be expected of it, rushing over the land to a height far
beyond high water-mark, and completing the destruc-
tion begun by the earthquake. Practically the same
effect is caused by the volcanic rending open of the
earth's crust beneath the sea ; indeed, the effects are
even more dire. For now, in addition to the displace-
ment of a vast body of water, owing to its having
rushed down into the chasm just opened, that water
has fallen into an incandescent abyss of enormous
area, and most of it has been simultaneously converted

THE TIDES 159

into steam, thus liberating forces which threaten
to rive the globe asunder. It is, indeed, highly
probable that many earthquakes are caused in this
way, apart altogether from the dreadful damage done
by the mighty mass of displaced water rushing back
upon the land, and overwhelming it, as the breaking
loose of a dammed up reservoir drowns the whole valley
beneath.

Probably, however, enough has been said upon this
part of the subject, especially as we are at the close of
the chapter ; and it would be entirely wrong to leave
the reader with the terrible impression of the earth-
quake wave upon his mind. These incidental happen-
ings are, of course, calamities of the highest order, but
they bear no closer relation to the altogether calm
and beneficent action of the regular tides than does
the hurricane bear to the gentle zephyr or the steady
faithful Trade Wind. Drawn by the persistent suasion
of our satellite, the sea performs with beautiful
regularity its invaluable task of cleansing the shores,
which, left without such ablutions, or with only
irregular visitations of the sparkling flood, would, in
a very large number of cases, be entirely pestilential.
It is one of the most important ministrations to earth
of the benevolent sea.

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF
FOOD SUPPLY

No matter in what light we consider the ocean, the
magnificence of every detail thereof strikes us with
awe and admiration such as the consideration of no
other portion of the globe can produce. Nor can any
familiarity with the particular subject under review
dispel this, however homely it may be. In the present
case, that of food supply, the first thing that must
inevitably strike us is the vastness of that supply, so
vast, indeed, that it defies our calculations and wraps
itself in impenetrable mystery. It is a harvest-field
needing no tillage, and indeed untillable, an inex-
haustible field constantly reproducing its harvest, a
harvest of good food for man, wherefrom his most
energetic efforts can only take the very smallest
gleanings ; for what are his requirements compared
with those of the incalculable army of inedible, pre-
datory creatures in the sea, which must be, and are, all
bountifully fed continually ? He, of course, is handi-
capped in the pursuit — many hindrances combine to
prevent him from taking his lawful toll of the sea's
wealth, and when he does get an opportunity com-
mensurate with his desires, how suddenly is he over-
whelmed with too great plenty, abundance which in
many cases he can neither sell nor give away, a store of

160

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 161

good food which rapidly becomes an offence to the
senses and a danger to health by reason of its essen-
tially perishable nature. It is almost like the manna
of the Israelites, which, supplied daily, must be eaten
daily, or it bred worms and stank.

And this, too, in spite of the fact that in various
ways the harvest of the sea may be stored, may be
kept for indefinite periods after special treatment. It
is obvious that the quantities which may be thus
treated for preservation are strictly limited, and will
be still in a special sense, even though the needs of
man should compel him to depend more and more
upon the harvest of the sea for food. But, before
going further, I must, to avoid misapprehension, ad-
vert for a moment to what I have said as to the inex-
haustibility of the food supply of the sea. I shall be
told that in certain regions man's efforts have depleted
the sea to such an extent that it has been found neces-
sary to abandon the fishery there, at least partially, as
being no longer remunerative, and in other portions of
the sea near the coasts of our own islands, for instance,
it has been considered essential to enforce certain laws
as to prohibiting times of fishing, and also to disallow
fishing within three miles of the shore. But this
apparently exhaustible character of the ocean as a
food store only applies to those portions of the sea
easily within man's reach, as on certain banks in the
North Sea, every foot of which may be dredged over
by the powerful steam trawlers, and to the shallows
near shore which have been so long and patiently
searched by the fishermen. Moreover, in the former
case the peculiar kinds of fish which are becoming
scarcer, and are, as the fishermen say sometimes, not to

M

162 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

be found at all, are those whose habits render them
peculiarly liable to extinction wherever man can reach
them — flat fish of all kinds, which lie on the sand
ready to be scooped in by the dredger or trawl. The
marvel is, not that these banks should begin to show
signs of depletion, but that with so restricted an area
and such extraordinarily sluggish fish, whose flesh is so
delicate that the demand for them exceeds the supply,
that they have not been completely cleared of fish
long ago — by the efforts of the trawlers alone, I
mean, and without taking into account at all the
operations of their natural enemies, who can and do
pursue them everywhere and at all times of the day
or the year, preying upon them from the time they are
deposited as ova until they attain the size of edible
fish.

There is also another side to this tale of depletion.
Many experienced fishermen aver that so far from
trawling exhausting the supply of fish on any given
bank, it cultivates a continuous supply. I have often
heard tales of certain ridges and valleys on well-known
banks which have been avoided by common consent
of the fishermen in order that they might see if the
fish would increase in numbers, but so far from that
being the case it was found that the fish disappeared
altogether, owing, so my informants believed, to the
fact that they, the fish, had been accustomed to have
their natural food stirred up from the bottom by the
drag of the trawl, and not finding it as easily obtain-
able as it used to be, they had deserted the spot
altogether. Of the truth of this I can say nothing ;
I can only record the fishermen's evidence. But with
regard to the necessity for protecting the fish on

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 163

the shallows near the shore, there can be no conflict
of opinion. There is, however, very grave difficulty
in carrying out such protection ; for the only way
to do so efficiently, would be to prohibit shrimping
altogether, inflicting great hardship upon a large
body of hard toiling men, who, in gathering their
curious harvest, destroy enormous quantities of im-
mature fish which abound in these shallows, in order
to escape the depredations of their natural enemies,
who frequent deeper waters.

But when we have admitted all we can on the
score of exhausting any portion of the harvest of the
sea, we have really come to the conclusion that the sub-
ject is hardly worth consideration. It can only affect
the flat fish, and only then in certain very restricted
areas, so that it may, indeed, be said that the harvest
of the sea is inexhaustible without fear of contradiction.
Moreover, such is the fecundity of the sea that it is
certain, however far man's inventive powers may
enable him to reach down into the as yet unfished
depths and draw from their limitless stores, he will
never be able to make the least impression upon the
incalculable wealth of the sea in food. For what, after
all, are his puny efforts compared with the never-
ceasing devourings of the sea-monsters ? It has been
calculated that an adult rorqual will require and
obtain at least two tons of herrings every day to satisfy
his hunger, and who knows how many of these raven-
ous whales accompany each school of herring, to say
nothing of the dog-fish and other devourers, whose
depredations are even greater by reason of their mighty
hosts. These, however, are, as must necessarily be
the case, but general statements, and it is time to

164 OUK HERITAGE THE SEA

particularize a little, to survey tlie various parts of the
ocean within our knowledge, and make some effort,
however feeble, to realize what this beneficent element
holds in store for the sons of man in the way of food.

So vast is the sea, that the mere fact of being able
from so infinitesimal a speck on it as a boat to let
down hook or net where the bottom may be reached
and be sure of bringing up some kind of fish, will,
if we think for a moment, fill us with amazement at
the amount of its population. It is as if a balloonist,
stealing silently along at night over an utterly un-
known country, should only have to let down a basket
on a line to haul it up almost immediately filled with
good food. But when we remember that at certain
seasons and in certain places this population is aug-
mented to such an extent that it can only be com-
pared to — but, no, we have nothing at all on earth
with which the wealth of the sea can be compared.
Not even the swarms of flies in the most vermin-
haunted regions of the earth can for a moment com-
pare with the solid armies of the herring, the mackerel,
or the cod. Take, for instance, the first of these
citizens, the one with which as food we are most
familiar, but of whose habits even the most learned of
sea-naturalists know so little — the herring. From
those hidden recesses of the sea, where the infallible
instinct of the female Clupea harengus bids her lay her
hundred thousand eggs, he emerges, a host uncount-
able, nay, unthinkable, in its numbers. And yet he
has been providing food for vast numbers of other fish
during the period between his appearance as an egg
and his attainment of adolescence. Suppose that
those natural checks upon his numbers could have

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY Ifi5

been removed ? Is it too much to imagine that, for
such a host as he would then have presented, the
ample ocean itself would hardly have afforded room ?
Fanciful as the idea may seem to some, I know of no
better way of converting a sceptic to such an opinion
than to show him a school of herring on the march,
and ask him to try and assess their bulk and weight,
to say nothing of their numbers. Even spread as a
thin layer over several square miles of sea, they would
appal us with their profusion ; but when we remember
that these schools are many feet deep, and that just
the remotest corner of them impinging upon the nets
of a fleet of fishing-boats will suffice to load them all,
if the nets do not break, we get a faint idea of what is
meant by the wealth of the sea.

As far as we are concerned in Britain, the prin-
cipal visitants among fish to our shores, for the purpose
of spawning, are herring, pilchards — which are a species
of herring — and mackerel. The former are the most
numerous, and are rightly accounted the most valu-
able, because as a food-fish they have really no rival,
whether fresh or cured. If only they were less plen-
tiful, they would be placed on an equality with the
lordly salmon, and would certainly, if scarce, be as
costly. But, fortunately, they are not, and their cheap-
ness and consequent accessibility by the very poorest
should never blind us to their super-eminent virtues.
With wonderful regularity they appear from the
remote depths, where they feed and grow fat — on
who knows what incredibly abundant stores of their
special food — for their long patrol of these shores in
order to deposit their ova. All through that long
march, although they furnish such abundant supplies

166 OUE HEKITAGE THE SEA

of food for others, they themselves eat not, for who-
ever saw a herring with any food in its entrails?
Therefore they bring us the hidden riches of the
ocean, and distribute that wealth in most lavish
fashion, retiring again — those that survive, lean and
starving — when their mission is accomplished, to the
feeding-grounds whence they came, and whose locality
is known to no man.

In the same mysterious fashion come the mackerel,
but far less regularly, and certainly with much more
independent movements. Nor do they fast upon their
visit, for the mackerel is among the most ravenous of
fish among all the finny hosts noted for their insati-
able appetites. And while his legions are also in
number like the sands of the sea, they are as far
inferior in quantity to those of the herring as is his
flavour to that of the commonest of fish. There is
really no comparison between them in point of value,
but still they do furnish an enormous supply of cheap
food, and as such are highly esteemed. And if only
it were possible to increase the means of distribution
of these two fish among our poorer population, there
would be far less hunger than there is, for the enor-
mous supply would enable them to be sold in the
remotest inland village at a less cost than that of
any other form of food, while the fishermen would
not need to sell them to the distributor at any less
price than he now receives. At present, the difference
between the price received by the fishermen and that
paid by the consumer is anywhere between 1000 and
2000 per cent., which goes a great way towards
neutralizing the benefit conferred upon our people
by the benevolent sea. This enormous increase in

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 167

price, owing to the greed of the middleman and the
difficulties of distribution, will one day certainly be
lowered as the need arises, for men will no longer
consent to go hungry while such superabundant
supplies of food are being wasted.

But, after all, vast as are the supplies of herring
and mackerel brought to our thresholds by the
instinct of the creatures themselves, there are also
enormous hosts of other fish which abound in our
seas within comparatively easy reach, but which,
owing to the lack of distributional facilities, are dear,
and indeed almost unattainable by people of moderate
means in inland towns and villages. The west coast
of Ireland, for instance, teems with fish of the best
quality, which are obtainable, weather permitting, all
the year round. Yet the people of Ireland lack food
to the extent of living upon potatoes, buttermilk, and
Indian meal, with all this wealth of succulent brain-
building food clamouring at their very doors. It is
sad to think of, but I console myself by remembering
that these anomalies right themselves, or rather, are
righted, in time ; only the marvel is, that an intelligent
people should for so long be content to submit to such
deprivation of what is not only their undoubted right,
but what would, properly handled, secure to a large
proportion of coast dwellers a good livelihood. At
present, however, food of many kinds is fairly easy to
procure from the land — nay, from many lands having
a surplus — because of the ease and facility with which
our ships come and go. But if, and when, these new
lands need their food for themselves, or the commerce
on which we rely is hindered by any cause, it will
become absolutely necessary to find other sources of

168 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

food supply, and then the treasure of the ocean will
be eagerly pounced upon, much as it is now neglected.
The process of garnering the harvest of the sea is,
I will admit, in some places a severe one for those
engaged therein, but where it is imperative that it
should be carried on, that never hinders. I have
heard the tale several times that the reason why fish-
ing is not more generally carried on upon the prolific
fishing-grounds of the west coast of Ireland is because
of its hardships, owing to the inclemency of the weather
and the infrequency of the gales, which, if true,
would only argue that the west coast Irish were such
a feeble folk that they were hardly fit to live on the
threshold of so teeming a sea-pasture. But it is not
true, nor anything like true, any more than the
specious tales of the unemployed, which draw thou-
sands of demoralizing pounds from the charitable, are
true. For inclemency of weather and gales, look at
the Norwegian coasts, the shores of Iceland, the littoral
of Labrador, yet there the inhabitants must fish or
starve. Compared with the rigours of those fishing-
grounds, the west coast of Ireland is a paradise, even
in winter. No, other reasons must be sought for the
lack of enterprise shown by Irish fishermen, these are
too weak to hold water. I have a shrewd idea of the
true reasons myself, but I do not wish to raise strife
by opening up a vexed question with which my subject
has naught to do. One thing cannot, at any rate, be
brought within the region of controversy, which is the
fact of the abundance of the best edible and easily
caught fish in close proximity to the abodes of the
poorest people in the world.

Before going too far afield, let us glance for a little

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 169

at the work of our own fishermen sailing from Grimsby,
which is known as the greatest fishing-port in the world.
Steam has revolutionized the industry as carried on at
Grimsby; it has also allowed the fishermen to go as
far from home as the Arctic regions almost in quest
of their finny prey. Yet, owing to the well system,
they find it possible to keep their catch alive, and
land them in almost as good condition as if they were
caught just off the Humber. But this habit of theirs
of roaming so far away from home, acquired of late
years, has often got them into serious difficulties. The
Danes, who own Iceland, but get very little good of
it, are intensely jealous of their rights and dignities,
as small nations and peoples always are ; and so,
although the territorial limit of three miles off shore
might as well not exist for all the difference it makes
to Denmark, she keeps a gunboat on the prowl in
order to seize any hapless Grimsby trawler that may
chance to be fishing so near to these inclement shores
as to get within the three-mile limit. The penalties
enforced are tremendous — confiscation of gear and
catch, and the infliction of a hundred-pound fine is
the usual ruinous mulct, entirely so to a small owner,
but pressing terribly hard upon the men. Of course,
it may be said that they have the remedy in their own
hands : to keep away from these inhospitable shores.
That is true, yet until fishermen learn that it is not
necessary to fish in such shallow water in order to
secure most abundant hauls, and that with modern
gear the extra work and time involved in using a few
fathoms more of line is not great, these unpleasant-
nesses will still go on. Truth to tell, fishermen
generally believe that beyond a certain shallow depth,

170 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

such as may be found on the Dogger Bank and other
similar plateaux in the North Sea, the fish do not
congregate, and they will not go there to look for
them. Of course, where the water is very deep the
labour of the fishermen is or would be tremendously
enhanced, as would the amount of time taken ; but I
believe the fish would be found just as plentiful as in
the palmy days of the bank-trawling, where the trawl
could not be dragged too long because it would be
too heavy to heave in. And it is a question easily
answered, I think, whether it would not be better to
undertake deeper trawling nearer home than go so far
afield and take so many risks. But it is a difficult
matter to advise experts ; and, besides, it savours, to
them at any rate, of impertinence, so perhaps I had
better refrain from further attempts in that direction.
What, however, I would like to say before leaving this
section is, that the wealth of the sea in edible fish is
by no means confined to the shallows and banks near
our shores, but is spread with fair partiality over the
sea-bed, even to depths undreamed of by the ordinary
fishermen.

Cross we now the broad Atlantic to those wonderful
plateaux in the sea, whereof Kipling wrote so graphi-
cally and so truly in " Captain Courageous," the New-
foundland and Nova Scotian Banks. Here, indeed, we
have a preserve of Nature's own making, which man,
come he in never so many numbers, can do naught
to deplete or even lessen. This is, perhaps, the most
thickly populated cod-country in the whole watery
•world. I say perhaps advisedly, for since our ignorance
of what obtains beneath the ocean's surface is so vast,
it is hardly safe to generalize from the few facts which

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 171

we undoubtedly do possess. It is true that our
imagination, be it ever so vivid, can hardly picture to
us any portion of the sea more densely packed with
great fish than are the Newfoundland Banks ; but, then,
oceanic facts are given to transcending the efforts of
the imagination. Here, at any rate, there are no inter-
ferences with natural laws on the plea of protecting
the deep-sea denizens from man. Also, there is no
territorial jurisdiction, because the banks are all much
more than the stipulated three miles from any coast.
Like the ocean, this splendid fishing-ground is free
to all ; and all may know that, toil as they will, and
have what success they may, they will not, because
they cannot, diminish the plenitude of the supply by
one jot, any more, indeed, than they could decrease
the water of the ocean by using a hand-pump. And
this would remain true if the fishing fleets were
augmented a hundredfold, because the hidden wealth
of the sea is incalculable by man. Only, he is apt to
form his conclusions from what he sees, and forget the
magnitude and importance of the unseen, which, of
course, is but natural.

The enormous area over which the cod range in
their countless myriads, numbers beyond all the powers
of human imagination, embraces between fifteen and
twenty thousand square miles, and its finny population
do not merely overlay the bottom in one stratum, but
in many strata, so that the depths are thick with them.
They are not found in the same numbers at all seasons,
moving hither and thither, but not far, in their search
for food at times, although generally that food comes
to them, and thus obviates the necessity of their
travelling far. But even at their slackest time they

172 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

must be amazingly numerous when compared with the
flocks and herds of the land which must be so care-
fully preserved and fed by the hand of man. And
all along the northern littoral of America, as far as
the confines of the frozen sea, fish of many kinds, but
almost all edible, are to be found in the same mighty
hosts, the inclement weather above the sea affecting
them not at all. Here, again, the toll taken of them
by man is so small as to be entirely negligeable, it
probably does not amount to as much in a whole
season as would be devoured by two or three adult
rorquals. Does it not, then, seem strange and un-
fortunate that whole populations should ever die of
famine with such boundless stores of food available, if
only means of transporting it were organized ?

Not only are fish in large quantities to be found
within a few miles of the shore, but the labours of
the United States deep-sea dredging expeditions hare
proved that in depths beyond those ever reached by
fishermen, or ever before dreamed of as available for
fishing purposes, such valuable food-fish as the halibut
and other varieties of the pleuronectidce are to be found
in great numbers and of huge size. And in those
depths of water the range of such fish is vastly ex-
tended, because below a certain depth it has been
proved that the temperature of the sea is everywhere
equal, and temperature is one of the greatest factors
in the distribution of fish of edible kinds which are
all addicted to coolness, loving their environment to be
a little only above freezing-point. The greater part
of the North Atlantic Ocean, then, north of the tropics,
is an immense reservoir of fish, practically of all the
edible kinds, of which it is well within the truth to

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 173

say that not one ten-millionth part is utilized for the
food of man, despite the fact of the difficulty of feed-
ing sufficiently the toiling millions of workers upon
nourishing and palatable food. With the advance of
science, new methods of food-preserving have attained
to such perfection that it is not too much to hope that
before long more attention will be paid to the harvest
of the sea, in order that it may be delivered to inland
populations without being rendered tasteless and even
detrimental to health by being over impregnated with
salt, an effete and barbarous method of preserving food,
which will surely disappear with the spread of know-
ledge. Even now it is a well-known fact that our
splendid floating hotels carry with them from home
sufficient fresh fish of the most valuable kinds, such
as salmon, trout, turbot, and lobsters, to provide dainty
dishes for their passengers throughout the whole of
the voyage. It only needs an extension of this
principle to the land for inland peoples to be fed on
fresh fish at reasonable rates which shall yet yield
large profits on the capital employed. There is really
no more difficulty in doing this than that which has
been so successfully overcome in America in the matter
of fresh meat. The great butchers of Chicago have
practically eliminated the butcher's shop. Their
travellers pervade the country, taking orders for meat,
which is sent to their demand in refrigerator-boxes,
stowed in refrigerating-cars, so that remote hamlets,
thousands of miles away, get their fresh joints from
the great stockyards controlled by such giants of com-
merce as Armour, Swift, and Cudahy. With the
"Trust" methods of these leviathans I have here
nothing to do ; 1 hate them, and feel that they should

174 OUK HERITAGE THE SEA

be kept within bounds by the State; but I have
nothing but admiration for the legitimate business
enterprise which they exhibit.

Of the abysses of the Atlantic I have said nothing,
not believing that they, although containing un-
doubtedly immense quantities of fish which may be
eaten, will ever be exploited ; for many reasons,
chief among which is the fact that deep-sea fish, so
far as we know, are, although eatable, very hard and
tasteless. They may, of course, be treated as the
Italians treat the tunny, an essentially deep-sea fish,
namely, by boiling in oil and preserving the flesh in
tins; but that is too costly a process ever to solve
a food problem where cheapness is the first considera-
tion. Nor have I said anything about the commercial
aspect of dealing with the non-edible creatures, such
as seals, whales, etc., which in the past have been
caught merely for their oil and skins, but are now
being utilized entirely by the enterprising men who
have established factories on barren coasts to deal
with this hitherto undeveloped mine of wealth. But
since manure derived from animal substances, such
as bone or fish, plays such an important part in the
production of our food ashore, I do not think this
new venture ought to be lightly passed over. More
especially as it fulfils that first essential of successful
enterprise to-day, namely, that of utilizing products
which have hitherto been regarded as waste. In many
places, but notably in Newfoundland, the chase of the
whales, hitherto regarded as useless owing to the low
value of their oil, as well as its small quantity, and
also the extremely scanty amount of baleen or whale-
bone to be got from them, is now being carried on

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 175

with ardour, only tempered by the fact that for much
of the year the weather renders operations impossible.
But before very long we may see many other such
stations established in more temperate places, and
what is now but a small industry greatly extended,
as indeed it deserves to be. And also, although it
must ever involve hard and extremely filthy labour
with the maximum of discomfort, it will be but a
pleasurable amusement compared with what the old-
time whalers must needs have endured, while its gains
will be out of all proportion greater for the workers.

All around the shores of the Antilles and in the
Gulf of Mexico and Florida the wealth of the sea in
fish is, while still enormous, not to be compared with
that of the northern coasts of America and Europe,
nor is the fish of anything like so highly edible a
quality. Moreover, owing to the intense heat of the
atmosphere causing putrefaction to set in so rapidly
after capture, it has not yet been found practicable
to preserve fish here ; although, if the fish were highly
sought after for their food qualities, that could easily
be got over by the refrigerating method, and cold
storage would keep them sweet as long as required.
A somewhat striking example of this was brought
under my notice a few months ago. Returning from
the West Indies in a swift steamer, we carried a large
number of living turtles .in shallow tanks for the
delectation of gourmands at home. These curious
reptiles will not feed in such captivity, and conse-
quently, as might be expected, they occasionally die.
An experienced eye can always detect the symptoms
of approaching death, when an order is at once given
to the butcher, who cuts the throat of the creature,

176 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

or, as an Irishman would, say, kills it to save its life.
It is then placed in the refrigerating room, where the
natural process of decay is at once arrested, and in
due time the frozen body is landed, fetching a good
price, if not so great as it would obtain were it living.
This, of course, can be done, no matter how high the
temperature may be at the time.

It is a curious confirmation of the statement of the
greater value of the northern fish, that a large trade
is done with the West Indies in salted cod and
herrings, and even mackerel from the United States
and Canada, although only the lower grades of fish
are sent. The people inhabiting these islands and the
coasts of the Spanish main, though loudly vaunting
the merits of fish caught locally, crave for the northern
fish — hard, bitter, briny, and tasteless as they may
seem to us. But, indeed, with the exception of the
flying-fish industry at Barbados, the fishing in these
islands, and all around the shores of the Gulf of
Mexico, is almost entirely neglected, although why
it should be so is a mystery to me. Of the wealth
of these seas in fish, however, there has never been,
because there cannot be, any question whatever.

Crossing the equator and coming south on either
shore the same thing is observable. Fish there are
in abundance, but as far as man is concerned there
might as well be none. Truly the land is but sparsely
inhabited, and consequently there is but little demand
for this valuable form of food, but still the absence
of enterprise in this direction is very plainly marked
everywhere. It is not, however, until we reach the
Southern Horn of Africa that this indifference to
ocean's bounty becomes to the fish-loving observer a

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 177

thing to be marvelled at exceedingly. Here are to be
found fishing grounds as prolific, I suppose, as any in
the wide ocean; and the fish are of the same high
quality as those in the north, owing to the fact that
the temperate zone has again been reached. Every
mile of the shores of South Africa above, say, 28° S.,
is simply infested with the most delicious fish — there
are supplies, if needed, for all the peoples of the world
which are not drawn upon at all. And that is by no
means all. Eight off the Cape of Good Hope itself,
out in the great Southern Ocean, is to be found the
Agulhas Bank, with an area as large as Wales and
an average depth of about forty fathoms, which is
teeming with splendid fish that are never molested
save by the becalmed sailing ship, which, dropping
a deep-sea lead-line, with a couple of hooks attached
just above the lead, seldom fails to secure a couple of
magnificent cod in the momentary interval between
sounding and hauling up. Perhaps some day, when
South Africa comes to her own and has a great popu-
lation, this great reservoir of good food will be drawn
upon ; meanwhile it lies fallow as it were, only kept in
equipoise, prevented from overcrowding the seas by
the natural checks ordained to that end and constantly
in operation. But, indeed, as I am never tired of
pointing out, those checks need continually to be
exerted, for man's toll of the wealth of the sea is so
utterly trifling as to be safely disregarded in the
oceanic scheme of life.

Now we enter upon an ocean, which laves the
shores of some of the most hardly bestead peoples in
point of food. As we go up the East African littoral,
passing between the great island of Madagascar and

178 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

the mainland, we find the sea everywhere replete with
the most delicious fish. Here I have seen them in
such enormous quantities as to make me gasp; but
a fishing-boat is a rare sight indeed. Well, that
accounts, of course, for the neglect of the fish, for the
people being very low in the scale of civilization, and
not at all given to nautical adventure, are precluded
from taking toll of the sea as they otherwise un-
doubtedly would. Here, as everywhere along this
coast, the only native seafarers are the Arabs, and
they are far too energetic in money-making on other
lines to become fishermen. Fishers of men they have
always been until Britain stopped them (they do a
bit of it even now, when they get a chance), and born
traders they are, of course, but fishermen ! oh no ; the
gains are too small. And as for food, well, whoever
lacks in those regions, be very sure that the Arab will
not. Occasionally, in some harbour or sheltered road-
stead, a scattered few fishermen will be seen plying
their profession in a timorous, tentative fashion, but
nowhere as if they had any heart in their work.
Zanzibar Roads, for instance, swarm with fish of great
size and delicious flavour, but the utmost number of
fishermen I have ever seen there at work has not
exceeded a dozen at one time, although there is a
teeming population on the island, and plenty of
money wherewith to buy. The same story holds good
of Madagascar ; the natives, though fond of flesh food,
do not fish, apparently do not care to draw upon the
vast supplies of succulent food the sea brings up to
their very doors.

Eight up along the African coast to Somaliland,
along the shores of the Red Sea and the Persian

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 179

Gulf, the same neglect of the sea's riches is to be
seen, but with greater excuse, since here the natives
are entirely disinclined for seafaring, and besides
their numbers are very small. And now we come to
the vast continent of Hindostan, with its thousands of
miles of sea-board, with its hungry millions of in-
habitants swarming along those easily accessible shores,
people essentially maritime and inured to seafaring,
but we must deal with them in another chapter.

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD
SUPPLY (Continued)

IT cannot be said that, compared with many other
parts of the ocean, the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal
show an over-abundance of fish. There are no im-
mense shoals to be seen there, as, for instance, are of
constant occurrence in the temperate zones — yet
there is a bountiful supply of fish near the shores to be
caught with hook and line, if not with nets. And fish
is, moreover, the only form of flesh food permitted by
their religion to millions of these hungry coast-
dwellers, who, like the vast majority of the inhabitants
of Hindostan, are always hovering on the very verge
of famine. Yet here, again, the strange spectacle may
be witnessed of a whole people, who may never be
said to have their hunger fully satisfied, neglecting
the bountiful provision which Nature has brought
within their reach. Such feeble and futile attempts
at fishing as are made in some places excite our
wondering pity, both at the inadequacy of the equip-
ment used and by the calm fatalistic daring of the
fishermen. Here may be seen the fisherman putting
forth upon the bosom of the mighty deep upon a con-
trivance the invention of which is almost coeval with
navigation — just three cocoa-tree logs, each about
eight feet in length, ten inches across, and six inches

180

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 181

through, the two outer ones having their ends slightly
curved inwards towards each other, and the whole
seized together with lashings of coir spunyarn. For
all equipment the fisherman has a paddle, a rush
basket lashed to one of the seizings, and his coir fish-
ing-line, with a polished stone for sinker. He is
naked all but a loin-cloth, or dhoti, and a turban, in
the folds of which he may sometime keep a leaf of
tobacco and a small coin. Thus, without food or
water, he will venture as far as three miles from the
shore, and remain tossing upon the heaving billows in
the attitude of prayer, his knees calloused like pieces
of rhinoceros hide, for sometimes the whole night
through. And, if he be exceptionally fortunate, his
whole catch may sell for the equivalent of eight-
pence, or eight annas. There is, to my mind, some-
thing mysterious about this lack of ability to extend
or improve upon such a miserably inadequate and
painful way of fishing.

For the people are fond of fish, not, as far as I
could see, eaten fresh, though that may be because of
the exceedingly scanty supply, but highly salted and
dried to the hardness of wood. These are mostly a
kind of ribbon-fish, something like a flattened eel,
which are scorched over the fire, then rubbed up into
a rough powder and mingled with curry to flavour the
everlasting rice. A further proof, if any were needed,
that it is not from any reluctance to face the sea in its
most perilous forms that the fisheries are neglected
may be found in the existence from time immemorial
of the pearl fisheries in the Gulf of Manaar, on the
southern shores of India. Here the natives almost
live in the sea, diving for pearls, and making fortunes

182 OUB HEKITAGE THE SEA

— for others. They toil like slaves and live like fish,
but with far less food, at what is one of the most
dangerous and distressing occupations known. Their
lives are short and hard, and certainly the ordinary
fisherman's calling, onerous and uncertain as it is,
cannot be nearly as much so as theirs.

The whole coasts of the Bay of Bengal are thus
neglected in the matter of fishing, and it is not until
we reach the coral groups of the Maldives and Lacca-
dives that we find a regular fishing population, driven
to thus seeking a livelihood by the scantiness of the
food supply on shore. But when we enter the Indian
Archipelago, that marvellous congeries of huge fertile
islands, we find again the same indifference to ocean's
wealth, except where the frugal and industrious
Chinese are at work. But here a curious trade begins,
dependent entirely upon the strange tastes of the
wealthy in China itself. Neglecting the many fine
fish that abound, the seafarers, mostly Malays and
Siamese, with a sprinkling of Chinese who attend to
the business side, the fishermen here catch sharks for
their fins, and search the crowns of shallow reefs for
the Holothuria, or sea-slug, a black, loathsome-looking
tube, which exudes, when touched, a variegated skein
of slimy threads together with fragments of coral.
These two curious products of the sea are boiled,
dried in wood-smoke, and stored for conveyance to
China, where they fetch a price, varying according
to some strange standard of quality, from £100 to
£200 per ton. With them is also conveyed another
strange food, which, while not strictly a product of
the ocean itself, is closely allied thereto, I allude to
the nests of the sea-swallow (callocalia esculentci), which

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 183

are only found adhering to the sides of sea-washed
caves inaccessible by land. These nests are, like the
sea-slug and the shark's fin, highly glutinous, and as
such are prized by the wealthy Chinese. In this
strange branch of the fisherman's trade a very large
number of the semi-savage but wholly nautical
denizens of those shores are constantly engaged, since
their more congenial occupations of piracy, slave-
raiding, and head-hunting have been effectually put a
stop to by the exertions of our watchful cruisers, much,
of course to the disgust of the artless Malays, Siamese,
and Dyaks, who cannot for the life of them understand
why these old-established customs of theirs should be
interfered with by a set of meddlesome strangers.

But of fishing, pure and simple, there is exceed-
ingly little until we get to the Chinese coast, where,
for the first time since we left the shores of Europe
and North America, we find genuine fishermen de-
voting all their time and skill and industry to the
collection of the harvest of the sea. Of course, know-
ing what we do of the omnivorous habits of the
Chinese, who have extended their list of edibles much
farther than any other nation under heaven, we are
not, or should not, be surprised at this. At the same
time, it must be admitted that Nature has not been
as lavish to the Chinese in the matter of fish as she
has to more northern nations. The Chinese coasts
know no shoals of herring, or mackerel, or cod coming
periodically in their innumerable hosts to given points,
apparently for the sole purpose of being caught and
utilized for the food of man. No, the fish -supply of
China is scattered, diffuse ; and the Chinese fishermen
must put forward all his patience, energy, and skill

184 OUR HEEITAGE THE SEA

to get a haul which will be remunerative even to his
modest ideas. Not the least curious of the Chinese
methods is the one that, even as I write, is being
exhibited in the London Hippodrome : the utilization
of trained cormorants for the purpose of fishiug, a
method of hunting fish akin to the ancient sport of
hawking, and one that with the Chinese has doubtless
been practised from time immemorial. It may, how-
ever, be taken for granted that in all methods of
obtaining food, whether by land or sea, the Chinese
will take the very highest place, first because of their
patience, next because of their skill, and thirdly
because all is food that can be eaten.

Diverging for a moment to a group of islands not
far from the coast of China, the Philippines, I found
there, amid a great neglect of the offshore fishing, a
curious little method of fishing practised in Cebu and
Cavite Bay. The natives would come off in their
canoes and make fast to the side of a ship. Their
lines were of exceedingly fine twisted grass and
their hooks very small. The bait they used was
rice boiled into glue, and they each carried a bottle-
shaped basket of cane with a small opening in the
side. This they put into the water secured by a line.
As each fish, small mullet-like creatures about ten
inches long, was hauled up, the fisherman, holding
one end of a disgorger in his mouth, freed the hook,
which the fish has invariably swallowed, with a most
dexterous movement, and dropped his prey into the
floating basket. In a couple of hours a basketful
would be secured, and the fisherman, making all speed
shoreward, reaped, let us hope, a goodly reward, in
his opinion, for his labour. With this sole exception

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 185

the fishing in the Philippines seemed to me about on
a par with that carried on in all the rest of the East
Indian Isles.

And now, as we go north, we come to what I think
all unbiassed and thoughtful opinion concedes is the
most marvellous nation in the world, Japan. Coming
late as they have into the comity of nations, they
have proved themselves to be superior in nearly every
respect to all other nations, even where their ideas
differ fundamentally. But with the nation, as such,
we have now no concern, only the fishing part of it.
Japan, like Britain, is an island nation, and at no part
is it very far from the sea, consequently, although
the land is cultivated with a minuteness of perfection
unknown elsewhere, the harvest of the sea is never
neglected, and, to the bulk of the Japanese, fish is a
daily article of diet. But the Japanese is not by any
means an omnivorous feeder like the Chinese, rather
is he dainty in his tastes as in his appreciation of the
beautiful; and so we do not find the strange, the
outre forms of ocean's denizens served up to the eater
in Japan. Still it must again be noted that, com-
pared with the enormous supplies of fish daily brought
within our reach in Britain, Japan is comparatively
poor, the stock of fish is exigent compared with ours,
which we do not at all appreciate as we ought. Still,
with all its drawbacks, the Japanese attend so dili-
gently to the harvest of the sea, that it may safely
be said that in no country in the world does fish bulk
so largely in the daily diet of the inhabitants as in
Japan, which is just what might have been predi-
cated of so enlightened and painstaking and frugal
a people. No doubt, since their acquisition of the

186 OUE HERITAGE THE SEA

half of Saghalien Island, and their consequent free
access ,to the prolific fisheries of the North, they will
be able to extend very greatly their supply of this
nourishing food for their hard-working and meritorious
population. As it is, it is only stating the bare truth
to say that in no country in the world is such great
and careful attention paid to the fisheries; and now
I see that an attempt is being made to compete with
France in the supply of sardines preserved in oil, for
it is said that the finest sardines in the world are
found in the bays of the coast of Japan. An amazing
fact, too, may be noted in connection with this, viz.
that about one-twelfth of Japan's teeming population
is engaged in her fisheries. I should not be in the
least surprised were Japan to revive the sperm-whaling
industry, to her own great benefit, since her business-
like people cannot be ignorant of the fact that, for a
century, the "Japan Grounds" were the richest and
most favoured of all the whaling-grounds of the world
visited by American and English whaling vessels.

The Arctic regions of the Pacific are, like the corre-
sponding latitudes in the Atlantic, wealthy beyond
account in fish, but, unlike the Atlantic, there is a
dearth of fishermen and of markets. I can never
forget the infinite abundance of the finest fish in the
shallow waters of the Okhotsk sea, where by day or
night anywhere a line had only to be let down to
secure instantly some splendid specimen of the finny
tribes. All were large, and all were delicious, the
salmonidas predominating. Here, I think, must be
the great feeding-grounds for the salmon, which, as-
cending the Columbia River, in Oregon, furnish so
large a proportion of the peoples in Western lands

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 187

with delicious food in tins. The salmon is a river-
caught fish, but he attains his fatness in the sea, and
therefore I have a right to claim him as a portion of
the wealth of ocean, lavished in overflowing measure
for the food of man. But he is not caught at sea to
any extent, for the simple reason that there is no one
there to catch him. Such fishermen as there are in
those wild and inhospitable regions are busy taking
the whale for oil and baleen and the seal for fur, and
fishing for food as a matter of commerce is practically
non-existent, with the exception of a few scattered
Indians who catch the dry fish to feed themselves and
their dogs upon. And all down the Pacific shores of
the United States, although fish are very plentiful
and there are huge numbers of people to be fed, so
great is the wealth of the land in food, and so small
are the gains to be made in the catching of fish, that
fishing as a business is very much neglected even
now. And so it is all the way down to Cape Horn,
the monotonous tale of the bounty of the sea being
thus lightly passed over must be told and retold, but
with one pleasant reflection, which is, that whenever
the hungry peoples of the earth need food it will
always be there awaiting them, for the gifts of the
ocean are never withdrawn.

It may possibly appear as if I had too lightly
passed over this vast extent of coast, where, indeed,
there may be many ways of fishing, and many races
of fishermen ; but I hope it will be remembered that
I am not considering so much the many modes of fish-
ing practised in the world, as the capabilities of the
ocean for supplying the needs of all who may apply
to it. There are few places, indeed, where, given the

188 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

proper knowledge and perseverance, the ocean will not
be found to be a far richer harvest-field than the land,
and that with vastly less labour than the earth demands
from those who till it. Now we must go north again ;
for the Pacific, unlike the Atlantic, has all down its
centre, and scattered over its vast area, a large number
of islands, inhabited by most interesting peoples, and
especially so for our present purpose. First of all, let
us consider the beautiful Hawaiian Group, or Sandwich
Islands, now a part of the great United States common-
wealth. These splendid islands, set in a silver sea,
are inhabited by a gentle, amiable race of almost
amphibious natives, who, from very early times, have
been fully alive to the advantages the sea had to offer
them in the matter of food ; in fact, it is not too much
to say that, with the trivial exception of a few birds,
the only flesh-food known to these Hawaiians, until
the arrival of Captain Cook among them, was fish — if
what at first sight may appear an Irishism be per-
mitted. Of fruit and vegetables the kindly earth
yielded them an ample supply, but like all unsophisti-
cated mankind, they craved for animal food as well,
and they found in the seas laving their shores an
inexhaustible supply of the most varied kinds. The
desire to capture fish stimulated their inventive
genius both in the direction of canoe-building and in
the manufacture of fishing-tackle, in both of which
arts they developed amazing fertility of resource, in
the entire absence of metal tools. Nowhere in the
world are there to be seen such wonderful pieces of
workmanship in the way of hooks, lines, and nets,
wrought in the crudest way and from the most primi-
tive materials, as may be witnessed in the Pacific

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 189

islands even now, although the march of civilization
is fast sweeping those early arts away, and replacing
them with the more useful and durable, but far less
interesting and picturesque, tackle of Europe and
America. I have not been in Oahu for many years,
but even so long ago I saw that the steel fish-hook
and the cotton or hemp-line was becoming universal
in use among the natives, and now, I suppose, it would
be almost impossible to find any of the fishing-tackle
of native manufacture in use among them, or, indeed,
outside of a museum.

Out of the husk of the cocoa-nut, most unpromising
of fibres, from its rigidity and hardness as well as
shortness of fibre, the patient native spun his lines of
a fineness and durability quite marvellous to see,
especially when it is remembered that no mechanical
appliances were available, only the twisting up by the
fingers and the dexterous rolling on the bare thigh
to give the necessary " lay " to the line which makes
for strength. For the finer parts of the line, such as
the " snoods " of the hooks, etc., human hair was used,
and very fine and strong it was when spun up. But
it was in the hooks that the inventive genius of the
Kanaka showed itself principally. Some were of pearl-
shell, patiently ground down into a hook shape with
a piece of stone and sand, and when finished, shining
so brilliantly in the water that no bait was needed,
the fish were allured by the sheen alone. For bigger
fish a forked tree-root was chosen, and laboriously
scraped with a piece of sharp shell into the needed
shape, a lashing of fine coir, or hair-twine, being often
added around the bend of the hook to give additional
strength. With such hooks as these I have seen quite

190 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

large sharks caught, not, however, without the manifesta-
tion of great skill and patience on the part of the
fishermen who, in their frail canoes, dared to try con-
clusions with these ravening monsters of the deep.
Sometimes, but not often, a hook-shape stone was
found, or a fragment that might with infinite patience
be chipped into hook-shape; but these stone-hooks
were never in much favour. Small harpoons, or fish-
spears, tipped with sharp shells cut with barbs were
also used, and even the children used to catch small
fish in the shallows with tiny darts fabricated for them
by fond parents. By such means did the Hawaiian
natives secure for themelves an ample supply of fish
wherewith to flavour their vegetable-food, and they at
least could never have been accused of neglecting the
plentiful supplies afforded them by the ocean.

Coming farther south, among the more thickly
clustered groups of islands, we find the same careful
attention paid to the wealth of the sea. Indeed, it
would have been more than strange if it had not been
so, seeing how, in the vicinity of all the islands, the
waters teem with fish, even in the heart of the tropics.
The procedure of fishing varies with the genius of the
inhabitants, as might have been expected, but it all
had a family resemblance, and with all of them there
was the same readiness to eat the fish raw if fire was
not easy to obtain, as in a canoe at a good distance
from land ; for these natives, unlike the Fuegians of
Magellan's Straits, do not carry a fire in their canoes.
But some, notably the Tahitians and Fijians, went to
the length of weaving rude nets, with which they
secured splendid hauls of fish occasionally ; only,
having no means of preserving their catch, they did

not care to make very great hauls, any more, that is,
than could be'eaten by the village mouths before putre-
faction set in. Sometimes a whaler anchoring in one
of their bays brought them joy by catching and tow-
ing near the beach a hump-backed whale, which, when
denuded of its blubber and sent adrift, was eagerly
pounced upon by the natives, and towed ashore where
its bounteous store of flesh, resembling coarse beef, pro-
vided a royal feast for all the population. These
occasions were dates to reckon from, for the food was
to them delicious, and their own inventions of tackle
stopped far short of anything sufficiently strong for
catching the whales which swarmed at certain seasons
among their isles.

I must here, before passing on to those wonderful
lands where our kinsmen dwell, pause awhile to note
two curious methods adopted by the natives of different
groups for catching the fish they desired — methods
wide as the poles asunder, yet reflecting the native
mind and its adaptability to circumstances. In the
Vavau group of the Friendly Isles, I once came upon
an elderly native standing on the beach in the moon-
light, hurling something as far as he could out into
the sea and then hauling it back again. With that
gracious courtesy which I always found among these
amiable people, he allowed me to examine his gear.
It consisted of a fairly long hand-spun coir-line,
to which was attached a large pebble; around the
pebble was hung a number of hooks. When this
machine was flung into the sea, which was highly
phosphorescent, the cuttle-fish abounding there sprang
at it, and, becoming entangled in the hooks, were
hauled ashore to furnish later a goodly feast for the

192 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

fisherman and his friends, for, as in the Apostolic
days, all things in those isles were apparently held
in common. In Noumea, New Caledonia, among
natives far more primitive or less civilized, whichever
epithet may be preferred, I saw the very antithesis of
this curious plan. For some reason, which I could
not fathom, the splendid fish of New Caledonia, as
far as I could see, would not under any circumstances
take, could not be cajoledj into taking, a hook ; so
the natives used to procure, I do not know how,
cartridges of dynamite which had the property of
exploding as soon as they were flung into the water.
Armed with a supply of these, a party of natives
would sally out to the inshore side of the barrier
reef, and, having assembled in what they considered
a favourable spot, would hurl one or two cartridges
into the smooth water. A tremendous explosion would
follow, and when the agitated waters had resumed
their calm, the surface would be seen strewn witli
the bodies of dead and stunned fish, which were picked
up and flung into the bottoms of the canoes. In a
very short time a full load of fish was thus procured,
and the fishermen made the best of their way to
market with their spoil. I could not ascertain how
they used to capture those wily fish before they
learned the properties of dynamite and were able to
procure the powerful explosion ; but I found that
here alone, of all the out-of-the-way places I have
visited in the South Seas, I was utterly unable to
catch a single fish anywhere around the shores of the
great island, although it seemed an ideal place for
fishing.

Australia! how can I do justice to the plenitude

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 193

arid amiability of your splendid fish ! Everywhere I
have sailed or steamed around the shores of that
noble country, in or out of harbour, the story is the
same, the most marvellous assortment of fish easy to
be caught and of most delicious savour. But although
a meal of fresh fish is fairly easy to obtain in the
coast towns, I consider that Australia's fisheries are
unaccountably neglected, even when it is remembered
how plentiful, good, and cheap are all kinds of other
food. What fishing there is has fallen mostly into
the hands of industrious foreigners, as the lucrative
business of market gardening is almost entirely carried
on by the Chinese. Our kindred in Australia do not
care to engage in any work that requires long and
irregular hours and also precarious gains, or if driven
by any pressure of circumstances to engage in such
employment, they always relinquish it as soon as
possible. So the fisheries are not at all exploited
as they should be. Nature has been exceedingly
kind to Australia in many ways, but in none more
so, I think, than in the matter of food to be obtained
from the sea. I can only say that here, as in other
places I have noted, when the day comes that food
is scanty on shore there will always be found an
inexhaustible store awaiting the hungry ones, in
the sea.

In one direction, however, the ocean's wealth is
exploited on a portion of the Australian coast, fiercely
and incessantly and by the aid of the very latest
scientific appliances, that is, in the pearl fisheries of
Western and Northern Australia. There is no lack
of energy here, and no lack of reward either for the
industrious, for although this pearl fishery cannot vie

o

194 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

with either the Manaar pearlery or that extraordinary
one around the island of Margarita on the Spanish
Main, there is no doubt that a vast number of beau-
tiful pearls are here obtained, and owing to the
immense appreciation in the value of pearls that has
taken place of late years, there must be some very
pretty fortunes to be made. There was a time, too,
when Australia's bold seamen engaged in the whale
fishery to a considerable extent; but that was long
ago, and to-day I doubt whether anything in that
direction is being done at all, either from Australia
or the beautiful fruitful island of Tasmania, whose
chief port, Hobart Town, was once the principal
rendezvous of Australasian whaling ships.

I am glad that I have saved some superlatives for
the last and best of our possessions in the south, the
lovely colony of New Zealand. Because of all places
in the world that I have been privileged to visit, this
wonderland lies nearest my heart, for many reasons.
But here I only deal with one of its phases of attrac-
tion; it is undoubtedly the sea -fisherman's paradise.
If I were asked the question, which is so often put
by one sailor to another, " Which is the best port you
have ever been in for fishing?" I should unhesitatingly
answer, " Auckland." Of course, such a question has
a special meaning for a sailor, because, as a rule, he
is confined to his ship, and if he cannot fish success-
fully over her rail he has no other opportunity. Now,
in Auckland, whether the ship lies at the wharf or
is anchored in the harbour does not matter, fish can
always be caught. Of course, fish are not everywhere
alike plentiful, because, for instance, in some portions
of the beautiful bay fish are so thick that, on the

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 195

passage of a boat through them, the stroke of the
oars will kill many. But fish are amazingly plentiful
everywhere within the harbour, and correspondingly
abundant outside all around the coasts. If it were
necessary, I really believe that New Zealand alone
could supply the world with fish, not, as in the case
of the banks of Newfoundland, of one sort alone, or,
as with us, where the only fish we get in such amazing
numbers are the herring tribes and mackerel, but
of so many varieties all of such high quality that
the enumeration of them is quite bewildering. Two
varieties of fish are found in New Zealand waters,
which I firmly believe will successfully challenge all
other fish in the world for supremacy in point of
flavour. They are the "trumpeter" and the "frost-
fish," to give them their trivial names, which are the
only ones I know them by. But, indeed, there is
such an embarrassment of riches, as regards fish,
around New Zealand, as no other land can boast of,
and I must, for fear of becoming tedious, leave it at
that.

Another form of oceanic wealth in the shape of
food is possessed by New Zealand in great abundance,
oysters. They are small and irregular in shape, but
of delicious flavour, and, owing to the absence of any
polluting element such as sewage, free from any danger
to the eater. But these succulent rock oysters only
abound in the North Island. In the south, about
Foveaux Straits, are found the bottom oysters, but
not in any great quantities. New Zealand is also
extremely rich in cetacea, especially in the largest
sperm whales, which come closer to the shores here
than to any other inhabited land known. The Solander

196 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

whaling-ground, at the entrance to Foveaux Straits,
although really the smallest in area of any in the
world, has long been known to whalemen as the most
prolific in all the ocean. Its only drawback is the
frequency and strength of its gales, for this part of
New Zealand stretches well down into the stormy
Southern Sea, and shares its wild weather. There is,
however, a scheme on foot which, I believe, will be a
great source of wealth to New Zealand — a plan for
dealing with those magnificent visitors to the southern
shores, and making the best possible use of them. It
is, in short, a project for handling sperm whales as they
are being handled in Newfoundland — by the aid of
small specially built steamers, which will sally forth,
and, capturing whales, will tow them in to the station,
where every last ounce of their huge bodies will be
utilized, and the waste that has hitherto attended all
sperm-whaling operations be entirely avoided. This
will, I feel sure, be a splendid addition to the resources
of New Zealand, already great, for it will provide her
with what she has hitherto had to import from other
countries at great cost — the very best of manure for
her farms at a low price. And in due time we may
expect to see such fisheries extended to the outlying
groups lying still farther to the south of New Zealand,
the Macquarie, Campbell, and Auckland Islands, which
are no less rich in whales than are the southern coasts
of New Zealand, and have besides other visitors in
the shape of the huge elephant seals.

With New Zealand I must conclude this hasty
sketch of the ocean as a storehouse of food for the
nations. It has been of necessity most cursory, as I
did not wish to cover again the ground I traversed in

THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OP FOOD SUPPLY 197

the "Creatures of the Sea," but only to give a few
glimpses, as it were, into the vast larder of the ocean,
and to show how trifling are the demands made upon
it by the hungering peoples ashore. Dealt with ex-
haustively, this is a subject which, it is plain, would
fill many volumes ; but here my only object has been,
as stated above, to bring into line, as it were, the
aspect of our glorious heritage with those other no
less interesting characteristics of the ocean as the
great benefactor to the sons of men.

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY

AGES ago, so far back that the doubtful chronology
of those dim days can give us no definite idea as to
when it was, some man made an involuntary voyage
seaward from the shore of his native land. And when
I say " involuntary," I wish to express his entire un-
willingness and distaste for the making of the voyage.
For him the land held all that his simple needs indi-
cated— roots and fruits, and grubs and small succulent
living things, the getting of which for the satisfying
of his craving but primitive appetite was a very easy
matter. His life was an easy one, containing just an
occasional thrill when a big beast of prey came after
him, a not unpleasant thrill either, for although there
were disappearances of his friends and relatives to
remember, he had the proud knowledge that he had
on certain well-remembered occasions been able to out-
manoeuvre, to over-reach the grim monsters of the
mysterious forests, and exultantly convert their huge
carcases to his own uses. And these recollections bred
in him a certain sense of superiority, of pride in
achieving that made for a distinct advance in the
long road of human progress.

Now, it does not in the least matter where this

198

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 199

country was; indeed, it is highly probable that no
amount of painstaking exploration would now discover
it, for the unstable earth may have long ago so changed
her contour that its place knows it no more. It must
be sufficient to say that it was either an island or
part of a continent washed by the sea, whose waves
constituted the terrific boundary between it and the
unknown beyond. It has long been the fashion, or
custom, to credit the Phoenicians, those hook-nosed
Philistines of the farthest Mediterranean, wiih being
the pioneers of seafaring, but that belief, like so
many others we hold, may only be based upon the
fact that our knowledge doesn't go any farther
back. Keally, when you come to think of it, there
does not seem to be any reason why the ancient
Egyptians, whose recorded history ante-dates that of
the Phoenicians by a few thousand years, should not
have been navigators, especially when one recognizes
the intimate likeness between their works and phy-
sical characteristics to those of the aborigines of the
American continent. Or, to go even farther back
into the dim twilight of time, what about the Chinese ?
I hold in my hand a Chinese mariner's compass of
quaint design and unknown antiquity, and, reflecting
that the date of its invention by these immobile con-
servatives defies chronology, I am compelled to admit
that it is quite likely that these incomprehensible,
yellow people may have been navigating all the seas
of all the world long anterior to the rise of that hoary
mystery among nations — Egypt.

No, it does not now serve to credit those com-
paratively modern people, the Phoenicians, with being
the pioneers of seafaring, simply because of their

200 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

connection with our islands, and the record of their
maritime position in the pages of Holy Writ (Ezekiel
xxvii.). They were a nautical and enterprising people,
no doubt; but it is quite certain that they have no
claim to having been in any sense the pioneers of sea-
faring. Not only so, but in their voyagings they
were far less venturesome and enterprising than those
earlier mariners of whom we have no records, save the
indirect ones given by their works yet remaining to
show what manner of people they were. Probably the
earliest seafarers of whom we shall ever get any record
were the Chinese, with their immemorial civilization,
and the initative, which though they have now lost
all trace of it, they certainly did once possess in a
very marked degree. That they have not left their
physical characteristics more definitely stamped upon
the inhabitants of the far away lands, which they
undoubtedly visited, may be plausibly explained by
the fact that they were never colonists — that is, the
Chinese of the maritime provinces were then, as now,
merely trading pilgrims with an intense desire to
return to their native soil when they had realized
a modest competence. I have purposely mentioned
the maritime provinces of China, because it is a matter
beyond dispute that the Mongols did colonize Eastern
Europe as the Huns, and that their facial peculiarities
are faithfully reproduced there to this day.

But all speculations as to the place where sea-
faring may be said to have had its origin must be
in the very nature of things based upon the shadowy
foundation of guesswork. One solid fact, however,
remains that somewhere upon ocean's borders, some-
where in the far back days of mankind's history, some

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 201

man more venturesome than his fellows balanced
himself upon a floating log while bathing in the sea,
and, with a sense of mingled terror and delight, found
himself being carried along over the mysterious and
unstable element. Doubtless, as the current gradually
swept him seaward, and he became aware of the in-
creased distance between himself and the land, terror
dominated his feelings, but instead of paralyzing his
energies it drove him to try and direct the course of
his log by paddling with his hands. Not, of course,
at first by breaking off a branch and using that as
an oar, although I believe such great inventions did
come at once by an intuitive flash, such as we may
often see among animals who suddenly discover for
themselves an improved way of doing things, which
almost argues the possession of high reasoning powers.
Now, lest this preliminary supposition may appear
far-fetched and improbable to some of my readers, let
me say at once that as it is a well-known physiological
fact that the whole history of the evolution of a type
may be seen in the development of its embryo, so
to-day the evolution of seafaring from its earliest
inception may be witnessed by the observant traveller
round the world. Even in so highly civilized a
country as Hindostan the simple native of some parts
of the coast may be seen seafaring under the most
primitive conditions, only one stage, indeed, removed
from the original floating tree-trunk. The fisherman
of the Coromandel coast procures three rough logs, and
lashes them together with yarn spun from cocoanut
fibre, or, as we say at sea, seizes them together in three
places. It is the first timid, tentative step towards
shipbuilding ; from it to the dug-out or canoe hollowed

202 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

from a log, either by fire or slow chipping, is a very
long way. This rude craft is innocent of the most
elementary equipment of a navigable vessel. The
voyager just kneels upon it as near the middle as
possible, with his legs wide apart, preserving a pre-
carious balance. He propels his vessel with a paddle,
upon which he has spent far more labour than upon
the building of his vessel. Store of food or water he
has none, but his rude outfit of fishing-tackle he puts
in a roughly woven mat bag, which he secures to one
of the seizings which holds his frail craft together.

Thus equipped he puts out to sea, and, greatly
daring, ventures right off the land until he can hardly
discern it, in search of the primal need of mankind —
food. How he manages to endure the constant strain
of keeping upright, the incessant wash of the seas
over him, the fierce heat of the sun, and the privation
of food and drink, is a mystery ; but the fact remains
that he does. Of course the constant wetting does in
some measure prevent the fiercer pangs of thirst, for it
is a well-known fact that thirst can be alleviated at
sea by pouring sea- water over the body. He is the
primitive seafarer, almost at the beginning of things
nautical, but yet far removed from the pioneer on the
floating log who first discovered how easy a road the
sea made from one place to another. Necessarily
the range of these primitive craft was very limited,
except under extraordinary conditions, presupposing
as much suffering as the human frame is capable of
enduring. Yet we have had proofs of involuntary
journeys having been made in the South Pacific from
one island to another in craft almost as primitive as
those which I have described, by natives who have

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 203

survived the terrible ordeal, and made their permanent
home in the land to which they had come for the best
of all reasons — they couldn't get away any more.
Yet from such beginnings as these, the outcome of
pure accident, the art of navigation had its rise,
although among most of the nations it never reached
a scientific stage. Aboriginal navigation in its most
advanced stages may be witnessed to-day in Polynesia,
on the Indian and African coasts, and very often the
elaborate construction of the vessels, by the most
primitive of tools, compels admiration ; but as far as
the navigation of the deep sea is concerned, they have
stood still for more thousands of years than any one
can reckon. But they hold fast to the great discovery
that journeying by sea has many great advantages
over travelling by land, not the least of which was
that it was universal territory, that given means of
propulsion and guidance, both of which were far easier
of attainment at sea than ashore, long journeys might
be made far more expeditiously by sea than by land.
There was also far less chance of meeting with hostile
forces prepared to dispute the passing of travellers,
and ready to take from them, if strong enough, all
that they possessed, including their lives, or, what was
much more precious, their liberty.

This discovery of the ocean as a universal highway
was, perhaps, the greatest factor in the making of
history of which we have any record. Once it had
gained firm hold upon the minds of men the develop-
ment of navigable craft was bound to follow, no matter
how long the period of evolution might be. The
initial step had been taken, the mysterious terrors
of the unknown expanse of waters had been met and

:204 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

overcome, and thenceforward all the embryo mariners'
energies might be devoted to producing navigable
craft, and finding out means whereby they might be
successfully piloted from a given spot to a desired
haven. Undoubtedly most of the earliest voyages
were accomplished involuntarily ; accident determined
their departure and their arrival. And how many
perished on these forced passages from one land to
another will never be known, nor does it matter ;
pioneers were ever martyrs, unconsciously sacrificing
themselves for the benefit of those who should follow
them. But it must have been a very long time, even
in the leisurely history of the early world, before any
definite rules of navigation were formulated. The
building of seaworthy vessels, within which some
degree of safety might be expected — comfort did not
come for thousands of years; in fact comfort, as wo
understand it, is probably a word that, if it existed, had
no real meaning until the last century, and at sea
certainly was meaningless until fifty years ago. I ain
sure there could have been little to choose between
the condition of the passengers in the ship of Adra-
myttium in which Paul made his memorable voyage,
and that of the emigrants in a Black Ball liner of
fifty years ago, as far as comfort went. But as what
we never know we never miss, these early navigators
were not conscious of their want, and just endured all
the evils of the flesh incidental to their voyages with
philosophic calm or callous indifference, as the case
might be, knowing that they were probably far better
off than if travelling by land. I remember once, amid
the horrors of a pilgrim ship, asking a grave Arab
whether he would not rather have made the journey

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 205

by camel if it had been possible. I was much sur-
prised by his answer that, compared with the desert
journey, this easeful progress was akin to being already
in Paradise. Now, I had thought that the condition
of those pilgrims more closely approximated to the
antipodes of Paradise ; but, of course, much depends
upon the point of view.

For a very long time we cannot speak more
definitely than that, and it does not really matter, the
followers of that first involuntary navigator did not
get beyond his initial mode of propulsion. Paddles
or oars were the only means whereby the hollowed
logs could be moved along. And here, again, progress
must have been hindered for centuries, awaiting the
coming of the inventor of sails. Since labour might
be had for the taking, what easier than to impress a
crew of fellow-savages, given the necessary power, and
make them paddle or row ? I wonder how many oars-
men, leisurely propelling their boats with a beauteous
lady-love at the stern pretending to steer, spend a
thought over the fact that they are indulging in
almost the earliest form of marine propulsion; that
what they are doing was done by the most primitive
seafarers, and that the oar for ages remained the only
way of getting a ship along ? Doubtless the sail came
when some genius, having lost all, or nearly all, his
rowers, noticed that the wind was pushing his vessel
along, and was suddenly struck with the idea of
sticking the unused oars up on end with the flats
of their blades disposed so as to catch the wind.
From that to sails was a comparatively short step,
determined only by the ease or difficulty of getting
material whereof sails might be made.

206 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

But here, again, it is demonstrable that for some
hidden reason or another the earliest discoverers
of the value of the ocean as a common easy road, and
the inventors of the means whereby they might ex-
peditiously get their vessel along, it having reached a
given point in their progress, stuck there, and never
went any farther. So we may see them to-day. The
Chinese, probably the earliest navigators and in-
ventors of means to navigation, are now at the same
point as regards the rig and equipment of their vessels
as they were in the dim days before the dawn of
history. The Coromandel native, having evolved his
three-log catamaran from the floating tree, no one
knows how many centuries or even millenniums ago,
still sticks to it, unable, apparently, to devise any im-
provement. Even among peoples who are such near
neighbours as the various islanders of Polynesia, it is
curious to note how in one group there will be many
types of canoe, all pathetically showing limping pro-
gress from the tree-trunk, but none getting past the
rudimentary, experimental stage, while in another
group you shall find elaborately evolved vessels, with
decks and cabins, with careful arrangements to secure
stability, much ornamentation for the delight of the
eyes, and, above all, scientifically constructed masts,
sails, and rigging, every detail of which demonstrates
a high grade of inventive genius and constructive
skill, also of no mean order, especially remembering
the immense difficulties in the way of such people
producing these appliances out of their exceedingly
limited and primitive stock of materials. But great
as their progress undoubtedly must have been for a
time, it reached a limit far below that of seaworthiness

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 207

at a very early date, and there it has remained ever
siuce.

This applies to all the early seafarers, and gives
almost certainly to the theory that the colonization of
parts of the earth by people separated from them
by ocea"ns must have been by accident, since their
ships were never fitted for undertaking lengthy
voyages, and, indeed, were usually of such a low grade
of seaworthiness, or so small, that it needed no little
courage on the part of the seafarers to creep in them
from headland to headland, or cross narrow stretches of
sea without losing sight of land. But, in the nature
of things, such frail and hardly navigable craft must
now and then have been blown off the land and carried
away by wind and current for long distances, some-
times reaching far-distant shores with some at least of
the crew or passengers still alive.

There is only one exception to this rule, one
difficulty in applying it universally, and that is the
almost absolute certainty that parts of America were
colonized by the early Egyptians. The records they
have left behind them, in the shape of buildings
covered by inscriptions which are almost identical with
those recently discovered in Egypt, antedating the
pyramids by a few thousands of years, are all on the
western side of the continent, showing that these
highly cultured visitors came from the East. But
since there is a sharply defined limit to human en-
durance, which would be reached in a case of drifting
many months before the vast stretches of ocean be-
tween the eastern shores of Africa and the west coast
of America had been crossed, we must admit that
there is good ground for supposing that these old

208 OUB HERITAGE THE SEA

Egyptians sailed with deliberate intention eastward—
ever eastward. Their undoubted astronomical know-
ledge would enable them to direct their course by the
heavenly bodies, albeit without the compass it would
be very roughly made. And as their way would be
beset by islands after passing Hindostan, which they
probably would do without touching these, they would,
after crossing the great stretch of the Indian Ocean,
make what we should call a coasting voyage of it for
nearly three thousand miles before emerging upon the
vast open Pacific, with its stretch of seven thousand
miles, to the shores of the great American continent.
That part of their voyage confronts us with the pro-
foundest mystery of all; but we know it was made,
and must be content with that knowledge.

Such stupendous journeys for these ancient
mariners must, however, have been the great ex-
ception to the rule of coasting necessarily followed
by early navigators, and nothing can well be more
certain than that for many centuries after the first
discovery of the possibility of using the ocean as a
toll-free road it remained in all its wider breadths
in utter solitude, as far as man was concerned. It was
in no sense a universal highway, and, indeed, even for
the timid coastal navigation that was carried on, only
men of the highest courage and enterprise, as well as
skill and adaptability to entirely new sets of conditions,
were available. Such men were, pre-eminently, to be
found among the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, who
probably obtained their seafaring bent from the
Egyptians; but whereas the latter did their marine
business along the shores of the Ked Sea, ' and crept
down the African coast probably as far south as Natal,

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 209

the Phoenicians made the great Middle Sea peculiarly
their own, and did indeed realize its value as a means
of communication between all the most important
countries of the then civilized world. But it was a
long time, owing doubtless to their hazy notions of
the terrors that lay beyond, before they ventured to
pass the pillars of Hercules and entrust their frail
craft to the mighty waves of the Atlantic. The spirit
of exploration, however, was peculiarly theirs, and in
due time they ventured, little by little, keeping, we
may be sure, very close to the land all the while, as
far as Britain. And I do not think it at all fanciful
to suppose that they did then sow the seed that
should so long afterwards bear such wonderful fruit.
I should also be inclined to give them the credit, too,
of having inoculated the Portuguese and Spaniards
with their own strong desire to roam over the sea,
enduring all the trials and dangers which that roaming
entailed, for the sake of the amazingly rich rewards
that were occasionally gained, but more especially for
the gratification of that love of wandering into the
unknown, which is one of the strongest instincts of
mankind.

There is yet another important item to the credit
of the Phoenicians, which must on no account be
omitted. They sought the sea-road as peaceful traders,
carrying the wares for which their manufactures were
famous to barter for the desirable commodities of other
countries. They were neither pirates (for piracy had
not then been invented) nor restless adventurers, bent
on aggression wherever they were strong enough. It
is true that for the motive-power of their vessels they
used slaves, and in so doing inflicted cruelties upon

p

210 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

helpless human beings, which we have to shudder at ;
but it was reserved for seafarers of a later day and a
boasted higher civilization to use the galley-slave in
war, and war, too, without any other excuse than that
of greed. Yes, the maritime polity of the Tyrians and
Sidonians was essentially a peaceful one, and if their
religion was one of dark and bloody cruelty, we ought
not to forget that they used the sea with a due sense
of its proper relation to mankind, as a means of
beneficial intercourse between the nations, and not
as a truly infernal battle-ground.

For many generations it would appear that they
enjoyed a practical monopoly of our sea-trading, so
that it was no figure of speech to say of the Prince of
Tyre that the waters made him great. Indeed, we
have the best evidence to prove that they were the
teachers of the other nations whose territories bordered
the great Middle Sea, and, as has so often happened
since, long after the Greeks and the Eomans had
established a navy, it was to the Phoanicians and their
descendants, the Carthaginians, that the new-comers
had to look for captains, officers, and pilots. But long
before the more northern nations had become fully
alive to the advantages of sea-traffic for the purposes
of commerce, they had with characteristic blood-
thirstiness seen what a tremendous power it gave
them for the furtherance of their schemes of conquest.
And one of the first uses that the Komans, at any rate,
made of their sea-power was to destroy the nation that
had educated them in the use of it. In doing this
they left a lesson for Britain which is like the hand-
writing on the wall, but which, alas ! we do not seem
able to interpret or even to read. It is that a maritime

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 211

power, which has grown to be entirely dependent upon
its own sea-trade for its existence, cannot afford to be
contemptuously indifferent to the rise and progress of
other nations in sea- power that are not dependent
upon the food brought oversea for their daily bread.
And also that the possession of great wealth without
the energy to fight for the protection of that wealth,
and with the belief that money will make up for the
loss of national manhood is a fatal delusion, and one
that surely presages the downfall of the nation be-
mused by it.

After the fall of the Carthaginians, the use of the
sea (I cannot yet say the ocean, since navigation was
principally confined to the Mediterranean as yet)
became degraded to fighting purposes almost exclu-
sively. It is true that Eome, following the bad ex-
ample of Carthage, began to neglect her own resources
because of the comparative ease with which she could
be fed by means of her ships from Egypt, the granary
of the ancient world. But the bad precedent of sea-
fighting had been fairly established, and there was
now no such thing as a peaceful trading vessel. Every
seafarer had, of necessity, to sail prepared at any hour
to meet with another vessel which would certainly
plunder him if able, and which he would certainly
plunder if strong enough. Even if they bore the
same insignia, or were even under the same ownership,
the fact of their being at sea seemed to render them
Ishmaels of the most pronounced type. In conse-
quence of this, seafaring had degenerated into piracy
— it is quite safe to say that every seafarer of the
Middle Sea was a pirate, given opportunity.

But, meanwhile, the hardy barbarians of the

212 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

inhospitable North had taken to seafaring — apparently
had been driven to it by the necessity of finding the
subsistence which their hyperborean home denied
them. The rugged shores of Scandinavia and Denmark
bred an ideal race of seafarers — children of the storm,
the mist, and the frost. Hard as their native rocks,
turbulent as the waves that foamed upon their barren
shores, they formed an amazing contrast to the men
of the South, who wilted under the biting blasts of
winter, and thought shudderingly of the land of the
Cimmerians, which lay in the mysterious North, as
beyond the endurance of flesh and blood. How or
when the northmen first conceived the idea of sailing
the sea-road, of seeking in softer lands through no
matter what trials, the much-desired luxuries denied
them by the land of their birth, we do not know, for
even their own sagas are silent. But, once having
taken to the sea, even though their ships were but
cockleshells, they seem to have been at home ; the
wave and the tempest had no terrors for them, and in
a spirit of comradeship entirely foreign to the Eoman
idea of the difference between patrician and pleb, or
legionary and galley-slave, they face with cheerfulness
and alacrity all the terrors of the Northern Sea.

Still, their advent marked no advance in civiliza-
tion, but the reverse. Before very long the native
of any shore within their reach (and their reach grew
more and more comprehensive every year) grew to
look upon the sea as an easy inlet for the most terrific
dangers to him and his. It was no longer a barrier
between him and the outer world, contact with which
he dreaded, but an open road, along which might come
at any hour of the day or night, the ships of the

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 213

northern pirates, their crews unswayed by any such
modern notions as mercy, justice, kindness, or fair
play. Such was the terror they inspired, that it was
only by making their descent upon any place a com-
plete surprise that they could compass any success in
their undertakings with the smallest notice of their
coming; the inhabitants disappeared inland, bearing
with them the most easily portable and precious of
their possessions. In case of a surprise, the story was
always the same — indiscriminate slaughter for awhile,
then selection of the fairest of the women, then fan-
tastic cruelty to the few prisoners reserved for that
purpose, wild debauchery, and departure with the
plunder.

Yet, in spite of their piracy, and of the manner in
which, owing to the terror they inspired, there was no
possibility of any growth of peaceful trading among
the people who inhabited the Southern European
shores, they undoubtedly did good work in extending
the ocean range of seafaring. Regardless of privation,
greedy of adventure, and apparently impervious to
cold, they gradually crept across the North Atlantic
in their frail craft until, centuries before Columbus or
Amerigo Vespucci were born, they discovered the
mainland of America. But they were not colonists ;
their only ideas were warfare and plunder, and so
America remained a terra incognita, waiting its due
time. The Vikings, meanwhile, returning to their
own land without plunder, but full of stories of adven-
ture, turned their attention entirely to the rich lands
of the South, with what result we know. Proving as
doughty warriors by land as they had been invincible
by sea, they overran Europe, overthrowing the existing

214 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

civilizations which had become effete and utterly vile,
and substituting for the emasculated Eoman rule their
own savage virility.

But still the sea called them, and leaving the
luxurious life of the land behind them, they pressed
on to the eastward, overrunning the waters of the
Mediterranean until they had visited all those
countries where the navigation of the Middle Sea had
its origin. It cannot be supposed that in so doing
they did not occasionally find traces of the nautical
prowess of their predecessors, and even some of their
degenerate descendants feebly endeavouring to main-
tain an intermittent traffic. Such trembling mariners
met with the usual fate at their hands. All strangers
were enemies, and the only mercy that any enemies
could hope for at the hands of those fierce corsairs
was speedy death. The granting of life was always
on such terms as made death a boon to be craved for
with intensest desire, but it was seldom granted unless
the supplicant were useless either for toil or sport.

So the uncounted years rolled on until, inoculated
with the sea-roving instinct by those hardy, ruthless
sea-warriors, the coast-dwellers on the shores they had
visited began almost simultaneously to seek their
fortunes on the seas. Unhappily, the day of peaceful
trading had gone with the Phoenicians, and was not
to return until quite modern times ; no man dare
hope to go unmolested upon his lawful occasions at
sea ; every sail sighted was a possible and most pro-
bable enemy, and only the ship that was well manned
and well armed might hope to escape, not unmolested,
but uncaptured or undestroyed. Yet the trading in-
stinct, once having been aroused, and the reports of

215

the successful voyagers having been bruited among
their countrymen, no danger of capture or destruction
at the hands of ruthless pirates sufficed to deter the
eager voyagers]; nor, when we come to think of it,
was this attitude of mind unreasonable. Men, who
had braced themselves to meet the thousand dangers
of an unknown ocean, to whom navigation, as we
understand it, was but a series of guesses, and the
principal component of whose enterprises was hope,
could hardly be deterred by the remote possibility
of meeting with pirates ; it was a risk not to be com-
pared with those they met daily and nightly, without
any preparation, to be considered at all adequate for
the unequal conflict.

Contemporary with the rise and progress of sea-
faring on the seas of Europe, the Arabs, on the other
side of Africa, had discovered that the sea afforded for
them, too, a comparatively easy road to power and
wealth. The narrow but deep waters of the Eed Sea
and Persian Gulf afforded men an admirable learning-
ground, having settled weather, deep water, and skies
always free from cloud. By reason of this latter
advantage, indeed, they became expert navigators,
for to them had descended the ancient astronomical
wisdom of the Chaldeans, supplemented and reinforced
by their own researches and improvements in mathe-
matical knowledge. When and where among them
the mariner's compass first appeared, the one instru-
ment wanting to complete their equipment for ocean
navigation, is uncertain; but my own belief is that
they either met on one of their roaming voyages to
the East with a Chinese junk, part of the plunder of
which would certainly be a compass, or that they

21 G OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

penetrated to China itself, and there found the wonder-
ful thing that, in more capable hands than those of the
ossified scions of its inventors, was destined to be the
means of opening up the whole navigable world.

Whatever the means, they certainly obtained a
compass, and speedily learned its use, so that they
became, for the time, quite expert navigators ; indeed,
they were the pioneers of that science, a proof of which
is afforded by the Arabic names given to the stars even
now in use, and the indispensable almanack. And
had their skill in shipbuilding or instrument-making
been commensurate with their courage and learning,
it is difficult, indeed, to see why they, and not Euro-
peans, should now have been the carriers of the
world ; but, like the Chinese, having reached a certain
point in their development of seafaring, they halted,
and could go no farther. For one thing, their perfect
fatalism, with its inevitable excuse for laziness, stood
in the way of their advance beyond a certain point.
What, for instance, could be more fatal to any progress,
in a business point of the view, than their practice,
followed to-day as it was in those far-off times, of
lowering the anchor down a few fathoms on the
approach of night, furling the sail, and turning in,
all hands of them satisfied with the knowledge that,
before their vessel could strike upon any shore, she
must be brought up by her anchor ? or, if that did not
happen, and she became a wreck — well, it was so to be,
and no amount of exertion or watchfulness on their
part could have possibly prevented it.

Thus, although they undoubtedly did mankind a
great service in extending the science of seafaring so
as to take in the great ocean roads, they, in their turn,

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 217

having reached a given point, remained there till this
clay. But if they remained stationary, the wisdom they
had shown became available for nimbler minds ; and
when Europeans once obtained it, their energy and
perseverance opened up the way for the great era of
sea-traffic, which we seem to be at the apex of to-day.
That, however, must form the subject of the next
article, this one being already over-long.

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY

II

WHAT we may call the modern era of seafaring began
in the Mediterranean, when the highly organized
Arabian powers, flushed with their success in warfare
against every nation they had met in Asia and Africa,
turned their attention to Europe. As already noted
in the last article, they had become the first sea-power
in the world, and now, in the tenth century A.D., they
began to establish a naval domination of the Middle
Sea as a preliminary to the conquest of Europe. Quite
rapidly for those days, Saracenic vessels began to
ravage the European coasts, and compelled a con-
solidation of the newly risen civilizations of Italy and
the survivors of the ancient Greeks, who had become,
at least, nominally Christian, to bestir themselves in
order to avoid being annihilated by the fierce Eastern
corsairs. Some sort of intermittent traffic was carried
on, whereby the rich products of the East found their
way into Europe, and the Italians and Greeks, ready
learners, managed to gain from their fierce visitors
some of their seafaring lore. The Greeks and Romans
had, of course, long been carrying on their semi-piratical
seafaring, but it had been conducted in primitive
fashion as regards navigation. Their mariners were

218

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 219

expert coasting sailors, but when out of sight of land
were helpless from lack of the mathematical and
astronomical knowledge which was a monopoly of the
Arabs.

When, however, these latter fierce seamen began
to invade Europe their sea-lore soon became common
property, with the result that the Mediterranean be-
came the great cockpit wherein the struggle for
supremacy between East and West was waged for
centuries. The energetic and astute Italians excelled
in the new art, and although each petty republic,
Pisa, Genoa, Venice, fought steadily for their own
aggrandisement, careless apparently whether it was
against each other or the infidel, it was against the
Arab that they always combined whenever they did do
so. Even then they did not scruple to enlist the Moor
or Arab whenever possible, having the greatest respect
for his courage and ability, and the position of Othello
must have been quite a common one among the Italian
republics of the Middle Ages.

Yet, in spite of the almost incessant internecine
strife, in spite of the ever-present necessity of waging
war against the infidel, there was a vast amount of
traffic carried on, and the argosies of the Italian
republics gradually pushed on until they passed into
the dreaded Atlantic and brought their wares to
Britain, now by constant intercourse with France and
Scandinavia becoming ripe for a commerce of her own.
The Moorish invasion of Spain and Portugal had also
imbued these valiant descendants of the old Eoman
colonists and the aboriginal inhabitants with the desire
of seeking new outlets for trade and conquest over-
sea ; and so it came about that, even in the throes of

220 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

emancipation from the awful scourge of the Arab
invasion of Europe and the counter-invasion of Asia
by the Crusaders, sea-traffic gradually grew and ex-
tended its ancient limits until in the fulness of time
Columbus, the Genoese, set sail from Spain to find
India by going westward, and Bartholomew Diaz
sailed southward for the unknown limit of the great
African continent. It was as if weary of the incessant
clash of arms, the futile slaughter of each other on
land, men turned wearily for relief to the great
mysterious ocean in the hope that there they should
find the room for peace which was denied them on
land.

Thus it came about that, groping almost blindly in
the mysterious ocean solitudes, Italians, Spaniards,
and Portuguese rediscovered America and India, and
laid the foundation of the inter-ocean traffic which we
see to-day. Still, their voyaging was quite timid and
tentative, for the advance in the science of navigation
had not kept pace with the courage and enterprise
of the navigators. But one great step had been taken,
perhaps the greatest possible — one, at any rate, that
more than compensated for lack of navigational know-
ledge. It was that men had lost their fear of the
ocean. They no longer dreaded sailing over the edge
of the world into space, or into a region of darkness
from whence there could be no return. They had
become so far familiar with those apparently illimit-
able breadths that they put forth in all confidence
that they would fetch somewhere or another, and that,
wherever it might be, it would be well worth visiting
and annexing, for, after all, conquest and subsequent
gain was the root motive of these voyages.

221

In this way did Spain and Portugal become the
proud possessors of the fairest and wealthiest portions
of the world, and through the enterprise and daring
of their mariners, coupled, of course, with almost
incredible suffering, wealth incalculable poured into
the homelands, and did its demoralizing work. The
minds of all men were fixed upon these strange new
regions oversea, from whence flowed in a golden
stream such abundance of treasure as intoxicated the
intellect, and made the steady cultivation of home
industries seem too paltry for consideration. Every
argosy that put forth appeared to those remaining
behind as the germ of a golden harvest, the dreadful
toil, the sacrifice of life, and the entire uncertainty
attendant upon every venture being quite forgotten.
The ocean was indeed becoming not merely the uni-
versal highway, but the royal road to wealth beyond
man's wildest desires.

But meanwhile in the north of Europe there were
two little nations, at that time hardly considered
worth reckoning with, who were steadily acquiring
sea-lore also — Britain and Holland, both informed
with the spirit of the ancient Vikings, and both being
driven by their poverty on land to seek participation
in the spoils of which they had heard such glowing
reports. It is a common platitude that history repeats
itself, and here the truth of the saying was made
abundantly manifest, for as the Greeks and Romans
of old hired the Phoanician mariners to rear their
naval forces, and the Italians made use of the Moorish
navigators, so did the British and Dutch hire the
Italians and Portuguese seamen to educate them in
this grand new way of becoming wealthy. It must

222 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

have been a quaint experience for both parties to such
bargains. On one side, the stolid, unemotional, but
freedom-loving Dutchman or Briton, without dash or
initiative, but possessed of that invaluable quality,
perseverance ; on the other, the vivacious Italian,
keen as a rapier, bubbling over with intelligence and
receptivity, but so mercurial that he was continually
alternating between the heights of hope and the depths
of despair. There was also undoubtedly much friction
because of the impossibility of the Italian master or
pilot to comprehend the essential difference between
the slaves he had been in the habit of commanding
and these sturdy freedom lovers, who, although they
did submit themselves to savage punishments, insisted
that those punishments should be legal, and those
laws assented to by themselves. Still more must the
Italian mariners have been surprised at the wonderful
way in which the British islanders and Dutch low-
landers assimilated the teaching they received and
improved upon it until their teachers were fain to
confess that their pupils were outstripping them in
a marvellous fashion.

Now, it is a moot point whether in such wondrous
enterprises as the opening up of new worlds, or of new
forms of government, it is better to be the pioneer
or the vanguard of the main army. There is always,
of course, an intensely human desire to be first in the
field, to skim the cream off the venture, as it were ;
but history teaches us that it is but rarely that the
pioneers in any national enterprise have eventually
profited much thereby. But in the present case it
really must have seemed to both Britons and Dutch-
men, imbued, of course, with the hazy notions of the

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 223

age as to the size of the unknown world, as if the
Spaniards and Portuguese had got so far ahead of
them that they could only expect leavings, and, of
course, they could form no estimate of what those
leavings were likely to consist. In any case, however,
the traffic with neighbouring countries needed develop-
ment, for there was a growing demand everywhere for
the commodities that some other country produced
which in no other way could be so cheaply and easily
procured as by sea. What has puzzled many, though,
is the slow and curious development of marine archi-
tecture. Of course, all evolution is from the simple
to the complex, but in the case of ships, that complexity
should indeed have, in modern times, been entirely
confined to the interior equipment of the vessel. We
are really now in the twentieth century, with our
finest ships, not far removed from the model favoured
by the Vikings in their long ships, or, to go still
farther back, to the Phoenicians with their galleys.
Yet in this period, when all ocean secrets were yield-
ing themselves passively to mariners of sufficient
daring to seek them out, a curious degradation of
marine construction set in — a sort of recrudescence of
barbaric display without regard to efficiency, such
as may even now be witnessed on the Irrawaddi, or
among some of the more remote South Sea Islands.

Underwater the general contour of the vessels
remained the same, but their upper works began to
show a burden of fantastic ornamentation which we
should have thought would have struck a practical
seaman even in that early day as cumbrous, out of
place, and, above all, dangerous in the extreme by
reason of its making the vessels crank, or top-heavy.

224 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

Moreover, another vicious development took place
which was bad in every way, and yet possessed such
a fascination for those early ship -constructors that
they persevered in it until they had made many of
their craft entirely unseaworthy. I allude to the
extraordinary camber they gave their craft. A slight
curve downward to the waist, from bow and stern,
seems to a seaman an absolute necessity in every
ship; he cannot imagine a hogged ship, i.e. one that
rises instead of sinks in the middle as seaworthy,
to say nothing of being beautiful. But these early
ships were made to sag so much that while in the
waist their deck-line was almost awash at the bow
and stern, especially the stern, it rose until it seemed
almost a miracle that they could stand upright at all.
It is a problem I have often discussed with modern
seamen, how in the name of common sense did those
extraordinary craft keep right way up, and how with
that enormous after-erection holding the wind did
they ever manage to steer? We always gave it up
after coming to the conclusion that their seamanship
must have been of a superlative order, and their
patience far exceeding that of the Patriarch of Uz,
to handle those vessels at all. That they ever did
or could tack or beat to windward appears so eminently
impossible that we always dismissed the idea as not
worth discussing.

Another matter that seems puzzling, but may be
explainable on the ground of want of means, is why,
after deep-sea voyaging had become the vogue, the
size of the vessels which were appointed to that service
did not more speedily increase. People ashore may
not take much notice of the fact, but to sailors of our

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 225

day it is a never-ceasing wonder what great voyages
were undertaken by vessels which to-day we hardly
feel justified in allowing out of a river or an estuary.
Occasionally a small craft like Captain Slocum's
Spray, of twelve tons measurement, does make a
voyage round the world or across some of its stormiest
oceans, but it can never be gainsaid that long voyages
in small crafts mean the maximum of privation with
the minimum of usefulness. Of course, many of the
adventurers had high hearts but low means, and, like
schoolboys of to-day, thought that if they could only
get a boat — something floatable — they would in some
haphazard fashion find their way to the other side of
the round world. That, of course, was an entirely
proper spirit, and one that carried its possessors far ;
but what we must quarrel with these old seamen for is
the way in which they allowed the shipbuilders to
overload even these tiny crafts with top-hamper, not of
masts and sails, but of solidly-built upper works, as if
at sea the ordinary laws governing stability were re-
versed. Yet, I don't know. As I write these words
my mind's eye pictures some of the old buildings in
England and Holland, whose upper stories bulge out
so amazingly as to make us feel sure that unless they
were supported by the neighbouring edifices, the first
blast of wind must topple them over. But, then, this
topheaviness is carried to an extraordinary length in
Moorish or Saracenic dwellings, and it does not seem
to have affected their shipbuilding in the same
manner.

Enough ; in spite of the severe handicap placed
upon them by the smallness and build of their ships,
Spain and Portugal had led the way in ocean traffic

Q

226 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

until, Spain on the west and Portugal on the east,
they seemed as if they had divided the remaining
world between them. Talk as we may of the de-
generacy of the modern Latins, we ought never to
forget that to do what they did in the discovery or
rediscovery of those far-away lands by means of ocean
traffic exhibited some of the very highest qualities of
the human race, with the exception of justice and
mercy or any form of altruism whatever. It should
also be remembered that the commanders of those
ships were entirely dominated by the idea that they
were of the chosen ones of earth, and those whom
they commanded born only to serve them. The idea
is not yet extinct, but it is doomed. In their case it
served to energize them, to carry them high above
all such trivial obstacles as huDger or thirst or insub-
ordination. They believed in themselves almost as
gods, and the unlimited power over the persons of
their crews, the utter absence of any check upon them
when once they had left home for the unknown, could
not but foster and confirm that belief.

Another incentive which they had in their voyaging
was undoubtedly the very powerful one of religion.
Their belief in themselves was buttressed by their
absolute certainty that they were divinely commis-
sioned to carry the banner of the Cross all over the
world and propagate their religion in much the same
manner and with quite as much ruthlessness as their
Saracenic predecessors had done, and their Moorish
contemporaries were even then doing ; for while they
were intensely religious, their religion was of the
fanatical type, which entirely separates theory from
practice, even to the amazing extent of spreading the

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 227

Gospel of Peace by murder, rapine, and torture. Of
their seamanship little can be said. We do not know
much of the polity of those vessels except that the
seaman was looked upon as a base mechanical slave,
whose duty it was to take the ship wherever the leader
willed, that leader being generally entirely ignorant
of seamanship or navigation, and dependent upon his
pilot or sailing-master for those essentials to making
a voyage. It would seem to be a very poor way
indeed of making a success of seafaring, but where
time was no object and the ascendency of the aristo-
cratic leaders of an expedition over their men was
so complete, it answered well enough. And, more-
over, it must be remembered that at first there was
no opposition or competition; the pioneers of those
world-encircling voyages had the vast stretches of
ocean entirely to themselves.

That fifteenth century, however, was the era of
vast changes for the whole world, as far as the varied
Governments and peoples were concerned. The ocean
became at last in very deed the universal highway,
became so, in fact, almost with a bound after the
voyage of Columbus and the Portuguese opening up
of India. But it is fairly certain that if it had not
been for the advent of Britain and Holland, with their
more energetic seamen and their far more business-
like ideas, the progress of ocean communication would
have made very little headway indeed. It would
almost certainly have died out again from sheer lack
of energy to carry it on, history repeating itself as in
the case of the early Arab or earlier Chinese navigators.
The two Northern powers, however, hearing of the
great spoils to be won overseas, and impelled to seek

228 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

a share in them, partly by their ordinary human
desires of gain and partly by the dynamic force
exerted upon them by their ungenial climates, now
appeared on the scene, and very soon made it manifest
that if they were late in the field they did not intend
to allow that fact to cramp their operations. The
Dutch, as if a compact had been made by them with
the English to divide the watery world between them,
started on the track of the Portuguese, and in their
thorough methodical but slow way pressed on around
the Cape and into the far Eastern seas. Theirs, how-
ever, was a far more peaceful cutting into the dis-
coveries of their predecessors than that developed by
the English. For one thing, there was an enormously
varied and extended area open to their operations,
and, either by accident or design, or a combination
of both, they hardly encroached upon the Portuguese
discoveries in Hindostan and Africa at all ; but, going
farther east, opened up the amazingly rich islands of
the East Indian archipelago. With quiet persistence
they established themselves among those mysterious
isles, and set about enriching the mother-land from
thence, not in the splendid unstable fashion of the
Spaniards, who traded in gold, silver, pearls, and
precious stones, and scorned the humbler commodities
of life, but in spices, valuable woods, fabrics, and
fibres — a far more sure if a much slower means of
adding to the national wealth.

The English, on the other hand, retaining as they
did many of the piratical instincts of their Viking
ancestors, and fired by the reports of incalculable
wealth being acquired by the Spaniards, did not
attempt to make any discoveries of their own, but

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 229

boldly sailed in the Spaniards' tracks, and demanded
a share in the gains of their discoveries. It was
entirely outside morality, business or otherwise ; it
could not be called war, since the two nations were
ostensibly at peace ; and it was not frankly piratical,
being justified by the aggressors on religious grounds.
I have called the English "aggressors," although the
term seems rather far-fetched, remembering the enor-
mous disproportion between the two countries in
favour of Spain. But I -think the term is correct ;
we were the aggressors, whatever justification for our
aggression we might have put forward.

Still, it was an unmoral age. The rules of conduct
which govern us to-day, not perfectly, but to a very
great extent, were then extant but entirely ignored,
and men of all the nominally Christian nations did
things without a qualm that we to-day should cha-
racterize as the blackest of crimes, and turned from
the commission of those acts to the performance of
religious duties with an air of perfect innocence.
Even then, so queerly constituted is the human mind,
men made excuses for their deeds, found all sorts
of strange justifications for them, so that even the
horrible slave trade was carried on by Englishmen
with as little compunction as if they had been rovers
of Sallee. And in this spirit the English sea-rovers
began the informal war with Spain by following in
the tracks of her argosies, noting the ports to which
they sailed, lying in wait for them when return-
ing laden with spoil, and conscientiously robbing
the robbers — for the Spaniards were nothing better
than robbers and murderers of the very worst type,
albeit they committed their crimes with a high-bred

230 OUR HERITAGE THE SKA

nonchalance that made them almost seem like legiti-
mate acts of commerce.

Still, steadily, persistently, the opening up of the
highways of Ocean crept on. The science of navi-
gation did not keep pace with the enterprise of the
adventurers, but considerable knowledge of prevalent
winds and currents was obtained coincidently with
much local acquaintance with the various coasts. It
may fairly well be doubted whether the astronomical
calculations were made with anything like the same
exactness as they were by the old Arab nakhodds or
shipmasters; but what the English, Dutch, Spanish,
or Portuguese mariners lacked in accuracy, they made
up for in enterprise and energy. But, even with
them, " hurry " was a word that had no place in the
nautical vocabulary. Having crawled into a region
of winds or currents favourable for their destination,
they allowed their vessels to drift or jog along in
sublime disregard of the passing of the days ; for they
had no worrying owners pursuing them with tele-
graphic instructions, no fears of losing freight, no
trouble of any kind with those left behind, they had
enough to bother them in the scurvy and the keeping
of unruly but sorely-suffering crews in order. All
the while, though, progress was being made in the
science of navigation, however slow, and charts of
the oceans were being laboriously compiled and con-
tinually added to by the mariners who had cultivated
the art of cartography. If we remember, as we should
do, what the accommodation was like in those vessels,
how crude were all the appliances for the prosecution
of so delicate a work as marine surveying is, and how
entirely absent was any form of comfort, we must look

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 231

upon those old sea-worthies with the greatest admira-
tion for the work they did in laying the foundation
of our gigantic oversea trade. It has to be remembered,
too, how small the vessels were, how overmanned and
hampered with the necessary armament to enable them
either to defend themselves or to attack a weaker
vessel that offered plunder. We shall not be able to
restrain our praise of the simple old pirates who did
such wonderful work under such adverse conditions.

Still the ocean was, like the desert, a hunting-
ground for the descendants of Ishmael. Pretexts for
attacking, plundering, and destroying ships of another
nation were always forthcoming, and the only im-
provement that could be noticed was that it was
seldom that ships bearing the same flag attacked
one another. There was no regular navy anywhere
now, for the old Italian maritime republics had fallen
upon evil days, and could no longer boast of their
thousands of merchant vessels and their scores of
war galleys to protect them. Every ship now was
man-of-war or peaceful trader, as the occasion arose ;
but it was a prime necessity for any seaman that he
should know how to fight for the safety of his ship.
If he did not, or could not, there was an end of him
and his crew, and his owner's gains, for there was
no such thing as insurance or protection by vessels
exclusively equipped for war.

Again, it is obvious that these old seamen are en-
titled to our unstinted admiration in that they accom-
plished what they did in development of ocean traffic
when the odds against them were so heavy. Not only
were they handicapped in the passing of those vast ocean
solitudes by the puerile size and equipment of their

232 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

vessels, the question of provisioning, which even to-
day, as far as seamen are concerned, still remains a
burning one, and the advance in astronomical know-
ledge was not all commensurate with the eager desire
of mariners to push forward to the innermost recesses
of old Ocean. And as to instruments, to mention
them only raises a smile of pity. The cross-staff for
measuring the sun's altitude and the compass made
up the sum of their scientific implements, so that
they could only hope to obtain an approximately
correct latitude ; and as for longitude that was, and
continued to be for many generations, a matter of
pure guess work. There were no charts, at least none
worthy of the name, for the science of cartography
had not yet been born, and in consequence it was
only possible to proceed when near land (and they
had to watch the sea and the birds very carefully to
know whether they were near land or not) with the
utmost timidity and caution. Yet all unconsciously
they were adding to the sum of navigational know-
ledge, building up very slowly but very securely the
great fabric that should afterwards prove to men, of
no special force of character and only moderate in-
tellectual ability, an almost royal road to seafaring.

Progress, of course, was continually hindered by
war. Ever eager to embrace any means whereby
they might rob and murder one another more easily,
men found that the ocean lent itself with peculiar
ease to these satanic developments of humanity, and
in consequence the beneficent side of ocean traffic was
continually hindered by the infernal practice of
merchant seamen preying iipon one another, and
recognizing no law upon the sea but the primitive

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 233

one of the ability of the strongest to do what he felt
inclined to.

So by the opening of the sixteenth century ocean
traffic had become almost a commonplace, and while
much discovery remained to be accomplished, the
main high-roads of all the oceans were now wide open,
mariners had grown accustomed to the idea of sailing
across the ocean, and thought little of the safe accom-
plishment of a voyage from Europe to any of the
other great divisions of the globe. By the expression
" wide-open " I mean to point out that the element of
mystery, breeding dread of the unknown, had departed,
and, given time, any seaman worth counting as such
had no qualms in undertaking a voyage to any part
of the world accessible to a ship.

Now, with the wonderful development of all-ocean
traffic came a problem to be solved. Was this new,
immense adjunct to national prosperity to become the
monopoly of any one nation, or was it to be, as it ob-
viously should be, according to the dictates of humanity,
free to the enterprise of all for the common good of all
men ? Spain, fretted and galled beyond endurance by
the semi-piratical raids of the English, determined that
one formidable competitor, at any rate, should be
effectually silenced. And the Invincible Armada was
the result of that determination, its fate a matter of
history, upon which there is no need to dwell. Terrific
as the struggle and the subsequent exhaustion was for
both sides, there is no controversy as to the position
in which its conclusion left England. It did not ruin
Spain, she had ruined herself in much the same
manner as Kussia has done in her conflict with Japan.
But England had found herself, and realized that her

234 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

future greatness lay in her development of sea-power,
and that she must be prepared to assert that greatness
at all costs, to sacrifice all her internal necessities, if
need be, to this one paramount idea — that she must
be the mistress of the seas. This was not so much
formulated as felt, and that universally, with the result
that English sea-power rose steadily, and her flag was
carried by the Elizabethan mariners to the remotest
corners of the earth. The nation had found its proper
vogue, and being convinced that it could not only
hold its own, but grow as fast as it would, became a
veritable driving force in the affairs of the whole world.

Now, since the days of the Greeks, Komans, and
Italian republics, there had been no division of any
country's vessels into warships on one side, and mer-
chant ships or trading vessels exclusively on the other.
The vessels that fought in the supreme struggle of
the Armada were armed merchantmen, and hence the
conditions were quite different to those, say, at the
battles of Platea or Actium, where the vessels engaged
were built and handled for warlike purposes only.
The only alteration that was made in the ordinary
merchantman in preparation for a great sea-fight
was in the extra ammunition that was put on board
and the reinforcement of the crew by soldiers. This
latter was in itself a hindrance to naval development,
for the military, ever a haughty caste, looked down
upon the seafarers as mere mechanics, only useful to
bring the ship into such a position as would enable
the soldiers to do the fighting, which bred all manner
of heart-burnings and jealousies, and made progress
difficult.

Gradually it became evident to Englishmen that

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 235

if her trade was to grow in its natural ratio, merchant
seamen must have their hands free from the necessity
for fighting, the ships themselves must not be ham-
pered by warlike equipment, that peaceful trade must
be protected by vessels built and fitted out for war.
In short, that England must have a navy to protect
her already great commerce from molestation by the
ships of other nations, as well as by the pirates sailing
under the flag of universal hatred and depredation ;
for going to sea in those days was an extremely
hazardous undertaking, more so, perhaps, than at any
other time in the world's history. As before noted,
the development of all aids to safe and speedy navi-
gation had by no means kept pace with the courage
and enterprise of seafarers generally ; and, in addition
to the clumsiness of the vessels and the horrible priva-
tions in the matter of food and water and lodgment,
there was now the fierce and lawless competition be-
tween all the maritime nations, so that the sighting of
a sail was the signal to prepare for action, to make
ready to fight not merely for liberty, but for life.

Spain, however, had been permanently crippled;
Portugal was fast sinking into a slothful negligence
from her brief and brilliant sea career ; France was not
yet of much account on the sea, and the only two nations
who were contemporaneously growing in sea-power
and skill were England and Holland. They seemed
as if they were going to share the world between
them, or else, in case of a national quarrel, that one
would be practically destroyed, leaving the other
paramount. England had done Holland an enormous
service in breaking the sea-power of Spain to pieces,
for Spain had been the relentless tyrant of the Dutch,

236 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

the whole of whose manhood had been exerted for
many years in order to retain the leave to exist, in
defiance to the relentlessness of Spain for their de-
struction. But there is no such thing as national
gratitude, as Britain has abundantly proved, and so it
gradually became evident that if England did not
crush the sea-power of Holland, the opposite would
certainly happen. Both nations strained every nerve
to equip themselves for maritime warfare, building
warships and training fighting seamen in preparation
for the coming struggle.

It came to a climax, as we kuow, in the middle of
the seventeenth century, when England, writhing in
the throes of civil war, was also compelled to fight for
her existence as a maritime power. The time was
entirely propitious for Holland, but the dark hour pro-
duced men who rose to the full height of that great
occasion, and after many a severe struggle England
emerged triumphant, mistress of the sea. It is true
that during the shameful reign of the Second Charles
we slipped back for a time into a condition so helpless
that had there been any concentrated effort on the
part of our foreign foes we must then have sunk into
a state of such absolute helplessness at sea that we
should probably never have recovered from it. As it
was, the Dutch, who had been so effectually crushed
during Cromwell's rule, recovered to such an extent
that a fleet of theirs entered the Thames and inflicted
terrible damage upon the hapless merchantmen ; but
they were not able to pursue their advantage, and the
danger passed away.

Thenceforward the sea-power of England increased
amazingly. Science and exploration went hand in

OCEAN, THE UNIVERSAL HIGHWAY 237

hand, and even the almost incessant warfare in which
we were engaged at sea, as well as on land, only
seemed to have the effect of increasing our oversea
trade and of fixing our maritime supremacy. When at
last, from the growth of right-mindedness among
civilized peoples, over-sea trade came under the opera-
tion of law, piracy was crushed and peaceful merchant
mariners were free to devote all their energies to com-
bating the inevitable perils of the sea, the only serious
competitor we found was the young giant of our own
breeding, driven by acts of superlative stupidity to
turn against us and become almost implacably in-
imical. Within the memory of men still living, the
oversea trade of the United States of America was
almost equal to that of Great Britain, and any observer
of the trend of maritime affairs might have been for-
given for prophesying that by the present day the
great Republic would have been the chief maritime
power in the world.

That, however, was not to be. Various causes,
with which we have nothing to do, put an effectual
stop to the growing sea-power of the United States,
and not only restored Britain to her proud pre-emi-
nence among maritime powers, but made that pre-
eminence far greater than ever. Chief among these
was the advent of steam and the utilization of steel
for shipbuilding. Since these two great factors in
maritime intercourse have made their appearance,
navigational science has kept pace with their develop-
ment, until to-day the ocean has become so universal
a highway that the average man thinks less of a
journey to the Antipodes than his grandfather did of
a stage-coach trip from London to Edinburgh, and

238 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

certainly with reason, for more discomfort and real
hardship would be endured on the latter trip than on
half a dozen modern voyages to New Zealand.

I feel I cannot do better in concluding this chapter
than point out that, while we still easily hold our
own against all the rest of the world put together,
there are not wanting signs that our position as the
chief users of the great highway which we have done
so much to make universal, and in the policing of
which, in order that all peaceful mariners may come
and go unmolested, we have spent such countless
millions of treasure and such an enormous number of
lives, will soon be seriously challenged. Germany
and Japan are undoubtedly going to put us on our
mettle in this direction. And there need be no war.
Just the steady pressure of efficiency and economy,
combined with a determination to employ their own
citizens, will undoubtedly carry them very far, even if
they are not quite able to wrest from us our supre-
macy as the greatest of all the powers who do business
on the sea.

THE OCEAN, UNEXPLORED AND
UNEXPLORABLE

AT first sight the title of this chapter may raise a
spirit of contradiction in the mind of the thoughtful
reader, who may well be forgiven for saying, " What
part of the ocean yet remains to be explored ? Has
not man traversed every sea open to the passage of n
vessel, and surveyed it too, so that we may buy for
a few shillings charts of the entire surface of the
watery world ? " Quite true ; but I speak of that un-
imaginably vast portion of the earth's surface which is
hidden by the ocean, into which the questing eye of
man can never penetrate, from which he is, and must
be for ever excluded, the depths of the sea. There is
no danger of giving offence to veteran oceanographers,
such as Sir John Murray and Sir Wyville Thomson,
by such a statement as this, for they, with the true
modesty which always marks your real scientist, would
be the first to admit that, in spite of the labours of
themselves and others, the marvels of the ocean-bed
and of the vast intermediate spaces of ocean between
its surface and its bottom still remain as mysterious
as ever.

The depths of the sea ! The very phrase savours
of mystery, is as full of uncanny suggestions as is the
world of spirits to some minds. To think that in

239

240 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

these ultra-scientific days of ours there should be so
vast a portion of our globe as unknowable as space
itself, a very world peopled by the strangest forms of
life existing under the most extraordinary conditions
of pressure, lack of light and air, conceivable by us, is
enough to give the least imaginative mind among us
something to dwell upon with awe ; for it has no
parallel on the dry land or in the air. Above a very
thin film of atmosphere terrestrial life must cease, below
an equally thin stratum of earth it is the same, bat in
the ocean's depth we know that life everywhere
abounds, even in abysses which would submerge
Kinchinjanga or Aconcagua. From these profound
depths the trawls of the Challenger have drawn strange
forms of life, but there has always been a feeling that
these may not have come from the greatest depths;
and, in any case, when we remember the enormous area
of the ocean and the tiny space covered by the ship,
we must at once feel how trivial must be the know-
ledge gained by the most unremitting industry of
exploration. All our speculations as to the nature of
those gloomy profundities seem to fall lamentably
short of the possibilities of mysterious life abounding
there, and after dwelling upon them for a space the
mind recoils, baffled from the attempt to imagine what
the depths of the ocean must be like. We may, how-
ever, dwell with a certain complacency upon what man
has accomplished in spite of the difficulties attendant
upon deep-sea exploration, chief among which is the
truly wonderful feat of laying the submarine cables.
First of all, the careful laying off of a line of deep-sea
soundings from continent to continent, so that a rough
idea of the contour of the ocean-bed might be gained,

THE OCEAN UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLORABLE 241

then the careful laying of the cable among the sea-
bed with all its irregularities, so that the strain of its
being stretched from one submerged mountain peak to
another should not be too great for its strength ; and,
lastly, the perfect protection of the cable against the
corroding influence of the sea-water. Sufficient re-
cognition has, I fear, never been accorded to the work
of the cable-layers, to those quiet men, unknown, out-
side of their own circle, who so nonchalantly steam out
into the great waste of ocean, and unerringly pick up
the end of a broken cable from these inscrutable
depths, buoy it, and go off and pick up the other
end. The subsequent work of reuniting those ends
is comparatively easy, a mere matter of mechanics, —
wonderful enough, of course, to the great majority of
people who have never considered the mechanical
difficulties in the way, but, compared with the
spectacle of the dot of a ship pausing at the exact
spot in the illimitable ocean to drop a grappling down
six or seven thousand feet and pick up a thread
from the bottom, as simple as the alphabet to a
reader.

In these days of mathematical and engineering
wonders we take too much for granted, using the
amazing marvels of science without a thought of the
" how it is done," of the nameless unknown toilers
who have conspired to make life easy for us, who have
dared to enchain the lightning from the clouds and
bid it run through the bowels of the earth or along
the sea-bed to carry our messages for comfort of gain ;
but I know that our appreciation of these marvels
would be far greater and our enjoyment of life itself
be enhanced wondrously if we would but consider the

It

242 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

labours of those by whose energies these ameliorations
of our lot are made possible. It is not as if such
knowledge was hard to gain, superficially at any rate.
There are always with us a host of willing scribes to
make plain to us the labours of the workers ; but, alas
for us, the unutterable balderdash of low fiction, the
impossibilities of most of the modern novels, are more
to our taste, and, like the foolish dog, we reject the
substance for the flickering shadow, to our own ex-
ceeding detriment.

All this, however, is but by way of preliminary, a
lengthy introduction to my subject. If we glance at
a chart of the North Atlantic Ocean we shall see a
series of irregular curves drawn along the lines of
soundings which have been obtained, partly by the
indefatigable labours of the surveyors for cable-laying
purposes, but more, much more by the work of the
various scientific expeditions which have been sent out
to examine as far as could be possible the irregularities
of the ocean bed. And it will at once become evident
to us how rough an approximation to the truth these
curves represent. Of course when near the various
shores the lines of soundings become very accurate,
having been fairly easily obtained owing to their
shallowness, and the nature of the bottom carefully
noted as an all-important guide to the mariner. But
soon after leaving the land these easy depths suddenly
become abysses, descending precipice-like from five or
six hundred feet to as many thousands, or, as in the
Bay of Biscay, to three times as many. For there it
will be seen that the submarine cable is stretched
across an abyss whose sides descend abruptly from a
depth of less than a thousand to one of from twelve to

THE OCEAN UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLORABLE 243

eighteen thousand feet, the distance from the one
brink of this awful chasm to the other being less than
a hundred miles. It is impossible to imagine a cable
bridging so vast a gulf in air without intermediate
support, say from Chimborazo to Cotopaxi, since no
cable would bear the strain. Yet such is the sustain-
ing power of the water that it is most probable that
the cable through which our Southern messages are
flashed from Scilly via Gibraltar does bridge that
mighty gulf, and that, too, without undue strain. No
such sudden irregularity is encountered by the Trans-
atlantic cables. They lie fairly close to each other
over an irregular plateau, varying in depth from the
surface from six thousand to fifteen thousand feet, but
not abruptly. And the deepest soundings yet made
in this, the best-measured ocean in the world, reaches
nearly twenty-eight thousand feet, from which abysmal
pit rises almost sheer the mountains whose summits
form the Antilles.

But what is the character of those vast depths?
Here comes the justification for calling the depths
of the ocean unexplored and unexplorable. From the
ships of scientific expeditions trawls have descended
into these inscrutable depths thousands of times, but
the sum-total of the spoil they have brought to the
surface is infinitesimal, and certainly in nowise repre-
sentative of the abundant mysteries beneath. If only
the drag-nets of the Challenger could have brought
to the surface some sculptured fragment of the lost
Atlantis, some recognizable sign of an immemorial
civilization submerged by some unrecorded cosmic
upheaval, what a discovery it would have been ! But
no, apart from a few eerie forms of alien life, of bizarre

244 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

fish, the sole gain from the bottom of the deep sea has
been a few bucketfuls of ooze, rich, indeed, in organic
remains of globigerina, diatoms, and foraminifera, but
bearing no relation to the works of man. Another
similar fact, exemplifying the infinitesimal spots which
would-be exploration has been able to reach : out of
all the thousands of wrecks, of ships foundered in the
deep sea, no portion, not the least fragment, has ever
been recovered by the searching drag-nets of explor-
ing ships.

There is another phase of the ocean depths which
appeals to the imaginative mind very strongly, the
steady set of submarine currents, the enormous flow of
what, for a better name, we must call submarine rivers,
carrying with them who knows what of influence
upon the shores against which they will presently
impinge. I cannot dwell too much upon this aspect
of the submarine world, having already alluded to it
sufficiently in a previous chapter upon currents, but
it demands a passing mention here in connection with
the title, because if we only knew, with any approach
to accuracy, in what direction these unseen currents
were trending, what was their origin or cause, and
what their effect upon the upper world, many problems
of weather and navigation which are at present in-
soluble would become comparatively easy of elucida-
tion. At present we must content ourselves with the
meagre knowledge that these mysterious movements
of the lower waters of the ocean, like the incessant
flow and return of the currents of the human frame,
keep the globe in health, such constant circulation of
the whole mighty mass of ocean's body being essential
to the avoidance of stagnation and death, death not

THE OCEAN UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLORABLE 245

only of the myriad tribes inhabiting the sea, but of
the millions of higher creation on the land.

And knowing this, we need not be too much
troubled about our ignorance of the proximate causes
of these great motions, whether changes of surface-
temperature, or gales, or cosmic upheavals, or the
ceaseless revolution of the earth upon its axis ; we
must be content to know that these currents exist,
and that their action is wholly beneficent in its opera-
tion for the well-being of the globe. Of one thing we
may be certain, from the very best of evidence, which
is, that the ocean is a vast laboratory for the manufac-
ture of those often invisible matters which make for
health, as well as being the great deodorizing recep-
tacle for all the filth of the world. It is true that
mother Earth also deodorizes, changing the foulest
forms of refuse into wholesome food, but she does it
at a terrible price, and the process is most disagreeable
under the best conditions ; whereas, in the vast bosom
of the ocean, this cleansing, health-renewing process
goes on continually, perfectly ; and those whose life is
spent upon the sea surface or near its shores know
full well what an elixir of life is continually ascending
from its limpid waters.

Now, in the foregoing, I have assuredly no wish to
belittle the wonderful work done by the Challenger
expedition and kindred efforts. iThey have accom-
plished an amazing amount of work, and have added
largely to our sum of scientific knowledge by even the
blind gropings that they have been able to make in
a few spots scattered over the vast ocean bed. For
one thing, they have dispelled several old and well-
worn fallacies connected with the depths of the ocean,

246 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

principal among which was, that below a certain depth,
say, a thousand feet, life ceased owing to the enormous
pressure of the superincumbent weight of water and
the absence of air, to name only two reasons which
used to be advanced. They have discovered, also, the
extreme mobility of the ocean ; in the language of the
late hydrographer, Sir W. Wharton, " not one drop of
all that vast mass of water is ever for a moment at
rest," — that is, in the popular sense of motion, and
taking no account of the high scientific fact, recently
discovered, of the incessant activity of the electrons of
which all matter is composed. They have learned a
great deal of the contour of the sea- bed, and plumbed
its greatest depths in the South Pacific, or at least
approximately so to a few yards, an awful abyss just
north of New Zealand, with a profundity of six miles.
The only other portions of the ocean bed, which nearly
approach this stupendous depth, are all fairly close to
land : as the deep near Hayti, in the West Indies,
28,000 feet ; the trough off the Japanese coast, of about
the same depth; and a hole, between the Marianne
and Caroline islands, in the North-Western Pacific, of
over 27,000 feet.

Now harking back to the Atlantic again, the
explorers have by diligent survey discovered, in the
midst of the southern half of that vast and almost
landless expanse of water, what they call a ridge, or,
rather, a submerged continent, larger than the whole
of Scandinavia, which rises from adjacent depths of
from fifteen to eighteen thousand feet, to a mean height
of about seven thousand feet, leaving its top still some
ten thousand feet below the sea surface except at its
extremities, where the lonely peaks of Ascension, St.

THE OCEAN UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLORABLE 247

Helena, Tristan d'Acunha, and G-ough Islands soar
into the upper air. Possibly at some period of the
wondrous early history of our globe this great ridge
was above water, dividing the South Atlantic sheer
in two, with such effect upon the climate of that
ancient world as we can now hardly imagine; but
owing to our utter inability to penetrate the mysteries
of those inscrutable depths, we have no means of
knowing whether this was so or not. We may, how-
ever, reasoning from the known to the unknown, feel
fairly certain that there is but little difference really
between the land above and the land below the sea,
except in those attributes which the former has gained
from its contact with the atmosphere and sunlight.

Among the most potent forces at work in the
depths of the sea must be the volcanic upheavals,
some of which having taken place near land have
given evidence of their terrible effects. Arguing from
our knowledge of the fact that the deeper we go down
from the Earth's surface the nearer we approach to
the incandescent core of our world, it would seem only
reasonable to suppose that at a depth of about ten
times that of the deepest mine ever bored by man
there must be but a comparatively thin skin between
the sea-bed and molten conditions. Consequently,
where in the course of the planet's cooling that skin
cracks, and the astounding mass of water at the freezing
point rushes in upon that glowing reservoir, the up-
heaval caused by the sudden conversion of so many
millions of tons of water into steam would be sufficient,
one would think, to rend off whole continents from the
submerged surface, and to change its whole contour
in a way which we dry land-dwellers can only dimly

248 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

imagine. I am fully persuaded in my own mind that
the bed of the sea is the breeding place of earth-
quakes, and that the reason of their being so much
more prevalent in some parts of the world than in
others must be looked for in the fact that the gigantic
concussions consequent upon these submarine ex-
plosions take certain given directions laid down for
them by the geological configuration of the earth ; for
it is well known that the harder the substance the
greater the effect of an explosion upon it, and the
farther reaching its effects. But in any case so great
is the concussion that its effects may be observed all
over the world, although in many places quite delicate
instruments must be used, known as seismometers, in
order to note and record the tremors of the earth.

Another reason why earthquakes are more prevalent
in some places than others is, I suppose, that in such
places there are usually vent-holes for the subterranean
fires which, presumably from the lie of the strata
beneath the volcano, come much nearer to the surface
in these places than in others, and consequently the
pent-up volume of steam, taking the line of least
resistance, rushes towards these outlets, shattering the
intervening rocks in its way. I consider it to be a
striking confirmation of this theory, that all terrestrial
active volcanoes are near the sea ; and the extinct ones
in places remote from the margin of the ocean appear
as if by the intervention of some cosmic upheaval they
had been thus isolated from the element which had
been the proximate cause of their elevation. And
therefore the same remarks which I have ventured to
make as to the cause of earthquakes will apply with
equal force to volcanoes, which, I take it, are in most

THE OCEAN UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLOEABLE 249

cases just safety-valves, and this I think may be con-
sidered as proved by the presence in all volcanic
eruptions of vast quantities of boiling mud and steam,
as well as the more terrific floods of molten rock known
as lava. To digress for a moment, it may be said that
such a wonderful exhibition of volcanic action as is
shown in the Yellowstone Park cannot be due to the
sea, because of its remoteness. In that case, I think
the upheavals may be referred to the penetration into
subterranean fires of rivers flowing down from the
mountain chains, and so is to be considered as due
to the action of water after all.

I am suddenly reminded that hitherto I have been
able to refer continually to the beneficent action of
our heritage the sea upon the earth, but that in this
case it is difficult indeed to see where the benefit
to mankind comes in, what good can be wrought
by these terribly devastating phenomena. But while
admitting the difficulty, I am not prepared to say that
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are wholly evil in
their effect upon the life of the world at large, or that
the unascertained good may not largely overtop the
easily understood evil. It may be that only our
ignorance of the great cosmic scheme prevents us from
seeing the good that is being done, and for my part
I am content to believe that all these mighty forces
have their mission which makes for ultimate good.
Certainly the amount of destruction done which we
can assess is appalling, apart altogether from the wide-
spread cessation of life in the sea itself as a consequence
of these cataclysms. In some of them, at any rate, the
area of absolute death must be measured by many
thousands of square miles, yet, taking place as it does

250 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

in that unexplorable region into which man is for-
bidden to penetrate, we know nothing about it ; nor
does it cause, except in a very small degree, and in
3nly a few places, even inconvenience to mankind by
the loss of the fisheries. For such is the recuperative
and revivifying power of the sea, that these gigantic
destructions do not leave traces of their power for any
length of time that is appreciable, the teeming life
of the ocean asserts its tenant-rights again at the
earliest possible moment, and all is as it was before
the catastrophe.

Still, it must be gratefully admitted that certain
parts of the sea-bed, and notably those where such
paroxysms of our planet would cause the greatest
possible amount of suffering and loss to man, are
remarkably free from these terrific visitations. I
have often thought of the possible effect of a sub-
marine upheaval beneath the banks of Newfoundland,
for instance, or indeed anywhere within the extra-
tropical regions of the North Atlantic. We need not,
however, speculate upon these palpable possibilities,
but be humbly thankful that they do not occur.

And now, leaving the Atlantic for awhile, let us take
a brief glance at the Indian Ocean. The principal
feature of the Indian Ocean bed, until we get away
east to the Archipelago, is the absence of volcanoes
and the presence of the coral reef. Not, however,
in any great numbers ; these, wonderful evidences of
animal activity in secreting from the water the solid
material of which the dry land is made are not, so
to speak, very abundant. I passed them over when
they occurred in the North Atlantic, or, to speak more
particularly, in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico,

THE OCEAN UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLOBABLE 251

because I wished to deal with them as a whole. In
the face of the acute controversies which have taken
place between great authorities upon the subject of
coral reefs, it would be impertinent of me to intrude
any personal opinions of my own. But one thing is
certainly most clearly established, which is, that as
the madrepore or millepore, or, to use a more popular
and therefore incorrect term, the coral insect dies
when it reaches the surface, so it is unable to exist
below a certain depth of only a few fathoms. There-
fore the fanciful idea of these tiny builders toiling
through the ages in order to erect their babel towers
from the remote ocean depths until they reach the
surface to form islands must, however reluctantly, be
abandoned. Where it has been found that coral
persists to a great depth, it has also been found that
it is dead coral; that is, the tiny builders have
succumbed upon the sinking of the basement or
foundations of their erection — a settlement in all
probability due to the shrinkage of the earth from
cooling, before alluded to. But where the coral
structures have been found to exist well above high-
water mark, it must be presumed that they have been
lifted thither by some subterranean upheaval as rapid
in its action as the sinking before mentioned had
been slow.

The main feature, however, about the coral forma-
tions which strikes the imaginative mind is the
manner in which each of these tiny globules of jelly,
in whom only the microscope can enable us to observe
any of the organs we usually associate with constructive
life, labour incessantly to abstract from the sea as it
flows past them the particles of lime necessary to

252 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

construct their fairy-like dwellings ; how, infinitesimal
as they are, the aggregate result of their toil is
enormous, comparing to easiest advantage with the
most stupendous works of man ; how, too, all this
labour is directed by some supreme intelligence into
the most beautiful structural forms, comparable only
with the most delicate tracery of leaf and blossom in
the vegetable world. Here alone may be found the
most satisfying food for thought that the most ardent
mind could desire, even if the privilege of viewing
these marvels in situ has been denied. The actual
contemplation of them breeds awe and reverence and
a fuller appreciation of the wonders of the mighty
deep than any previous and dissimilar acquaintance
with those wonders would have appeared to make
possible. Enjoying as I do most keenly the works
of Nature observers, such as Richard Jefferies, Charles
Gr. D. Harper, Richard Kearton, and others, I am
bound to say that an even richer field awaits the
enthusiast who shall devote a year or two to close
and constant study of the work of the denizens of
a coral reef, and write of them and their labours in
the same spirit of loving appreciation, based upon
close observation, as the writers already mentioned
have done.

Leaving for a while the coral islands of the Indian
Ocean, let us take a flying glance at that wonderful
broken series of volcanic lands which border this ocean
on the east. They are, of all the earth's surface, the
most closely allied to the great cosmic changes that
are occurring in our age, being honeycombed with
volcanic outlets, and subject to the most appalling
manifestations of subterranean energy. One of the

THE OCEAN UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLORABLE 253

most terrible of these outbreaks occurred in 1883, at
Krakatoa, in the Straits of Sunda between Java and
Sumatra, on the direct highway to the Far East.
Perhaps because of the spread of observatories all over
the world the universal character of this cataclysm
was noted all round the globe, proving how tremendous
was its effect upon the atmosphere. An atmospheric
wave of the most marked character recorded itself
upon every barograph in the world for three successive
days, and the sky presented for weeks, to masses of
wondering awestricken spectators, the most marvellous
blends of lurid colours at sunset and sunrise, owing
to the presence in the higher strata of the atmosphere
of incalculable quantities of volcanic dust. But of
the world-wide effect of the submarine concussion we
know little. Its local effects transcended all previous
experience, mention having been made of waves one
hundred feet high recoiling landward, and inundating
in a few moments many hundreds of square miles.
But enough has probably been said of this particular
destructive form of ocean's activity, and I gladly
pass on to the great Pacific, which is in some respects
peculiarly distinct from the Atlantic.

First, in that it does not owe anything for its banks
in the north to what has been considered the prime
factor in forming, for instance, the great bank of
Newfoundland, viz., the gradual melting of southern
drifting icebergs laden with detritus from the Arctic
lands, which has been deposited in this favourable
position during the course of ages. For the only way
into the Pacific Ocean from the Arctic is through
Behrings Straits, which are much too shallow to permit
the passage of any piece of ice large enough to be

254 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

called a berg, since the submerged portion of an ice-
berg, owing to the slight difference between the specific
gravity of ice and water, is about eight times as deep
as that appearing above water is high. One valuable
result from this is that the navigation of the North
Pacific is not impeded by the presence of these wander-
ing dangers, which constitute the most terrible of all
mid-ocean perils for the seafarer. Another great pecu-
liarity of the Pacific is the vast number of scattered
island groups, nearly all of which are mainly of coral,
although the evidences of submarine volcanic energy
are very frequent, the appearance or disappearance of
islets in a day being of such frequent occurrence as
to constitute a considerable danger in navigating those
intricate waters.

It is notable, too, for its immensely greater average
depth than that of the other oceans, although, knowing
what we do of the immense depths that have been
discovered within comparatively small areas surrounded
by much shallower waters, it is far too much" to say
that even the great deeps that have been plumbed
are the deepest that will be found. Many years of
incessant labour in deep-sea sounding, even with the
present splendid instruments used for that purpose,
must elapse before we are in a position to say we know
exactly how deep the ocean is, if, indeed, we ever do
know. Besides, it must be remembered that this is a
scientific question, not a commercial one at all, a depth
sufficient to float the biggest ship we can build, with a
fair margin over so that the heaviest seas may not
break, being amply sufficient for all navigational
purposes.

Yes, the Pacific, besides being the most vast in

THE OCEAN UNEXPLORED AND UNEXPLORABLE 255

area, and the deepest, is unique in many respects ; but,
although it has been traversed for centuries, although
it probably bore upon its broad bosom the earliest of
all navigators, and has, being the wonder sea of the
whole world, a magnetic power of attraction for all
who still love the romance of the sea, it has not yet
nearly come to its own. That, however, is in the near
future. With the rise of Japan into a first-class power,
with all the maritime qualifications necessary to enable
her to take advantage of her magnificent position,
with the cutting of the Panama Canal and the develop-
ment of the Australasian colonies, the next generation
or so will most probably witness an amazing develop-
ment of Trans-Pacific trade, in which it is most probable
that our country will have to struggle fiercely to hold
her own with America, our own colonies, and Japan.
But that great development will come gradually, and
it is to be hoped that our ancient energy in shipping
matters will be equal to the occasion.

And now, in considering the most mysterious ocean
of all, the boundless Antarctic, we come to a portion
of the surface of the globe that, both above and below,
is full of mystery. A few attempts have been made
on scientific grounds to explore it, and a century ago
a certain amount of romantic business, in the shape of
sealing upon its few barren islands, was carried on,
while great fleets of sailing vessels, bound from Britain
to her antipodean colonies, and home again round
Cape Horn, gave the northern portion of it a fairly
strong human interest. But the sealers have long
given up their stormy trade, the sailing ship is fast
disappearing, and, except for the swift passage of the
big ocean steamships that still use this route, the great

256 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

Southern Ocean would have almost relapsed into its
primitive loneliness and silence. It was always a
strenuous ocean, where only the best of ships and the
boldest of mariners could hope to hold their own, and
its passage has ever been calculated to show the stuff
that ships and men were made of. Steam in this, as
in so many other departments of seafaring, has wrought
a marvellous change, so much so, that what old sailors
know as running the Easting down, will probably soon
be a thing of the past.

But, whether it relapses into its primitive deserted
condition or no, there is one phase of beneficent
activity which it will never lose, and one that has a
vast and incalculable effect upon many millions of the
human race. Its cold waters, studded with mighty
icebergs from the mysterious Southern region, where
life apparently cannot exist except in the sea, are
continually rushing northwards to supply the immense
and continual evaporation of the heated waters of the
tropical oceans, so that there is nothing extremely
fanciful in supposing that a nodule of ice from the
vicinity of Mount Erebus may, converted into rain, be
found nourishing a wheat ear in the fields of the Doab,
or that the rain for which the patient ryot is waiting,
in almost utter hopelessness, is coming to him from
that far-off region of which he had never heard, and
for which he has certainly never cared. And thus the
four great oceans, by reason of their wonderful system
of circulation, are mutually interdependent, and co-
operate in their great work for the benefit of mankind.

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD

IN spite of the admiration and affection I feel — I hope
in common with all other Britons — for the British
Navy and its glorious history, it is, I confess, with
the greatest possible reluctance that I approach this
portion of my subject. War in any form is, to my
thinking, a horrible, bestial thing, and its exercise
indicates that the people who commence it are lost to
all the higher feelings of humanity, unless, indeed,
they are driven to take up arms as a last resource in
order to save themselves and those dear to them from
slavery, in which case the onus rests upon the aggressor,
although he may not have actually committed the
initial act of war. But dreadful as war is anywhere,
it will surely be admitted that it is pre-eminently so
upon the sea. Man's conquest of the sea as a highway
for commercial purposes has been and remains one
of the crowning achievements of humanity ; that he
should calmly pursue his avocation upon this treacher-
ous and foreign element sets the seal upon his posi-
tion in creation. But that he should degrade this
magnificent triumph of mind over matter to the
shameful purposes of subjugating, despoiling, and
slaying his fellow man is to afford an object-lesson of
the most striking kind of the heights to which man
can soar and the depths to which he will drag himself

257 S

258 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

by the aid of those very qualities which place him at
the summit of the scale of creation.

Not, of course, that I would dare deny even to a
pirate the possession of heroical qualities. To do so,
indeed, would be foolish ; for it must be obvious that
the mariner who is also a fighter is doubly a hero, and
it must never be forgotten that every naval engage-
ment has in it the nature of a forlorn hope. Way of
retreat for the defeated there is none, except for those
whose courage fails them early in the fight, and who
manage to flee before any material damage has been
inflicted upon them. But here, again, I feel the
deepest sorrow that the possession of such qualities
should be so perverted, and that the beneficent ocean
should be for even the briefest hour polluted by the
slaughter of one another by men. Let me hasten,
however, to add, for fear of misunderstanding, that
this view of the ocean as a battle-field does not in
the least affect my admiration for the British Navy
and its splendid men. In spite of what foreign liars
may say, ay and even our own home-bred traitors
declare, every right-thinking, intelligent Briton knows
that in the fullest sense of the word the motto of the
British Navy is " Defence not Defiance." It is more
than that, it is the police of the world, the chief,
almost the only, agent for making the navigation of
the most difficult waters secure ; its one end and aim
is that the peace of the world shall be kept, and that
all men, specially mariners, under whatever flag, shall
be free to go and come between the lands in pur-
suance of their lawful occasions. Moreover, feeling
assured, as I should do were I a native of any other
country, that the existence of Britain as a nation is,

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 259

under God, a prime necessity for the advancement and
well-being of the whole world, and being equally
certain that her prosperity and power has excited the
fiercest envy and cupidity on the part of other nations,
which it is unnecessary to specify, I look upon the
might of her navy as the only safeguard against the
evil desires of those nations, which, if they only could
possibly compass the destruction of that safeguard,
would be immediately exercised with the utmost ruth-
lessness for the purpose of reducing her to a condition
of helpless vassalage to them. This, of course, will be
looked upon as a prime example of British hypocrisy ;
but even those who will call it so know, however dis-
tasteful the knowledge may be to them, that it is
within the bounds of the strictest statement of fact.

So much by way of introduction, and now we must
make a long leap backwards into the twilight of time.
The same difficulty of finding a basis of fact for our
remarks besets the subject in hand as was noted in
the chapters on the " Ocean as a Universal Highway,"
viz. that the records we have of the doings of the early
maritime peoples are very scanty, and vitiated by
fable, while of the exploits of others, whom we feel cer-
tain had their share in early nautical enterprise, such
as the Chinese, we have practically no record at all,
fabulous or otherwise. It seems certain, however, that
the same essentially nautical people whom we have
agreed to regard as pioneers of European nautical
commerce, whatever may have happened before their
days in the Far East, the Phoenicians, were also the
earliest sea-warriors. That, I think, would naturally
follow, because there would undoubtedly be among
them reckless men who would be tempted to take a

260 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

short cut to wealth by robbing one another (for there
were no other seafarers to rob) ; and because, having
committed this crime, they dared not return to Tyre,
they would establish piratical colonies in suitable
ports on the shores of the Mediterranean. This led to
the honest merchantmen arming themselves against
the pirates — a simple matter enough ; since in those
days there was not, there could not be, such a thing as
peaceful trading, the merchant must be a fighter if he
would keep what he had honestly gotten. For the
primal instinct of man is to take what he covets, and,
if resisted, to fight like any other animal, the reign of
law not having yet begun. This, of course, applies to
those early maritime traders whom I have called
honest, for there can be no doubt whatever that, while
they bought commodities when they were unable to
obtain them in any other way, they never scrupled to
take what they coveted without payment when they
were strong enough to do so. And this applies espe-
cially to that, in those days, most marketable of all
commodities — man.

Consequently, it was no long time after the birth
of navigation before there was developed a regular
system of sea-warfare ; but it is as well to note that,
at first, it was a warfare conducted by mariners alone
without the aid of land soldiers. Fighting as a pro-
fession, distinct from the useful peaceful avocations of
mankind, had long been practised, and, indeed, had
reached to a high pitch of efficiency, as of course it
should have done, being, as far as we can learn from
history, the principal occupation of the more advanced
of the nations. I point this out because it is a curious
fact that for many centuries of naval, or, rather,

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 261

nautical history, it seems to have been considered abso-
lutely necessary to carry soldiers on board ship to do
the fighting; but we shall presently see that they
became slaves, and nothing else. The early Phoenician
mariners did their own fighting as well as navigation,
and consequently attained a high proficiency in the
art ; indeed, for centuries they held a monopoly of all
that pertained to navigation.

The first instance on record, however, of their being
employed in any great nautical warlike expedition
was, according to accepted chronology, about 1500 B.C.
According to Diodorus, Sesostris, the Pharaoh of the
Exodus, formed a project for the conquest of the
world. It is said that he commenced the cutting of a
canal uniting the Mediterranean and Red Sea, thus
antedating De Lesseps by a trifle of over three millen-
niums, but apparently he did not finish it, leaving it
to his successors, who did. But whether by transport
overland or by building on the coast, he managed to
fit out a fleet of four hundred vessels in the Ked Sea,
and started them, under the charge of Phoenician
officers for the navigation, on their career of conquest,
a gigantic piratical expedition, of course. There is
little doubt indeed attaching to the despatch of this
vast armament, although the chronology is more than
doubtful, and we have only the mistiest record of the
countries they visited and ravaged. In fact, our know-
ledge of that " first fleet " begins and ends with its
despatch nine hundred years later (it was a leisurely age,
and, as I said, its chronology is more than doubtful).
Another sovereign of Egypt, Pharaoh Necho, fitted out
a similar expedition, handled as before by Phoenicians,
who achieved the feat of sailing round the Cape of Good

262 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

Hope about two thousand years before Vasco da Gama
discovered it. However long these primary navigators
took on this prodigious voyage, or what adventures
they met with, we have no means of knowing ; but
how much richer the literature of the world would be
if, instead of the incessant tale of slaughter, which is
all we have, we could peruse the log-books of those
ancient pioneers ! and what would we not give to know
whether they met with vessels of any other, to them,
unknown nation ! Alas, if they did, they probably
made short work of them — that is, if they were able.
It was an age remarkable for the promptitude with
which all strangers, and therefore potential enemies,
were disposed of. There were probably few com-
modities then less accounted of than human life.

But, although this first circumnavigation of Africa
is intensely interesting, could we but get details of it
from the time those intrepid mariners left their port
of departure in the Ked Sea, until they returned to
Egypt via the Pillars of Hercules, it was, as far as
we know, fairly peaceful, except, of course, for land
forays. It is hardly likely that there would be any
naval engagements on that long voyage, at any rate
until nearing home, for there would be nobody to
fight with except one another. In considering that
voyage, moreover, we are striding far too much ahead,
and must needs retrace our steps a few hundred years
to the founding of the Carthaginian empire at Utica,
the date of which is unknown, but which appears to
have been about a thousand years before Christ.
Probably every intelligent schoolboy knows that this,
the first naval power of which we have any knowledge,
was a colony from Tyre, founded by seamen in about

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 263

the most commanding position in the whole Middle
Sea, for the prosecution of the peculiar industry which
the Phoenicians had made their own, viz. oversea
traffic. But they speedily supplemented this peaceful
business by one entirely warlike, for they established
a fleet of purely war-vessels, in which they sailed
from shore to shore slaying or making slaves of such
as opposed them, and planting colonies of their own
for the purpose of exploiting such countries, but
never penetrating far inland for some centuries. Their
own hinterland they seem to have neglected altogether.
Still, even in their wars they were essentially mer-
cantile, and consequently we find them lending a
navy to Xerxes for the subjugation of Greece, which
has been computed at two thousand war-vessels and
three thousand transports, so mighty had their power
become. By reason of this they had dominated the
whole Mediterranean; but in this, the first naval
battle of which we have any authentic record, they
were so signally defeated by the Greeks, who, with
hardly any vessels, managed to get on board the ships
which were besieging Himera, and were probably
crowded on the beach, that they lost, so it is said, a
hundred and fifty thousand men and most of their
vessels. It is probably a misnomer to call it a naval
engagement at all ; it was, more properly speaking,
a land battle in which the combatants accidentally
fought on board stranded ships. However, owing to
the wealth and skill she had at her command, Carthage
soon built another vast fleet, and pursued her career of
rapine and destruction as before, thus succeeding in
regaining her pride of place as mistress and despot of
the seas. But in the course of the centuries, for men

264 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

were slow to learn in those days, the Greeks had
gradually grown to emulate the Phoenician seamen in
the art of naval warfare, being indeed driven thereto
by the stern necessity of defending their very existence
against the menace of the Persians. And, although
they professed themselves entirely unacquainted with
the art of fighting at sea, we all know how splendidly
they acquitted themselves in their encounter with the
Persian braggart, whose fleet outnumbered theirs as
much as his enormous masses of men did the small,
compact army of the Greeks. The naval battle of
Salamis which was then fought was, although second
in point of time, first in importance in the history of
the ancient world, and established the Greeks as the
equals, if not the superiors, of the Carthaginians in
the new art of naval warfare.

I have said that in those leisurely days men were
slow to learn, but of course there were notable excep-
tions, perhaps the chief of these being the manner in
which the Eomans, finding that their only hope of suc-
cessfully coping with the Carthaginians was to fight
them at sea, determined to build a navy, and, with
that tremendous energy for the application of which
they were notable, actually built and equipped in two
months a fleet of one hundred and twenty galleys,
having also, in the mean time, taught themselves how
to handle them. And with this rapidly and rudely
constructed fleet they put to sea, met the Cartha-
ginians with a superior force, and utterly routed them.

It is now necessary to pause for a while in order
to point out that these warships were all galleys, or
vessels propelled entirely by oars, and that seaman-
ship, as we understand it, had no part in their handling.

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 265

The men who formed the motive power could not
fight, had they wished, being chained to the oars,
nor could they either defend themselves or escape.
In fact, as I have before pointed out, these vessels
were merely the means whereby huge masses of men
were brought into close contact with each other in
order that they might fight hand to hand as they did
on shore. Of course, it would not be long before it
was discovered that a whole shipload of men might
be disposed of at once by the summary process of
ramming, and that to effect this a certain amount
of manipulative skill must be acquired in order to
thrust the beak of one ship into the bowels of another.
But, with that sole exception, any approach to sea-
manship was absent, and remained so until it was
found that sails might usefully be employed in naval
warfare, and the first crude attempts at artillery, in
the shape of ballistse, hand-slings, arrows, and fire-pots,
came into use. Unhappily, the desecration of the sea
by warfare, having been thus bloodily commenced on
a large scale, soon became general, and for many
centuries the Mediterranean waters were the scene
of constant battles, every nation on its borders taking
a hand in the infernal game.

Throughout the next fifteen hundred years the
history of naval warfare remains practically the same.
Vessels grew little, as far as mere size is concerned,
although the shape altered greatly, and gradually the
equipment of sails grew in complexity and complete-
ness. But still the galley held her own as the most
deadly and efficient seafaring engine of war in those
narrow seas — held^it, too, long after the invention of
gunpowder had made it possible for men to slay each

266 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

other without coming to handgrips. The wonderful
Italian republics of Venice, Piza, and Genoa rose to
amazing heights of power and wealth by reason of
their maritime exploits, and Spain and Portugal
launched out into the deep and wide Atlantic in
quest of plunder — it is hardly fair to call it com-
mercial enterprise. But, hardly noticed by them, an
even fiercer, hardier race of seafarers had arisen in
the North, beginning in the same way with vessels
propelled by oars, but with one essential difference —
every man was free and a warrior. The early history
of our own country is inextricably interwoven with
the exploits of these Northern pirates, who sought
on the sea the wealth their own inhospitable shores
denied them, and ravaged in turn every country
within their reach that was fairer and wealthier than
their own. To them, and to their lineal descendants
the Normans, we owe our existence as a nation, and
undoubtedly it is to their seafaring instincts we owe
the present fact of our greatness in maritime affairs.
Throughout these stormy centuries the story of the
sea is one of continual bloodshed and rapine. The sea
was the road to fame, and wealth was only obtained
by robbery and murder. Peaceful maritime trading
did not exist, because it could not. " Seafarer " was
a synonym for pirate, a being whom the advance of
civilization and Christianity was one day to wipe off
the sea as a foul blot upon humanity. There is no
room for discrimination, all were alike guilty where
it was possible to be so. Even down to Elizabethan
times, it is well for us to remember that, although
great strides had been made in the direction of
peaceful sea-traffic, many of the nation's heroes were

;

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 267

not a whit better than pirates, although their deeds
bore a colour of legality, from the fact that they were
ostensibly fighting the battles of their country by
plundering and slaying, whenever and wherever they
found them, all those whom they chose to regard as
her enemies. It is a feeble excuse, because precisely
the same argument may be justly used on behalf of
the bloodthirsty seafarers of the Mediterranean during
all the dark days I have passed over so rapidly, except
in the few isolated cases where small bands of bontl-
fide pirates, without a country, fought and stole for
their own pleasure.

It is, however, time to turn for a little while to
the other side of the world, and see how in those far
Eastern lands navigation began, as far as we know,
with sea warfare — with probably one notable excep-
tion, China. It is only fair to suppose, knowing what
we do of the essentially peaceful character of the
Chinese, and the low repute in which the fighting
caste has always been held among them, that their
undoubtedly ancient seafaring enterprises were estab-
lished and maintained as purely trading purposes.
True, there were pirates among them, and of a
peculiarly diabolical type, pirates who persisted in
their evil calling until suppressed by our strong hand
not so many years ago. Nay, there are pirates among
them still, in a small way, and there is no doubt that
if it were not for the careful policing of those seas,
mostly by our ships, piracy would soon flourish again.
But that was only a phase of the Chinese character.
Piracy would specially appeal to them as being an easy
method of amassing wealth by pursuing the peaceful
trading-junks, running alongside and slaughtering all

268 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

the unresisting crew, then transferring the cargo to
their own keeping. Note well the Chinese pirate
never took any risks, never attempted to rob a ship
when there was a possibility of resistance. True,
there were so-called Chinese pirates who accomplished
bold but horrible deeds, but it will invariably be
found that they were commanded by a European,
usually a Portuguese ; and their crews were a mixed
medley of Eastern races, the fierce, ruthless, and essen-
tially warlike Malays predominating.

What I wish to point out, however, with regard
to the immemorial navigation of the Chinese is that
we have no record at all of their undertaking an
expedition whose main object was warfare. The very
idea would be foreign to them ; for while the Chinese
are first of all traders, then scholars, the man of war is
to them a blackguard, a hooligan, one whose existence
is a menace to the public peace — a condition of things
worth any sacrifice to maintain. As an instance of
this, and also of the average amenability to law and
order universally obtaining among the Chinese, the
celebrated marine edict of the Emperor K'ang Hsi,
reigning from 1662 until 1723, may fairly be quoted.
Great and splendid as were his achievements on land,
his authority stopped with the shore. The peaceful
coast-dwellers were made painfully aware of this by
reason of the enterprise of Koxinga, a notorious pirate,
who had established a regular co-operation among the
pirates, and might, had he lived later, have termed
the enterprise, " The Perfectly Practicable and Secure
Piracy Company, Unlimited ; Koxinga, managing
director." This business-like pirate, having garnered
the Chinese mercantile marine, turned his attention

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 269

to the coast-dwellers, so successfully that the hapless
ones petitioned the emperor for protection. This he
was unable to give them, as Koxinga was supreme at
sea, and to overthrow him meant fighting; so, in a
diplomatic mood, the emperor issued an edict that
all the dwellers on the coast were to retire nine miles
inland, where they would be quite safe from piratical
raids. The edict was obeyed, and, in the result, was
triumphantly successful. There is no record of how
many fishermen starved to death, or what sort of
experience the inland folks endured, but we learn
that Koxinga, baffled by the ingenious method of
frustrating his efforts, turned his attention to Formosa,
then recently colonized by the Dutch. Having driven
the hated Fanqui out — those who were not murdered
— the enterprising pirate was ennobled as the " Sea-
Quelling Duke," and became one of the chief officers
of the emperor. As Dr. A. R. Smith, from whose
delightful book, "Chinese Characteristics," I take
the present episode, remarks, " The foreigner reading
this singular account is compelled to wonder why a
Government which was strong enough to compel such
a number of maritime subjects to leave their towns
and villages, and to retire at such great loss into the
interior, was not strong enough to equip a fleet and
put an end to the attacks upon their homes."

That, however, would not have been the Chinese
way, and they alone among the nations who practised
navigation may therefore be acquitted of having ever
made a profession of naval warfare. But when we
get away from the coasts of the Celestial Empire, and
explore the islands of the Indian Archipelago or the
groups of scattered islets in the Pacific, we find a

270 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

totally different state of affairs prevailing. These
essentially maritime people constructed vessels of
most ingenious build and profuse ornamentation, with
the aid of the rudest tools and by dint of the most
strenuous toil, for the sole purpose of warfare. The
idea of commerce never so much as entered their
heads. Their homes furnished them in utmost abund-
ance with all that their simple needs cared for, as
far as food was concerned. What they craved for
was the stimulant of bloodshed, and, since to slay
one another was monotonous and, besides, pointed to-
wards extinction, which they naturally dreaded, they
looked longingly towards the islands near at hand
for the means of gratifying their desires. How long
it took them to develop their war-vessels from the
simple little tree-trunk, hollowed by fire and scraped
into shape by sharpened shells, we have no means of
knowing; but we do know that these naked savages,
ignorant of all arts and totally without maritime
models, did succeed in building huge war canoes
capable of carrying hundreds of warriors over many
miles of intervening sea. Their errand was solely
Avar. It has been assumed by some that they sought
food, being cannibals ; but this I doubt, feeling assured
from all the evidence obtainable that the eating of
captives was entirely in the nature of a religious rite.
No people could want food who were situated as these
were — in the midst of seas teeming with fish, and on
islands whose fertile soil produced, without any tilling,
such enormous quantities of fruit.

One curious fact may be here noticed, viz. that
while the art of ship-building reached to such a high
standard in some of these islands, in others quite near

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 271

the inhabitants were unable to construct anything in
the nature of a boat beyond the simplest form, the
elementary hollow log. Another strange fact I must
notice is, that even where the constructional skill of
the natives in a maritime direction reached quite a
high pitch, it suddenly stopped, for some unknown
reason, and commenced to retrograde. I have myself
seen in the roadstead of an island off Fiji, a flotilla of
native craft not one of which was like another ; while
the range was from the coracle to the canoe capable
of holding a dozen men plying their paddles and
making the elegant craft fly along over the crests of
the sparkling waves. But it was abundantly evident
that there was no prospect of improvement, no ideas
on the part of the natives of utilizing the new tools
brought within their reach for the production of better
or more seaworthy craft. There is, however, abundant
evidence to prove that in no part of the world was the
sea made more use of as a battle-ground than in the
Pacific Ocean; and the same remark holds good, to
a great extent, in that connecting link between the
Indian and Pacific Oceans, the East Indian Archi-
pelago — as, indeed, might be expected from the
character of the inhabitants and the nature of their
habitat. There is no doubt whatever that the Malays
at some far distant period evinced sufficient nautical
skill and enterprise to equip a maritime expedition
which sailed as far as Madagascar, and invaded it so
successfully that they became the rulers of the country,
dominant lords over the aboriginal inhabitants with
few exceptions, and those only in the dense fastnesses
of the interior forests. This supremacy the Hovas,
as the warlike Malay invaders were called, retained

272 OUE HEEITAGE THE SEA

until they in their turn were displaced by the French,
with just as much right or excuse as they themselves had
when they invaded the great island centuries before.

In the far north of the Indian Ocean we find that,
from those far-away times when Sesostris sailed down
the Red Sea and invaded India, there has always been
carried on a desultory warfare. We know that both
the Persians and the Greeks sailed those torrid seas,
doubtless by the aid of the Arab seamen, who saw
dynasty after dynasty rise and fall while they held on
their own simple direct way of old-fashioned piracy.
Sometimes, as under the caliphs, who spread their rule
at the sword's point over so large a portion of the
known world, these Arab seafarers congregated in such
numbers as to be dignified by the name of a navy or
navies; but concerted operations never found great
favour with them. They much preferred acting inde-
pendently, each vessel acknowledging no rule beyond
that of her naJchoda, or captain, and having but one
object in view, the conversion or destruction of the
infidel, and, incidentally, their own enrichment by the
appropriation of the infidel's goods and the bodies
of the infidels themselves to be sold as slaves. But,
whether acting singly or in concert, they never failed
to find the highest religious sanction and encourage-
ment for their bloodiest deeds ; and when overpowered
and destroyed themselves, they went blithely to their
death beneath the bloodstained sea in absolute cer-
tainty of an eternal reward for their heroic efforts
to spread the worship of Allah and his prophet. Nor
can we cast too many stones at them, since much of
our own sea warfare in early days was conducted on
the same comfortable principle.

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 273

Aboriginal sea- warfare in the Atlantic was practi-
cally confined to the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of
Mexico, and never attained such proportions as the
savage naval warfare of the Pacific, for the ship-
building skill of the American natives of those islands
and the shores of the Central American mainland
halted at the construction of the dug-out capable of
conveying at most a dozen men, and that only for
very short distances. In short, they were not a
maritime race at all, and when the winged monsters
of the East burst upon them they, affrighted, ceased
their puny efforts altogether, and never resumed
them.

And now we must return to a consideration of that
marvellous era when the bold and adventurous mariners
of Spain and Portugal launched out into what to them
were previously unknown seas and laid the foundation
of that world-wide traffic upon all the seas of all the
world of which we to-day are the chief representatives.
Fired by tradition concerning the incalculable wealth of
the East, accessible as they felt by sailing westward over
the unknown ocean, stimulated as well as supported by
the full sanction of religion, these bold men launched
forth into the deep, their enterprise being as daring
as any recorded in the history of the world. It is
difficult, nay, almost impossible, for us to realize what
these adventurers had to face. The cold recapitulation
of their hardships must be supplemented by much
imagination in order to gain the faintest idea of what
manner of men they must have been. To take, for
instance, those domestic and commonplace details of
which we get nothing in history, such as the feeding
and housing of seamen, and what an enormous sum of

T

274 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

human misery and human fortitude is opened up to
us ! Even when compared with the daily life of the
peasant or common soldiers of those days, beside
which we know that the existence of the prisoners in
our gaols is positive luxury, how unbearable appears
the life of the mediaeval sailor ! Cooped up in craft
so small that an Atlantic voyage in one of them to-
day would appear an act of suicidal folly, there were so
many of them that there was hardly room to move,
and every law of health was perforce violated. The
stench, the vermin, the abominations of every sort,
were impossible to enumerate, impossible for us in
these happy days to understand. The food, and
especially the water, was putrid beyond corruption,
and only by appreciating the miracle of the human
body can we begin to understand how it was that the
vessels did not become simply floating charnel-houses.
For one thing, only those almost superhumanly strong
did survive, the weaker were quickly weeded out and
dumped overboard.

Then came the dread of the unknown, the conse-
quently recurring question whether they would not
presently come to the edge of the world and be
launched over it into bottomless space. Fortunately
the rank and file of those days had few ideas. They
could endure, they could fight, and they could die.
And it is certain that, life being so full of horrors,
none of them could have felt very much repugnance
at the prospect of leaving it, for they could hardly
expect anything worse than they were then enduring.
Also there was always dangled before them, will-o'-
the-wisp like, the prospect of untold riches in which
they might possibly share. What they would do with

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 275

that wealth, if obtained, they never seemed to con-
sider. Perhaps the lore of adventure, which is innate
in man, and was ever one of the strongest incentives to
action of mankind, lured them on. But whatever it
was that upheld them in their dogged facing of all
those miseries, the simple fact remains that they did
face them, and probably looked upon the prospect of
fighting, of shedding blood, as an agreeable interlude
to the terrible monotony of misery of which those early
voyages were composed. Moreover, every member of
the crew of one of those early ships of Spain and
Portugal might well have said, in the language of
Paul, " I die daily," in that, apart from the sufferings
inseparable from a seafaring life, he was at the mercy
of the cruellest of mankind in the persons of his own
officers, whose only idea of discipline was the exercise
of incessant brutality in such shape that the very
reading of those practices curdles the blood and makes
us wonder whether indeed these men were of like
feelings with us. Eeally the idea will seize us, whether
we invite it or not, that the actual warfare in which
these men were engaged was far less terrible than the
everyday occurrence of their miserable existences.

Yet, in spite of all, they did endure, did reach
the golden land of promise, and there found helpless
creatures of other races upon whom they could
and did practise in their turn the atrocious cruelties
which they themselves had endured, proving that
they were lineal descendants of those ruthless pioneers
of sea-warfare the Carthaginians, and that the advent
of the Prince of Peace and their acceptance of His
teachings as the way of salvation had not modified
in the least, as far as their actions were concerned, the

276 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

awful passion for cruelty wherein man has excelled the
most terrible carnivorous animals. Crowning horror
of all, these deeds were done in the name of Christ,
and ostensibly for the extension of His kingdom and
love. The very thought makes one physically sick
with disgust and shame, for that these were men
calling themselves Christians, and their ships by the
names of saints and angels, even more sacred names
still, such as El Salvador del Mundo, El Espiritu
Santo, Madre de Dios, or Santissima Trinidada.

Meanwhile in the blood-stained Mediterranean
there was approaching a conflict which would vie with
the most gory battles of ancient times, and the issue
of which was to be fraught with much farther-reaching
consequences to mankind. The sea-fights of Salamis,
Platsea, and Actium, to mention only three out of the
many that were continually taking place in those
days, were between heathen, who made no pretensions
to humanity, whose gods were bloody monsters, and
whose pastime was destruction of human life and
happiness. True, matters were not much bettered
by the advent of Christianity, but the ideal of good
was there, and promised in the fulness of time to bear
fruit, for scattered about Europe and some part of
Asia, like leaven in the lump, were holy men, ready
to sacrifice life with a smile if only they might spread
the good news of peace on earth, good will towards
men. Then arose in the East the awful portent of the
Mohammedan power, actuated by the fiercest fanati-
cism, which, with consummate skill, welded many
races into one homogeneous body, impelled irresistibly
forward to the conquest of the world. And these
superb warriors, who welcomed death as a glorious

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 277

passage to joys unutterable, were no less skilful
mariners than they were soldiers. They were also
astute enough to welcome into their ranks some of the
ablest of their Christian foes, who, becoming renegades,
outdid their Muslim masters in deeds of cruelty and
daring. While their armies on land pressed ever
westwards towards the strongholds of Christendom
with the irresistible momentum of the avalanche or
glacier, they accumulated fleets of galleys, whereof the
motive-power was Christian slaves, and the fighting
complement the fiercest of their own ruthless tribes.
Well informed of all that went on in Europe, they
knew how weakened by luxury and dissensions were
the Italian republics, notably that of Venice, which
for so long had proudly withstood them, and had even
carried maritime warfare into many of their chief ports.
They were also fired with a determination to win back
again the Iberian peninsula, from whence the brave
Christian warriors had expelled their Moorish confreres,
and thus at one fell swoop establish Mohammedan
ascendency in the very stronghold of Christianity.

And so it came to pass that an almost despairing
cry arose throughout Christendom ; ancient jealousies
were put aside ; and the allied fleets of the Christian
Mediterranean met, on October, 1571, with the armada
of the infidel in the Gulf of Lepanto.

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD

(Continued)

THE battle of Lepanto preceded the defeat of the Spanish
Armada by only seventeen years, and in the minds of
many there is great doubt which of the two great events
was the greater, as far as the history of the world was
concerned. As far as we as a nation are concerned,
there can be no doubt at all, although the conflict
was between two nominally Christian Powers, of the
greater importance of the latter event ; but taking the
broader, more universal view of the matter, I think it
will be admitted that the issue of the battle of Lepanto
had a profounder influence upon the history of the
world than any other single conflict in that history ;
for it decided that the advancing civilization of Europe
and the farther West still should not be crushed back
into barbarism, should not again sink into the horrible
slough from which it had so painfully emerged after
ages of struggle. I hope I may be pardoned if I
magnify mine office, but I cannot help saying that,
in comparing these vast conflicts at sea with those
that have taken place on land, the effect of the sea-
victories always seems to me to have been incomparably
greater; for, with the world subdivided as it is by
the ocean, land conflicts are in a measure localized,
but whoso has command of the sea, and occupies an

278

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 279

insular position, possesses also a supreme safeguard
against the most powerful and malignant enemy with-
out those advantages.

But this is by the way. I have chosen the battle
of Lepanto to begin this chapter with, because it
marks the passing of the old hybrid methods of
maritime warfare. In all essential details Lepanto
was the same as Salamis or Actium. It was fought
by soldiers on board of the galleys propelled by slaves,
and although artillery was used, the main object on
either side was to get to hand-grips, as in the ancient
times ; to lock the ships together, and to fight as if
on land. Sails were used, but very sparingly, since
there was a far more reliable method of propulsion
below, and the hamper of gear aloft was likely to fall
and obstruct the fighting platform. It was, as all
such conflicts have been, an exceedingly bloody battle,
the Muslim losing 25,000 killed and 5000 prisoners,
and the Christians approximately 8000. It is signifi-
cant that no mention is made of the wounded, they
were not accounted of in those days, for to be wounded
was usually to die, unless, indeed, the wound was so
superficial as to be tended by the recipient. And it
is worthy of notice, too, that in sea conflicts, as on
land, the advance in the perfection of weapons of war
has resulted in an amazing diminution of the loss of
life. In the most tremendous naval conflict of modern
times, where the monetary value and offensive power
of one ship probably equalled that of the whole fleet
on either side at Lepaiito — I allude to the battle of
Tsu Tshima — the loss of life was not more than one-
sixth of what it was at the former battle.

Now, tempting as the subject is, I feel that, in view

280 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

of the far more interesting matter to us which lies
before me, I must quit Lepanto, with the reflection
that there the maritime power of the Moslemah was
finally broken, and that, although it was long ere the
infernal nests of Mohammedan pirates, which abounded
along the shores of Africa and in the far Eastern
Mediterranean, were finally broken up, the snake was
so badly scotched that it never again became a serious
menace to civilization. We must now return to the
Atlantic, where a new era had opened up with the
discovery of the new world. Naturally the discoverers
claimed it for their own, without knowing of its vast
extent, and fancied vainly that they should be able
to hold it, this amazing reservoir of wealth, for the
aggrandisement of the mother-country and the Holy
Koman Church. In this they reckoned without their
hosts, and with all the arrogance which characterized
the haughty hidalgos of Spain. Our own islands had
bred a fearless race of seafarers, lineal descendants of
the ancient Vikings, and, feeling the need of having
a share in the world's wealth so long monopolized by
the Latin races, began to poach upon the Spanish
preserves. Here again the excuse of religion was
readily made for the wildest excesses, the most flagrant
acts of robbery and bloodshed.

But it is difficult for us to put ourselves in the
place of the Spaniard when considering this question,
remembering, as we must, his horrible cruelties towards
the Dutch in the name of religion. Not even the
most bigoted Roman Catholic would dare to accuse
Protestants of attempting to spread their form of
worship by fire and sword, although he would, doubt-
less, add a saving clause to the effect that, had they

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 281

believed in their religion as firmly as did the Catholics,
they would have spared no effort, neglected no means
to promulgate it among the nations.

Primarily, however, the reason for the English
cutting into the Spaniard's rich preserves in the new
world was the overwhelming desire to share in those
fabulous gains, and the fact, in their belief, that in so
doing they were also combating the vast tyranny of
the Eomish Church from which they had so lately
been set free, was an added incentive of the most
important kind. Moreover, the ships of the English
were manned by freemen, each of whom, however
humble, was guaranteed his definite share of the spoil,
and, although for the good of all, the sternest dis-
cipline was maintained, there was also justice of the
most definite kind for high and low. Again, these
adventurers were independent, the monarch had no
sort of control over them save that which they freely
accorded. They fitted out their ships at their own
charges, and invited co-operation by seamen on a
profit-sharing basis, so that, although hardships were
necessarily faced, they were also voluntarily endured
for the sake of the reward that was to follow.

Now, the history of the long struggle between
Briton and Spaniard upon the ocean, which culminated
with the Armada, was one of practically uninterrupted
victory for the English. As, indeed, it was bound to be,
remembering the essential difference in the character
of the men who did the fighting. There were no great
fleets equipped to fight pitched naval battles, only a
series of isolated conflicts between ships, all essentially
one-sided affairs. The Spaniards had always the ad-
vantage in size of ships — a doubtful one at best in

282 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

those days — but, on the other hand, they were manned
by slaves not only in name, but in fact. They were
hampered by the bad old mediaeval tradition, which
made of the seaman but a piece of machinery only
useful to get the ship from one point to another.
When fighting was to be done, the soldier came
forward — an alien on board ship, whose trade was
fighting — and the sailor was whipped into the back-
ground. To oppose such a crew as this must have
been a delight to the sturdy sea-fighters of England,
every man of whom felt that upon him rested a certain
proportion of the welfare of the whole venture, and
was to invite the defeat which invariably came, no
matter what the odds were — odds that in some cases
were so disproportionate as to make it difficult to
believe the records we have.

Now, while these desultory combats at sea made
the grandest possible training for the English mariners,
improving their seamanship and tactics of fighting, as
well as giving them that sheer contempt for the enemy
which counts for so much in all warfare when it does
not lead to carelessness or neglect, the Spaniards
apparently found it impossible to learn. They clung
to their effete ideas, and only invited more complete
disaster by increasing the size of their vessels and
adding to their already unwieldy crews. And thus
they led up to the crowning mercy of the Armada.
Utterly unable to understand the reasons why their
ships were taken, or why the English sailors seemed
to be invulnerable to defeat, they collected that amazing
congeries of vessels, with their polyglot crews, their
equipment of monks and priests, and their store of
manacles for the accommodation of the heretic prisoners

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 283

they were going to take, and then sent them forth
under the command of a landsman to face the seasoned
sea-fighters of England.

Indeed, it was well for us that the naval genius of
Spain was of so poor a character, for, in spite of all we
can say in praise of Elizabeth and her statesmen, the
fact remains that, as far as the Government of the
country was concerned, and the numberless warnings
that had been given, disaster was actually courted by
lack of preparation. Sheer patriotism on the part of
our seamen, and an extraordinary combination of
favourable circumstances, allied to the ineptitude
of the Spaniards, prevented the invasion of England.
Had the Spaniards been better seamen, or had they
been ably led, another tale would surely have been
told, the world's history would have taken a totally
different form. Consummate seamanship was shown
by the English seamen in their harassing of the un-
wieldy Spaniards and in keeping from close quarters
with them, which meant being overwhelmed by sheer
weight of numbers. But oh ! the pitiful tale of want
of ammunition, of food even, for the fighting warriors ;
it is, indeed, galling to remember. And it does not
soothe us to remember the glorious ending of that
great sea-fight, because we feel that we have skirted
the precipice of disaster far too closely, and quite
unnecessarily.

The defeat of the invincible Armada ushered in
the new era of naval warfare, wherein the ship was
used not merely as a means whereby masses of men
were brought into contact with one another to fight
in the same manner as they did on land, but as an
engine of destruction herself, wherewith an opposing

234 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

ship or ships might be destroyed by the aid of artillery
carried swiftly from point to point. Not, of course,
that it entirely did away with hand-to-hand fighting
on board ship, for boarding tactics still held favour for
centuries, but it gave a small ship and a weak crew
possessed "of superior skill a great advantage which
they did not possess before, that of holding aloof
from a numerically superior enemy and defeating him
by sheer skill in manoauvring and accuracy of aim.
It was the real advent of seamanship in naval warfare
on a grand scale, which had been led up to by the
long series of solitary sea-fights between the ships of
Spain and those of England.

As yet, however, there was, properly speaking, no
navy of either England or Holland any more than
before, and even after, the Armada, there was for a
long time any navy of Spain. That is, neither country
possessed a fleet of ships solely equipped for fighting
and never engaging in trade, such as had been seen
in the Mediterranean for centuries. Every ship was
a trader ready to fight when the need arose, and it
might just as easily arise from the sight of a richly
laden ship of another nation, the plunder of which
would add immensely to the profits of the voyage,
as from the sight of a stranger eager to spoil. It was,
indeed, a transition period for seafaring, a time for the
abandonment of old ideas and the assimilation of new.
It was just beginning to dawn upon the minds of
Englishmen and Hollanders that as the fitting out
of a fleet of vessels, with the twin objects of robbery
and murder, as had' so long been the case in the
Mediterranean, was totally irreconcilable with the
Christian ideal as understood by Eeformers, so it was

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 285

unjust and unreasonable to deny the honest, peaceably
minded merchant adventurer at sea the protection
which he claimed and received ashore. The worthy
men who ruled over the destinies of these two great
maritime countries began to perceive, dimly and afar
off perhaps, but still they did see, that commerce and
war were incompatible, and that if the trade for which
both countries were pre-eminently fitted, both by their
geographical position and the genius of their people,
was to flourish, there must be a total rearrangement
of maritime affairs. The ship of war must be built
and equipped for warlike purposes only, yet her
principal mission must be the care of her country's
trading craft, and not unprovoked aggression upon other
nations. The merchant ship, on the other hand, must
be freed from the necessity of carrying a large arma-
ment, and a crew far greater than was needed to work
the ship, in order that the merchant might reap his
legitimate profit, unhampered by these totally un-
necessary expenses.

It was a revolutionary idea, for except, as I have
hinted, in China, no such thing as an unarmed ship
equipped for purely trading purposes had been hitherto
known. And even the Chinese example was vitiated
by the fact that every Chinese merchantman was a
potential pirate, given sufficient opportunity, which
indeed is the case to-day. But it took root and grew,
very, very slowly it is true, still there was growth.
Of course, the chief hindrance to its development
arose from the merchants themselves, who were ulti-
mately to be its chief beneficiaries. Full well they
knew what great profits were suddenly to be made
by the piratical onslaught upon a richly laden ship

286 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

of another country, with which their own might be,
if not actually at war, at least on bad terms. Also
they were fully aware how slowly the privateer and
armed merchantmen of other nations would assimilate
the new idea ; indeed, it was difficult to imagine
international law running upon the high seas, where
the primitive

"... good old rule, the simple plan ;
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can,"

still held, and seemed likely to hold, undisputed sway.
Moreover, there was always the pirate, the real pirate,
who was the Ishmael of the sea, and who owned no
country ; whose crews were composed of the reckless
villains of all nationalities, ripe for any deed of
savagery, if only opportunity offered. The horrible
deeds of the pirates excite our indignation so much
that we are apt to forget that they were the lineal
descendants of the heroes of history, of the Vikings,
for instance, who had absolutely no excuse for their
deeds of rapine and plunder save the lust for wealth
and cruelty, and whose only virtue was the one that
all pirates have been credited with — that they willingly
risked their lives and endured incredible hardships in
the pursuit of their dreadful profession. Reading
history, one can only come to the inevitable con-
clusion that the ancient kings and rulers, as far back
as we can get, were simply pirates and brigands on
a grand scale, but with less heroism than the pirates
of the Middle Ages in that they risked their own lives
but seldom, preferring to compel their unfortunate
subjects to do their dread bidding while they lolled
in luxury, receiving the plunder. Still, their piracies

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 287

had a colour of national enterprise about them, ne-
farious though they were, and they differed from the
regularly named pirates in that the latter were in-
variably co-operative, profit-sharing enterprises.

But the better day was breaking in which there
should be no room for the pirate, although it was slow
in spreading its light. Meanwhile, war being still the
normal condition of mankind, it was necessary, in
order to spread the oversea trade of peaceably inclined
peoples, that something should be done to protect the
merchant vessels, and so we get the idea of the convoy.
Trading vessels gathered their cargoes and congregated
together until there were a sufficient number of them
to form a fleet. Then under the protection of a few
ships of war they sailed for home like a brood of
ducklings under the protecting oversight of the lona-
fide fighting ships. It was a cumbrous system, under
which trade could grow but very slowly, the hindrances
being so many, but it was a long step in the right
direction, and it involved the final differentiation
between men-of-war and merchant ships. It had,
however, one tremendous drawback, which was that
if the convoy was attacked by a superior force and
defeated, the attacking fleet made a tremendous haul,
their prizes being already collected for them. They
had only to shepherd the helpless richly laden fleet
to their own ports, instead of its original destination,
in order to reap a harvest such as was impossible in
the days of scattered single ships.

Now, in the new form of maritime enterprise, two
Powers became pre-eminent, two Powers alike in origin,
in enterprise, and dogged perseverance ; and may it be
•mid without suspicion of hypocrisy, with advanced

288 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

notions of honesty and fair dealing (for that period),
such, at any rate, as the other nations were strangers
to. These were Britain and Holland, and after the
collapse of Spain with the Armada it seemed as if they
would divide the oversea commerce of the world
between them. This appeared the more probable
because Britain's chief objective was the Americas.
She fought for a footing there and wrested it from
Spain ; she was still prepared to attack Spanish ships
wherever they might be found as knowing that they
were an easy prey and that much wealth was to be
gained from them as well as from the countries whence
they drew that wealth. But the Dutch, with their
plodding enterprise, had made the East Indian seas
their El Dorado, and, except for an occasional brush
with the original European exploiters of that far-off
region, the Portuguese, were amassing wealth with
about the minimum amount of bloodshed for those
days. It is true that they did reach westward to
North America, curiously mixed up with Englishmen,
who, for faith's sake, were exiles from their country,
but still, taking all things into consideration, the
two growing maritime powers developed side by side
with quite a small amount of friction. Of course,
if gratitude were an ordinary human attribute, this
should have been very strongly marked, seeing that
Britain had practically crushed Holland's bitterest foe
and not relentless persecutor, Spain. But, as quite
recent years have reminded us, the virtue of gratitude
need not be looked for either among nations or
individuals.

Another great nation, however, was making a bold
bid for the empire of the seas, not so much in a

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 289

commercial sense as for warlike purposes. France,
Laving long been the cockpit of Europe, having been
a battle-field for centuries, had at last emerged into
the proud position of being the foremost among
continental nations, and the fall of Spain gave an
impetus to her warlike propensities of the greatest
force. Her seamen were brave and adventurous, her
naval architects the best in the world, and it was
hardly to be wondered at that she should view the
growing power of her hereditary enemy, England,
with ever-accumulating envy and hatred. The great
rebellion in England gave her a pretext, if indeed any
were needed, to increase her naval forces and to look
forward to the time fast drawing near when she might
repay her ancient debt with interest. For it was
obvious, even at that early day, that, so long as
England was powerful at sea, it was hopeless to think
of successful invasion. But now it really seemed as
if the time was at hand when the long-cherished idea
of humbling England at the feet of France might be
realized.

Fortunately for us, there was no great weakening of
our naval forces, although, even at sea, civil war was
carried on, and the spectacle of opposing fleets, each
under the British flag, was presented to the longing
eyes of the continental peoples. But England was
fortunate even then, because the Puritan spirit which
formed the finest army that England has ever owned
was alive in her fleet as well, and the naval genius of
the race never shone brighter than at that troubled
time. Robert Blake suddenly developed from a simple
country squire into a leader of men, second only to
Cromwell, and in an incredibly short space of time did

290 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

for the Navy what Cromwell had done for the Army.

There is something almost miraculous in the rise of

Blake to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, naval

captain the world had ever seen. In this the centenary

year of Trafalgar, it is difficult indeed to think of any

other British admiral than the immortal Nelson, and

yet it seems ungrateful to forget Blake, whom even

Nelson acknowledged to be his superior. This is not

the place to go into much detail concerning the deeds

of Blake, but he cannot lightly be passed over, because

he represents to the full the new naval spirit of

England. Up till his day the possession of a powerful

fleet seemed to be an irresistible temptation to its

owners to be aggressors, to use it for purposes of

oppression ; but such an idea was entirely foreign

to Blake's essentially Christian spirit. " Defence, not

defiance," was his motto, and the policing of the seas

for the protection of British trade, and incidentally

the trade of other nations, a part of his self-imposed

duty. True he had first to drive off the sea the fleet

of the Royalists, who, in his opinion, as well as in that

of all who were best and noblest among Englishmen of

that day, were inimical to freedom at home in the

true sense of the word. In the prosecution of this

arduous duty he learned his profession, learned to

depend upon his seamen, although he might have

been expected to have all the prejudices of the

soldier. Following up the splendid traditions of the

Elizabethan seamen, he grew to depend upon the sailor

at sea instead of the soldier, and to care for his sailors

with such fatherly solicitude that they gave him love

and loyalty such as had never before been shown to a

like degree from sailors to their officers.

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 291

Unfortunately, it fell to his lot to fight against
the only other power whose aims were similar to
England's, viz. the use of naval strength only for the
protection of commerce at sea against unprincipled
aggression. I allude, of course, to Holland. I have
ever thought it a sad thing that such men as Blake
and Van Tromp were brought into conflict, and I
cannot at all determine, with any satisfaction to my-
self, which country was to blame in this almost fratri-
cidal conflict. Nor would it, I fear, be of any service
if we could definitely and impartially apportion the
blame. It must suffice to say that, after a tremendous
struggle," in which the heroic qualities of both sides
were fully manifested, the gallant Dutch people were
crushed, their country was brought to the brink of
ruin, and Britain became absolutely mistress of the
sea. What continental historians may say about the
use made by her of this tremendous power does not
matter ; the events following cannot lie, and they tell
us in plain and unmistakable language that she used
her power for the benefit of mankind, and not at all
for purposes of aggression.

Indeed, the events immediately succeeding the
overthrow of the naval power of the Netherlands had
all the characteristics of abstract justice. For the
great Puritan admiral, having developed to the highest
degree not only the fighting, but the diplomatic in-
stinct in the course of his mighty struggle with the
Dutch, was now to attack the ancient foes of his
country and the scourge of Holland. There was no
longer any question of an armada being fitted out
to chastise the haughty Protestant islanders, but the
fleets of those islanders actually maintained so close

292 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

a blockade of the Spanish coasts that the treasure
ships from America, upon which Spain had grown to
depend, were unable to reach her ports. They were
snapped up one by one and their enormously valuable
freights sent to England. But we are not so much
concerned with matters of history except in the
briefest fashion; what is far more germane to the
present article is the gradual development of naval
warfare. The ships were growing in bulk much faster
than the enlargement of the guns could keep pace
with them, and as the motive power was still the
fluctuating and unstable wind, seamanship as opposed
to mere fighting qualities was more and more becoming
a fine art. Indeed, it is nothing short of miraculous
to modern seamen how those old sailors ever did
manage to handle such unwieldy craft, wherein every
principle making for speed and handiness in a vessel
was systematically violated. Doubtless many of these
vessels could and did go at a fair speed through the
water with a gale of wind astern, but whenever the
wind drew abeam it must have been a terrible task to
keep them from drifting dead to leeward like a barge
laden with a haystack.

Yet the soldier-admiral Blake, by dint of en-
couraging his seamen and diligently learning from
them, so handled these clumsy craft of his that he
succeeded in performing a feat in which his great
successor failed — the attack on Santa Cruz. Nor does
it in the slightest degree detract from the glory of his
exploit that the wind blew fair into the harbour for
attack, driving his ungainly vessels into the narrow
entrance between the formidable forts, and blowing
his cannon smoke away from him into the eyes of his

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 293

foes, and then, when his great deed was done, it veered
in the opposite direction, driving him out to sea again
with an amazingly small casualty list for so great an
exploit. He did not know that such a wondrous com-
plaisance on the part of the elements would be shown
towards him, but was ready to take all risks in the
pursuance of what he deemed to be his duty. There
was, moreover, another item of development in the
great matter of naval warfare which Eobert Blake
made peculiarly his own. It is recorded of him that
he first taught ships to contemn castles on shore,
proving that, given a resolute captain, a ship was not
only at a less disadvantage in the fight against a fort
than had been supposed, but that she might even
prove that a floating battery was superior to a fixed
one. It was a momentous advance in naval warfare,
of which the results were tremendously far-reaching,
although, of course, its importance was hardly realized
at the time.

But the next step taken by Blake was indeed a
marvellous one, such as the world had never before
seen. It was that of using the British fleet under his
command for the purpose of policing the Mediter-
ranean. The great inland sea, the scene of so much
barbarity, was, although no longer terrorized by the
Turkish armaments bent upon the conquest of Europe,
still the chosen hunting-ground of hordes of Mussul-
man pirates, whose lairs were to be found all along
the shores of Northern Africa, and whose strong-
holds had long bidden defiance to all forces brought
against them. To cleanse these waters of this uni-
versal scourge, and to set free the wretched Chris-
tian prisoners, who, taken out of the ships of every

294 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

European nation, were languishing in the most terrible
slavery, was a task that might well have been
undertaken by an international fleet, could such a
phenomenon have been witnessed under the condi-
tions then existing. It would have been quite as
worthy an object as that achieved by Don John of
Austria at Lepanto, even if of less magnitude and
European concern as regarded the fate of Christian
nations. But Blake did not wait for such a union
of forces, he was content to do what he conceived to
be his duty, and abide the result. That result was
a glorious one, for although he did not succeed in
extirpating those piratical hordes and laying waste
their strongholds, he inflicted so tremendous a punish-
ment upon them that he entirely crippled their
operations, weakened them so that they were never
again able to do more than just petty acts of piracy.

All unconsciously, too, Blake then laid the founda-
tion of Britain's naval power in the Mediterranean,
a power which, through all the vicissitudes of later
times, she was to retain. It was then, and it is now,
an amazing spectacle, this island kingdom far in the
Northern Sea dominating by sheer naval force the
policies of all the countries bordering upon the Medi-
terranean, and defying all attempts to dislodge her
from that proud position. Now, of course, owing to
the opening of the Suez Canal, our predominance in
the Mediterranean is of paramount importance to us
in view of our enormous Eastern traffic, for no reason-
able man can have any doubt that, if it were possible
to oust us from Gibraltar and Malta and forbid us
to maintain a Mediterranean fleet, a very short time
would elapse before our trade to the East would be

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 295

strangled by all sorts of vexatious restrictions ex-
pressly designed to that end. It is to me an inspiring
thought that, after all the centuries of blood-shedding
upon the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, all the
terrible deeds done solely for the purpose of robbery
and murder — dignify these crimes by what other
names we may — a power should at last obtain the
pre-eminence whose palpable object was, and is, the
preservation of peace in order that commerce might
be free to develop upon lawful lines, and that the
merchant seaman might go upon his peaceful way,
none daring to make him afraid.

The good work accomplished by Blake in estab-
lishing a fleet for the protection of commerce instead
of aggression suffered a temporary set-back with the
Restoration. We need not linger over these dis-
reputable days, for they cannot be considered without
deepest shame, but pass on to the much more satis-
factory fact that, in spite of all that a corrupt
Government could do, the naval power of Britain
was only temporarily weakened, it suffered no per-
manent degradation. No other nation was able to
wrest from us our proud title of Keeper of the Peace
of the seas, and through all the welter of European
warfare there remained one force always to be
reckoned with that could turn the scale whichever
way its possessors listed, and that was the Navy of
England. It is true that during our shameful and
entirely unnecessary war with our own flesh and blood,
the American colonists, we experienced many isolated
defeats of individual ships, which was only what might
have been expected under the circumstances. But
they were merely incidents, and had no real influence

296 OUU HERITAGE THE SEA

upon the sea-power of Great Britain, much as has
been made of them, and is even now made, by American
writers. There is really no need to press the point,
the proof of it may be found in the fact that we were
able, alone among European nations, to curb success-
fully the Napoleonic tyranny, to put bounds to that
all-grasping ambition which aimed at nothing less
than the enslavement of the whole civilized world.

What is more to the point is to note how slow
was the march of nautical improvement. Ships were
getting bigger and more unwieldy than ever, especially
those designed and built by the French and Spaniards,
but the artillery remained much the same as in Blake's
time, and the principal object in naval warfare was
still to close with your enemy, run him aboard, and
settle the matter in hand by personal combat, as in
the days of old. In fact, I am inclined to believe
that artillery had less to do with the settlement of
naval engagements than it had in the days of Drake.
Yet, in spite of all the drawbacks consequent upon the
types of ships which were used, and of the hindrance
inseparable from the handling of the vast top-hamper
required for the moving of those ungainly hulls, naval
warfare was becoming more and more the peculiar
province of British men, and the record of the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries in naval matters is
a very cheering one for us. Dimly and afar off it is
true, but still effectively, we had come to recognize
that sea-power was the prime factor in international
warfare, and we spared no expense, no pains, to main-
tain our predominance therein. How ably we were
aided by those glorious men, that splendid band of
leaders of whom Nelson was the bright particular star,

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 297

history tells us plainly ; but it is, to say the least of
it, curious that Napoleon, with all his transcendent
military genius, did not recognize this. It only goes
to show how the greatest of men have their limitations,
their points of failure. The ability of Captain Mahan
has shown us how all through the mighty struggle
with Napoleon which we waged, not alone for our own
freedom, but for the liberties of Europe, sea-power
was the predominant factor, and that the smashing
of the French fleet at the Nile and the crowning
mercy of Trafalgar really settled the question whether
Napoleon or freedom was to sway the destinies of
Europe.

Now, men began to recognize that the ocean was
not only the great battle-field, but that the nation
which obtained pre-eminence in that exotic warfare
was sure to be the arbiter of peace and war, was bound
to be in an unassailable position as regarded its own
interests, so long as it took care to keep that pre-
eminence. It will, I suppose, be set down to mere
insular hypocrisy, as usual, when I say that it was
a good thing for the world that this pre-eminence
should have been reached and kept by Britain. I
care not, because I know it is true. Can we point to
any other nation and honestly say that they might
be trusted with an overwhelming strong navy and
perfect knowledge how to use it ? It is hardly worth
while to put the question, because every man honestly
minded, no matter what his nationality may be, will
know, even if he does not care to give the answer.
But I am going ahead too fast, since I want to point
out how essentially naval conditions have altered since
the days of the old wooden walls — days not so far

298 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

removed in point of fighting conditions from the
historic times of Platrca, Salamis, and Actium.

Steam came, unexpectedly, unwelcome to the essen-
tially conservative minds of those who ruled over
naval matters. But the keen men whose business on
the great waters had been rendered so easy and safe
by the labours of the British Navy in the cause of
peace, were quick to see the possibilities underlying
this new motive-power, and they seized upon it with
avidity. In spite of all that pseudo-scientists said in
its disfavour, the merchants persevered, and soon steam
navigation had arrived obviously to stay. It is a
notorious fact that in Governmental affairs nations
are always behind their commercial interests (except
in the case of the Japanese), and so we need not
wonder that it was late before the Admiralty sanctioned
the fitting of the old wooden walls with paddle-wheels
and engines, later with propellers, long after Ericsson
had laboured and demonstrated to the thick-headed
Lords in vain the advantages of his screw. But, once
adopted, events moved rapidly. A Frenchman invented
an armour-clad vessel, La Gloire, and Britain replied
with the Warrior. Thus the great race was begun
which is still in progress, but in which we still are
easily first. Not only first, but far ahead, as indeed
we must be.

Meanwhile, thanks to Britain's command of the
sea, ocean traffic had assumed gigantic proportions.
The lion's share of this commerce belonged as of right
to us. I say " us " of right, for had we not led the way
in freeing the universal highway from those bars to
honest traffic which had so long prevented its exten-
sion? No longer dared piratical ships, under any

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 299

pretext whatever, prevent merchant seamen from ply-
ing upon the high seas for their honestly earned
bread. Thanks to our efforts, the day of the pirate,
whether national or private, was over. Of course, it
will be said that in this keeping of the peace of the
sea we were merely consulting our own interests. Be
it so, a fair field for commerce, an open road for ships
engaged in honest trade, and let the best, the most
energetic, men win. If we were the most energetic
we should win, but there should be an open free field
anyhow. And there has been for the last hundred
years, thanks to Great Britain alone.

Then came war again, a senseless, profitless war,
but one in which the value of the new motive-power
was put to a practical test ; not that it was at all a
fair test, since all the warships employed in the Black
and Baltic Seas were of the old and ungainly type in
use at Trafalgar, but with the addition of steam-power.
Nevertheless, unhandy as they were, it was at once
seen how immense was the advantage gained in being
able to handle your ship without sails, not independ-
ently of the wind as yet, because an ordinarily strong
breeze ahead would effectually stop one of those
vessels despite the utmost power of her engines. But
despite all the drawbacks, every man recognized the
dawn of a new era in naval warfare, and saw dimly the
immense possibilities thereof. Such warfare as took
place under these early steam conditions was of so
unimportant and one-sided a character that practical
lessons were few ; and although invention followed
invention, improvement improvement, with almost
startling rapidity, no opportunity occurred to test
the new engines of war with that thoroughness which
was necessary.

300 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

As usual, the merchant and his shipbuilders led
the way in the adaptation of science to nautical affairs,
and by reason of their generous payment of inventors,
as well as their appreciation of the great services
rendered them, they always secured the best talent
available. These designers and inventors, however
patriotic, could not afford to sell their high qualifica-
tions for the miserable pittance offered them by
government, and so progress was always comparatively
slow in the Royal naval dockyards. And when it
was quickened on the advent of steel for shipbuilding
it was always by outside pressure, always at the in-
stance of men who had sufficient faith and patience
to persist, in spite of numberless heart-breakings and
disappointments at the hands of pompous hide-bound
officials, whose idea of the public service was to
hinder and not to help forward anything proposed for
the national benefit. It must, however, be admitted
that when at last the great forward movement in the
equipment of the Navy did come, it came with a rush,
and the hearts of patriotic Britons were made glad by
beholding their Navy brought up to a position in which
it was theoretically fit to face any combination of two
first-class powers against us. Experience was lacking,
though, in the working under actual war conditions of
these amazingly modern vessels of war; for all the
old ideas of naval warfare had entirely passed away,
and all things had become new. The war between
China and Japan settled nothing, as it was essen-
tially a one-sided affair. The Spanish-American war
did very little more, because it, too, was one-sided to
almost the same extent as the conflict last mentioned.
And it is very little to the credit of the people of the

THE OCEAN AS A BATTLE-FIELD 301

United States that they raised such tremendous shouts
of exultation over their defeat of ships that were help-
less to resist attack.

Then came the battle of Tsu-Tshima, wherein it
was hoped that some lessons might be given us,
some settlement of urgent problems arrive. In some
measure this was the case, in spite of the fact that
here, again, one fleet was perfectly equipped, dis-
ciplined to perfection, and every man on board a
patriot of the noblest type, while the other fleet,
though numerically stronger, was heterogeneous in
composition, honeycombed with mutiny, and effete
by reason of departmental corruption. But these
disqualifications, at least the extent of them, were
not fully known until after the battle, wherein a great
fleet was destroyed, while the victors suffered prac-
tically no loss at all. It has brought the story of the
ocean as a battle-field right up to date, for, with the
exception of the submarine, every modern engine of
war used at sea was brought into play, while the
opposing forces were of a magnitude truly colossal.
The mind almost reels to think of the play of those
terrible 12-inch guns, with their 850-pound projectiles,
rending foot-thick steel-plates and bursting with
volcanic force in the bowels of the devoted ships.
Never since the world began has man been enabled
to let loose such awful elements of destruction, to
which, indeed, the ships and marine weapons of our
ancestors were but playthings. And yet, in spite of
the almost incalculable increase in death-dealing
potentiality, and of the enormous damage done,
measured in millions of value ; in spite, too, of the
non-floatability of the materials of which the ships

302 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

were constructed, we are confronted by the amazing
fact that the actual death-roll was really trivial as
compared with that of many of the conflicts at sea in
the Middle Ages : the sea-fight of Lepanto, for in-
stance, in which some 33,000 perished, or fully six
times as many as died at Tsu-Tshima, although the
boats of the modern iron-clads, when armed, were far
more powerful than the galleys of the mediaeval
mariners.

Therefore, those of us who long for the days when
war shall cease, and who shudder at the awful spectacle
of man warring upon the sea, may be encouraged, and
hope that, with each advance in the destroying capabili-
ties of ships of war, the time may be brought nearer
when the ocean shall no longer be used as a battle-field,
but remain simply the grand open road, toll free, and
uniting the nations which it divides.

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO
GREAT BRITAIN

IF a compendious answer in the briefest terms possible
were desired to the question in the title, we might
truthfully reply in one word, " Everything." But,
while this one-word answer really does state a great
fact, it is absolutely necessary to go into details for
many reasons. The great mass of our population
assent in a careless, non-understanding way to the
statements that "Britain is the greatest maritime
nation in the world," " that if she loses the command
of the sea Britain is doomed," that " seven-tenths of
the food consumed in Great Britain comes oversea,"
and so on ; but only a very small minority take any
intelligent interest in this first of all questions affecting
Britain. So, although there is plenty of sentimental
interest in the sea and seafaring, there is a lamentably
small amount of practical knowledge of these great
matters, and it may be stated, without fear of contra-
diction, that there is a hundred times more interest
taken in a spicy divorce case, a big football or cricket
match, or a sordid murder trial, than is ever manifested
in the most epoch-making development of our mer-
cantile marine. We are, indeed, a curious people;
utterly incapable, apparently, of having a fixed national
policy, with a constitution unwritten, the most

303

304 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

unbusinesslike form of government the world has ever
seen, trusting apparently, in all things, as a nation,
that we shall muddle through. And yet we pride
ourselves on our practicality, our freedom from excite-
ment, our businesslike qualities, our ability to teach
the rest of the world how to do it. We assist the best
of our manhood to leave the country and spend millions
upon the worthless and wastrel, treating them, indeed,
far more gently and liberally than we do the honest
hard-working folk whom we tax to keep them. We
almost literally fulfil the command, as regards our
foreign relations, " to love our enemies, and do good
to them that despitefully use us," but when our
philanthropy is called upon for our friends, we shake
our heads and refrain. We behave as a man might
who spent all his substance upon beggars, impostors,
and swindlers, leaving his own family to pine for the
necessaries of life.

And yet, in spite of all these paradoxical qualities,
we have thriven, we do thrive, although there are not
wanting signs that we have nearly reached our zenith
of prosperity, if not quite, and that we shall soon begin
to descend the height climbed so painfully for many
generations. In nothing is this so manifest as in our
national treatment of the greatest of all our interests,
seafaring, which is, indeed, the very Cinderella of
our professions. The successful merchan t, great surgeon,
wealthy brewer or distiller, or astute lawyer, are frequent
recipients of those honours which flow from the throne,
but the greatest shipmaster, whose skill and per-
severance and courage has probably been greater than
that of any of the foregoing, is always unknown, and
retires into obscurity, often into poverty, especially

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 305

if, after many years of successful navigation, he should,
after the manner of men, make one mistake.

But it may be said, " Why begin an article on what
the sea means to us with a diatribe like this? " I cry
you mercy ; my only excuse is that, in season and out
of season, I feel called upon to denounce the utterly
unmerited neglect meted out to the men of the
Merchant Service, and consequently zeal often outruns
judgment. Enough ! let us to the subject imme-
diately in hand. In other portions of this book, I
have glanced rapidly at the conditions which made
this little group of islands in the North Atlantic heir
of all the nautical mercantile traditions of the civilized
world. But, in considering what the sea now means
to us, it will be well to remember that, before ever we
had entertained an idea of founding a great oversea
trade, the Italians especially had built up powerful
republics upon this foundation. With a whole con-
tinent at their backs full of incalculable riches, the
great men of Pisa, Leghorn, Genoa, and Venice
deliberately chose the sea as their road to wealth, and
worthily they pursued it, doughtily they fought for
its maintenance. It was not until they, by reason of
quarrels with one another, warring factions at home,
and restricted area for their operations, began to
dwindle, and the English, lineal descendants of the
ancient Vikings, and with distinct traces of an elder
ancestry — that of the trading Phoenicians — began to
push forward into remote parts of the world in strenuous
competition with the Latins, and discovered that, in
all things appertaining to seafaring, the English were
the superiors of the Latin. It was a momentous dis-
covery, and it fired the blood of Englishmen generally

x

306 OUK HERITAGE THE SEA

to such an extent, that it may well be doubted if there
has ever been such an enthusiasm for the sea and its
power to connect Britain with the ends of the earth
as there was in Elizabethan days. The hardships were
terrible, but the English seamen had consolations
withheld from the seamen of any other nation — with the
sole exception, perhaps, of the Dutch — in that they
were sharers in the profits of the ventures, being free-
men, and treated as such. Truly, the discipline was
hard, as was the life generally, but it was binding upon
all alike, and if any tyranny was attempted, it soon
met with its due from these sturdy sea-dogs, who knew
so well how to work and fight to protect the results
of their work. But, when all has been said that can
be said in praise of the maritime enterprise of the
seventeenth century, it remains true that it was only
what the modern American would call a get-rich-quick
scheme : it was not a necessity of national existence,
for the country was quite self-supporting ; it contained
within its own borders all that was needed for the
wants of its moderate population. But we were ever
a turbulent, restless race, impatient of restraint, the
true stuff of which empires are builded, and none in
those days, at any rate, were oppressed by craven fears
of becoming great.

This spirit of adventure, reckless of perils yet
calculating profits, made our seamen enter into com-
petition with the mariners of the older type and
defeat them on their own ground with comparative
ease — made us, earlier than any other people, establish
the principle of a merchant marine, protected in its
lawful business of getting wealth by honest toil and
adventurous voyaging by ships especially equipped

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 307

for fighting, if need were, but primarily designed to
protect honest trade. And this division of duties
once firmly established, the world discovered that a
new spirit was abroad — the spirit of British conquest
by peaceful means of the world's trade. At this time
the people were fully alive to all that oversea traffic
meant to Britain, although it did not in those early
days mean anything to what it means now. Still, it
cannot be denied that when the Americans, our own
kinsmen across the sea, commenced their wonderful
seafaring career, we were resting upon the laurels we
had gained, apparently satisfied with the position to
which we had attained, and unwilling to believe that
any improvement was possible. This complacent satis-
faction with ourselves is a national failing that needs,
as happily it has obtained, sharp corrections, which we
have usually though not always profited by. I am
here tempted to a somewhat serious digression, but
one warranted, I think, by the subject. When the
great Scandinavian inventor Ericsson had so far per-
fected his screw-propeller as to fit it to a small vessel
and steam up and down the Thames, he obtained an
interview with the Lords of the Admiralty in order
to try and induce them to fit his invention to warships.
They listened to him in contemptuous silence, saw
what his little boat could do, and then, in grandiose
fashion, called his attention to the mighty paddle-
wheels of the warships fitting out, and asked him if
he thought his contemptible little device would com-
pare with those ! So, broken-hearted by his conflict
with official stupidity, he gave up the struggle and
departed for the United States, where he was received
with open arms, and eventually repaid his hosts by

308 OUH HERITAGE THE SEA

saving the Federal Navy with his Monitor destroying
the Merrimac in Hampton Roads.

We did not readily assimilate the lesson our kins-
men across the sea had to teach us. For it must be
admitted that whatever we say, by whatever title we
may designate ourselves, we are essentially conserva-
tive, although with our usual exposition of the paradox
some of the most radical changes we have made have
been the work of the party calling itself Conservative.
It was not until we found ourselves being beaten upon
every sea, found the ships of the vigorous young
republic making their voyages while we were making
passages, that we bestirred ourselves to remodel our
ships and our methods — to learn, in fact, from our
hitherto despised competitors how to save time in
crossing the seas. It was a great lesson conveyed in
a variety of ways. First of all, in the contour of the
ships. Our old bluff-bowed, heavy-sterned ships with
their clumsy top-hamper and their deliberate officers
had to be remodelled. The builders of Blackwall and
other typically British yards had to learn that speed
was not incompatible with the strength and safety
they felt indispensable in the building of their ships.
But nothing would or could induce them to build in
the same manner as the Yankees, who flung their
ships together of soft wood and in the most casual
manner, so that when at sea they were all a-work,
almost like a basket, as old sailors used to say. British
shipbuilders, however, learned to discard old-fashioned
shapes of hull for the clipper models of the New
England shipyards, and in a few years began to turn
out ships that could and did hold their own with the
smartest of the Yankee flyers. In those few years,

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 309

however, the Americans built up an enormous oversea
trade by reason of their superior speed and the won-
derful ability of their officers. In this latter respect,
again, they showed us the way out of our old-fashioned
ideas of navigation. The American officers did not
believe in shortening sail every night at sunset in
man-of-war fashion, with whom rapid passages were of
no moment, nor did they believe in reducing sail at
the first premonition of bad weather, or in waiting
until a gale had blown itself right out before they
made sail again. They took every advantage they
could of the wind while it lasted, only reducing sail
when it was impossible for the masts to bear the strain
any longer, and on the first slackening of the gale
making sail again.

Now, it must not be supposed that British seamen
were not just as brave and skilful as these kinsmen of
theirs in the United States. But they were, as sailors
have always been, pre-eminently conservative, and
slow to learn, so that when the energetic Yankees
introduced their pushing ways into shiphandling, they
immediately gained a very great advantage, which
they kept until the disastrous civil war. Disastrous,
that is, to American oversea trade, for the damage
done to American shipping by the Confederate cruisers
was irreparable, in that the British shipowners and
seamen, having learned their lesson, stepped in and
took the waiting trade, conducting it on such im-
proved lines that it was impossible for the Americans
ever to regain the ground they had lost. Moreover,
they had now to compete with the most beautiful
models in shipbuilding the world had ever seen. Hall,
of Aberdeen, Steel, of Greenock, Scott, of the same

310 OUE HERITAGE THE SEA

place, and others, vied with each other in turning out
vessels of yacht-like appearance and enormous spread
of canvas, many of them being of what is called
" composite " build — that is, having a framework of
iron and a skin of hard wood, thus combining elegance
with strength. In vain did the Yankees strive to
compete with these new clippers, and publish long
fictional accounts of the superior prowess of their
soft-wood ships, the hope of their supremacy at sea,
which had at one time seemed so probable, having
entirely gone.

An interesting parallel has been drawn between
sea and land traffic by the remark that the mail and
passenger coaches had never been so splendidly built
and handled, or the organization of their services been
so perfect as at the advent of railways; and in like
manner never had there been seen such splendid
clipper ships as were built between 1840 and 1870,
or well within the memory of many seamen now
living, at the close of which period it had become
evident that steam had come to sea to be the power
of the future ship. Great firms, like Greens, Money
Wigram, George Thompson and Sons, Devitt and
Moore, Ismay Imrie and Co., Brocklebanks, and a
host of others hardly less famous, had accumulated
splendid fleets of sailing ships, and appeared almost
to monopolize the trade of the world. The British
seaman was facile princeps, and the Americans, re-
linquishing the unequal contest, turned their attention
to the development of their vast internal resources
and their huge lake traffic, which has a character
peculiarly its own.

Before going any further, however, in our cursory

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 311

examination of the development of British seafaring,
we must note another factor in the development of
British Merchantile Marine of the utmost importance.
The repeal of the corn laws and the adoption of free
trade by Great Britain gave a tremendous and un-
paralleled impetus to her oversea trade. Every
country washed by the sea, more especially new
countries like America, having produce to sell, found
a new market flung freely open to them, and hastened
to pour in supplies of all kinds, which were mostly
carried by British ships. It was the golden age of
shipowning, but one consequence of the new departure
must never be lost sight of : it made Britain each day
more and more dependent upon her oversea traffic
for her national existence. However, such was the
prosperity of the country under the new regime, and
so cheap did food become, that no one thought of the
inevitable consequences of becoming dependent entirely
upon food borne over sea. Only certain of our people,
those engaged in agriculture, began to feel the pinch
and make outcry against the new order of things,
predicting the ruin of agriculture. But as they had
done that for many years without adequate cause, no
notice was taken of them. Not that I think they
would have gained much attention anyhow, being,
in comparison with those who were flourishing under
the new state of affairs, but a feeble folk.

But we must now hark back a little to note a
tremendously accelerating factor in British shipping
business — the advent of steam. It is curious to note,
remembering the extremely arrogant claims made by
the United States to lead the world in enterprise
and ability, how completely they failed to grasp the

312 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

significance of steam as applied to shipping. There
can be little doubt as to their having possessed not
only the first steam vessel, but also the first call upon
Ericsson's splendid invention of the screw-propeller,
which conservative England would not then look at.
Yet, in spite of their undoubted inventive genius and
great energy, they did not grasp the occasion offered
them of regaining the maritime supremacy they had
lost by developing the new motive-power at sea.
Instead, they went on building wooden sailing ships
while Britain was turning out from her well-equipped
building yards iron sailing ships in great numbers,
which were faster, more seaworthy, and incomparably
better cargo-carriers than wooden vessels could ever
be. Side by side with this development of the iron
sailing ship came the introduction of steam for ocean-
going ships. And when it was too late the Yankees
saw what a mighty future was in store for steam.
They then tried to compete — with the Cunard Line
in the beginning of things — but made a complete
failure, leaving Britain in possession of an almost
complete monopoly of the new ocean traffic. Our
only other competitors worthy of notice at this time
were the hardy and thrifty Scandinavians, for the
German Mercantile Marine was practically non-existent
owing to the war with France, wherein the superiority
of French warships and seamanship had been the only
bright spot amid the otherwise universal cloud of
French disasters.

Our position, then, a third of a century ago, was
one of apparently unassailable commercial supremacy.
We controlled the commerce of the world, for we were
almost the only carriers between nation and nation;

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 313

we possessed a monopoly of shipbuilding as of almost
every other form of manufactures, and although our
internal resources in the matter of food were dwindling
very rapidly, no one thought of that in view of the
great fact that all the new nations were eager to
supply us, and by reason of our magnificent system of
ocean-carriage, cheap food was poured into the country
in an ever-increasing ratio. Not only in non-perish-
able goods, such as grain, but refrigerating processes
had been discovered, and meat killed at the Antipodes
was being put upon the British markets as fresh and
sweet as if it had been slaughtered at home. Still,
with all these object-lessons before us, it is certain
that neither the working classes, the middle classes,
nor the ruling classes adequately realized whither all
this unexampled development of our oversea trade was
tending. Here and there warning voices were raised
as to the tremendous responsibility we were incurring
in thus making ourselves dependent upon seaborne
food, but for the most part these voices were unheeded.
At last, and mainly owing to the persistent hammering
away at the subject by one London newspaper, the
Pall Mall Gazette, a genuine scare was raised in
Parliament, and the public attention was focussed
upon the Navy. It was pointed out, in the strongest
and most unmistakable terms, that even supposing we
possessed (which we certainly did not) an army capable
of competing in point of numbers with that of any
European power, that army would be helpless if unfed,
and unfed it certainly would be if the constant
supplies of food from oversea upon which we had
grown to depend could be intercepted for only a few
days. In short, we were shown to be living in a fool's

314 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

paradise, arid the only hope that we had of maintain-
ing our national position, under the peculiar circum-
stances into which we had grown, was by building and
keeping up a Navy capable of dealing with any
probable coalition of European powers against us.

And so we come to a consideration of the other
phase of what the ocean means to Great Britain — her
Navy. Very rightly the proper maintenance of the
British Navy is held by the majority of Britons as
essential to our existence as a nation, but there is
certainly not the same amount of intelligent apprecia-
tion of the reasons why this should be so — which
accounts for the widespread ignorance of the work, the
functions of the Mercantile Marine, and the apathy
generally manifested when any question affecting,
however vitally, its welfare crops up. Yet it may be
stated, without any fear of contradiction or of the
accusation of belittling the importance of our only line
of defence, that without the Mercantile Marine the
Navy would be without a raison d'etre. This fact was,
I feel, not so very long ago ignored by naval men
generally, who looked upon merchant seamen as
belonging to a lower caste — as mere mechanics, in
fact, who were fit to do servile work only, and were
of very little account in any case. This attitude, if
entirely reprehensible, is very human, and is certainly
not confined to the Navy. It may be seen in lesser
but no less offensive degrees among policemen and
civil servants generally — for genuine contempt for his
employers' commend me to a Somerset House clerk
when approached on a matter of business to which
he is well paid to give his attention. Happily, as I
feel, this contemptuous attitude on the part of naval

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 315

officers towards the men of the Merchant Service has
almost disappeared, largely owing, I believe, to the
presence in the Navy of so many Merchant officers,
who have entered the Navy through the medium of
the Royal Naval Keserve.

Leaving all these considerations behind, we have
in our Navy an arm of which we do well to be proud,
and towards which every citizen should feel the very
highest sentiments of gratitude and loyalty. But in
this, as in many other matters, we might well take
a few lessons from our bitterest enemy, Germany. A
strong navy is not in the least necessary to Germany's
national existence as it is to ours. If her great over-
sea trade were totally destroyed to-morrow she would
be impoverished very greatly, and there would be
much distress, no doubt, but not one of her subjects
need to starve, nor could she be deposed from her
admittedly high place among the nations. Yet over
the whole of the German Empire there flows an ever-
swelling tide of the most intelligent enthusiasm for
both her Navy and her Mercantile Marine such as we,
in this country, are absolute strangers to. And this
enthusiasm is not wasted or allowed to dissipate in
talk. It is guided into practical channels by Govern-
ment, fostered by the emperor, and is bearing fruit
in very notable ways. The German Navy League is
an immense power for the upbuilding of the German
Navy, and so widespread and popular is it that its
latest development is that the women of Germany
are providing a first-class battleship which they will
present to their country — a gift of over a million
pounds sterling. We have a Navy League, too, which
endures a precarious existence, is looked upon as a

316 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

nuisance by both parties in the State, and is anathema
at the Admiralty. Every piece of work it has done,
every single item of admittedly much-needed reform
of which it has been the means, has been accomplished
in the face of direct and almost virulent opposition
by the Government of the day. Any recognition of
its services to the nation by any member of the Eoyal
Family, to say nothing of the king himself, is un-
thinkable, and yet, in Germany, with a need infinitely
less than ours for such an institution, how eagerly
does the kaiser tender to the Navy League his power-
ful patronage. I hold no brief for our Navy League,
not being even an honorary member, and thus reserv-
ing my right to criticize its operations ; but I do
believe that the treatment it meets with in this country
is a fair sample of the attitude of our people towards
anything which concerns their best interests.

Fortunately, we have had of late years a sympa-
thetic appreciation of the Navy's needs in the highest
Governmental quarters, and a reorganization of the
headquarters of naval affairs, the Admiralty, which
is full of hope for the future ; for although, as a people,
we are careless and culpably ignorant of what the
Navy really is and what it means to us as a people,
we pay whatever is asked for its extension and upkeep
without a murmur, and resent nothing so much as any
suggestion of its being weakened for any considera-
tion, political or otherwise. Indeed, there are not
wanting signs that, owing to the indefatigable labours
of certain journalists in influential organs of public
opinion, aided immensely by the efforts of the Navy
League, the general public is being awakened to some
intelligent interest in the Navy and its duties. So

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 317

much so, that it is possible now to hear, whenever
men are gathered together for conversation, some more
or less intelligent remarks made upon the status and
functions of the Navy, and sundry comparisons made
between the work of the Admiralty and the War
Office, the sailor and the soldier — much to the dis-
advantage of the latter, in each case. Which is all
to the good, because, with the stress of national com-
petition now existing, it is more than ever essential
that Britons shall know what the command of the sea
means to Great Britain, and that public opinion upon
this all-important matter shall be intelligently guided,
its great force concentrated in a right direction, and
not dissipated or swayed about in useless directions
through lack of knowledge.

Before leaving for a while this most important
phase of what the ocean means to Great Britain, it
will be well to take a cursory glance over the march
of naval affairs during the last quarter of a century.
At the beginning of that period the principle of the
ironclad had been firmly established, and the de-
velopment of the turret had also begun. But Britain
lagged behind, as usual, in taking up new inventions
for the Navy, and, consequently, the strange spectacle
was seen of our having up-to-date ships armed with
obsolete muzzle-loaded guns and antiquated machinery
for working them, while our then great rival at sea,
France, was pushing on, feverishly adopting almost
every new invention, although quite unable to keep
pace with our rate of building ships. But stranger
still was the fact that our private shipyards were
turning out fully equipped men-of-war for foreign
countries, which in speed, in armament, in stability,

318 OUE HERITAGE THE SEA

were far superior to anything which our Government
possessed. And when we did make a start in the
direction of improvement, we entered upon a period
of failure that was positively ghastly, the ships being
veritable death-traps, incapable of keeping the sea in
bad weather or even of being steered. But happily
a better day dawned before it was too late, the best
possible talent was secured for Government yards, and
a very large amount of work was given to private yards
of proved capacity, which showed Europe that, not
only had we the money and the will to spend it, when
necessary, but that our rate of shipbuilding was such
that no other nation could hope to approach us or put
ships into the water so rapidly that they had not time
to become obsolete before they had done good service.
With some, however, it is a question whether we
have not gone ahead too rapidly, whether the vast
congeries of complicated machinery which goes to
make up a battleship or a first-class cruiser to-day is
not getting beyond the power of the human brain to
handle in a time of stress of actual war. We have
ships of amazing speed, whose vitals are protected by
almost unpierceable armour, guns of terrible power and
range, which, under the direction of skilful men, can
be aimed with marvellous exactitude so as to strike
a target much smaller than a ship at a distance of
several miles ; but the question of what would happen
if two fleets of fairly equal strength, with equally
brave and intelligent crews, and all equipment and
ammunition in good order, were to meet each other
still remains to be answered. We have had object-
lessons in actual naval warfare between modern fleets
in the China-Japanese war, the Spanish-American

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 319

war, the Kusso-Japanese struggle, each of which has
afforded many lessons as to the actual effect of gun-
fire, the torpedo explosions upon ships in action, but
in each case the fighting has been essentially one-
sided, and always for the same reason. The Chinese,
the Spaniards, and the Kussians stood no earthly
chance from the beginning against their opponents
because of the corruption either among their officers
or the Government officials who fitted them out. It
would be ridiculous to doubt that, had the ammunition
and equipment of the Russian ships and the discipline
of the crews and ability of the officers been equal to
that of the Japanese, a very different ending to the
battle of Tsu-Tshima would have resulted. It seems
quite a platitude to say that the best gun is useless
without ammunition, the best machinery of no avail
if neglected and rusty, and that neither perfection of
armament or abundance of proper ammunition will
prevent defeat if in the hands of incompetent or
undisciplined men, however brave. For the day of
hand-to-hand fighting at sea, of mere brute force and
contempt of death as a means of victory is gone,
never to return. It still obtains on land, to a certain
extent, and probably will continue to do so, but it
has nothing now to do with naval warfare.

Therefore, it seems necessary to point out that
where modern fleets are equally matched in all the
respects just alluded to, the merest accident may
decide the fate of the battle — a shell not particularly
well aimed, perhaps, but partly directed by the scend
of a sea, may strike a great battleship in such a place
as to disarrange her internal complexities in such a
manner as to put her virtually at the mercy of an

320 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

untouched ship. In somewhat the same manner as
a slight and perhaps accidental blow upon a certain
part of the body of the most powerful athlete, will put
him at the mercy of a much weaker opponent, who
has the wit to seize the opportunity thus offered.
This consideration, however, leads to another — the
value of smartness in sea warfare. This has always
been held of the highest value in our Navy, and
rightly so ; for it is evident that where a single shot
may have such tremendous results, it is of the highest
importance that the side which can fire the quickest
and straightest must have the best chances of success.
In the training of our men, too, we have made
splendid strides during the last twenty-five years.
The old rollicking tar, who could and would fight,
but who regarded education as a thing unattainable
and unnecessary, has vanished into the limbo of for-
gotten things, and we have now a personnel in the
Navy of higher training and also fighting force than
any other country, with the possible exception of
Japan, can boast. This, of course, is of the greatest
importance in view of the fact that in no other pro-
fession are men called upon to handle such vastly
complicated machinery under such terrific conditions ;
and it is quite gratifying to know that our rulers are
fully alive to this fact, and are doing all that is in
their power to raise the standard of education as well
as mechanical skill among the men of the Navy. But,
after all, important as all this is which we have glanced
at so hastily, it forms but a part of what the sea means
to Great Britain.

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO
GREAT BRITAIN (Continued)

IF it be said, as it may well be, that in what I have
written about the Navy I have given no details, I can
only reply that to those who wish to know what they
ought to about the mainstay of our defence against
foreign aggression, there are many books upon the
subject compiled with the utmost skill and research,
such as the works of H. W. Wilson, the late Sir
AVilliam Laird Clowes, and Fred T. Jane, to name
some of the foremost of modern writers who have
striven to explain the Navy to landsmen. In a series
of brief sketches like these it has been only possible to
give outlines, but I do sincerely hope that those who
do me the honour to read what I have written will be
so interested in the subject that they will be impelled
to read up for themselves works treating its various
aspects at proper length and in exhaustive fashion. It
must, however, be admitted that in the later develop-
ment of the Navy under the wise and energetic rule of
Sir John Fisher, progress has been so very rapid, and
revolutionary events have followed one another so
swiftly, that naval historians have not as yet had
time to bring matters up to date, and therefore I
may venture to summarize briefly up till the time of

321 y

322 OUR HERITAGE THE SE*

writing what has been accomplished during the last
few years.

One of the first as well as one of the most
revolutionary acts of the New Board of Admiralty,
with Sir John Fisher as First Sea Lord, Lord Selborne
as First Lord, and Mr. Arnold Forster as secretary, was
to abolish at one stroke all the obsolete or even semi-
obsolete ships which had made so big a show on paper,
but were useless for modern warfare when opposed to
the newer vessels. It was a bold stroke, involving an
apparent waste of millions of money, but in reality it
meant a great saving, since to keep each of those
obsolete ships seaworthy, not battle-worthy, meant
enormous and wasteful expenditure. Another far-
reaching edict was that which consolidated our exist-
ing fleets at the best strategical points, such as the
Straits of Gibraltar, the Cape of Good Hope, Singapore,
and the English Channel. The scattered squadrons
of inefficient ships were recalled and their cost saved ;
for, in the first place, they could not uphold the might
of Britain if it were necessary, and, in the next, there
was no possible combination of circumstances which
could render their services necessary in such places as
the west coast of South America, the Canadian coast,
or even the West Indies, the days being gone when
brag took the place of efficient force. Another
splendid achievement was the keeping of all the
efficient ships of the Navy ready for service, with
nucleus or skeleton crews on board, so that although
in harbour and really out of commission they might be
mobilized in the shortest possible time.

But those epoch-making changes in the disposition
of the ships were not more important than others

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 323

made for the better training of officers and men. The
embryo officer was to be caught young — at the age of
twelve, and from the beginning trained for his arduous
duties instead of wasting three or four of his most
valuable years in public schools, this in most cases
only unfitting him for his life's work. The men, too,
were given to understand that only those who really
took an interest in their work, and were not merely
content to mark time, were to be allowed to remain,
the inefficients were to be weeded out. And a new
spirit was developed by judicious appreciation of
straight shooting with big guns, the most necessary
of all accomplishments for the naval artillerists, and
one that should need no explanation whatever. Of
course, there have been many other alterations and
rearrangements carried out with a bold hand and a
far-reaching policy that should excite our utmost
admiration, if we were given to considering how in-
tensely essential it is that we should be masters of the
sea. But it will not, I fear, cause nearly as much
thought in the mind of the ordinary reader as the
chances of a bridge tournament, a golf match, or a
football contest, to so great a depth of criminal care-
lessness have we descended. And it cannot be said
that these vast reforms, the evolution of the forward
naval policy, involving many millions of money, and
the greatest interests of the race, have excited anything
like the interest to which they are most justly entitled.
And now we must return to the Mercantile Marine,
which we left the consideration of some time back, after
having followed up its development to the beginning
of the last twenty years. This period marks the
greatest industrial development of shipping that the

324 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

world has ever known, the impetus being derived from
three sources, if not four, at once. The use of steel
for shipbuilding, the rapid improvements in methods
of steam propulsion, the sudden and immense growth
in the size of ships, and the increasing need of our
teeming populations for the cheap food produced in
such enormous quantities by the opening up of new
lands. The fourth, if it be not called a controversial
subject such as I wish to avoid, was the position of
this country as the only home of free imports, which
could only be balanced in our favour by our maintain-
ing our position as the principal carriers of the world's
goods. And each of these developments give a striking
object-lesson in what the ocean means to Great Britain,
if only our citizens generally would heed it ; but of that
more presently.

First of all, the epoch-making inventions of
Bessemer and Siemens for the production of immense
quantities and in great masses of mild steel with its
superior strength and greater workability, made the
building of very large ships possible. Working hand
in hand with the steel makers, marine architects soon
left that prematurely born leviathan, the Great
Eastern, far behind, for they combined strength with
symmetry and speed and economy. It was soon found
possible to convey in a wonderful short time in one
ship the produce of a county across the oceans, and
deliver those products in perfect condition upon our
shores. One ship especially fitted for the purpose will
carry the frozen carcases of a hundred thousand sheep
from the Antipodes to our ports, bringing as well a
couple of thousand tons of cheese, butter, and grain,
and landing it in almost miraculous fashion as regards

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GEE AT BRITAIN 325

rapidity, while its distribution among the waiting
millions at home is only comparable to the melting of
snow under a blazing sun. Other ships carry whole
herds of cattle, a trade that from being at first full of
cruelty has now by dint of careful planning of ships
become far easier for the cattle to bear than long
journeys by rail, or driving them along country roads.
Of course, there has been a vast difference between the
types of ships employed in the various trades. For the
mighty floating hotel carrying a couple of thousand
passengers and a crew numbering several hundreds, a
vast amount of space was necessary for passenger and
crew accommodation, for the enormous installation of
boilers and machinery necessary to drive a mass
between twenty and thirty thousand tons in weight
through the waves at a rate of from eighteen to
twenty-five miles an hour, and for the two or three
thousand tons of coal necessary to energize those
engines. Such vessels in themselves represent a
capital of from a quarter to three-quarters of a million
pounds sterling, without counting the cost of their
upkeep ; and when it is remembered that some shipping
companies, such as the White Star, the Cunard, the
P. & 0., Royal Mail and Orient Lines, will own and
run from half a dozen to twenty or thirty of such
vessels, it will easily be understood to what enormous
dimensions the shipping trade must have grown. And
yet the great passenger lines, of which I have only
named a few in the first rank, represent only a very
small proportion of the immense number of British
ships afloat, and being added to at the rate of a million
tons or so each year.

The cargo-carrying steamer of economically slow

326 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

speed, that is to say, of from ten to fourteen miles
an hour, represents really the backbone of British
commerce, and it needs only the merest glance at a
publication like Lloyds Kegister of Shipping to realize
how vast are the number of hostages to fortune which
we have given; in other words, how vital is the
possession of an overwhelmingly strong British Navy
to protect our commerce scattered over every ocean of
the globe. I am not now concerned in the controversy
whether, given sufficient reason, therefore, we could not
produce from the soil of these islands sufficient food
to feed our teeming populations — personally, I believe
that we could do so ; I only state a fact which should
be well known to all persons old enough to think, that
in the event of war with a first-rate power, five-sixths
of the population of these isles would be starving
within a fortnight should our Navy fail to protect our
commerce. Nay, we should begin to feel the pinch the
moment that war was declared, and that in a way that
no other nation would, for the price of food would
immediately rise to an inordinate height and the
consequent suffering would be terrible. I remember
very vividly at the time of the Penjdeh scare when,
had we gone to war with Russia, our command of the
sea would never have been even challenged, except by
privateers preying upon our isolated ships, that the
very rumour alone sent up the price of wheat in the
case of the cargo of the ship in which I was sailing
nearly two shillings a bushel, much of which rise was, of
course, the work of unscrupulous speculators ; but still
there would have been an undoubted increase in the
price.

Hitherto I have only dealt with the food aspect of

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 327

what the ocean means to us Britons, food being the
primal necessity ; but when food must needs be brought
from over the sea it must needs be bought and paid
for also. If food is grown or produced in the country
it may be exchanged for labour, but in the case of
imported food this direct exchange of labour is of no
avail. Therefore we need enormous imports of raw
material for our manufactures in order to employ the
army of workers who have no means of cultivating the
land. Every land is drawn upon for this raw material,
and in the importance of its free inflow it is scarcely
second to the importation of food. It is true that in
the immensely valuable items of coal and iron, by
means of which we have attained and keep our position
as the premier shipbuilders and shipowners of the
world, we have our own great resources within the land ;
but even then we import vast quantities of ore from
Spain and Norway and Sweden. Then when these raw
materials are worked up into the finished articles by
the skill and industry of our workers, our ships come
into requisition again to carry them to whatever
nations will buy. But not only are our ships thus
employed for our own needs, but they also have the
greatest share in international ocean commerce, carriers
for the world, and earning vast sums thereby. What
those sums are may be faintly guessed by the following
figures for the year 1904, which I may be forgiven for
quoting in view of the importance of the subject. Our
aggregate tonnage of merchant shipping is 10,500,000,
the total value of our imports £596,500,000 sterling,
and of our exports over £417,000,000. And in the
same year 1904 we spent £41,696,313 on the Navy,
not a high insurance premium on so vast a property.

328 OUK HERITAGE THE SEA

The shipbuilding figures are much more up-to-date,
and break the record. During 1905 we built 126(>
vessels of an aggregate total of 1,824,750 tons, this
output being 14,000 tons more than the previous
maximum in 1901. A tremendous amount of this
tonnage has been for foreigners, 21 '5 per cent, of the
total, so that we are engaged in forging the weapons
wherewith we may be fought in our own field.

But within the last twenty-five years we have seen
a most formidable rival in shipping matters arise, which
has not only entered into keenest competition with us,
but has in many cases wrested from us whole lines of
trade in which we once were supreme. Not only so,
but this rival, Germany, which has built up the two
greatest shipping companies, has actually beaten us in
one most important matter, that of owning the fastest
passenger ships across the Atlantic Ocean. Our other
competitors, France, the United States, Scandinavia,
all put together do not press us so hardly as does
Germany, a country which so short a period ago
as a quarter of a century was scarcely worth our
consideration at all. But Germany's watchword is
thoroughness in all things, and while her internal
industries have made gigantic strides, it may safely be
said that no branch of her multifarious energies has
received such careful fostering, such minute attention,
as her shipping. While with us the shipping interest
is a matter of national life or death, in Germany it is,
however important, a side issue ; yet Germans, from the
emperor downwards, devote such energy to furthering
their shipping interests as should put us to shame if
we thought about the matter as we ought. Nothing
stranger in national affairs has ever been witnessed

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 329

than the apathy of Britons where shipping is concerned,
in contrast with the intense interest manifested by
Germans in all that concerns their shipping affairs.
They have been rewarded, too, by seeing German
shipping make colossal strides, and they are beginning
to believe that they are destined to occupy the place
so long held by Britain, owing to her inability to rise
to the occasion and keep the advantage she has had.
It is only just to add that the Germans have worked hard
for what they have, letting no opportunity slip, and
following in our footsteps all over the world, imitating
British goods and trade-marks, taking advantage of
British free trade, leaving, in short, no stone unturned
to win away from us what we are too apathetic to hold
on to.

There are not wanting signs that Germans have
long regarded British supremacy in the world's traffic
as a matter for their undivided national attention, and
that the whole of their policy is directed to one end,
which is the abasement of Britain, which they believe
to occupy now a place that is theirs by right. But it
must be said that if ever they do succeed in this
perfectly legitimate aim of theirs, it will be entirely
our own fault, because we have not realized what the
ocean means to Great Britain. The leaders of political
thought in Germany look with sardonic satisfac-
tion at our petty political squabbles at home; at
the amount of energy which is wasted over things
which do not matter; at the ever-increasing number
of our men who grow up untrained, unfit for work,
a drain upon the country's resources instead of an
addition to her strength ; and while they do this, they
frame pacific addresses to our professors and litterateurs

330 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

avowing their persistent friendliness to us and their
altruistic intentions towards Great Britain. Unfortun-
ately for these aims of theirs, the virulent German
press, directly representative of German feeling towards
Britain, cannot restrain itself, and so affords us a
splendid barometer whereby we may judge the con-
ditions of the German mental atmosphere as it affects us.
Again I say that I do not blame the Germans ; if they
succeed in their efforts to destroy Great Britain's place
among the nations, it will only be because Britons have
become unworthy to hold that place. As I write,
comes the news that German school-teachers instruct
their scholars to bring money for the purpose of
building ships to beat the British Navy ; this is
done by order, and is a lurid comment upon German
professions of amity.

It may be here remarked that every effort on the
part of any nation to extend her commerce at sea
must of necessity affect Britain chiefly, since, at the
risk of repetition, it must be stated that Britain and
sea-supremacy are correlative terms — one cannot exist
without the other. The United States have challenged
us in no uncertain terms, but unlike the Germans, who
plod steadily on towards a goal never lost sight of, the
Yankees have endeavoured to buy the supremacy of
the sea. There is no need to labour the point. The
experience of the International Shipping Combine,
directly aimed at the heart of Britain's shipping
trade, is an object-lesson in the futility of the methods
employed. There are many things that money cannot
buy, and it is evident that a command of the world's
shipping industry is one of them. I do not think we
have anything to fear from American competition at

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 331

sea now, in whatever form it may come. I have very
much more reason to dread the persistent and scientific
efforts of a much later entrant into the lists of the
struggle for sea-power in the direction of commerce.
I mean Japan. I foresee a day not very far distant
when Japan will rule the Pacific by sheer ability.
The same intensity of industry, of attention to detail,
and of national devotion to a national ideal which
Japan has manifested, in a degree never before wit-
nessed, during her wars with China and Kussia, she
will show, she is showing, in her application to com-
merce. Japan is a small nation, but she has at her
hand, and amenable to her tuition, a vast unknown
quantity, China. She will undoubtedly energize
China; will utilize the almost appalling capacity of
the Chinese for patient labour and imitative ability ;
and, without the necessity for shedding one drop of
blood, she will dominate the East in the interests of
the yellow races. Here is the real yellow peril, if
peril it really be. Not that the yellow race will carry
fire and sword Westward, destroying all the evidences
of Western civilization, but, by the most peaceful
of methods, by bettering the teaching they have
received from the Western nations, they will simply
crush the Westerner back to his own countries, and
defy him to do any trade with the Far East at all.
In this gigantic struggle all the Western nations will
suffer alike ; but the most direct antagonism will be
with America, which is perhaps the most hated of all
the white races by the yellow man for the restrictions
placed by the United States upon Mongolian immigra-
tion. But America will, doubtless, owing to her
enormous population and wealth, be able to speak

332 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

with the enemy in the gate effectively. But for our
Australian colonies I have the greatest fears. I do
not see how, when to Oriental ability, patience, endur-
ance, and thrift is super-added Western skill and
knowledge, it will be possible for our well-paid, well-
fed, and luxury-giving countrymen down under to
compete with it. It will certainly soon be impossible
to enforce the exclusive laws already obtaining, and
once Australasia is open as an emigration field to
China and Japan, the deluge is upon them. I hope I
am taking far too gloomy a view of the future, but
I feel sadly that I am not.

One thing, however, I would like to insist upon
and hammer away at with all my might, caring nothing
for the risk of being voted a nuisance. It is that steps
should at once be taken to impress upon all our citizens
the absolute (by no means relative) importance of the
ocean to us. It is our natural highway, the only place
outside of our own dominions where we are free to go
and come untaxed, and if by any succession of untoward
events we should lose our right to range the ocean
freely, we should then have to ask leave to live at all.
A matter so vital to us all should certainly be taught
at the earliest possible age in our schools, and large
maps, similar to the Navy League map, be hung in all
schoolrooms for the youngsters to look at, while half
an hour or so every day should be devoted to homely
lessons, impressing upon the scholars what our position
really is, and how entirely dependent we are upon the
sea for our life. Is this being a faddist ? I think not ;
but if it be considered so, I will gladly be called a
faddist if allowed to uphold it. Another point which
I earnestly wish to see taken up is that our great

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 333

newspapers should devote at least a column of their
space daily to shipping matters, which might be made
intensely readable as well as interesting, while of the
educational value of such reading there can be no
room for difference of opinion. The country possesses
many shipping papers, all valuable in their way, but
not accessible to the mass of people, nor would the
information they give, valuable as it is, be at all
intelligible to the ordinary reader unless it were care-
fully edited and often translated. If it be pleaded
that the pressure of the other news keeps shipping
matters out, I reply that in a properly edited paper
this could not be. I have repeatedly seen news of the
utmost interest and importance trampled upon, crowded
out, in order to give a full report of a spicy divorce
case or a breach of promise case or criminal prosecu-
tion, affecting at the most but a handful of people,
but put in from a mistaken idea that the human
interest in such drivel is what sells a paper. I do
not believe it, and if it were true, then it is the
mission, the duty of the newspaper, if it possesses a
tithe of the educational value claimed, and, I believe,
rightly claimed for it, to teach the people what they
ought to read by giving it to them.

If only the public mind were awakened to the fact
of our utter dependence upon the sea for our living,
it is unthinkable to suppose that they would calmly
acquiesce in the fact of our Mercantile Marine being
so very largely manned and handled by foreigners as
it is. This question has been before the public now
for a good many years, but it is just as far from settle-
ment as ever. A great deal of money in the form of
subscriptions has been, as I think, wasted over this

334 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

matter. What is wanted is an awakening of the public
opinion to its importance, and this cannot be done by
spasmodic outbursts in the press, a flare-up for a few
days, and then a going to sleep again for months, as
has hitherto been the case. However, I gratefully
admit that there have been signs of late of an awaken-
ing on the part of the press to a sense of the respon-
sibilities in this matter which gives promise of better
things to come. I feel sure that the heart of the
people is sound enough, and that if only we could be
made to understand that this question of our sea-
supremacy is as vital to us as is the issue of a great
war, nay, that there is a great war being waged merci-
lessly upon our chief interest by foreign nations, with
the never-fading hope of getting the upper hand, we
should soon see what is most earnestly to be desired,
the great mercantile marine of our country placed
upon a national footing, lifted into its proper position
in the eyes of all men as the one thing which concerns
every one of us, and in the maintenance of which, at
the highest possible pitch of efficiency, no effort,
national or individual, should be neglected.

But perhaps it may be as well to leave this side of
the question for a little while and say just a word or
two upon the commercial aspects of shipping, which
to most of us are a sealed book. The day of the
individual shipowner, who could do as he liked
with his ships, and who in many cases was like a
father of a very large family, is nearly, if not quite,
gone. Shipowning is now almost entirely in the
hand of limited companies of varying degrees of
stability, from such gigantic affairs as the Peninsular
and Oriental, with their mighty fleet constantly being

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 335

renewed and their steady dividends of ten per cent.,
down to the little single ship company with a capital
of £10,000 invested in an almost worn-out cargo
steamer, which has to fight for a bare existence. The
great companies conduct their businesses on lines
savouring more of the government of a kingdom in
their widespread ramifications, with their lordly repre-
sentatives all over the world, and their host of well-paid
servants ashore and afloat. The enormously costly
matter of insurance does not trouble them much, for,
in the first place, by having ships and men of the
very best at lavish cost they reduce their risks, so
that by placing in a fund all the premiums they
would have to pay for insuring their ships, experience
has shown them they are enabled to build a new ship
every now and then, after having paid for all losses
and damages. Of course, this method is only open to
a firm that has many ships, off every one of which is
written a goodly amount each year for depreciation,
while they are so well looked after that, though twenty
years old, some of them are just as good and efficient
as new. I have named one company, but there are
many others who are in just the same position, but
about which we do not hear so much ; indeed, it may
be doubted whether in the whole history of shipping
there has ever been known such a marvellous record
of prosperity as belonged to the White Star Line
before its purchase by the Americans. With a capital of
£750,000, it owned ships valued at several millions, which
had been written down in the books till they stood at
nothing, while the shareholders had been receiving divi-
dends all along ranging from twelve to twenty per cent.
But when we leave these leviathans of shipping

336 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

and come to the smaller fry, whose numbers are legion,
we are in a sea of perplexity.

Some of the smaller companies, honestly managed,
and faithfully served because the servants are decently
treated, are exceedingly prosperous. Life in them is
hard, for they are not floating hotels by any means, nor
are the rates of pay for the officers high — the wages of
the men are practically the same in the smallest tramp
as in the largest liner. But still there is honest
dealing and a fair amount of satisfaction all round.
When, however, we leave these we come to the real
tramp, the cheap tank, under-engined, under-manned,
and under-paid, run by the managing owner, who is
also a broker and taxes everybody, from the master who
must invest his hard-earned savings in order to get a
command which is worth £12 or £15 a month, and
who knows that to inquire after a dividend is to get
the sack (vulgarly speaking) without being able to
realize his investment, to the country clergyman or
maiden lady who has been led by specious promises
to invest their little all in shipping. This form of
shipping enterprise is of no use to the country, it
is more of a curse than a blessing, but unfortunately
it fills a very large space in our mercantile marine.

Another vast change has been brought about in
shipping matters by the almost universal extension
of the telegraph cable, as well as by the establishment
of brokers' offices in practically all the ports of the
world. This has shorn the master of much of his
responsibility, and vastly limited his power of making
a little extra on his scanty pay. In almost every case
nowadays the master is solely concerned with getting
his ship to port in safety and good time. As soon

WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 337

as she is in harbour, all business connected with her
freight is taken out of his hands by the agent or
broker, and he has but to obey orders, instead of, as
of old, hobnobbing with shippers, and using all his
endeavours to scare up a cargo, as they say, and get
away to sea again as soon as possible. But by the
operation of a universal law, that applies afloat as
well as ashore, the harder and more onerous the duties
of the mariner, the lower his pay and consideration.
In a great liner the master's duties are very light
indeed. His responsibility is tremendous, but all actual
detail work is taken off his hands by a thoroughly
competent staff of officers, several of whom are as
fully competent to command as he is himself, and,
being very anxious to rise, are not at all likely to
shirk their duties. The purser attends to the clerical
and commercial part of the work, and so the master,
who from his sublime altitude may look down upon
his brother master in a tramp steamer of a tenth of
the tonnage, with a sixth of the pay and ten times
the work, may be congratulated upon his position as
being a highly honourable and fairly easy one.

The cruel and unjust thing about the profession
is that for such men a single mistake on their part
or that of one of their subordinates may, and very
often does, spell utter ruin. It is the rule of some
companies, and it ;is the unwritten custom in most,
that nothing excuses an accident : the master must
go, faultless or not. And if he be past middle age,
with a family dependent upon him and only a trifle
saved, his career is over, for except in the worst and
lowest kind of tramp, where such a man's necessities
are taken advantage of to get him at starvation wage,

z

338 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA

he cannot get employment even as a subordinate
officer. It is the only profession among us where
an error of judgment or an absolute misfortune is
construed into a crime worthy of ruin after a blame-
less career, and its victims are rightfully very bitter
about their treatment. But it cannot be gainsaid that
the tremendous penalty attaching to failure has made
our Mercantile Marine what it is, and has kept down
our list of disasters at sea, reducing it each year until
sea traffic compares very favourably with railway work,
for instance, in its immunity from loss of life.

Here I must close this discursive chapter, with the
earnest hope that those who do me the honour to read
it will first of all take home to themselves, and then
endeavour to impress upon all with whom they come
in contact, the transcendent importance of the ocean
to our beloved country, Great Britain.

THE END

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