the ships' companies with whom I have served in various
capacities. But I reflected that I had left the sea in '94, twenty years
before the outbreak of the war that was to apply its severe test to the
quality of modern seamen. Perhaps they had deteriorated, I said
unwillingly to myself. I remembered also the alarmist articles I had
read about the great number of foreigners in the British Merchant
Service, and I didn't know how far these lamentations were justified.

In my time the proportion of non-Britishers in the crews of the ships
flying the red ensign was rather under one-third, which, as a matter of
fact, was less than the proportion allowed under the very strict French
navigation laws for the crews of the ships of that nation. For the
strictest laws aiming at the preservation of national seamen had to
recognise the difficulties of manning merchant ships all over the world.
The one-third of the French law seemed to be the irreducible minimum. But
the British proportion was even less. Thus it may be said that up to the
date I have mentioned the crews of British merchant ships engaged in deep
water voyages to Australia, to the East Indies and round the Horn were
essentially British. The small proportion of foreigners which I remember
were mostly Scandinavians, and my general impression remains that those
men were good stuff. They appeared always able and ready to do their
duty by the flag under which they served. The majority were Norwegians,
whose courage and straightness of character are matters beyond doubt. I
remember also a couple of Finns, both carpenters, of course, and very
good craftsmen; a Swede, the most scientific sailmaker I ever met;
another Swede, a steward, who really might have been called a British
seaman since he had sailed out of London for over thirty years, a rather
superior person; one Italian, an everlastingly smiling but a pugnacious
character; one Frenchman, a most excellent sailor, tireless and
indomitable under very difficult circumstances; one Hollander, whose
placid manner of looking at the ship going to pieces under our feet I
shall never forget, and one young, colourless, muscularly very strong
German, of no particular character. Of non-European crews, lascars and
Kalashes, I have had very little experience, and that was only in one
steamship and for something less than a year. It was on the same
occasion that I had my only sight of Chinese firemen. Sight is the exact
word