were intact. The captain had been so long without sleep and
proper rest that he had lost the power of sleep. His nerves were so
badly shattered, and his physical endurance so completely exhausted, a
new captain had to be sent to relieve him, and the poor fellow never
really regained his normal state afterwards. I have often heard him say
"it was death or glory; scud, pump, or sink," which was one of the
common phrases used by seamen in describing circumstances of this
nature.

Stories more or less sensational are written from time to time of the
terrors of a passage from Liverpool to New York aboard one of the White
Star or Cunard liners, or even a passage on an ordinary ocean tramp,
and although I would not under-estimate either the danger or the
discomforts of either the crew or the passengers aboard one of these, I
am bound to say they can only form a meagre conception of what it must
have been like on one of the diminutive frail sailing crafts that built
up the supremacy of the British mercantile marine. No one can really
imagine the awfulness of the work these vessels and their crews had to
do except those who sailed in them. This vessel, like many others of
her class and size, did useful work in her time in building up our
trade with other parts of the world. Distance and danger were no
obstacles to the crews who heroically manned them. They feared nothing
and dared everything. Their pride of race was inherent. They aimed at
upholding the fine traditions of their nautical forbears, and
contemptuously ignored the right of other nations to a place on the
high seas. It was their dominion, and their prerogative therefore to
monopolize them. Uneasy, ill-informed, political propagandists and
commercial theorists would do well to ponder over what it has cost in
courage, in vital force, in genius and in wealth to build up an edifice
that represents half the world's tonnage. This structure of national
strength has been erected without the aid of subsidies or bounties, and
it may be not only maintained without them, but grow still greater if
it is left alone to pursue its natural course under a system that
brought us out of commercial bondage into a freer air over fifty years
ago. That system has been the secret of much of our success, and once
we embark on the retrograde course of protection then that will be the
beginning of our mercantile decadence. Is the heritage not too
magnificent, too sacred, to have pranks played