The Project Gutenberg EBook of Windjammers and Sea Tramps, by Walter Runciman

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Title: Windjammers and Sea Tramps

Author: Walter Runciman

Release Date: February 23, 2005 [EBook #15155]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WINDJAMMERS AND SEA TRAMPS

_By_

WALTER RUNCIMAN, _Sen._

Author of "The Shellback's Progress in the Nineteenth Century."_

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE: THE
WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: 3 EAST 14TH STREET. 1905.

THESE EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS
OF THINGS NAVAL
NEW AND OLD
ARE DEDICATED
WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF ESTEEM
TO
JOHN DENT AND WILLIAM MILBURN
AND TO THE MEMORY OF
E.H. WATTS

CONTENTS

PREFACE
I. INTRODUCTORY
II. PECULIAR AND UNEDUCATED
III. A CABIN-BOY'S START AT SEA
IV. THE SEAMAN'S SUPERSTITIONS
V. THE SEAMAN'S RELIGION
VI. SAFETY AND COMFORT AT SEA
VII. WAGES AND WIVES
VIII. LIFE AMONG THE PACKET RATS
IX. BRUTALITY AT SEA
X. BRAVERY
XI. CHANTIES
XII. JACK IN RATCLIFF HIGHWAY
XIII. THE MATTER-OF-FACT SAILOR
XIV. RESOURCEFULNESS AND SHIPWRECK
XV. MANNING THE SERVICE

PREFACE

"I went in at the hawse-hole and came out at the cabin
window." It was thus that a certain North Country shipowner
once summarised his career while addressing his
fellow-townsmen on some public occasion now long past, and
the sentence, giving forth the exact truth with all a
sailor's delight in hyperbole, may well be taken to describe
the earlier life-stages gone through by the author of this
book. The experiences acquired in a field of operations,
that includes all the seas and continents where commerce may
move, live, and have its being, have enhanced in value and
completed what came to him in his forecastle and
quarter-deck times. He learned in his youth, from the lips
of a race now extinct, what the nature and traditions of
seamanship were before he and his contemporaries lived. He
has seen that nature and those tradi