chief part of my environment in entering the navy. The effect was
inevitable, and amounted in fact simply to making me a man of my
period. My most susceptible years were colored by the still lingering
traditions of the sail period, and of the "marling-spike seaman;" not
that I, always clumsy with my fingers, had any promise of ever
distinguishing myself with the marling-spike. This expressive phrase,
derived from its chief tool, characterized the whole professional
equipment of the then mechanic of the sea, of the man who, given the
necessary rope-yarns, and the spars shaped by a carpenter, could take
a bare hull as she lay for the first time quietly at anchor from the
impetus of her launch, and equip her for sea without other assistance;
"parbuckle" on board her spars lying alongside her in the stream, fit
her rigging, bend her sails, stow her hold, and present her all
a-taunt-o to the men who were to sail her. The navigation of a ship
thus equipped was a field of seamanship apart from that of the
marling-spike; but the men who sailed her to all parts of the earth
were expected to be able to do all the preliminary work themselves,
often did do it, and considered it quite as truly a part of their
business as the handling her at sea. Of course, in equipping ships, as
in all other business, specialization had come in with progress; there
were rope-makers, there were riggers who took the ropes ready-made and
fitted them for the ship, and there were stevedores to stow holds,
etc.; but the tradition ran that the seaman should be able on a pinch
to do all this himself, and the tradition kept alive the practice,
which derived from the days not yet wholly passed away when he might,
and often did, have to refit his vessel in scenes far distant from any
help other than his own, and without any resources save those which
his ready wit could adapt from materials meant for quite different
uses. How to make a jib-boom do the work of a topsail-yard, or to
utilize spare spars in rigging a jury-rudder, were specimens of the
problems then presented to the aspiring seaman. It was somewhere in
the thirties, not so very long before my time, that a Captain Rous, of
the British navy, achieved renown--I would say immortal, were I not
afraid that most people have forgotten--by bringing his frigate home
from Labrador to England after losing her rudder. It is said that he
subsequently ran for Parliament, and when on the hustings some doubter
aske