THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
[To TEE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR:1
Ssu.,—Mr. Cuthbert Laws, the son of a fine sailor, who himself has spent some part of his life at sea, and who is now manager of the largest shipping organisation in the world, a statistician, and a man of superb ability in all that appertains to shipping, has deemed it expedient completely to expose the comic irrelevance of Mr. Noble's facts. But Mr. Noble is at it again in the last issue of the Spectator. His letter is, of course, entirely at variance with the facts. That, however, does not seem to matter. I defy him to name one specific case of loss of life where an owner of repute can be proved to have neglected any precaution whatever in order to safeguard the property, the lives, and to provide for the comfort of the men in his service, irrespective of officials or surveyers. In his letter to the Morning Post last year he made statements that were as grossly fallacious as those which have appeared in the Spectator, the only difference being that he now eulogises the quality of the liner (for some obscure reason) and declaims against the cargo vessels. He calls them tramps, and implies in grandiloquent language that they are inferior in every respect to the liner.
One would really imagine that this unsailorly person was carrying on his back all the cares of the mercantile marine. Here, again, he shows his ignorance, for it is well known that cargo vessels are in no sense inferior to the liner. Certainly the supervision is as complete, both during construction and afterwards.
In his last ebullition Mr. Noble refers to turrets. He says that under certain conditions their boats cannot be launched; but "under certain conditions" the boats of other types cannot be launched either; whereas, whensoever a boat can be launched from an ordinary type, it will be easier in com- parison to do the same thing from a turret, and unquestion- ably as easy as from any of the liners. Any one who has a real knowledge of this class of vessel praises their sea-kindli- ness, and as an insurance risk they are unequalled. I have eleven, and am building another, not for sentiment, but for safety and usefulness, because I am a large underwriter and proprietor. What does this man, who is crying out about abstract evils, know about turrets? The last two paragraphs of his letter are so amazingly amateurish that I shall not ask you to give me space to reply to such twaddle. I have only now to say that the race of men that have made England supreme are not composed of monotonous dreary whiners who pour out cataracts of denunciation, and do their best to make the earth a miserable place on which to abide.
In my early sea days, and long after, there were found in every forecastle one or two of the crew who were termed "sea lawyers." They were never any good as sailors. They were abortive in every capacity, and apparently they are not extinct. There must always be a distinction drawn between the typical blunt., resourceful, dare-devil sailor and the croaker. The one is a fine specimen of English manhood, and the other is always unpractical, theoretie, and securely
indefinite.—I am, Sir, Isc., WALTER RUNCIMAN. Pilgrim Street, Newcastle-on-Tyne.
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