Chapter 26

A SAILOR A JACK OF ALL TRADES

As I began to learn my sailor duties, and show activity in running
aloft, the men, I observed, treated me with a little more consideration,
though not at all relaxing in a certain air of professional superiority.
For the mere knowing of the names of the ropes, and familiarizing
yourself with their places, so that you can lay hold of them in the
darkest night; and the loosing and furling of the canvas, and reefing
topsails, and hauling braces; all this, though of course forming an
indispensable part of a seaman's vocation, and the business in which he
is principally engaged; yet these are things which a beginner of
ordinary capacity soon masters, and which are far inferior to many other
matters familiar to an "able seaman."

What did I know, for instance, about striking a top-gallant-mast, and
sending it down on deck in a gale of wind? Could I have turned in a
dead-eye, or in the approved nautical style have clapt a seizing on the
main-stay? What did I know of "passing a gammoning," "reiving a Burton,"
"strapping a shoe-block," "clearing a foul hawse," and innumerable other
intricacies?

The business of a thorough-bred sailor is a special calling, as much of
a regular trade as a carpenter's or locksmith's. Indeed, it requires
considerably more adroitness, and far more versatility of talent.

In the English merchant service boys serve a long apprenticeship to the
sea, of seven years. Most of them first enter the Newcastle colliers,
where they see a great deal of severe coasting service. In an old copy
of the Letters of Junius, belonging to my father, I remember reading,
that coal to supply the city of London could be dug at Blackheath, and
sold for one half the price that the people of London then paid for it;
but the Government would not suffer the mines to be opened, as it would
destroy the great nursery for British seamen.

A thorough sailor must understand much of other avocations. He must be a
bit of an embroiderer, to work fanciful collars of hempen lace about the
shrouds; he must be something of a weaver, to weave mats of rope-yarns
for lashings to the boats; he must have a touch of millinery, so as to
tie graceful bows and knots, such as Matthew Walker's roses, and Turk's
heads; he must be a bit of a musician, in order to sing out at the
halyards; he must be a sort of jeweler, to set dead-eyes in the standing
rigging; he must be a carpenter, to enable him to make a jurymast out of
a yard in case of emergency; he must be a sempstress, to darn and mend
the sails; a ropemaker, to twist marline and Spanish foxes; a
blacksmith, to make hooks and thimbles for the blocks: in short, he must
be a sort of Jack of