Home Contact Us

The Men of the Merchant Service

by Frank T. Bullen

Originally published in 1901

Born in 1857, Frank T. Bullen went to sea at the rather tender age of twelve. After a number of years sailing ‘before the mast’, he qualified as an officer and rose to the rank of Chief Mate. He witnessed the revolution in sea transport as sail gave way to steam. Although he realised this change was inevitable and could foresee the end of the merchant sailing ship, he was at heart a sailing ship man:

My own personal knowledge and predilections are on the side of the “wind-jammer”, and consequently I feel the less inclined to deal with her perfunctorily. I cannot, however, conceal from myself that fact that the passing of the sailing ship is being greatly accelerated of late years, and that in all probability another twenty years will witness her final disappearance.

He wrote a number of other books, including ‘The Log of the Sea Waif’ in which he recalled his first few years at sea and ‘The Cruise of the “Cachelot”’ which is perhaps his best known book. Like other Victorian writers, such as G.A. Henty and R.M. Ballantyne, he has fallen out of favour and is now not much read and his books can be hard to get hold of. The only easily available book of his is ‘The Cruise of the “Cachelot”’ which is available for download from the Project Gutenberg web site. For the others, none now remain in print and second hand bookshops are the only places where his books can be found.

As well as a guide to the Victorian Merchant Navy, “The Men of the Merchant Service” is also something of a polemic. As a former seafarer Bullen was much exercised about the seaman’s wages and living conditions. He had no high opinion of either – especially of the wages:

The master of a great liner is in a really enviable position - not, perhaps, as regards his earnings in solid cash, for it still remains to the discredit of British seafaring that its most highly placed officers are far worse paid than men greatly their inferiors engaged in business ashore.

The problem of wages has, it must be said, been more or less dealt with. Most seafarers are now well paid and have reasonable working conditions. There are, of course, still some floating death traps with under-paid and overworked crew but not many of them

What has not changed is the general population’s ignorance when it comes to merchant ships. Bullen’s words are just as relevant now as they were then:

The overwhelming importance of our over-sea commerce to Great Britain cannot be too greatly emphasized, while the astounding ignorance of maritime matters manifested by British people generally makes one gasp in amazement.

Most are still not aware that practically everything they own or eat has, at one stage or another, seen the hold of a cargo ship or the trailer deck of a cross-channel ferry. Perhaps this is as it should be – why should people be aware of or worry about how their TV, car, clothes or food got to their front door? Maybe, but most would argue that they do so at their peril.

Whilst Bullen here perhaps over-eggs the pudding a little, I would not necessarily disagree with him:

Viewed from whatever standpoint we may choose, it is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion than that the British Mercantile Marine is not only the greatest British industry, but that, for its overwhelming importance and far-reaching effect upon mankind, it is the most stupendous monument of human energy and enterprise that the world has ever seen. Yet, with that peculiar absence of pride in our own institutions, that easy-going magnanimity which, in spite of what not only foreign writers, but many of our own authors assert, is really the most distinctive characteristic of the British race, we show but little appreciation of this marvel of commercial genius and concentrated effort. Dependent by our own action upon our ships for food, we evince no alarm at the possibility of disaster to these main arteries of our national life. Go where you will, up and down this country of ours, and, except among people directly engaged in shipping business, or a few earnest souls who think it is their duty to know something of the conditions under which their dear ones live, you will find scarcely any knowledge of the British Merchant Service at all. The vast majority of people know of but one form of seafaring, the Navy, as they call it, par excellence; and if a man tells them that he is a sailor, they are disinclined to believe him unless he wear the familiar loose blue clothing and gold-lettered cap of the man-o’-war’s man.

As recently as the nineteen-seventies, when I first went to sea, Britain still had a vibrant merchant fleet employing tens of thousands of British seafarers. Not so now. Whilst there are still many ships flying the red ensign, they are manned almost exclusively by foreigners. The only organisation employing British merchant seamen deep sea (that is away from the British and North West European coasts) is the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, which as the name suggests supplies and supports the warships of the Royal Navy. No commercial organisation employs British ratings deep sea, and only very few employ British officers. Within ten years this industry had all but disappeared in Britain and future generations will be amazed at how fast it happened. All the great shipping lines - P&O, Blue Funnel, Blue Star, Lambert & Holt, PSNC, NZS and all the others - are now long gone or exist as trading names only.

Now on one level this does not matter – the cargo ships and tankers still come and go. So long as the goods are delivered then there is nothing to worry about and the nationality of the owner, the ship or her crew is irrelevant.. I would submit that this is a mistake, and a mistake that we or our children will come to regret. Bullen, of course, had it right:

“And what shall we say in face of the almost universal manifestation of malevolence towards us by foreign powers in what they believe to be our hour of tribulation, of a British minister who from his high position declares he sees no cause for alarm in the prospect of our merchant ships being entirely manned by foreigners?”

It seems strange that an island nation should rely on foreign ships and foreign crews for the transportation of all imports and exports.

The book is divided into thirty-five chapters, each dealing with the work, duties and responsibilities of a different crew member. Naturally certain ranks get more attention than others, but on the whole he gives a full account of the role of each person on board. Here, for example, is Bullen summing up the burden of command:

“The master of a ship cannot enjoy that peculiar repose common to every other member of his crew. Deeply as they may feel the weight of their special responsibility while on watch, the moment they are relieved the relief is complete. No matter how black the outlook, it is the other fellow’s business now. The relieved one goeth unto his bunk, and divesting himself of his clothing, passes into dreamland as free from care as if in some cosy bed ashore. Not one vestige of his late anxieties troubles him. They will come on again all too soon; meanwhile he will get as much sleep into the allotted hours as possible, and nothing short of a summons from his commanding officer shall disturb that calm. The poor skipper, on the other hand, has no such relief. He must cultivate confidence in his officers, or want of rest will soon make an old worn-out man of him; but in any case he must he always ready to assume full responsibility.”

The book is also peppered with ripping yarns, such as the description of a drunken skipper returning to the ship rather the worse for wear:

“That night, when the vessel had settled down upon the mud, by reason of the great fall of the tide, so that her tops were nearly level with the wharf-edge, the skipper returned and, avoiding the lighted gangway carefully placed for him, walked over the unprotected side of the wharf and fell fifty feet. He passed between the vessel’s side and the piles of the wharf without touching, and entered the mud feet first with a force that buried him to his arm-pits.”

Then there is the compulsory amputation on the saloon table story (with a twist):

“He relates how, in one of his passages from New York to England, he was midway across the Atlantic when during a heavy gale a sea was shipped which dashed him against the bulwarks with such force that one of his legs was broken above the knee. It was a compound fracture; and although such attention as was possible under his direction was given him at once, in a few days he recognized the necessity for having the leg cut off. Mortification had set in. His mate was absolutely unable to attempt the job from sheer physical incapacity, although in other respects a most able, strenuous man. So the sufferer, in superhuman fashion, rose to the occasion and performed the operation upon himself.”

All good stuff.

Bullen clearly loved the life and despite the privations and hardships enjoyed his time at sea immensely. He was happiest when sailing as mate on a sailing vessel:

Of all the different positions on board ship that I know of, none is so favourable to the formation of fine characters, none that a man can hold with greater dignity and benefit to himself. He has a scope for his energies that is practically denied to the master; and where lie has the good fortune to serve under a man who has not forgotten the days when he himself was mate, and treats his immediate coadjutor as his mate, there is no reason why he should not be perfectly happy. I know that it was the happiest time of my own sea life.

Although I no longer go to sea for a living, and for the most part thoroughly enjoyed my time and it always struck me as strange that people who clearly hate the job still decide to go to sea.

He was also a bit of romantic - here he is writing on what the engineer, who spends his working life imprisoned in the engine room misses:

For him there is no meditative contemplation of the glories of the tropical night, when in the midst of the mighty solitudes of the untainted ocean man draws near to the great heart of Nature, feels himself akin to the stars and the wind and the waves; no heart-uplifting view of the apocalyptic splendours of the dawn, when the grey shadow of night melts away before the palpitating glow of the approaching sun; no speechless delight in the indescribable panorama sweeping past when the swift ship skirts closely the wonders of many shores.

Some things never change:

To take the simplest matter, personal cleanliness. How many lads are there to be found, I wonder, leaving good homes, such as the majority of sea-apprentices do leave, who have ever washed a shirt or a plate, made a bed, or sewn on a button? Not one in a thousand. These things have always been done for them, and had they decided upon going into any trade or profession ashore would have still been done for them. It is one of the gravest defects of modern education, to my thinking, that it leaves a man so helpless when thrown upon his own resources.

Whilst working through “The Men of the Merchant Service”, I came across a couple of problems with the language. The first has been easily solved – some of the spelling and grammar were slightly unorthodox and occasionally gave my word processor’s spell and grammar checkers fits of the vapours. I decided that Bullen’s spelling, punctuation and grammar should remain untouched.

The second problem caused me a little more difficulty. There were a couple of words (or one in particular) that would probably not be acceptable in modern day writing and conversation; in particular the “n” word. Although he does not use it often, I was faced with the problem of what to do about it. Should I edit the text and replace it or leave the text as is? In the end I made the decision to keep the text unchanged. These are Frank Bullen’s words, not mine and I do not see it as my place to censor the work. The book is a period piece and should be read as such.