Yet I Should Not Wish To Take The Command
Of A Ship To-Morrow, Running My Chance Of A Crew, As Most Masters
Must, And Know, And Have My Crew Know, That I Could Not, Under Any
Circumstances, Inflict Even Moderate Chastisement.
I should trust
that I might never have to resort to it; and, indeed, I scarcely
know what risk I would not run, and to what inconvenience I would
not subject myself, rather than do so.
Yet not to have the power of
holding it up in terrorem, and indeed of protecting myself, and all
under my charge, by it, if some extreme case should arise, would be
a situation I should not wish to be placed in myself, or to take
the responsibility of placing another in.
Indeed, the difficulties into which masters and officers are
liable to be thrown, are not sufficiently considered by many
whose sympathies are easily excited by stories, frequent enough,
and true enough of outrageous abuse of this power. It is to
be remembered that more than three-fourths of the seamen in our
merchant vessels are foreigners. They are from all parts of the
world. A great many from the north of Europe, beside Frenchmen,
Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, men from all parts of the
Mediterranean, together with Lascars, Negroes, and, perhaps worst
of all, the off-casts of British men-of-war, and men from our own
country who have gone to sea because they could not be permitted
to live on land.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 556 of 618
Words from 152577 to 152828
of 170236
