merchant sailor, and they have, in part,
already come. A boy gains nothing by going
to sea at a too unripe age; let him wait till he
is fifteen years old, and take care that by
that time he can translate Cæsar, is well
versed in arithmetic, and has the best
elementary knowledge he can acquire of algebra,
geometry, the use of logarithms, trigonometry,
and the chief branches of natural philosophy.
He cannot be too skilful with the pencil, and
should understand shading with Indian ink,
and as much as he can acquire of the use of
colour. He should have learnt one modern
language, and if he stay ashore some months
beyond the age of fifteen, he may spend them
in reading Riddle's "Navigation."

Let him then enter, we will say, on board
a Blackwall ship, and make his first voyage
without books, studying with his eyes, ready
to do anything, spending his leisure rather
among the men in the tops, learning from
them how to knot, reefing and furling with
them, and becoming familiar with all the
ropes and all their mysteries. Let him keep
also a neat log journal. In the interval
between his first and second voyage, let him
work at Riddle with a master, and take
lessons in languages, in drawing, painting, or
any other subject that may be worked at
afterwards, in leisure hours at sea. Let the
career be continued in this spirit, and the
end of it will be success.

It is not only the merchant officer who is
to take a new position. It would be fit that
the common seaman should rise with him,
Captain Methven speaks truth in the seaman's
cause. Merchant officers, he says, generally
dislike merchant crews, and want faith in the
men. They should be pitied rather than
disliked, and they are better, he says, than
one might suppose they would be made by
their position. The ordinary position of a
common sailor on board a trading vessel, has
been dwelt upon repeatedly in Household
Words. We have nothing to add to what has
been already said of the miseries of the
forecastle; of the harassing and worse than
useless watch and watch system; and of the other
causes of that premature old age so often to
be found written in the faces of young sea
men. For ourselves, we have spoken; but
we are not sorry to add here Captain
Methven's testimony upon two important
points. It is the testimony of a merchant
officer whom a just devotion to his profession
induced, on three several voyages, to lay aside
the quarter-deck jacket, and make himself at
home with the men in the forecastle. He
learned to respect them, and to revolt from
their home. "It is important," he writes, yet "to
make great amelioration in the accommodation
provided for the labouring occupants of
a merchant ship; for when it is considered
that this is the home-life of men who have to
do the brunt of the work, and that the home
of the working man should be a rest from his
labour, the short periods which the sailor has
below should be both a relaxation and an
enjoyment to him. The forecastle should,
therefore, at least, contain provision for a
clean, dry bed, a comfortable well-set-out
meal, with space, light, and ventilation; and
these, it will be candidly admitted are, in
theory, the minimum conditions for comfort.
The crowding up of this space, as is generally
the case, by filthy bunks, and still more
filthy hammocks, occupied by discontented
idleness, under the baneful system of watch
and watch, makes it a place whence the
fair sisters Godliness and Cleanliness have
withdrawn, shuddering."

The only other point upon which we shall
cite Captain Methven is, again a hint to
owners. Though the ship's log is the
most important thing on board, it is, in
ordinary cases, practically useless; the log-slate
is carelessly written up, and as the need of
carefulness increases, it becomes less possible
to get it, even with the best intentions. Fancy
an officer in a storm stooping over the binnacle,
with the rain dripping from his hat, taking
after dark, what the captain styles flying
shots at the barometer with a spot of light
from a dark lantern, and then going to look
at a sympiesometer in another place, that is
fixed where it is subject to another temperature.
There should exist, it is urged, on
board every merchant vessel, proper
convenience for writing up the log slate in all
weathers, accurately and with punctuality.
Ships' logs cannot continue to be what they
have been. There should be a deck-house,
however small, lighted up at sundown,
containing the log slate and all the ship's
instruments, proper convenience for writing, and
the chart of the ship's voyage spread out for
reference. In large vessels, this deck-house
should be a regular chart-room. Everywhere
it should be the accepted workshop of the
learned sailor.

Of the mysteries of charts and logs
themselves, we do not speak. We content ourselves
with recording this fact as a memorial of the
departing epoch of unlearned seamanship. It
occurs in a note to Captain Methven's work,
and is as follows: "One of the very few
officers whom I have ever met who took an
interest in a log-book, was employed in the
Hooghly and in the head of the Bay of
Bengal, which is rife with storms. He
provided his vessel with a superior class of
log-book, arranged so as to meet the circumstances
of the weather with which he was brought in
contact, and had the volume bound in a plain
neat strong cover. His owner, one of the
leading shipowners of England, disallowed the
bill as being unusual and not needed;
cartridge paper, with a pasteboard cover and
extemporaneous ruling, being considered
more fitting." Yet it is the log-book which
professes to define that vital fact, a ship's
position. "I have repeatedly," says the same
authority, "given corrections of two degrees
of longitude (!) generally to foreign, but also