" It was thus that a certain North Country shipowner
once summarised his career while addressing his
fellow-townsmen on some public occasion now long past, and
the sentence, giving forth the exact truth with all a
sailor's delight in hyperbole, may well be taken to describe
the earlier life-stages gone through by the author of this
book. The experiences acquired in a field of operations,
that includes all the seas and continents where commerce may
move, live, and have its being, have enhanced in value and
completed what came to him in his forecastle and
quarter-deck times. He learned in his youth, from the lips
of a race now extinct, what the nature and traditions of
seamanship were before he and his contemporaries lived. He
has seen that nature and those traditions change and die,
whilst he and his generation came gradually under a new
order of things, whose practical working he and they have
tested in actual practice both on sea and land.
It is on this ground of experience that the author ventures
to ask attention to his views in respect of the likeliest
means to raise a desirable set of seamen in the English
merchant navy.
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