Merchant seamen man all the different kinds of cargo ships you see in the pictures on these two pages. Their jobs take great skill and patience and very often courage. It has always been that way with men who follow the sea. Some of the things they do are as old as ships themselves. But many things are different now.

On old sailing vessels, the crew had to get their sleep wherever they could find a place to lie down. They might curl up on a coil of rope or on the cargo in the hold. Later, they were given one room, the forecastle, for the whole crew. Everybody was on watch at least twelve hours a day. It is only in the last twenty years that seamen have worked eight regular hours a day.

Almost all ships now have more comfortable bunkrooms, with only two or four men in each one. Instead of living on old-fashioned salt meat and salt fish and crackers called hardtack, seamen have almost the same things that they eat ashore. In the old days, seamen often got a disease called scurvy because they had no fresh food. Then the British discovered that lime juice prevented scurvy, and every one of their ships carried barrels of it. That’s why American seamen still call British seamen limeys.

There are laws and regulations now that provide for better food and working hours and pay on ships. Seamen in their unions have worked hard to get the laws and rules that have made life better for them.