Considering that Great Britain is an island, that immense numbers of the inhabitants live in seaports, that the sea is within at hour or two of the metropolis, that there is always an abundance of sailors “knocking about” ashore, and that pretty nearly all our wealth as a nation is owing to our seamen and our shipping, it must be owned that many of those notions of Jack and his life ashore and at sea which may be found among the greatest maritime people on the face of the earth, are in the highest degree extraordinary. Is it possible that the sailor is still supposed to have nothing to do at sea but to sit down with a pipe in his mouth and let the wind blow him along? Are there people yet living who imagine that on Saturday nights at sea cans of grog are handed about, roaring nautical songs sung, and wives and sweethearts toasted? Is it even in this day of steamboats believed that a sailor cannot express himself without loading his language with marine terms; that he cannot speak of “walking,” but of “steering;” that the right-hand side ashore is the “starboard;” and that he cannot step backwards without making “sternway”?

Where do these highly nautical fellows live when they are at home? I never have the luck to come across them. In some seaports you may still see here and there, over a public-house, the sign of the Jolly Tar: a figure in flowing breeches, tarpaulin hat on “nine hairs,” a bottle of grog in one hand, and a great red nose, set in the midst of a shining face. Who was the original of that fellow? He is not a man-of-war’s man, and most certainly he is not a merchantman. I take it that he is nothing more nor less than the embodiment of the landsman’s notion of the sailor obtained to a large extent from marine novels, but mainly from the English sea songs. You might walk the whole of Great Britain over without meeting with the counterpart of that effigy, unless it lay in some turnpike impostor who gets a living by swearing he has been shipwrecked. If the merchant seaman is to be typified, he must not be dressed in loose breeches and an open-breasted shirt. If his language is to be imitated, it must not altogether consist of “hard-a-lee” and “haul the bowline.” And if his life at sea is to be pictured, one must drop all reference to cans of grog, and have nothing whatever to say about Saturday nights and sweethearts and wives.

But how can landsmen be ridiculed for their absurd ideas of the sailor when for years and years writers who profess to know all about him have persisted in reproducing the same stereotyped likeness—the same drunken, singing, good-humoured, sprawling mountebank, shouting out for more grog, bawling inane verses about his Poll and his Sue, clamouring the purest “slush” about the Union Jack, and talking inconceivable nonsense about topgallants and handspikes? Of course the likeness is accepted by those who know no better, and songs are sung about Jack which no sailor can listen to without astonishment that ignorance so profound should be also so widespread. I remember a man who was much applauded in his day as a singer of nautical ballads, saying to me, “To-morrow I have to sing ‘Tom Tough,’ by desire. Can you tell me, sir, what attitude I ought to adopt when I come to—

Do I pull or do I push, sir?”

What did it matter? Whether he pulled or whether he pushed would have been all the same to his audience. Who but a sailor at a concert would notice that a vocalist thought it all right when he roared out—

Apparently, let the words employed be as nonsensical as they will, so long as there is plenty of “yohing” and “heaving” and “so-hoing,” the song is accepted as extremely nautical and peculiarly expressive of the free and open character of the sailor.

I was once in a house much frequented by seamen, when there entered the room in which I was sitting an elderly man of a somewhat sour cast of countenance, dressed—not, believe me, in that flowing rig in which all kinds of sailors are popularly supposed to go clad—but in plain black cloth and an unstarched, striped cotton shirt, with a cravat round a stand-up collar. He had the look of a man who had been at sea all his life, and consequently no marine exterior could be less suggestive than his of “So-ho’s” and “Heave ho’s,” and “Pull aways.” He called for half a pint of ale, and filled his pipe, and sat smoking and listening to a conversation between two men relative to a collision in which the vessel they had recently left was concerned. By-and-by he began to grope in his pockets, and presently produced some sheets of songs, which he held out at arm’s length the better to inspect the highly marine figure who, in sailor’s shirt and jacket, with straddled legs, immense belt, and lifted hand, embellished the titlepage of the cheap collection. He took a long look at this striking figure, frequently removing his pipe to expectorate, and then very leisurely began to examine the songs.

I saw by the movements of his lips that he read little bits here and there, and now and again I would catch him stealing a glance at me, as though he had something on his mind, but was too shy to address me.

“What have you there?” said I.

“Why,” he answered, reverting to the titlepage, “something I paid a penny for just now—bought it from a chap who stood alongside a row of ’em fixed against a wall. They call it the ‘Sea Songs of Great Britain.’ It’s full of queer spelling, and it’s all about Jack, whoever he may be, if this be’n’t him,” and he pointed to the absurd straddling woodcut.

He went on reading for a short time, his pipe in his hand, and his mouth opening wider and wider, until, coming to the end of the song, he looked at me and said, “Well, I’m jiggered!”

“What’s the matter?” I inquired.

“Dibdin—Dibdin!” said he, “d’ye know anything of that gent, sir?”

“Only as the greatest nautical song-writer this country ever produced,” I replied.

“Yes,” said he, casting his eyes upon the page, “I see he is a nautical song-writer; but was he ever at sea?”

“Not as a sailor, I believe.”

“Mates,” he called out to the others, who had stopped talking and were listening to his questions, “what d’ye think of this for a nautical job? It’s called ‘My Poll and my Partner Joe;’” and he read slowly and hoarsely—

He paused and looked around him.

“‘Blindfold to the maintop-bowling!’” he ejaculated. “Which end of it, d’ye reckon, mates? Would he come down the bolt-rope to the bridle? That must have been it, otherwise what manfulness would he have had occasion to talk about? But listen to this, boys—evidently the work of another nautical man. It’s called ‘The Storm.’

‘Set the braces!’ How’s that job done, d’ye know? And when they was told to ‘Luff, boys, luff,’ did they let go of the wheel to ‘Up their topsails nimbly clew’? It must have been a bad storm, that. I wonder they didn’t ship a capstan bar in a lee scupper-hole to keep the ship upright.”

“You mustn’t be too critical,” said I; “it’s the music of those old songs that makes them beautiful.”

“I’ve got nothen to do with the music,” he said warmly. “It’s the words I’m looking at. What’s the music got to do with the sense? See here!” he cried. “What’s the name of it? oh! ‘The Boatswain Calls,’” and he read—

He let fall the paper on his knee and stared at me.

“Well, that is certainly very poor stuff,” said I.

“Poor stuff!” he exclaimed. “Why, it ain’t even that. Ne’er an omnibus driver but could do better. How can they pull away if they’ve got their handspikes poised? and what’s the windlass got to do with pulling away? And hear this—

Booze in a calm! Why, there’s naught going but liquor in these blooming rhymes. And ‘All taut from the stem to the stern’—did the chap who wrote that have the least glimmerin’ shadder of a notion of what he meant? But stop a bit; here’s a song called ‘Poor Jack’—

What d’ye think of that, boys?” said he, addressing the others, who were on the broad grin. “Did ye ever hear of a topgallant-mast going smack-smooth? One lives and larns. I always thought that was a job for the lower masts. And, I say, how d’ye relish stowing the yards? He can’t mean atop of the booms, for he keeps the foresail on her to scud with; but perhaps the foreyard’s stowed too, and the reefed course is set on the flying jib-stay. But follow this—

—something; here’s a word left out—

Does he mean topping-lift? If so, that’s a queer sort of thing to be taken aback. Why, if he goes on in this fashion he’ll be reefing the mainsheet next.”

All this was exceedingly amusing to me. It was too good, indeed, not to encourage.

“Nautical blunders seem uncommonly cheap,” I said. “You appear to have got a wonderful lot for one penny.”

“Look here!” he cried, bursting into a laugh as his eye lighted on another ballad:

that’s the name of it—

Only a Harley or a Robson could do justice to the seaman’s face as he looked at me after putting down the paper—there is nothing in words to convey the sour astonishment and contempt in his expression.

“‘Right fore and aft we bore!’” he presently exclaimed. “Did any man ever hear the like of that? What sort of course is it? How’s her head when she’s bearing right fore and aft? And then think, arter lying like a log upon the main, of putting to sea again without going into harbour first!”

“I doubt if ye can beat that,” said one of the other sailors.

“Think not?” answered the old fellow quickly, “then what d’ye say to this out of a song here wrote down as ‘Spanking Jack’?—

“What is wrong there?” I asked.

“Wrong!” he shouted. “Did ye ever hear of a square mainsail with two reefs in it? and a square one’s meant if anything is meant at all, by the hallusion in the verse to the topgallant-sail. And what’s intended by the scud coming on louring upon a lee shore? Scud comes from windward, don’t it? And what’s a spray?”

“Quite enough water to wash off such a sailor as Spanking Jack, I dare say,” I remarked.

“Ay, you’re right,” said he, with a grin. “But I’m not done yet. Here’s something in the ferocious line, called ‘The Demon of the Sea’—

What d’ye think of that for a nautical bust-up? Think of standing in mute despair after the ball had struck the magazine! How long did the chap as wrote this wash reckon it takes powder to hexplode arter it’s fired? Instead of being appalled and standing in mute despair, they should have taken to the boats; for, ye see, that convenient magazine was bound to give ’em plenty of time. And they calls this,” said he, turning the pages backwards and forwards, “‘Sea Songs.’ It’s the likes of this that is offered to shore-going folk as correct representations of the mariner’s calling, hey? Ain’t it true to life? Here’s a bit for ye—

What sort of cords did he come down by—the signal halliards? And isn’t it quite conceivable that, being on a man-o’-war, and aloft on duty, he should drop his job to come down to his Susan without leave of the officer in charge? Wonderfully true to life, sir, ain’t it, ispecially them bits about the sailor boy capering ashore, and jolly tars drinking and dancing at sea, as if cargoes consisted of nothing but casks of rum which sailors are allowed to broach whenever they want to be merry?”

He turned to the rude woodcut, and had another long look at it; then, suddenly twisting the sheets up in his hand, he thrust one end into the fire, singing out as he looked around him:

“Anybody want a light?”

This sour seaman was, of course, a very hard and exacting critic, belonging to a class of sailors who, when reading about the sea, should they come across the least oversight on the part of a writer, will fling his book or poem or song out of window, and vote the author a lubber and utterly ignorant of all that concerns the calling. I remember, when I wrote an account of the wreck of the Indian Chief, a sailor gravely told me he was cocksure the whole yarn was an out-and-out lie, because I had made the chief mate escape from the mizzenmast by getting into the maintop by the mizzen-topmast stay. No doubt I should have done better by sending the mate to make his way into the top from the topgallant masthead; but just because my sailor was sure that the mizzen-topmast stay of the Indian Chief set up half-way down the mainmast, he refused to believe the story of the wreck. Yet it is quite possible to read many of our English sea songs with wonder and ridicule without necessarily bringing to them the sourness and severity of judgment I found in the old seaman. The present generation of writers are not worse sinners in respect of accuracy than the past; but I am bound to say that their blunders are to the full as numerous. The production of a sea song is by no means conditional on a man’s having been to sea. The finest marine lyric in this or any other language, “Ye Mariners of England,” was written by a man who had no knowledge whatever of the sailor’s calling. There is nothing false in that glorious poem, no absurd references to bowlines and topsail sheets, and other words of which few landsmen have the least idea of the meaning. But can as much be said of Allan Cunningham’s popular poem, “A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea”? It is just possible that the poet may have used the word “sheet” rightly, and meant the song to refer to a small fore-and-aft vessel that when heavily pressed down might wet her sheets; but Jack, when he hears that ballad, is strongly disposed to believe that the writer thought that a “sheet” was a sail, and this being his suspicion, he could never sing the song with the least relish or enjoyment of even the beautiful air with which the words are associated. By all means let landsmen continue to write sea songs; but if they desire a larger audience than shore-goers for their compositions, if they wish to hear of their verses in the forecastle and learn that they are popular among sailors, let them rigorously avoid all technicalities, all the stupid old clap-trap about cans of grog and “Yeo, heave ho,” and “So ho!” and the like. For a song may be as salt as the sea itself, and yet be as free from the stereotyped nauticalisms as a page of “Hamlet.” Indeed, the real English sailor is not one-third as nautical as he is supposed to be; and the numerous inanities dedicated to his rollicking enjoyments when at sea, his Sues and Nans ashore, are about as true to his real character as the public-house effigy of him, on one leg, in shoes, and round hat at the back of his head, is like the original.