Say a minute at the very outside. Naturally, if the blow of a
right-angled collision, for instance, were heavy enough to smash through
the inner bulkhead of the bunker, why, there would be then nothing to do
but for the stokers and trimmers and everybody in there to clear out of
the stoke-room. But that does not mean that the precaution of having
water-tight doors to the bunkers is useless, superfluous, or impossible.
{7}
And talking of stokeholds, firemen, and trimmers, men whose heavy labour
has not a single redeeming feature; which is unhealthy, uninspiring,
arduous, without the reward of personal pride in it; sheer, hard,
brutalising toil, belonging neither to earth nor sea, I greet with joy
the advent for marine purposes of the internal combustion engine. The
disappearance of the marine boiler will be a real progress, which anybody
in sympathy with his kind must welcome. Instead of the unthrifty,
unruly, nondescript crowd the boilers require, a crowd of men _in_ the
ship but not _of_ her, we shall have comparatively small crews of
disciplined, intelligent workers, able to steer the ship, handle anchors,
man boats, and at the same time competent to take their place at a bench
as fitters and repairers; the resourceful and skilled seamen--mechanics
of the future, the legitimate successors of these seamen--sailors of the
past, who had their own kind of skill, hardihood, and tradition, and
whose last days it has been my lot to share.
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