The average seaman of the middle of the nineteenth century, like his predecessor, was in many respects a cruel animal.  To appearance he was void of every human feeling, and yet behind all the rugged savagery there was a big and generous heart.  The fact is, this apparent or real callousness was the result of a system, pernicious in its influence, that caused the successive generations of seafaring men to swell with vanity if they could but acquire the reputation of being desperadoes; and this ambition was not an exclusive possession of those whose education had been deplorably neglected.  It was proudly shared by some of the best educated men in the service.  I do not wish it to be supposed, however, that many of them had more than a very ordinary elementary education; but be that as it may, they got along uncommonly well with the little they had.  Mr. Forster’s Educational Bill of 1870, together with Wesleyan Methodism, have done much to nullify that cultivation of ignorance, once the peculiar province of the squire and the parson.  Amongst other influences, Board Schools have revolutionised (especially in the villages and seaport towns) a condition that was bordering on heathenism, and no class of workmen has benefited more than seamen by the propaganda which was established by that good Quaker who spent his best years in hard effort to make it possible that every English child, no matter how poor, should have an education.

At the time of the passing of the Education Act there were thousands of British lads who were absolutely illiterate (this does not apply so much to Scottish boys); and there were hundreds of master-mariners who could neither read nor write, and who had a genuine contempt for those who could.  They held the notion that learning, as they called it, always carried with it nautical ignorance and general deterioration; and in some instances the old salts’ opinions seemed amply borne out by palpable blunders in practical seamanship which were not uncommonly made when the theoretic seaman or navigator was at work.  These shortcomings of the “learned” were never forgotten or forgiven by the practical though illiterate seamen.

Until well into the ’fifties the north-east coast collier brigs and schooners were usually commanded by this type of illiterates, and innumerable stories might be told of their strange methods and grotesque beliefs.  The following is a fair example.  The London trade once became congested with tonnage, and a demand sprang up for Holland, whereupon a well-known brig was chartered for Rotterdam.  She had been so long employed running along the coast with the land aboard that the charts became entirely neglected.  When the time came to say farewell there was more than ordinary affection displayed by the relatives of the crew whose destiny it was to penetrate what they conceived to be the mysteries of an unexplored East.  There were not a few females who regarded the undertaking as eminently heroic.  With characteristic