LIBERTY MEN, DISCIPLINE, &c.
As a rule, there is very much more difficulty in maintaining discipline on board, when a yacht is seldom under way. The yacht is in such thorough order, that after she is washed down, the brass work cleaned, and her sides " chamoied," there is nothing left to do, except perhaps row the owner on shore, and bring him off again. The men have nothing to do but eat and sleep, and as they cannot be doing this all day, there comes a longing for going ashore. The master, of coarse, has to be asked for " liberty," and if he refuses, the man has a fit of sulks, and takes the first opportunity of being insolent. This is frequently the origin of squabbling on board ; but, on the other hand, sometimes the master allows too much liberty, and almost permits the crew to leave and rejoin the vessel when they please. This is worse than no liberty at all, and usually ends with the men who stay on board from week's end to week's end, abusing those who are everlastingly on shore, and the result is a regular fo'c'sle row. The best plan is for the master, directly the yacht is in commission, to have some system about liberty. The usual plan is for the crew to have alternate evenings on shore, or " watch and watch," if circumstances permit ; starboard watch goes on shore one night, and port watch the next.
It is useless to tell an owner that he should not keep his yacht at anchor for weeks at a stretch, but get under way every day ; there may be a variety of reasons why he does not want to get under way, but one is enough, and that is, the yacht is his own, and he need only get under way when he chooses. As a rule, the master will know the habits of the owner, and only engage men who he knows can stand a life of comparative idleness and confinement.
A great many complaints axe made about yachts' crews, and some very hard things have been said against them; no doubt many yacht sailors are ill-behaved, sometimes indolent, sometimes intemperate and dirty in their habits, and frequently show an extraordinary spirit of insubordination. Now, we are not inclined to wholly blame the crews for this ; in the first place, they are almost entirely untutored in any thing like discipline, or the discipline they are used to is of the most slipshod character; there is no restraint on their habits, and if they exhibit anything like insubordination, the master, perhaps as ignorant as they are, has no code or system to guide him in restraining it. Again, it must be understood that very much more is expected from a yacht sailor than from a seaman of the mercantile marine. He should be smartly built, be very active, be pleasant in his manners, and be as cleanly, as respectful, and as well conducted as a highly trained man servant ; at the same time he must be a seaman. Now all that is
required of a merchant sailor is that he should be a thorough seaman, and should show no mutinous tendency ; he may be as ill-shapen as Caliban, and as rough in his manner, and dirty in his person as a pitman, but no one will complain of this. He is kept in restraint by very severe laws, but the very nature of the characteristics expected in a yacht sailor forbids the application of the Merchant Shipping statutes to him in their integrity. A yacht sailor must be governed by quite a different hand, and in a large measure discipline and good behaviour on board must rest with the moral force of the master rather than with any restraints that could be employed under the Merchant Shipping Act. No Act of Parliament will make men clean in their persons, polished in their manners, or shapely in their forms; and a master in seeking these characteristics in a crew can only employ the means adopted for such ends in a household. He will take particular care, of course, that the men he engages are seamen ; and he must exercise the same care in seeing that they are men who have the other qualifications for a yacht sailor.
We hear a great deal about men saying " this is not yacht rules," and " that is not yacht rules," but if the seamen venture to say this we imme diately think that the master does not know what " yacht rules " are, if there be any such rules. We have already shown that such rules as there are for working ship, are in accordance with the custom of the Merchant Service, and should be, and we believe are, rigidly observed. The other rules for the good conduct and personal behaviour of the men must rest entirely with the master; if he has the moral force necessary to govern men he will have a happy and orderly yacht's crew ; if he has not, and attempts to supply the deficiency by the application of statutes that were intended for quite a different condition of things he will always be master of a bad crew.
Masters as a rule have that necessary moral force, and the very fact that most of them rise from " before the mast " is evidence of this And this brings us face to face with the fact that yacht sailors, taken as a whole, are not the ungovernable and ill-assorted lot of men that we are sometimes asked to believe ; and most masters exhibit a wonderful tact in maintaining what is not so much discipline as a ready compliance and respectful demeanour.