But meanwhile the character of the
merchant-marine is daily deteriorating. More is done for the sailor now
by fifty times than was done fifty years ago; yet who will compare the
crews of 1858 with those of 1808?
There are many reasons for this change, and one is Science. That which
always makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and which can be made
to restore the lost equilibrium in a higher civilization only by the
strong pressure of an enlightened Christianity, has been at work upon
the sea. Columbus sailed out of Palos in a very different looking craft
from the "Great Republic." The Vikings had small knowledge of taking a
lunar, and of chronometers set by Greenwich time. Sir Humphrey Gilbert,
when he so gallantly and piously reminded his crew that "heaven was as
near by sea as on land," was sitting in the stern of a craft hardly so
large as the long-boat of a modern merchantman. Yet the modern time
does not give us commanders such as were of old, still less such
seamen. Science has robbed the sea of its secret,--is every day bearing
away something of the old difficulties and dangers which made the
wisest head and the strongest arm so dear to their fellows, which gave
that inexpressible sense of brotherhood.
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