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Updated: May 18, 2025
Their crews were more numerous, and were recruited entirely from seamen, about one-third of whom would appear to have been of British nationality, while, as has been seen, many of them had been decoyed from British war-vessels by offers of higher pay. The British ships on the other hand were manned largely by landsmen, often impressed from the jails.
They looked on the Romans as mere landsmen, and naturally enough they supposed that they had as little to fear from an attack by water as from the shore. At the worst they could take to their ships and find a refuge in the islands.
You landsmen think that a ship is simply a floating hotel. I should like to have the Bishop you spoke of study a little navigation. That would put into him a healthy respect for the marvels of science. On board ship, sir, the binnacle is kept locked and the key is on the watch-chain of the master. It should be so in all intellectual matters. Confide them to those capable of understanding."
But to be mending things that haven't no insides to them appears to me the height of foolishness." And doubtless these continual pleasantries helped to reassure the landsmen, who went to and fro unmoved, under circumstances that might have daunted Nelson. The weather was from the outset splendid, and the wind fair and steady. The ship sailed like a witch.
We moderns, who may be landsmen, may justly boast of civil immunities not possessed by our forefathers; but our remoter forefathers who happened to be mariners may straighten themselves even in their ashes to think that their lawgivers were wiser and more humane in their generation than our lawgivers in ours.
They were written in war-time, when the nation was excited to a pitch of frenzied enthusiasm by a succession of unparalleled naval victories when a prince of the blood trod the quarter-deck, and Nelson was 'Britannia's god of war. Their popularity with landsmen was then incredible. Everybody sang Dibdin's sea-songs, deeming them a perfect mirror of sea-life and seamen's character.
Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in little, written of the whale.
Have they that fertility of resources and expedients which the emergencies of sea-life make so essential, and which can come only from a long and fearless familiarity with old Ocean in all his aspects of beauty and all his aspects of terror? Or are they essentially landsmen, landsmen just as much on the deck of a frigate as when marshalled on a battle-field? This is a test question.
To the people at large, whether landsmen or seafarers, the Act exempting from the press every male under eighteen and over fifty-five years of age would have brought a sorely needed relief had not Admiralty been a past-master in the subtle art of outwitting the law. In this instance a simple regulation did the trick.
And now, all being embarked, they bade farewell to the gazing throng upon the beach, who continued shouting after them, even when out of hearing, wishing them a happy voyage, advising them to take good care of themselves, not to get drowned with an abundance of other of those sage and invaluable cautions generally given by landsmen to such as go down to the sea in ships, and adventure upon the deep waters.
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