This is the kind of pernicious stuff (all the more dangerous because of its half-truth) that the boy is regaled with, along with a great deal more that cannot be reproduced, for reasons that need not be given; and again I say, without fear of being hauled over the coals for repetition, it is quite sufficient to account for the falling off in the numbers of young British seamen. But I feel certain that some such scheme as I have sketched out in the Apprentice chapters would be efficacious in preventing this wholesale waste of good material. From the lowest class of seamen up to the second mate (except in the first-class liners) the evil to be battled with is the lack of continuous employment. It does not admit of the sailor acquiring any interest in his ship. Moreover, there is ever dangling before his eyes the terror of being "outward bound"--those two fateful words that convey such a mountain of meaning to every seafaring man. To be outward bound means that he is ashore penniless, dependent upon the kindness of a boarding-master for a little food; to prowl about the docks, boarding ship after ship, in the remote chance of securing a berth, and to meet with black looks everywhere; to be told continually that he is a cumberer of the ground, a loafer, a fellow that might, if he would, get a ship, but prefers instead to hang around maritime liquor shops, keeping a keen look-out for homeward bounders who will treat him, instead of being, as he really is in nearly every case, feverishly anxious to get back to sea again: these are some of the greatest drawbacks to a deep-water sailor's career.
And they tell with tremendous force against the boy. Friendless and homeless in many cases, or with parents so poor that they can do nothing to help him, earning such small wages that he can hardly purchase necessary clothing, much less pay for board and lodging, and with all a boy's natural carelessness, he is sorely tempted to take the first job that comes in his way, and quit the sea altogether as a means of livelihood. If he does so, even though the new employment may only last for a few months, he will hardly go to sea again. And no one knowing the peculiar difficulties of his lot will be able to blame him.