Titanic and Other Ships By Charles Lightoller
Chapter 45 I "BURY THE ANCHOR"
I found things a bit raw in the Merchant Service and discipline more than a bit ragged, mainly due to the exigencies of War.
Merchant Service Men were thoroughly fed up with being made stool pigeons for everyone and anyone to shoot at. They had suffered terribly and far more than was either necessary or right. The losses had been frightful and the sufferings more awful than can well be conceived. There was some element of truth in the saying that "Men went into the Navy for Safety."
I was appointed to the Celtic and my hands were full for a couple of voyages, licking her into shape. The men were completely out of hand--although that did not trouble me much. I'd handled them all my life and my sympathies were wholly theirs, so we soon found common ground.
Very quickly, in fact all too quickly for my liking, she settled down into a steady routine, with a splendid, hard-working crew.
Perhaps it was because I brought back no Navy ideas to the old Merchant Service, that enabled us to see eye to eye. The fact remains, she went through her transmogrification as quickly as any ship of the Line and with the least trouble.
Once steadied down in the regular run, life dropped into its same old grooves.
On the English side the memories of war were an open sore. On the American side thee were still busy winning it. It was quite amusing, in a way, to hear how pat everyone had the figures of the huge amounts the U.S.A. had sent to "Yurrup." So many millions of shell, so many millions of bully-beef--both classed in much the same category.
They were still three thousand miles distant from the War.
After a time one got used to the child-like simplicity with which they made statements that showed, only too well that they had never even been on the fringe of the Fight.
For my part, the peace time routine palled and it was only a few short months before I decided to have done with it and seek some excitement ashore--I got it all right, but that has nothing to do with this story.
There used to be a fine picture in the front of old Todd and Whall's Seamanship (a book familiar to all apprentices) when first I went to sea. It was a picture of the s.s. Celtic, the old Celtic of the White Star Line, driving her way to westward. A big fourmaster with twin funnels and somehow I got to look on her as the height and summit of my ambition.
Years passed. Ships came and ships went. Now one Company and now another. Off on the trail and back to sea. The war blazed up and burned out. Yet it was a curious coincidence that for my last ship I should find myself in the modern edition of my boyhood's ambition; the R.M.S. Celtic. And it was in my cabin on board this ship that I finally wrote my resignation and said good-bye to the Sea.
-- The End --
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