often it means “danger at sea,” and the sooner ships are compelled to be worked reasonably in port, and out of it, the better it will be for all concerned. While dealing with the “despatch in port” business, I may as well mention another reprehensible practice in connection with it. All, or nearly all, of the steamers trading on the Australian coast are so timed that they sail from the various ports on Fridays and Saturdays, consequently the ships are ploughing the seas on Sundays and earning money for the various shipowners, while they (the owners) good, Christian men no doubt, are quietly sitting, or kneeling, in their pews at church! This system entirely deprives Jack of his day of rest, for it is well-known “there is no Sunday in seven fathoms water.” I admit it would seem hard to make a law preventing coasting steamers from sailing unless there was reasonable prospect of reaching their destination before Sunday, but it surely is quite as hard on seamen to carry out the practice which prevails at present. I can call it nothing but one of the worst forms of “sweating,” for it “sweats” the ship, the machinery, and the men, and though it seems a money-making plan it tells its own tale, on all three, in the end. Here in Melbourne we are accustomed to receive homilies from pulpit and press concerning the wickedness of causing railway, tram, and other employès to work on Sunday, but whoever heard of anyone speaking, or writing, on behalf of the seamen engaged in the coasting steamers? As Burns said, “Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart,” and shore folk, if they think about the subject at all, imagine, when they stroll down among the wharves on Sunday, that because they see no work going on, therefore no Sunday labour is being done! I don’t, for even a moment, say that Melbourne shipowners are any worse than those of any other port, for I have reason to know that almost everywhere Sunday work is winked at. I got what I may term an “eye-opener” when a boy on my first voyage to sea. During the Crimean war, the ship I was in took coals out from Scotland to Constantinople for the Turkish Government. We discharged cargo at the government dockyard, in the Bosphorus, by means of gangs of convicts—who, by the way, were chained in pairs, each two being connected by a ten foot chain which was shackled round one’s right ankle, and the other’s left—working every day, except Friday, which is the Turkish sabbath. On that day our own ship’s crew carried on the discharging, and consequently our cargo was being put out _every day_ in the week without cessation. This system, doubtless, suited our owner’s pocket, and yet allowed those belonging to each religion, Christian and Mahometan, to have their Sunday off!