Towards the close of my voyaging I became involved in the after-effects of the various seamen’s strikes, and the dangerous spirit of unrest and insubordination generated by them. The power of the master of a merchant ship, be she a collier or be she an _Olympic_, is a very uncertain quantity, inasmuch as it is limited only by the necessity of the case that is being dealt with. In other words, you can act as you consider the occasion rightly demands you should do, but you stand to be called upon to defend your action when you get on shore. It will thus be seen that the discipline clauses of the Merchant Shipping Act leave a great deal to the discretion of the judicial authority that may be dealing with any particular case, and it can well be realised that some magistrates would view offences against discipline with a more lenient spirit than others. Again, and I am well aware of the gravity of the words I am using, it is not the Board of Trade that has whittled down the master’s authority voluntarily, but it is the deliberate action of shipowners, who, curiously enough, have done more than any other agency to destroy authority on board ship. So long as a master was certain of support from the owner, so long would he act unflinchingly if necessity arose. But in many cases a master will hesitate to involve himself in law when he knows that in doing so he will get no support from his owners. Quite recently the master of a great mail steamer told me that it would not do to have any trouble with his crew, “for the Company would not like it,” a policy, I submit, which is simply asking for trouble, for the men of to-day fully realise that a clever lawyer can make a plausible case from very slight grounds. Hence arises the crying need of _one uniform administration_ of the Merchant Shipping Act, for as it is dealt with at present there is _no_ uniformity of practice.