Many books on seamanship have been written since Captain John Smith and Sir Henry Mainwayring published theirs. “Modern Seamanship,” by Admiral Austin M. Knight, U. S. N., is a deservedly popular work, even though it is largely given over to the art in its connection with ships of war. The fact, too, that it contains 250,000 or more words shows how great the subject is, and how superficial my brief discussion must be. The first duty of a sailor is to be familiar with his ship and the apparatus he is called upon to use. In the days of the clippers every sailor had to know how to perform almost every task. Many ships of that time carried cooks, sailmakers, and carpenters, it is true, and the duties of these men were for them alone. But every sailor was likely to be called upon to reef or steer, to handle an oar in a small boat, to splice lines and tie knots of all sorts, to re-rig spars and masts, man the pumps, paint, scrub, scrape woodwork, and perform a thousand other tasks with precision and rapidity. He had sometimes to “lay aloft” and in the blackness of bitter wintry nights to find his way along the foot-rope of a swaying spar far above the deck in order to reef sleet-covered sails that whipped repeatedly from his stiffening fingers. He had to know each of a thousand lines by name so as to belay or release the right one at a moment’s notice, even in the blackness of a night of storm. He had sometimes to make his way far out along the bowsprit to the jib boom or the flying jib boom in order to release some tangle of wind-whipped line, and to hold on for dear life as mountainous seas dashed their angry foam-flecked crests viciously at him as he maintained his precarious hold. He had to know what strain the whistling rigging could hold up under, and how to repair the damage wrought by storm. He had to beach his ship in far-distant ports and between the tides to scrape her bottom and calk her leaking seams. He had to know his ship from bow to stern, from truck to keel, and must ever have been ready to turn his hand to whatever task might momentarily have required him. It is no wonder that it took years to make a sailor. The wonder is that men were found to risk their lives in storm, to eat the disgusting food that such ships too often fed their crews, to toil for months—for years—for trifling pay, beaten by their officers for minor as well as major breaches of discipline, yet willing, once a voyage was done, to spend their little savings in one wild fling and ship once more. But most of that is gone. Sailors on the steamships that circle the earth to-day are mechanics and workmen. The man at the wheel can be taught his job passably well in a few hours. The men on deck are often not sailors at all, in the old meaning of the word, but merely labourers, who work at their appointed tasks under the direction of the officers, many of whom would be all but helpless if called upon to handle a square-rigged ship under sail.