Apprenticeship is often spoken of as a means to the laudable end of replenishing the British Merchant Service with British seamen. But in its present form such a suggestion about apprenticeship is utterly absurd. Respectable people who have spent money upon their sons' education do not pay a heavy premium, and apprentice him to a ship, with the object of his becoming an able seaman. They expect him to be an officer as soon as possible, and that is the goal to which the lad looks forward. Now, it must be said at once, plainly and frankly, that the supply of officers far exceeds the demand. The fact that there are many foreign officers in our Merchant Service does not affect this statement at all. All that it means is, that as the pay of officers is a matter of individual bargaining, and not a fairly fixed quantity like that of the seamen, there is always an opportunity for underselling. Let me give an instance. Before my last voyage I had been prowling about the docks, looking for a ship, until I was in very low water indeed, and glad of almost anything. Yet, as I was married and had one child, there was a minimum wage below which I could not go without the prospect of my dear ones starving. Receiving information that there was a brig in the St. Katherine dock wanting a mate, I hastened down to her, finding the master a pleasant, genial man, and English. I told him my errand, showed my credentials, and was asked what wages I wanted. I suggested £6 10_s._ per month, feeling as I did so that I might as well ask for the moon while I was about it. We finally agreed upon £5 15_s._ a month, which made my wife's income while I was at sea about 14_s._ a week. But I went home light-hearted enough in the feeling that I was no longer a dock-slouching mendicant, and that _something_ was sure for at least twelve months. The next morning, when I came on board to work, the skipper told me that he had received an offer from a German, fully certificated, to come as mate for £3 a month, and one from an Englishman, who said that, as he had money of his own, and only wanted to get his time in for master, he would come for _nothing_. "I didn't take the German," said Captain W----, "entirely because I had given you my word, but because I hold that it is a national crime to permit foreign officers to have charge of our ships, apart altogether from the shame of having them cut the already too scanty wages. And I didn't take the other fellow, because I wanted a man to earn his wages, and I knew that he was likely to earn what he offered to go for--nothing." So I kept the berth, but, as the skipper truly remarked, had the owner known that he was paying much more for my services than there was any necessity for him to do, he would have been very angry.