I.--THE SHIP.

When it was announced that we were to be paid off and that the gulls
and porpoises that help to make the Dogger Bank the really jolly place
it is would know us no more, there was, I admit, a certain amount of
subdued jubilation on board. It is true that the Mate and the Second
Engineer fox-trotted twice round the deck and into the galley, where
they upset a ship's tin of gravy; and the story that the Trimmer, his
complexion liberally enriched with oil and coaldust, embraced the
Lieutenant and excitedly hailed the Skipper by his privy pseudonym
of "Plum-face," cannot be lightly discredited; but at the same time
I think each one of us felt a certain twinge of regret. Life in the
future apart from our trawler seemed impossible, almost absurd.
Pacificists must have known a similar feeling on Armistice day.

Although to the outsider one trawler may look very like another, to
us who know them personally they differ in character and have their
little idiosyncrasies no less than other people. Some are quite surly
and obstinate, others good-humoured and light-hearted; where one
exhibits all the stately dignity of a College head-porter another may
be as skittish and full of fun as a magistrate on the Bench. There was
one trawler at our base so vain that they could never get her to enter
the lockpits until her decks had been scrubbed and a string of bunting
hoisted at the foremast. It is surprising.

Taking her all in all our trawler was a good sort, one of the best.
When steaming head to wind in a heavy sea she certainly shipped an
amazing quantity of water, and even in a comparative calm she would
occasionally fling an odd bucketful or so of North Sea down the neck