Nothing is more loudly regretted by the praisers of old times than the gradual disappearance¹ of etiquette² under the stress and burden of these bustling³ days, and nowhere is the decay of etiquette more pronounced than at sea. Romance persists because until machinery⁴ can run itself humanity must do so, and where men and women live romance cannot die. But were it not for the Royal Navy, with its perfect discipline and unbroken traditions, etiquette at sea must without doubt perish entirely⁵, and that soon. Such fragments of it as still survive in the Merchant Service are confined to sailing-ships, those beautiful visions that are slowly disappearing one by one from off the face of the deep. Take, for instance, the grand old custom so full of meaning of “saluting the deck.” The poop or raised after-deck of a ship over which floated the national flag was considered to be always pervaded⁶ by the presence of the Sovereign, and, as the worshipper of whatever rank removes his hat upon entering a church, so from the Admiral to the powder-monkey every member of the ship’s company as he set foot upon the poop “saluted the deck”—the invisible presence. As the division between men-of-war and merchantmen widened so the practice weakened in the latter, and only now[185] survives in the rigidly⁷ enforced practice of every person below the rank of Captain or mate coming up on to the poop by the lee side. And among the officers the practice is also observed according to rank, for with the Captain on deck the chief mate takes the lee side. But since in steamers there is often no lee side, the custom in them has completely died out. To etiquette also belongs the strict observance of the rule in all vessels⁹ of tacking

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