The Henson Journals

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25th Sunday after Trinity, November 24th, 1912. "Baltic".

Sunday on board ship is a disappointing day. It has lost its normal character of a day of rest, for that is the character of every day. The problem is to kill time, not to find it. Thus it is wholly a day of worship, & the conditions prohibit all the ordinary mechanism of worship. There are no churches and no choirs: & how can the modern man worship without these? Clergy there generally are: but they are not at their best on board ship. The silly chatter of every day has stripped them of professional sanctity: they have betrayed the whole secret of their incompetence in the compulsory intimacies of the deck: they essay an extemporaneous discourse amid unaccustomed & undignified surroundings, & provide materials for merry–making for the remainder of the holy day! Yet, it might be thought that the isolation of the ocean, & the strangeness of the whole situation, would have been favourable to devotion. When is the world so far away, and God so near, as on board ship in mid–ocean? In point of fact one is at one's lowest & pettiest on an American liner; though the illimitable sea stretches to the sky–line on every hand; & there is but an inch or two of metal, & some planks between one's self & death! The immediately contiguous circumstances cloud out of mind the sombre continuing conditions of life at sea.

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The weather continues fair, but has become much colder.

There was service in the dining room read very well by the ship's doctor. Afterwards I sate on deck, & wrote letters. We sighted two steamers during the day.

The captain asserts that one advantage, which the German liners have over the English is their frank disregard of Sunday. There is no service, & no embargo on games. Some relaxation of Sabbatarianism is taking place on the English boats. Games are now permitted on Sunday afternoons. We had a discussion as to the position & value of the Chaplain on board a man–of–war. The naval man at our table – a pleasant & intelligent man – returning from the East, maintains that the Chaplain hasn't enough to do: that his position is somewhat ambiguous: that compulsory attendance at divine service is a mistake, & creates a prejudice against it in the men's minds.

I read through a foolish story by Maurice Hewlett called "Richard Yea & Nea" – a fantastical grotesque of an historical romance.

I also read thro' a story of Gibert Parker, 'The Right of Way'.

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