Captain Pattman, who commanded her for over 26 years, gave the following testimony to her qualities, when interviewed by the Shipping Gazette:—“Being perfectly sparred, the ship is easy to steer, and even in the worst weather the smallest boy on board can keep her on her course.”

Anyone who has felt how hard-mouthed the average four-mast barque can be will appreciate this quality and envy the lucky quartermasters of such a ship. On Loch Torridon there was certainly no excuse for bad steering, and the most strictly adhered to rule on board was that any man or boy found more than half a point off his course was at once sent away from the wheel in disgrace. There were two other factors in Loch Torridon’s success, which she owed to her enterprising commander. Captain Pattman believed in British crews, and took the trouble to train his apprentices.

Regarding the first, he once remarked:—“Give me a Britisher everytime, drunken and bad as he is. The best crew I ever had during the past 15 years I shipped in London last summer (1907). They were all Britishers. The view I hold on this question is that the British sailing ship sailor cannot be equalled, let alone beaten. But the difficulty I have experienced is in regard to steamship A.B.’s. I shipped one of these fellows some time ago, and it turned out that he knew nothing of sailing ship ways. He could not steer, and he knew a good deal less than one of our second voyage apprentices. As compared with such a man, I say, ‘Give me a foreigner who has been at sea on sailing ships for two or three years and who knows the way things are done on a sailing ship.’ I find, however, that the foreigner who has been a few years in British ships becomes more insolent, more disobedient and more difficult to manage than the British sail-trained seaman.”

With regard to the training of apprentices, many a good officer owes his present position to the late Captain Pattman. The Loch Torridon apprentices went to the wheel on their first voyage. At first they took the lee wheel, but as soon as they showed their ability they were allowed to stand their regular trick. In other matters Captain Pattman was a strong advocate of the system carried out on board the German training ships, notably the North German Lloyd.

Captain Pattman took command of Loch Torridon on her second voyage. Her maiden voyage was a very tragic one. She went out to Hobson’s Bay from Glasgow under Captain Pinder, arriving on 27th April, 1882, 105 days out. This gave no indication of her sailing capabilities, so she was not taken up to load wool but was sent across to Calcutta to load jute. She left Calcutta on 22nd August. On 9th October, when off the Cape, she ran into a heavy gale from W.N.W. Captain Pinder hove her to on the starboard tack under close-reefed main topsail. After a bit Captain Pinder wore her round on to the port tack, but with the squalls increasing she lay down to it, dipping her starboard rail. Thereupon Captain Pinder decided to wear her back on to the starboard tack. The mate besought him not to do this without setting the foresail, but unfortunately, having been lucky once, the captain insisted, with the result that when she got off before the wind she had not enough way on her and a tremendous sea came roaring over the stern and carried overboard the master, second mate, man at the wheel, sailmaker and a boy, all being drowned. The mate also was swept away but was saved by a hitch of the main brace getting round his leg. On the following day the weather moderated, and the mate brought the ship home to Plymouth, from whence she was towed up to London.

Captain Pattman took charge of Loch Torridon in December, 1882, giving up the command of the four-mast ship County of Selkirk in order to take the Loch liner. As a sailing ship commander of the first rank, it may perhaps be of interest to give a short outline of Captain Pattman’s previous career.

From this record it will be seen that Captain Pattman had won his way to command by the time-honoured means of the hawse-hole.

In the barque Advice he had an experience which would have sickened most boys of the sea, and he bore the scars to his dying day. The officers of the ship were actually prosecuted by his father for their brutality, the result being that Pattman’s indentures were cancelled, the captain had his certificate cancelled and was sentenced to 18 months’ hard labour, whilst the mate was given three years’ hard labour. Both were hard drinkers and uneducated men.

The brig Hubertus, which Pattman joined as an ordinary seaman, was a real old-fashioned Geordie collier brig. Her skipper could neither read nor write, and Pattman acted as his clerk and did all his correspondence. But the old man knew his way about the North Sea by smell: he only had to sniff the arming of the lead and was never wrong in naming the ship’s position. These old collier skippers always wore sleeved vests and stove-pipe hats at sea, and in the summer the Thames was often a wonderful sight when these colliers sailed up to London before a fair wind. There were often a hundred and more, brigs, schooners, and barques, all crowding up the river so closely, that these old Geordie skippers, all smoking long church-wardens, would be leaning over their respective taffrails exchanging greetings and gossip. Truly 60 years have changed the London River. Yet many a man living to-day can remember the year 1866, when Pattman sailed up to London in his Geordie brig. It was the year in which the three famous tea clippers Ariel, Taeping, and Serica arrived in the river on the same tide. Seafaring then was far more like that of the days of Drake and the Elizabethans than it is like the seafaring of the present day.