THE CREW of Golden Vanity, the restored Brixham trawler, quit the Tall Ships Race this week. Sailing north through the Bay of Biscay from La Coruña to Antwerp, these 16 to 25-year-old volunteers encountered the fearsome foe of seasickness and wimped out. It would be easy to sympathise, but contempt is the more compassionate response.
Seasickness is miserable, but few displays of spinelessness better reflect the mollycoddling madness that is destroying self-reliance among young Britons. Instead of keeping children safe, risk-free education has spawned a generation of emotionally fragile wrecks with little fortitude.
Brixham trawlers were designed to battle storms in the North Atlantic. Vessels such as Golden Vanity sailed to Newfoundland in pursuit of fish. Their design is so seaworthy that they survived the advent of motor-powered trawlers to perform sterling work at Dunkirk. Some carried crew as young as 12. None of these fishermen was ever offered trauma counselling.
Nowadays self-reliance is misconstrued as self-harm. The burgeoning therapy industry believes that the self-reliant do not really take pride in overcoming life’s vicissitudes. Rather they lack the emotional vocabulary to talk about their feelings. Today our benevolent State insists that none of us is competent to cope with hardship unaided and offers a counsellor for every crisis.
No doubt the nauseous nautical neophytes believe that they were right to give up. According to the perverse logic with which they are indoctrinated confession of weakness is a form of strength. But such drivel has produced a flab-swaddled generation of wheezing underachievers ill-equipped for life.
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It is much kinder to chastise cowardice and stigmatise failure. Young people will face harsh realities in the world of work. A caring society would prepare them for success instead of training them to aim low, and miss.
The crew of Golden Vanity should feel humiliated. People younger and less well-nourished than them fought under Nelson, who was always seasick on voyages. While these cringing excuses for sailors remain aboard their vessel it should be renamed the Papier Mâché Vanity. Such fragile self-esteem is all that remains to those schooled to celebrate capitulation as the first response to hardship.