Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/73

 not—and I say it with regret—a more troublesome and thoughtless set of men, to use the mildest term, to be met with than British merchant-seamen. Only very lately, a master left his vessel, which was loaded with a valuable cargo and ready for sea, and was, after several days' search, found in a house of ill-fame: his mate was very little better than himself; and his people, following this example, a set of drunkards." He added, that occurrences nearly as bad as these were by no means rare, and that a Prussian vessel was sure to obtain a preference when freights were remunerative.

From the Mediterranean ports the accounts received were hardly more favourable to the character of British seamen. The consul at Genoa stated that it was quite common for captains of vessels at that port to take up their abode at a tavern; leaving the entire charge of the vessel in the hands of an ignorant mate, whose whole learning was not a whit superior to that of a man before the mast, and whose quarrels with the men or those among themselves were forced upon the consul for adjustment. At Ancona, the greater part of the masters who frequented the port were considered by the consul there to be unequal to the responsible trust imposed in them, not so much from the want of nautical skill as of sobriety. Out of the shipwrecks which had occurred during his residence at that port, he considered one to have arisen from incompetency, one from the inebriety of the master, and one from causes beyond control. At Naples, the consul spoke of the masters of British vessels being, on the average, ignorant and uneducated—"little superior in mental or literary acquire