Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/74

 *ments to the seamen they are placed over;" and though, on the whole, good seamen, "few of them understand navigation beyond the mere power of keeping the ship's reckoning. Nothing," he added, "could be more truly disgraceful or discreditable than the manner of keeping the log-books of the vessels that resort to this port."

From Trieste, Constantinople, and Alexandria, reports nearly the same were sent in. Nor were those from our consuls resident in the United States of a more favourable character. "It was but last week," remarked Mr. Sherrard, writing from Portland, 27th July, 1843, "that I had occasion to take upon myself the risk of sending back to New Brunswick a vessel, whose master, after disposing of her cargo and receiving the proceeds, squandered the whole in liquor, leaving his crew without their wages and the vessel without sea stores." He mentioned, also, the instance of another, a British barque, from England for St. John's, Newfoundland, which was boarded by a revenue cutter, the whole crew, including master and mate, being in a helpless state of intoxication, and the vessel drifting about embayed in a dangerous place near Mount Desert. From Baltimore the consul, Mr. MacTavish, wrote that, with few exceptions, "almost all the masters of English merchantmen which have arrived here from British ports in my time appear to me incompetent, arising chiefly from inebriety; but, with regard to colonial vessels, I am happy to say that my experience has been the reverse of the foregoing; the temperance principle is becoming very general on board of them, and a manifest improvement is in progress from