Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/75

 that cause;" he added, in reply to questions about the conduct of masters of Hanseatic ships frequenting Baltimore, that, in his thirteen years' experience, he had heard of but one master of a vessel being a drunkard, and he was at once removed. "They are," he said, "invariably competent navigators and good scholars, many of them belonging to respectable families in Bremen; and most abstemious, the principal beverage used in the cabin being light-bodied claret and vin de grave." Of the British shipmasters frequenting Baltimore he wrote in very disparaging terms, asserting them to be, in point of intelligence, address, and conduct, greatly inferior to the shipmasters of either Bremen or America.

Mr. Hesketh, writing from Rio de Janeiro, states that, during an active service of more than thirty years as consul at that port, he had experienced unwearied trouble and much anxiety, in consequence of the intemperate habits of the masters and crews of British merchant vessels, and that cases were not uncommon in which it had been found absolutely necessary to take from on board all intoxicating liquors. With regard to their competency in other respects, he said: "I have come to the conclusion that British shipmasters are frequently entrusted with commands on voyages requiring more knowledge of the scientific department of navigation than they possess;" he added, however, that the masters of large or first-class merchant vessels were generally fully competent for their duties.

Similar reports came from the consuls of Bahia, Pernambuco, and Paraguay; the consul at the last-named port remarking, "shippers now give such a