- 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."
Mr. Consul Sherrard.
Mr. Consul MacTavish.
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
