How infinitely easy is the task of the modern circumnavigator compared with the hazardous explorations of Magelhaens and Captain Cook, when the chronometer was an instrument of rude and untrustworthy quality, when there were no charts, and the roaring of the breakers in the dead of night was the mariner’s first warning that a coral reef was near!

Our comprehensive and varied cruise has strengthened my former convictions that the disasters due to negligence bear a large proportion to the number of inevitable losses.  Every coast is dangerous to the careless commander; but there are no frequented seas where, with the exercise of caution and reasonable skill, the dangers cannot be avoided.  These remarks do not, of course, apply to cases of disaster from stress of weather.  In fogs there must be delay, though not necessarily danger.

In these days of lamentation over the degeneracy of the British seaman, my experience may be accepted as a contribution to the mass of evidence on this vexed question.  I have not been surrounded by such smart seamen as can only be found on a man-of-war, but I have no ground for general or serious complaint.  Many of my crew have done their duty most faithfully.  In emergencies everybody has risen to the occasion, and has done best when his skill or endurance was most severely tried—­

   ’My mariners,
    Souls that have toiled and wrought and thought with me,
    That ever with a frolic welcome took
    The thunder and the sunshine.’

It is always in stormy weather that the good qualities of the British seaman are displayed to the greatest advantage.  The difficulty is to keep up his interest and energies in long intervals of fine weather, when nothing occurs to rouse him to an effort, and the faculties of the seaman before the mast, no less than those of his officer, are benumbed by the monotony and isolation from mankind, which are the gravest drawbacks of a sailor’s life.  It is in these dull moments that men are tempted to drink and quarrel, that officers become tyrannical, and their crews insubordinate, or even mutinous.  Lest it should be thought that my impressions of the average sailor are derived from an exceptional crew or picked men, I have only to add that the manning of the ‘Sunbeam’ was a family job.  The sailing master was related by blood or marriage to the majority of his subordinates—­fishermen from the coast of Essex, who had received their early training among the banks and shoals at the mouth of the Thames.

In this connection I tender my sincere tribute of praise to the officers of the Navy for their success in maintaining the efficiency and spirit of their crews through long commissions on foreign stations, much time being necessarily spent in harbour, in many cases in the most enervating climates.  The discipline of the service seems to be admirable, and the seamen are reconciled to it by tradition, by early training, and perhaps by an instinctive perception of its necessity.