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 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. Consul Hesketh.
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.
Reports from the Consuls in South America.
Similar reports came from the consuls of Bahia, Pernambuco, and Paraguay; the consul at the last-named port remarking, “shippers now give such a decided preference to the merchant vessels of Sweden, Denmark, Sardinia, Hamburg, and Austria, that they are rapidly engrossing the carrying trade of Brazil; and this alarming fact is attributed by the most intelligent British merchants and shipmasters, with whom I have conversed on the subject, to the greater care taken by foreign masters, and enforced by them on their crews, in the reception and stowage of their cargoes, which they consequently deliver in much better order than do British vessels, the masters of which are in general said to be exceedingly careless and inattentive in this respect,” an opinion confirmed by Mr. Ellis in his despatch to the Foreign Office from Rio, 10th December, 1842.
Although, for the reasons I have named, these voluminous reports are not so impartial as they otherwise might have been, had Mr. Murray, in his circular-note, merely expressed his desire to ascertain the facts without expressing any opinion of his own, there is too much reason for believing that the character of British ships and the conduct of British crews were then greatly inferior to those of other nations; hence Mr. Murray’s subsequent memorandum of the 22nd November, 1847, contains unquestionably many valuable suggestions for their improvement, while his conclusions could hardly be questioned when he stated:—
General conclusions of Mr. Murray, Nov. 22, 1847,
“1st. That the character of British shipping has declined, and that the character of foreign shipping has improved.
“2nd. That there was not sufficient control over British shipmasters and seamen, either at home or abroad, while foreign vessels were subject to considerable control.
“3rd. That there was no system of regular education for the merchant service of Great Britain, but that, in foreign countries, this matter was much attended to.