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vessel was below the rank of a mate. This is, obviously, in the best interests of that severe school of discipline, the Royal Navy, where insubordination, though not unknown, is never suffered to exist in the slightest form, but is promptly and properly dealt with, and stamped out unrelentingly. Hence the efficiency of the service, which His Majesty the King, in addressing the cadets of the Britannia not so very long ago, described as the finest service in the world. Periodical returns of offenders against naval discipline are published, together with the punishment inflicted, by the naval authorities, and these "black lists" are read over by the commanders of drill ships to the whole company assembled for the purpose. The moral effect of this may, or may not, show itself in time. It is positively appalling to consider the 'difference of methods and measures that obtain on a naval ship, compared with the general looseness of a merchant vessel. The naval officer is vested with proper power and the immediate means of enforcing discipline and inflicting punishment on those who offend against the rules of that service, whose people have been under training from the time they first joined, and who know quite well what they have to expect for any dereliction of duty. Not so in a merchant ship, where commonly enough voyages commence with a crew who are at once both insubordinate and mutinous, the only remedy against so serious a state of things being the Official Log Book and the Civil Law. A fair sample of this sort of thing is afforded in the following letter—(from Fairplay) a copy of which was addressed to the Board of Trade—received by the Merchant Service Guild, from Captain G. Browne, of the ss. Brunswick.
"Dear Sir,—As an illustration of the great necessity of some regulation for the better enforcement of discipline on board merchant vessels, and to ensure crews who have signed articles being on board at the time specified in those articles, J would beg leave to quote you my own case on leaving Liverpool on October 28, 1899. Crew signed articles to be on board at 5 a.m. on that day, but as they evidently found out that the ship would not sail that tide, they did not appear. About 5 p.m., as the ship was hauling through from Brunswick to Toxteth Dock, with engineers firing and working main engines, two firemen appeared alongside with their bags, bed, etc. One of them hailed in an impatient tone of voice, 'I say, cap'n, when are you going to sail?' I asked them what they were, and they replied, 'Firemen!' 'Why didn't you join the ship before?' queried I, fearing to offend them, to which the spokesman replied, 'Since you are 80 b((bar|2}} particular, we don't join now; come along, Jimmy,' and off they went down the quay. I have not seen them since, and being Saturday
