The evils afflicting the navy are easy enough to see. First among them was brutality. The times were hard. A glance at the trials which arose out of General Oglethorpe’s agitation against the management of some of our prisons will show how callous our ancestors could be in the early eighteenth century. The navy produced no General Oglethorpe. Though many officers sat in Parliament, none of them made a serious attempt to check the unquestionable ill-usage of the sailors. From that we may draw the deduction that they wanted humanity to incur the ill-will of the Admiralty by insisting on reform, or that they were indifferent to the miseries of others; or finally that, like the Roman Prefectus Castrorum, who had been a common soldier, and who was known to the men as “Bring another,” because he was for ever breaking sticks on their backs and calling for more, they were all the harder because they themselves had suffered. Here is one brief passage of naval manners in the early eighteenth century, written by a naval pen in the Journal of Rooke’s expedition to Cadiz in 1702:— “At six this evening Captain Norris coming on board this ship [the flagship] my Lord Hamilton, Captain Ley, Captain Wishart, and Captain Trevor, were standing on the quarter-deck, and as Captain Norris came up, Lord Hamilton asked him if he had taken any more wine or brandy. This means whether he had captured a ship laden with this kind of cargo. The other answered No; upon which Captain Trevor asked the price of his claret, whether he might have any at 4 li a hogshead. Norris said he would have 6 li or salt water, and then Captain Ley said he would rather the prizes were ashore than he would give the 6 li the hogshead; upon which Captain Norris said he was a rascal that he wished his prizes ashore; the other replied he was a rascal if he called him so; and then Captain Norris struck Captain Ley and threw him over the gun, which Mr. Hopsonn hearing, as he and I were in my cabin, ran out, and upon inquiry found he [Norris] had hurt Captain Ley, and by the admiral’s directions ordered him to be confined, upon which Captain Norris drew his sword, and offered to stab Captain Ley, but Admiral Hopsonn, holding his hand, ordered him to be disarmed, and confined in Mr. Rayney’s cabin.” It is a scene of huckstering and violence on the very quarter-deck of the flagship. Yet though Ley died soon afterwards, perhaps from the effect of the blow, Norris was never called to account, and lived to be the most distinguished officer of the reign of George I. and the early years of George II.