One practice of the old navy certainly lent itself to fraud. The captain was allowed four servants for each hundred of his ship’s company, and was accustomed to count this among the perquisites of his office. Indeed the total of their wages is sometimes spoken of as part of his pay. A captain was fully entitled to employ men shipped on these terms as servants, and he had a good claim to the patronage which the power of selecting them gave him. He could for instance provide for a son, or the son of a friend, by bringing him to sea, rating him captain’s servant, and training him to become an officer. Many of the best of our chiefs, Nelson himself being one of them, served their apprenticeship or part of it in this very way, and where the captain was an honourable man who used his patronage on a high principle the state was the gainer. The history of our navy in the last century shows that a large proportion of our captains did use their privilege in this spirit. But here there is no question of money profit. That could only be got in two ways, of which the first was mean and the second fraudulent. A captain could take servants to sea, on the understanding that he was to draw their pay, and give them what part he chose of the ten pounds a year allowed for them by the state. He could also keep false musters, that is, return boys or men as present when they were not in the ship. This was an offence punishable by dismissal, but it was habitually committed. In its least criminal form it was done to allow a boy, who was still at school, to be borne on the books of a ship in order to shorten the time he would have to serve at sea, according to regulations before passing for lieutenant. A distinguished officer who died in our own time, Sir Provo Wallis, had had his name on the books of a ship for some years before he joined. At its worst it was the offence of keeping false musters, pure and simple. The names of imaginary persons or of lads, who never meant to go to sea, were entered on the roll of the ship’s company, and their wages drawn by the captain. In the old slang phrase they were known as “Captain’s Hogs” and it is said that as many as thirty or forty of them drew pay in a single ship. At ten pounds a head this made a material addition to the commander’s salary.