[Sidenote: The Consuls of Genoa, Ancona, and Naples.] From the Mediterranean ports the accounts received were hardly more favourable to the character of British seamen. The consul at Genoa stated that it was quite common for captains of vessels at that port to take up their abode at a tavern; leaving the entire charge of the vessel in the hands of an ignorant mate, whose whole learning was not a whit superior to that of a man before the mast, and whose quarrels with the men or those among themselves were forced upon the consul for adjustment. At Ancona, the greater part of the masters who frequented the port were considered by the consul there to be unequal to the responsible trust imposed in them, not so much from the want of nautical skill as of sobriety. Out of the shipwrecks which had occurred during his residence at that port, he considered one to have arisen from incompetency, one from the inebriety of the master, and one from causes beyond control. At Naples, the consul spoke of the masters of British vessels being, on the average, ignorant and uneducated—“little superior in mental or literary acquirements to the seamen they are placed over;” and though, on the whole, good seamen, “few of them understand navigation beyond the mere power of keeping the ship’s reckoning. Nothing,” he added, “could be more truly disgraceful or discreditable than the manner of keeping the log-books of the vessels that resort to this port.” [Sidenote: Mr. Consul Sherrard.] [Sidenote: Mr. Consul MacTavish.]