The unpopularity of the Navy, and the consequent shorthandedness in time of war, had one very bad result in bringing into it all sorts of undesirable foreigners, who stirred up strife among the better disposed men, and altogether aggravated the evils of the service. Undoubtedly the care of the officers for their men was doing its gradual work in lessening all these evils. To instance this, we find, as we read on in the letters and official reports of Francis Austen, that the entry, “the man named in the margin did run from his Majesty’s ship under my command,” comes with less and less frequency; and we have on record that the _Aurora_, under the command of Captain Charles Austen, did not lose a single man by sickness or desertion during the years 1826-1828, whilst he was in command. Even when some allowance is made for his undoubted charm of personality, this is a strong evidence of the real improvements which had been worked in the Navy during thirty years. With such constant difficulties and discomforts to contend with, it seems in some ways remarkable that the Navy should have been so popular as a profession among the classes from which officers were drawn. Some of this popularity, and no doubt a large share, was the effect of a strong feeling of patriotism, and some was due to the fact that the Navy was a profession in which it was possible to get on very fast. A man of moderate luck and enterprise was sure to make some sort of mark, and if to this he added any “interest” his success was assured. Success, in those days of the Navy, meant money. It is difficult for us to realise the large part played by “prizes” in the ordinary routine work of the smallest sloop. In the case of Captain Wentworth, a very fair average instance, we know that when he engaged himself to Anne Elliot, he had “nothing but himself to recommend him, no hopes of attaining influence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in that profession,” yet we find that his hopes for his own advancement were fully justified. Jane Austen would have been very sure to have heard of it from Francis if not from Charles, if she had made Captain Wentworth’s success much more remarkable than that of the ordinary run of men in such circumstances. We are clearly told what those circumstances were.