In the first place, as a landsman, Napoleon did not make sufficient allowance for the action of contrary winds and waves; as indeed it was perhaps his fault, even in land operations, where their influence is less essential, to admit too little consequence to the opposition of the elements. He complained, when at St. Helena, that he could never get a seaman sufficiently emancipated from the technicality of his profession, to execute or enter into any of his schemes. "If I proposed," he said, "any new idea, I had Gantheaume and all the marine department to contend with--Sir, that is impossible--Sir,--the winds--the calms--the currents, will not permit it; and thus I was stopped short."[179] We believe little dread could have been entertained of the result of naval combinations in which the influence of the winds and waves was not previously and accurately calculated; and that British seamen would have desired nothing more ardently, than that their enemies should have acted upon a system in which these casualties were neglected, even if that system had been derived from the genius of Napoleon. But, secondly, there was this great difference betwixt the land and the sea service, to which (the vehemence of his wishes, doubtless, overpowering his judgment) Buonaparte did not give sufficient weight. Upon land, the excellence of the French troops, their discipline, and the enthusiasm arising from uninterrupted success, might be safely reckoned upon as likely to bear down any obstacle which they might unexpectedly meet with, in the execution of the movements which they were commanded to undertake. The situation of the French seamen was diametrically the contrary. Their only chance of safety consisted in their being able to elude a rencontre with a British squadron, even of very inferior force. So much was this the case at the period of which we treat, that Linois, their admiral in the East Indian seas, commanding an eighty-four-gun ship, and at the head of a considerable squadron of ships of war, was baffled and beaten off in the straits of Malacca by a squadron of merchant vessels belonging to the British East India Company, although built, of course, for traffic, and not for war, and, as usual in war time, very imperfectly manned.[180]