“In considering, then, what perfect seamanship really is, we must first adopt a correct standard by which to estimate it. The English sailor has been so long assumed as the perfect type of the _genus_ seaman, that the world has nearly acquiesced in that view, and _even we in Germany have been accustomed to rank our crews below the English, though it is an unfair estimate_. _There are no better sailors in the world than the German seamen, and there is no foreign nation that would assert the contrary._[85] On the other hand, it has also been the fashion universally to abuse French seamanship, and to speak of her sailors as below criticism. None proclaimed this opinion more loudly than the English; but in doing so they recurred to the men they had beaten under the Revolution and Bonaparte. The Crimean War, however, opened their eyes, and taught them that the French sailors of to-day were no longer the men of 1806, and that, to say the least, they are in no respect inferior to the British. England had for years been compelled to keep up a large effective force always ready for action, in consequence of the nature of her dependencies, which, as they consist of remote colonies across distant seas, required such a provision for their protection. This gave her an immeasurable superiority in days gone by. But since France in 1840 discovered her deficiency, it has been supplied by the maintenance of a permanent _experimental Fleet_, which, under the command of such Admirals as Lalande de Joinville, Ducas, Hamelin, and Bruat, has been the nursery of the present most effective body of officers and men; which, since 1853, have not ceased to humble the boasted superiority of England, besides causing her many anxious misgivings. “Anyone who had the opportunity of viewing the two Fleets together in the Black Sea or the Baltic, and was in a position to draw a comparison, could not fail to be convinced that everything connected with manœuvring, evolutions, and gunnery was, beyond comparison, more smartly, quickly, and exactly executed by the French than by the English, and _must have observed the brilliant prestige which had so long surrounded England’s tars pale sensibly beside the rising glories of her rival_.”[86] That this was not merely captious criticism is borne out by the following extracts from “The Life and Correspondence of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B.”:--