ccompanied me. The obstinate refusal of the Greek seamen
to embark or perform the smallest service without being paid in
advance--the contempt with which the elder portion of the seamen treated
every endeavour to promote regularity and maintain silence in exercising
the great guns and other evolutions, rendered their improvement
hopeless; and the enlistment of young seamen, whilst the old were
rejected, has been rendered extremely difficult by reason of the
influence of the latter, and by the prejudice excited against a regular
naval service by influential individuals, whose power and importance are
thereby diminished in the maritime islands. The frequent mutinies or
resistance to authority, and the numerous instances in which I have been
obliged to return to port or abstain from going to sea are recorded, as
to dates and circumstances, in the log-book of the _Hellas_, together
with the disgraceful conduct of the crew in the stripping and robbing of
prisoners, and their want of coolness in the presence of an
enemy--exemplified on our attacking a small frigate and a corvette near
Clarenza, and by the firing of upwards of four hundred round shot, on a
subsequent occasion, at the corvette now named _Hydra_, without hitting
the hull of that vessel four times, although she was within a hundred
yards of the _Hellas_. Such was the confusion excited by the contiguity
even of so inferior an enemy. It is not my intention to trouble you at
present with detail; yet I cannot suffer to pass unnoticed that certain
commanders, and the seamen of the majority of the fireships--in the use
of which vessels rested my last hopes--failed in their duty on the only
two important occasions when their services were required; once at
Alexandria in the presence of the enemy, as the brave Kanaris can well
testify; and again by the crews abandoning their duty and embarking in
privateers, many of them after having received pay in advance for their
services. Indeed--encouraged by privateering licenses--insubordination,
outrage, and piracy have arrived at such a pitch that these very
national fireships, stripped not only of their rigging, but of their
anchors and cables, are now drifting about the harbour of Poros. A
neutral boat, detained by the _Hellas_ for violation of blockade, has
been plundered by those sent in charge of her; and scarcely a vessel can
pass between the islands, or along the shore, without the passengers and
property being exposed to