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This Landless was a favourite with the officers, among whom he went by the name of "Happy Jack." And it is just such Happy Jacks as Landless that most sea-officers profess to admire; a fellow without shame, without a soul, so dead to the least dignity of manhood that he could hardly be called a man.
"I know that every military movement should be executed with precision, Captain Barnstable," returned the marine. "I am too much accustomed to hear the sneers of the sea-officers, to regard what I know proceeds from ignorance.
Three better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own different way, could not readily be found, and they were every one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man.
The credit for this development is generally given to the Duke of York, afterward James II.; but the question to whom the improvement is due is of little importance to sea-officers of the present day when compared with the instructive fact that so long a time elapsed between the appearance of the large sailing-ship, with its broadside battery, and the systematic adoption of the order which was best adapted to develop the full power of the fleet for mutual support.
"Then you need no help from me," said Nelson, with some bitterness. "If you have either guineas or interest you can climb over the heads of old sea-officers, though you may not know the poop from the galley, or a carronade from a long nine. Nevertheless But what the deuce have we here?"
However, it would be more correct to say that the fighting was done chiefly by soldiers, and consequently that military officers went to command them, while the ships were navigated by professional seamen, who had their own sea-officers, though generally of an inferior grade, over them. A vestige of this custom still remains in the Royal Navy.
But those sea-officers, though well-intentioned, including my poor dear brother-in-law, are dreadfully rough and unmannerly, and have not ceased to alarm and annoy me since I got on board that horrible little vessel, misnamed a pleasure yacht."
The Government having omitted, as even British Governments sometimes do, to gain any trustworthy intelligence of the strength or movements of the enemy, Torrington suddenly found himself confronted by a considerably superior French fleet under Tourville, one of the greatest of French sea-officers.
Ships and guns, masts and sails, grew better, as did also administrative processes; it may indeed be asserted, as an axiom of professional experience, that as the military tone of the sea-officers rises, the effect will be transmitted to those civil functions upon which efficiency for war antecedently depends.
His servant had devoted himself to polishing every button that morning with rotten-stone and rags your sea air is a sworn foe to metallic glosses; whence it comes that the swords of sea-officers have, of late, so rusted in their scabbards that they are with difficulty drawn. It was a fine sight to see this Emperor and Commodore complimenting each other.