Naval War of 1812 65 



telligent, quick with their hands, and showing at 

 their best in an emergency. They looked alike and 

 spoke alike; when they took the trouble to think, 

 they thought alike ; and when they got drunk, which 

 was not an unfrequent occurrence, they quarreled 

 alike. 



Mingled with them were a few seamen of other 

 nationalities. The Irishman, if he came from the 

 old Dano-Irish towns of Waterford, Dublin, and 

 Wexford, or from the Ulster coast, was very much 

 like the two chief combatants; the Celto-Turanian 

 kern of the west did not often appear on shipboard. 

 The French, Danes, and Dutch were hemmed in at 

 home; they had enough to do on their own sea 

 board, and could not send men into foreign fleets. 

 A few Norse, however, did come in, and excellent 

 sailors and fighters they made. With the Portu 

 guese and Italians, of whom some were to be found 

 serving under the Union Jack and others under the 

 Stars and Stripes, it was different ; although there 

 were many excellent exceptions they did not, as a 

 rule, make the best kind of seamen. They were 

 treacherous, fond of the knife, less ready with their 

 hands, and likely to lose either their wits or their 

 courage when in a tight place. 



intelligently waiting until the proper moment, worked fright 

 ful havoc. But though there was a certain slight difference 

 between the seamen of the two nations, it must never be for 

 gotten that it was very much less than that between the vari 

 ous individuals of the same nation; and when the British had 

 been trained for a few years by such commanders as Broke 

 and Manners, it was impossible to surpass them, and it needed 

 our best men to equal them. 



