Medusa.

This contrast is marked and stated, not in an invidious spirit towards
the French, but because there is no example on record, which furnishes
such a comparison between the safety which depends on cool and orderly
behaviour in the season of peril, and the terrible catastrophe which
is hastened and aggravated by want of firmness, and confusion.

'It is impossible,' said a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, of
October, 1817, 'not to be struck with the extraordinary difference of
conduct in the officers and crew of the Medusa and the Alceste,
wrecked nearly about the same time. In the one case, all the people
were kept together in a perfect state of discipline and subordination,
and brought safely home from the opposite side of the globe; in the
other, every one seems to have been left to shift for himself, and the
greater part perished in the horrible way we have seen.'[1]

I have brought the comparison between the two wrecks again under
notice to show, that as certainly as discipline and good order tend to
insure safety on perilous occasions, so, inevitably, do confusion and
want of discipline lead to destruction. In the one case, intrepidity
and obedience prompted expedients and resources: in the other case,
consternation was followed by despair, and despair aggravated the
catastrophe with tenfold horrors.

It is not to be concealed, that occasional instances of
insubordination and pusillanimity have occurred in the British navy.
Some such appear in this narrative, and they invariably have produced
their own punishment, by leading always to disaster, and often to
death; and they serve as beacons to point out the fatal consequences
of misconduct, under circumstances either of drunkenness,
disobedience, panic, selfishness, or confusion.

The selfish cowardice, noticed in page 94, on the part of the men in
charge of the jolly-boat of the Athenienne, and of some of the crew of
the launch of the Boreas, (see p. 136,) and the tumult, intoxication,
and desertion of the majority of the crew of the Penelope, which were
followed by the prolonged sufferings and painful deaths of the
culprits, (see pp. 200-204,) are but a few dark spots in the
shipwrecks of the Royal Navy, to set off by contrast the many bright
pages, which describe innumerable traits of character that do honour
to human nature.

As a direction to some of these noble traits, every one of which will
make the reader warm to the name of a British sailor