Sir, - What a splendid idea to publish a French supplement in the bicentenary years of Humbert's expedition to Ireland piloted into Killala Bay by a Drogheda man who, partly in gratitude, was made a pilot and in due course became chief pilot in the French port of Brest, known down the centuries to many hundreds of Irish seafarers and today twinned with the Irish port of Dun Laoghaire. But what a disappointment it was to find that The Irish Times is still hard aground with its back solidly towards the sea in the same attitude as the majority of our intelligentsia, our politicians and our bureaucrats have assumed for the greater part of this century.What an opportunity you missed to enrol permanent readers among the growing section of our young population that realises what huge opportunities lie before us if we capitalise on our great maritime traditions and start truly developing our great maritime resources. And what a chance you missed to win friendship for Ireland and readers for your paper by letting the world know what a great contribution Irish seafarers have made to France's very notable maritime history, and how great the contribution of French emigrants here was to our maritime history. - Yours, etc., John De CourcyIreland, Member of the Academie de Marine, Paris, Dalkey, Co Dublin.