Peter Carew's claim of insubordination has been given support by James Watt, former Medical Director-General of the Royal Navy, based on records of an epidemic of dysentery in Portsmouth which could have rendered the crew incapable of handling the ship properly, while historian Richard Barker has suggested that the crew actually knew that the ship was an accident waiting to happen, at which they balked and refused to follow orders. Marsden has noted that the Carew biography is in some details inconsistent with the sequence of events reported by both French and English eyewitnesses. It also reports that there were 700 men on board, an unusually high number. The distance in time to the event it describes may mean that it was embellished to add a dramatic touch. The report of French galleys sinking the "Mary Rose" as stated by Martin du Bellay has been described as "the account of a courtesan" by naval historian Maurice de Brossard. Du Bellay and his two brothers were close to king Francis I and du Bellay had much to gain from portraying the sinking as a French victory. English sources, even if biased, would have nothing to gain from portraying the sinking as the result of crew incompetence rather than conceding a victory to the much-feared gun galleys.