"The greater superiority and exclusiveness of the military class was reflected in the barrier between gentlemen officers and craftsmen officers on board the ships. ... Generally speaking one could say these barriers were higher and more rigid in France than in England and higher in Spain than in France."  (Norbert Elias Archive (part 1), Inv.-Nr. 505, p. 15, cited from Moelker 2004, pp. 384-385).

"Spaniards did not want to lose 'caste' regarding to race problems of the 'poor whites'. Spain was confronted with people of other races. Doing manual labour would lower the status of the lower Spanish men in their position towards the Moors. This prevented Spain from becoming a manufacturing country and to become a great commercial power and a great sea power. ... The profession of a seaman ranked among those low class occupations not fit for a pure Spaniard, whether rich or poor, noble or non-noble ... the gulf between the two groups was unbridgeable." (Norbert Elias Archive (part 1), Inv.-Nr. 505, pp. 18-20), cited from Moelker 2004, p. 385).

"[In France the situation was ... comparable], because the French could order the changes from above (by bureaucratic rule), they could reorganize their naval forces in the most constistent way ... as a result the French naval force became, for a time a most efficient weapon and a formidable threat to its competitors. ... In 1600 France was able to beat in the same year at Beachy Head the united fleets of the Confederates, England and Holland. ... However, the triumph of the French Navy was fairly short-lived."  (Norbert Elias Archive (part 1), Inv.-Nr. 510, p. 28, cited from Moelker 2004, p. 385).

"England had to become a great maritime power or else, as an island-nation, she would have suffered a fate worse than that of Spain." (Norbert Elias Archive (part 1), Inv.-Nr. 510, pp. 8-9, cited from Moelker 2004, p. 386).

"Although the initial antagonism between the two groups was essentially a social and professional antagonism, it was in its ups and downs and finally in its outcome closely connected with the great struggle between court nobility and middle class England, and more especially, between their social standards. ... On the continent (with expectation of the Netherlands) there was a matching rivalry between nonility and civilians but separation in Naval forces. Continental forces copied the more successfull British pattern (but nit difficulty because social structures resisted and had to be changed." (Norbert Elias Archive (part 1), Inv.-Nr. 510, p. 34, cited from Moelker 2004, p. 386).

sources: 
Norbert Elias Archive (Marbach/BRD), 
René Moelker: Norbert Elias, marine supremacy and the naval profession, in: British Journal of Sociology (London/UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul), vol. 54 no.3 (2004), pp. 373-390