At sea crew initially persisted in bad manners (10)
I believe the answer is:
disrespect
'bad manners' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both human attributes as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'at sea crew initially persisted' is the wordplay.
'at sea' indicates anagramming the letters.
'initially' says to take the initial letters.
The initial letter of 'crew' is 'c'.
'c'+'persisted'='cpersisted'
'cpersisted' anagrammed gives 'DISRESPECT'.
'in' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for disrespect that I've seen before include "Contempt" , "Lack of reverence" , "showing scorn" , "Discourtesy" , "Rudeness" .)