seamen—were adhered to as long as possible, and the mastless ship only very slowly evolved. The very existence almost into the twentieth century of a school which claimed the utility of mast and yard work as sound training for bluejackets who would never have to apply their knowledge; is a proof of how the new navy was grafted on to the old. Long before the ironclad appeared it was obvious that steam alone was fully sufficient as a motive power. A hundred million pounds were expended to avoid the wasting of less than ten millions of 'invested capital.' To create a modern navy in the early sixties would have entailed heroic sacrifices, the sweeping away of all the naval service and the substitution of the oldest sea warrior, the soldier at sea. It has taken the nations nearly forty years to realise and accomplish that fact; even to a partial extent. It has needed, in fine, a new generation of sailors who are not 'seamen,' sailors still in name, but, in actual fact, compounds (in the wide sense) of engineers and marines. Such an assertion is hardly received afloat; but that is because men forget that this is what the great early sailors were. The 'seaman,' though such famous names as Nelson are enrolled in his lists, is simply the rower of the past put to do the fighting as well as the moving. The process of a similar evolution to-day would be to eliminate all except the naval engineers and put them to do the fighting; the opposite alternatives to convert the military ranks
