advantage of having 'every man on board a combatant.'
Not so very long afterwards the mutinous condition of the seamen necessitated the creation of soldiers on shipboard in a new rôle,—that of marines. The marine, however, appeared distinctly as a police force and that he participated in the fighting was mere utilitarianism. The seamen fought the guns and in no way reverted to the old position of specialists in motive power.
In the Nelson era the seaman was supreme and seamanship won the battles.[1] This endured till the advent of steam introduced entirely novel conditions, and a new body of men, engineers, who gradually took over the old seaman duties of control of motive power, while the seamen slipped, almost imperceptibly at first, into the specialist position of the soldiers at sea. There has been, however, one important distinction between this change and similar changes in the past. The seamen changed into soldiers at sea retained the old navigating duties in a more complete form than in previous revolutions, though this of course may mean nothing more than that we are now in the transition stage. Here it is of interest to note that the Russians about the time that steam came in or a little before—it is difficult to trace any more exact date—
- ↑ The interesting fact, however, of Nelson's 'hammer and tongs' system should be kept well in mind. It suggests that Nelson at any rate had some conception of the old root idea of the ship as a means of carrying men to fight other men as opposed to the ship as an instrument intended to fight other ships.
