overcame the opposition of the mastodons, but it was the inferiority of his personnel, not the dimensions of his matériel, that lost to Antony Actium and the world. At Lepanto size had gone up again, and the mastodon proved itself eminently all-powerful and ideal as a fighting machine.
When King Alfred founded the British Navy in the ninth century, the special feature of his galleys, built to compete with the Danish raiders, was that they were bigger than the Danes.
In the time of the Crusaders, much of the Saracen Sea Power rested on big dimensions. Now and again, of course, these big ships were captured. The more
|moderate dimensioned ship of King Richard himself captured one, but owing to the size of the Saracen his men were several times repulsed and only succeeded in the end when the King assured them that death by torture would be the fate of all if the Saracen got away.[1]
The Harry Grâce à Dieu, the Great Michael, the Great Harry and all such ships were strivings after the mastodon. Uniformly successful they were not, but they soon became the moderate dimensions of a succeeding age. In the Spanish Armada the Spanish mastodons did not win against the smaller ships of England, but no thoughtful student can see in that an argument for moderate dimensions. Would the Spaniards have won had the two sides changed fleets?
- ↑ See account of this fight in Nicholas.
