308 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



saving the Federal Navy with his Monitor destroy 

 the Merrimae in Hampton Roads. 



We did not readily assimilate the lesson our kins- 

 men across the sea had to teach us. For it must be 

 admitted that whatever we say, by whatever title we 

 may designate ourselves, we are essentially conserva- 

 tive, although with our usual exposition of the paradox 

 some of the most radical changes we have made have 

 been the work of the party calling itself Conservative. 

 It was not until we found ourselves being beaten upon 

 every sea, found the ships of the vigorous young 

 republic making their voyages while we were making 

 passages, that we bestirred ourselves to remodel our 

 ships and our methods to learn, in fact, from our 

 hitherto despised competitors how to save time in 

 crossing the seas. It was a great lesson conveyed in 

 a variety of ways. First of all, in the contour of the 

 ships. Our old bluff-bowed, heavy-sterned ships with 

 their clumsy top-hamper and their deliberate officers 

 had to be remodelled. The builders of Blackwall and 

 other typically British yards had to learn that speed 

 was not incompatible with the strength and safety 

 they felt indispensable in the building of their ships. 

 But nothing would or could induce them to build in 

 the same manner as the Yankees, who flung their 

 ships together of soft wood and in the most casual 

 manner, so that when at sea they were all a-work, 

 almost like a basket, as old sailors used to say. British 

 shipbuilders, however, learned to discard old-fashioned 

 shapes of hull for the clipper models of the New 

 England shipyards, and in a few years began to turn 

 out ships that could and did hold their own with the 

 smartest of the Yankee flyers. In those few years, 



