96 [Assembly 



have arisen those who, by geographical position, or by love of 

 adventure, have engaged in maritime pursuits. And whether we 

 push our inquiries into the years of antiquity, and take a histori- 

 cal picture of the Sidonian ship yards; or at a later period watch 

 the movements of the founder of the English monarchy in his de- 

 termination of the advantages of long vessels over short onesj or 

 in our progressive march witness the folly of Spain in the con- 

 struction of short ships of war with great depth — a practice not 

 entirely obsolete even at the present time — we shall discover that 

 science and practice are inseparably connected with success in 

 this complicated art. Almost from time immemorial the English 

 government has been regarded as the exponent of national ad- 

 vancement in ship building throughout her widely extended ter- 

 ritory; hence it is no marvel that her maritime laws should be 

 regarded as the best, and that they should be incorporated with 

 the march of commerce in other lands ; but it is surprising that 

 the United States should (notwithstanding her intuitive inklings 

 after the customs of the Old World) have the largest commercial 

 list of vessels on the Globe ! 



If the geographical position of the United States were only com- 

 mensurate with that of England, their form of government must 

 render them the arbiter of commercial destiny. But we should 

 endeavor to investigate this important question by the light of me- 

 chanical rather than that of political or geographical science, and 

 in doing this we must go back to the time when the United States 

 were colonies, and only recognized as such by England, or take a 

 more remote position, at a time when the Spanish galleons of the 

 Armada exhibited the folly of constructing ships of war with more 

 than two lines of bristling batteries, and taught the world a lesson 

 in the consequent loss of that memorable fleet, which should never 

 have been forgotten, in the consequences of disproporlioned depth. 



But let it be remembered that pride and ambition take the 

 royal road to science, and, as a consequence, we find the same 

 characteristic significance in the number of decks of admiralty 

 flag ships, as though the power or security of a fleet consisted in 

 the attitude of frowning bulwarks. It requires but an ordinary 

 share of intelligence to discover that if, from the laws of flotation, 



