300 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



As usual, the merchant and his shipbuilders led 

 the way in the adaptation of science to nautical affairs, 

 and by reason of their generous payment of inventors, 

 as well as their appreciation of the great services 

 rendered them, they always secured the best talent 

 available. These designers and inventors, however 

 patriotic, could not afford to sell their high qualifica- 

 tions for the miserable pittance offered them by 

 government, and so progress was always comparatively 

 slow in the Royal naval dockyards. And when it 

 was quickened on the advent of steel for shipbuilding 

 it was always by outside pressure, always at the in- 

 stance of men who had sufficient faith and patience 

 to persist, in spite of numberless heart-breakings and 

 disappointments at the hands of pompous hide-bound 

 officials, whose idea of the public service was to 

 hinder and not to help forward anything proposed for 

 the national benefit. It must, however, be admitted 

 that when at last the great forward movement in the 

 equipment of the Navy did come, it came with a rush, 

 and the hearts of patriotic Britons were made glad by 

 beholding their Navy brought up to a position in which 

 it was theoretically fit to face any combination of two 

 first-class powers against us. Experience was lacking, 

 though, in the working under actual war conditions of 

 these amazingly modern vessels of war; for all the 

 old ideas of naval warfare had entirely passed away, 

 and all things had become new. The war between 

 China and Japan settled nothing, as it was essen- 

 tially a one-sided affair. The Spanish-American war 

 did very little more, because it, too, was one-sided to 

 almost the same extent as the conflict last mentioned. 

 And it is very little to the credit of the people of the 





