68 THE INFLUENCE OF NATIONAL POLICIES ON SHIPS' DESIGN. 



crease in size and weight, and as the motive force depended on the number of 

 rowers who could be placed along the side of the ships, the speed and handiness fell 

 off proportionately. Besides, the scantlings were increased to stand the impact of 

 heavy projectiles (two to three hundredweight). 



Thus at Actium the opposing fleets were of totally distinct types of ships ; one 

 with heavy artillery, with stout sides, and consequently slow and unhandy, yet 

 possessing as a survival those rams which had been the dominant weapon of three 

 hundred years before; the other with swift, light ships, without rams, depending 

 on hand missiles. The result of the battle was favorable to the Roman fleet of 

 light ships. Rome became the sole political power on the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean. The disappearance of rivals reduced the Roman navy to a police force and 

 caused artillery to disappear from the seas until gunpowder brought it back in a 

 modified form over a thousand years later. 



The Roman fleet at Actium was the outcome of political conditions which the 

 fleet itself had ended. That it was successful was owing to the marvelous tactical 

 skill of Agrippa, who had the supreme art to fuse the use of the newest warlike 

 inventions so thoroughly into his scheme of tactics that they were an integral 

 part of the victory. There is a touch of modernity about Agrippa's whole con- 

 duct. On the levantine side, the vassal powers of Antony were rich and unpro- 

 gressive, and their fleets, too, were the product of past international relations, but 

 they did not have the good fortune to be led by a man who could adapt his poor 

 tools to the conditions confronting him. 



Passing on for i,6oo years to the campaign of the Spanish Armada in 1588 

 we shall see the same control of ship design by national policies. 



On the Spanish side, that nation for centuries had been closely related to 

 Italy and to Mediterranean affairs. Her fleet had developed with a view to main- 

 taining her position there; it had formed a contingent of the Christian forces at 

 Lepanto only seventeen years before, and the men who had distinguished them- 

 selves at Lepanto were now in command in the English campaign. 



The Mediterranean policy of Spain had given her a fleet suited to Mediter- 

 ranean waters. It consisted of galleys, long, rowing craft, poor sea boats, built 

 chiefly to use the ram and to board the enemy, but equipped with artillery as an 

 auxiliary weapon. Spain also had another and more recent national policy ; namely, 

 the exploitation and development of her American discoveries and conquests. The 

 annexation of Portugal only four years before had added greatly to these trans- 

 atlantic provinces, as well as to the fleets of Spain. The over-sea navy of Spain 

 was of quite another type from her Mediterranean navy. It was composed of gal- 

 leons, a type of sailing ship having great beam for its length, fitted for cargo carry- 

 ing, and armed more for protection against pirates than for use in the line of battle. 



The Spanish nation was rich, self-satisfied and conservative. Neither the 

 Mediterranean fleet nor the ocean fleet was advancing in material. The leaders 

 were content to believe that the tactics which had brought success against the Turks 

 would do so against the English. Accordingly, when the rising commerce of 



