o
the enemy's fire. About the year 1500, however, the Dutch introduced
the modern practice of pointing the guns through ports in the ship's
side, so that the gunners would be sheltered from all shot that could
not pierce the sides. This improvement was soon universally adopted,
and by the beginning of the sixteenth century, ships resembling on the
whole the sailing ship of modern times had been evolved, having one or
two tiers of guns. But as the fight was still at comparatively close
quarters--owing to the guns being small, and of no great range,--
warships were fitted with cumbrous "forecastles" and "aftercastles" (see
illustration on page 69), and with heavy tops on the masts, to contain
musketeers, in order to command the enemy's deck. These features
greatly detracted from their seaworthiness, and made them unwieldy,
cumbrous craft.

As the centuries went on, experience gradually remedied the mistakes of
the earlier builders. Artillery also was improved, and tactics no
longer depended to the same extent on boarding and hand-to-hand
fighting. High "forecastles" and "aftercastles," and heavy tops, thus
became of little use and were discarded, as were also the oars used on
smaller craft, as the art of sailing became better understood and
vessels more seaworthy. For similar reasons the navigating and fighting
sections of the crew, hitherto distinct, were merged into one, only a
small number of "marines," as they are now called, being retained to
perform military duties for which fully trained seamen were not
required.

English naval architects seem to have had little inventive genius till a
late period. The early ships were all imitations from the Genoese or
other maritime people of the Mediterranean, while latterly the best
vessels were either taken from the French or else copied from them. For
instance the model for all the 80-gun ships built at the beginning of
the nineteenth century was the _Canopus_, which was taken from the
French, under the name of _Franklin_, at the Battle of the Nile in 1798.
The _Belleisle_, a "74," captured in 1795, bore a conspicuous part in
the battle of Trafalgar. Many frigates also, whose names are known to
fame, were acquired in the same way and performed useful service against
their former possessors.

In the early part of the eighteenth century British men-of-war were of
insufficient size for the guns they were made to carry, with the result
they worked and sailed heavily