, while in heavy weather their lower
batteries could seldom be used. The smaller the vessel the thinner is
her planking, and the more liable are her crew and structure to suffer
from the shot of the enemy. Other nations realised this long before we
did, especially the Americans, who built forty-four gun frigates almost
as large as our "seventy-fours," while their planking was even thicker.
This, of course, told heavily against us in the war with the United
States, but we were taught a lesson which perhaps helped us later on.
In truth Britain's battles were won not because her ships were superior
in size or armament to those of other nations but on account of the
pluck, courage, determination, and good seamanship of British officers
and crews, and because the latter had been well trained to use their
guns.

At last British naval architects woke up from their long lethargy and
began to think for themselves. Till the end of the eighteenth century
the ships were flat-sterned with heavy "quarter-galleries" projecting
from the side at the stern, while their bows below water were bluff with
long projecting beak-heads which, to avoid weight, were but flimsy
structures, affording no protection whatever to the crew. In 1805 Sir
Robert Seppings remedied this defect by constructing a solid circular
bow right up to the main-deck, thus protecting the crew from raking
shot. A dozen years later the same designer abolished the
quarter-galleries, and introduced the neater and stronger circular
stern. From this time forward, improvements were considerable and rapid
until about 1860, when the ironclad settled the fate of the "wooden
walls" that had protected England for well-nigh a thousand years.

But, while the sailing ship was being brought to its highest perfection,
it was on the eve of being supplanted altogether. In 1769, Watt took
out his first patent for the steam engine, and in October 1788 Mr
Miller, of Dalswinton in Scotland, first applied the new motive power to
propel a vessel. An engine was placed on a frame, fixed between two
pleasure boats, and made to turn two paddle-wheels, one in front of the
other--the invention of William Symington--which drove the improvised
steamer across Dalswinton Loch, at the rate of five miles an hour. The
first practical steamer, however, was not built till 1801, when Lord
Dundas, taking advantage of Mr Miller's labours, after spending 7000
pounds on experiments in two years, built the