displayed by Hawke in maintaining this simple but
arduous service were, first and supremely, the recognition of its
possibility, contrary to a tradition heretofore as commonly and as
blindly accepted as those of the line-of-battle, and of the proper
methods for fleet attack before described. It must be remembered also
that in these wars, 1739-1763, for the first time the British Navy found
the scene of action, in European waters, to be the Biscay coast of
France. In the former great wars of the seventeenth century, French
fleets entered the Channel, and pitched battles were fought there and in
the North Sea. Thence the contest shifted to the Mediterranean, where
the great fleets operated in the later days of William III., and the
reign of Anne. Then, too, the heavy ships, like land armies, went into
winter quarters. It was by distinguished admirals considered
professionally criminal to expose those huge yet cumbrous engines of the
nation's power to the buffetings of winter gales, which might unfit them
next year to meet the enemy, snugly nursed and restored to vigor in
home ports during the same time. The need of periodical refitting and
cleaning the bottoms clinched the argument in favor of this seasonable
withdrawal from the sea.

With this presumed necessity, attention had not been paid to developing
a system of maintenance and refit adapted to the need of a fleet
performing what Hawke undertook. In this, of course, there cannot be
assigned to him the individuality of merit that may belong to a
conception, and does belong to the man who initiates and assumes, as he
did, the responsibility for a novel and hazardous course of action. Many
agents had to contribute to the forwarding of supplies and repairs; but,
while singleness of credit cannot be assumed, priority is justly due to
him upon whose shoulders fell not only all blame, in case his enterprise
failed, but the fundamental difficulty of so timing the reliefs of the
vessels under his command, so arranging the order of rotation in their
going and coming as to keep each, as well as the whole body, in a
constant condition of highest attainable efficiency--in numbers, in
speed, and in health--for meeting the enemy, whose time of exit could
not be foreknown. Naturally, too, the man on whom all this fell, and who
to the nation would personify success or failure, as the event might
be,--terms which to him would mean honor or ruin,--that man, when
professionally so comp