ad their seed in tavern
brawls, enforcement "to stoope gallant [lower topsail] and vaile their
bonets" for a puissant king or queen, brought a reckoning of strife and
bloodshed.

Although military sea-captains, the glory of their victories, the
worthiness of their ships and appurtenances, figure largely on the pages
of subsequent sea-history, not a great deal has been written of the
sailor captains and their mates and crews. Later chroniclers were
concerned that their subjects should be grand and combatant: there was
little room in their text for trading ventures, or for such humble
recitals as the tale and values of hogshead or caisse or bale. A line of
demarcation was slowly but inevitably ruling a division of our
sea-forces. The service of the ships, devoted indifferently to
sea-warfare or oversea trading--as the nation might be at war or
peace--was in process of adjustment to meet the demands of a new
sea-attack. The vessels were no longer merely floating platforms from
which a military leader could direct a plan of rude assault and engage
the arms of his soldiery, leaving to the masters and seamen the duty of
handling the way of the ship. A new aristocracy had arisen from the
decks who saw, in the pull of their sails, a weapon more powerful than
shock ordnance, and resented the dictation of landsmen on their own
sea-province. Sea-warfare had become a contest, more of seamanship and
manoeuvre, less of stunning impact and a weight of military arms.

In division of the ships and their service, it may quite properly be
claimed that the Merchants' Service remained the parent trunk from
which the new Navy--a gallant growing limb--drew sap and sustenance,
perhaps, in turn, improving the growth of the grand old tree. Certainly
their service was an offshoot, for, since Henry VIII ordered laying of
the first especial war keel, the sea-battles to the present day have
been largely joined by the ships and men and furniture of the merchants,
carrying on in the historic traditional manner of a fight when there was
fighting to be done, a return to trade and enterprise when the great
sea-roads were cleared to commerce. Stout old Sir John Hawkins,
Frobisher, Drake, Davis, Amadas, and Barlow were merchant masters,
shrewd at a venture, in intervals of, and combination with, their deeds
of arms. Only a small proportion of State ships were in issue with the
merchants' men to scourge the great Armada from our shores. Perhaps the
existe