ful of man's creations on the sea--the square-rigged sailing ship
of the nineteenth century. With pride we sailed her. We, too, brought
science to our calling; rude, perhaps, and not readily defined save by a
long, hard pupilage. Not less than the calibre of the new naval ordnance
was the measure of our sail spread, not inferior to ironclad hulls the
speed and beauty of our clippers--we paralleled the roads of their
strategy by the masterly handling of a cloud in sail. With a regularity
and precision as noted as our naval sea-brothers' advance in gunfire, we
served the trade and the mails, and spread the flood of emigration to
the rise and glory of the Empire.

With the decline of square sail, a new way of seafaring opened to us. In
the first of our steam pioneering, we took our yards and canvas with us,
as good part of our sea-kit; a safe provision, as we thought, against
the inevitable failure we looked for in the new navigation. We were
conservatively jealous of our gallant top hamper, and scorned the
promise of a power that only dimly as yet we understood. But--the
promise held. In a few years we became converts to the new order, in
which we found a greater security, a more definite reliance, than in the
angles of our sail plane. There was no longer a need for our precious
'stand by,' and we unrigged the wind tackle and accepted our new
shipmate, the marine engineer, as a worthy brother seaman. It was not
only the spars and the cordage and the sails we put ashore. With all
the gallant litter we unloaded, condemned to the junk-heap, went a part
of our seamanship as closely woven to the canvas as the seams our hands
had sewn.

In steam practice, new problems required to be studied and resolved;
challenges to our vaunted sea-lore came up that called for radical
revision of older methods and ideas. Changes, as wide and drastic as the
evolutions of a decade in sail, were presented in a swift succession of
as many days. With eyes now turned from aloft to ahead, we retyped our
seamanship to meet the altered conditions of the veer in our outlook.
Unhelped, if unhindered, in our efforts, we adapted our calling to the
sudden and revolutionary innovations in construction and power of the
new ships. We grew sensible of gaps in our knowledge, of voids in
education that our earlier handicraft had not revealed. Severed, by
press of our sea-work, from the facilities for study that now offered
advancement to the landsman, we sought