ns, mainly
cruisers, and generally located about Havre and the Channel Islands, which
served the same purpose for the Norman and North Breton ports. To complete
the system there were flotilla patrols acting under the port admirals and
doing their best to police the routes of the coastwise and local traffic,
which then had an importance long since lost. The home system of course
differed at different times, but it was always on these general lines. The
naval defence was supplemented by defended ports of refuge, the principal
ones being on the coast of Ireland to shelter the ocean trade, but others
in great numbers were provided within the defended areas against the
operations of privateers, and the ruins of batteries all round the British
shores testify how complete was the organisation.

A similar system prevailed in the colonial areas, but there the naval
defence consisted normally of cruiser squadrons stiffened with one or two
ships-of-the-line mainly for the purpose of carrying the flag. They were
only occupied by battle-squadrons when the enemy threatened operations with
a similar force. The minor or interior defence against local privateers was
to a large extent local; that is, the great part of the flotilla was
furnished by sloops built or hired on the spot, as being best adapted for
the service.

Focal points were not then so numerous as they have become since the
development of the Far Eastern trade. The most important of them, the
Straits of Gibraltar, was treated as a defended area. From the point of
view of commerce-protection it was held by the Mediterranean squadron. By
keeping watch on Toulon that squadron covered not only the Straits, but
also the focal points within the sea. It too had its extended divisions,
sometimes as many as four, one about the approaches to Leghorn, one in the
Adriatic, a third at Malta, and the fourth at Gibraltar. In cases of war
with Spain the latter was very strong, so as to secure the focal area
against Cartagena and Cadiz. On one occasion indeed, in 1804-5, as we have
seen, it was constituted for a short time an independent area with a
special squadron. But in any case the Gibraltar area had its own internal
flotilla guard under the direction of the port admiral as a defence against
local privateers and pirates.

The general theory of these defended terminal and focal areas, it will be
seen, was to hold in force those waters which converging trade made most
fertile, and whi