tions change and die,
whilst he and his generation came gradually under a new
order of things, whose practical working he and they have
tested in actual practice both on sea and land.

It is on this ground of experience that the author ventures
to ask attention to his views in respect of the likeliest
means to raise a desirable set of seamen in the English
merchant navy. But he also ventures to hope that the
historic incidents and characteristics of a class to which
he is proud to belong, as set forth in this book, may cause
it to be read with interest and charitable criticism. He
claims no literary merit for it: indeed, he feels there may
be found many defects in style and description that could be
improved by a more skilful penman. But then it must be
remembered that a sailor is here writing of sailors, and
hence he gives the book to the public as it is, and hopes he
has succeeded in making it interesting.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

It was a bad day for Spain when Philip allowed the "Holy
Office" to throw Thomas Seeley, the Bristol merchant, into a
dungeon for knocking down a Spaniard who had uttered foul
slanders against the Virgin Monarch of England. Philip did
not heed the petition of the patriot's wife, of which he
must have been cognisant. Elizabeth refused the commission
Dorothy Seeley petitioned for, but, like a sensible lady,
she allowed her subjects to initiate their own methods of
revenge. Subsequent events show that she had no small share
in the introduction of a policy that was ultimately to sweep
the Spaniards off the seas, and give Britain the supremacy
over all those demesnes. This was the beginning of a
distinguished partnership composed of Messieurs John Hawkins
and his kinsman Francis Drake, and of Elizabeth their Queen.
Elizabeth did not openly avow herself one of the partners;
she would have indignantly denied it had it been hinted at;
yet it is pretty certain that the cruises of her faithful
Hawkins and Drake substantially increased her wealth, while
they diminished that of Spanish Philip and that of his
subjects too. Long before the Armada appeared resplendent in
English waters, commanded by that hopeless, blithering
landlubber, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who with other sons
of Spain was sent forth to fight against Britain for "Christ
and our Lady," there had been trained here a race of
dare-devil seamen who knew no fear, and who broke and
vanquished what was reckoned, till the