Among the great means of advancing technical improvements, none takes higher rank than a good educational museum; for it enables the student to learn, as he otherwise cannot learn, the general course which improvements have taken since the earliest times, and hence to appreciate the direction which progress will inevitably take in the future. Here he will learn, for instance, how difficulties have been overcome in the past, and will be the better prepared to play his part in overcoming those with which he, in his turn, will be confronted. In such a museum he can study the advantages conferred upon the owner, by the successive changes which have been effected in the materials, construction, and the means of propulsion of ships. He can trace, for instance, the effects of the change from wood to iron, and from iron to steel, in the carrying capacity of ships, and he can note the effects of successive improvements in the propelling machinery in saving weight and space occupied by engines, boilers, and bunkers; and in conferring upon a ship of a given size the power of making longer voyages. Here, too, he can learn how it was that the American clipper supplanted the old English sailing merchantman, and how the screw iron ship, fitted with highly economical engines, has practically driven the clipper from the seas. In fact, with the aid of a good museum the student is enabled to take a bird's-eye view of the whole chain of progress, in which the existing state of things constitutes but a link. Signs are not wanting that the competition with which British shipowners had to contend in the past will again become active in the near future. The advantages conferred upon us by abundant supplies of iron and by cheap labour will not last for ever. There are many who expect, not without reason, that the abolition or even the diminution of protection in the United States will, when it comes to pass, have the same stimulating effect upon the American shipbuilding industry which the abolition of the old navigation laws had upon our own; and when that day comes Englishmen will find it an advantage to be able to enter the contest equipped with the best attainable technical education and experience. CHAPTER II. ANCIENT SHIPS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND RED SEAS.