This ruined shrine Whence worship ne’er shall rise again:— The owl and bat inhabit here The snake nests in the altar stone, The sacred vessels moulder near— The image of the god is gone! Fallen indeed from its high estate of former days is the ancient royal establishment of “Navy-building town.” Where bluff King Hal used to walk and talk with Matthew Baker’s father, “old honest Jem”; where our sixth Edward paid a long-remembered visit, to be “banketted” (as the royal spelling has it) and see two men-of-war go off the ways; where Elizabeth knighted Francis Drake, and James and Charles rode down in state on many a gala day; where Cromwell paid his second naval visit—his “grandees” attending him, and escort of clanking Ironsides—to see the vindictively named _Naseby_ take the water; where our second Charles liked to saunter on occasion with Rupert at his side, and chattering Pepys and John Evelyn in his train; where James the Second, dull and morose of mood, for the sands of his monarchy were already running out, paid his last historic visit one gloomy autumn afternoon of 1688; where brave old Benbow liked best to spend the mornings of his half-pay life on shore, and Captain Cook set out on his last voyage; where George the Third drove down with Queen Charlotte to do honour to the naming of a _Prince of Wales_ man-of-war; where, too, Royalty of our own time has more than once visited—is now “a market for the landing, sale, and slaughtering of foreign cattle.” The glory has departed—the image of the god is gone! * * * * * The _Dreadnought_ and _Swiftsure_ and the two smaller ships were masted and rigged and completed for service during November and the early days of December, after which, with the help of a hundred and fifty extra hands, “prested in ye river of Theames for ye transportyngs about,” they set off on the twentieth of the month to join the fleet lying “in ordinary” in the Medway—an eight days’ voyage as it proved, owing to squally weather and an east wind. The Queen was to have seen the _Dreadnought_ and her squadron pass the palace at Greenwich and salute the royal standard with cannon and a display of masthead flags, as was the Tudor naval usage when the sovereign was in residence, but there had been a domestic misadventure at Placentia just a few days before. While talking with her maids of honour one afternoon, one of the Queen’s ladies—“the Mother of the Maids”—had suddenly dropped dead in the royal presence, and the Court had hastily removed to Whitehall. So the _Dreadnought_ had no royal standard to salute. Three days after Christmas the Deptford squadron took up their moorings in “Jillingham water.”