Our first _Sandwich_ broke the French line at the battle of La Hogue, and lost her gallant captain in doing it. Another bore Rodney’s flag in five battles—two with the Spaniards and three with the French—and was at the first relief of Gibraltar during the Great Siege. Our first _Dover_ was present at the taking of Jamaica. Another won fame as Captain Cloudesley Shovell’s ship. Commodore Trunnion served on board another _Dover_, if Smollett spoke by the card in making him express a wish to be buried “in the red jacket which I wore when I boarded the _Renummy_.” Apart from the taking of Louis the Fifteenth’s frigate _Renommée_, if we count in other French and Spanish frigates and privateers taken, our various _Dovers_, in their time, must have brought home captured flags enough to deck the town out from end to end. All, of course, have long since rotted out of existence. People in old times set little store by such trophies. “What are you going to do with all these flags?” a friend once asked of a frigate captain who, in his barge, gaily decorated from bows to stern with the colours of ships taken during the commission, was being pulled in from Spithead to land at the old Sally Port, Portsmouth. “Do with them?” came the reply. “Why, take ’em home and hang ’em on the trees round father’s garden.” It was a _Chatham_ whose twenty-four pounders, one May morning, just a hundred and forty-eight years ago, gave the Royal Navy our first, and the original, “Saucy” _Arethusa_. One _Maidstone_ fought with Blake at Santa Cruz de Teneriffe. Another, acting as “guide of the fleet,” led Hawke to victory on that stormy November afternoon among the reefs of Quiberon Bay, which the French Navy, pillorying the memory of its unfortunate admiral, has ever since called “la journée de M. Conflans.” A _Greenwich_ fought at La Hogue, and was one of Benbow’s squadron in his last fight. One _Deptford_ was also at La Hogue, and another with Byng off Minorca, where the _Deptford_, at any rate, did her duty. A _Romney_, in Queen Anne’s war, after a career of distinction, went down with all on board to westward of St. Agnes, Scilly, on the night of the catastrophe to Sir Cloudesley Shovell. _Rochester_, and _Medway_, and _Sheerness_, are also man-of-war names that have attaching to them interesting memories of the fighting days of old, as have too, in one way or other, in differing degrees, the remaining names of the group, _Woolwich_ and _Faversham_, _Eltham_ and _Deal Castle_, _Margate_, _Queenborough_, and _Folkestone_. * * * * * Our modern-day cruiser the _Kent_ has her own story also as a man-of-war, a notable and interesting historic reputation of her own, to uphold. This summary will give its points, the “battle honours” which the _Kent_ would be entitled to bear on her ship’s flag were our ships authorized to follow the practice of the army in regard to regimental flags. H.M.S. _KENT_.