Cowes, notwithstanding its appearance of, shall we say, possible antiquity, is not an “old, ancient place,” such as many of the more western and more eastern seaports along the coast. It may be said to date its origin as a town from the year 1540, when Henry VIII erected, out of the materials of Beaulieu Abbey across the water on the skirts of the forest, one of the numerous protective castles which he dotted along the south coast. The growth of the place, however, must have been slow, as more than a century later, in the reign of Charles I, we are told that the town consisted of but some half score of small houses. The usefulness and possibilities of its harbour were (if we may accept the evidence of another authority) long before this discovered, so that in the early years of the seventeenth century “sometimes as many as two or three hundred vessels of all kinds and sizes were to be seen at anchor off it at one and the same time.” Cowes was destined to become a shipbuilding port of some consequence in the days just prior to and during the Napoleonic Wars. From the Cowes yards, amongst other ships too numerous to mention, were launched the _Repulse_ and _Veteran_, each carrying sixty-four guns, Nelson’s old ship, the _Vanguard_, the _Cerberus_, thirty-two guns; the _Hero_, and many another. In the year of Waterloo the first building yards of any great consequence for pleasure craft were started by Messrs White, who have, since those far off days, sent many a swift and successful yacht afloat. The necessity for such a dock as the Medina, made in 1845, measuring some 330 feet in length and 60 feet in width, will give an idea of the importance of the shipbuilding industry of Cowes in the past as well as the present. But though, with the rise of yachting into popularity, Cowes may be said to have rapidly come to the front as “a resort of fashion and frivolity,” long ere this, about the middle of the eighteenth century, it was attracting attention as a sea-bathing station, almost rivalling Weymouth. A poet of sorts ventured to affirm-- No more to foreign baths shall Britons roam, But plunge at Cowes, and find rich health at home. And in the early years of the nineteenth century there were a good many bathers amongst the aristocracy frequenting the place and neighbourhood. Cowes, however, nowadays is scarcely a sea-bathing resort of particular note.