As the ports of Great Britain are now free to the vessels of all nations, it will be my duty to explain the nature of the navigation laws of Cromwell and of the reciprocity treaties of Huskisson, and to show how, step by step, all barriers to free navigation have been removed. The fallacy of endeavouring to enrich ourselves by the ruin of our neighbours will be exposed, and, from the experience of the past, I shall hope to inculcate lessons of use for the future. Ample materials are to be found for the elucidation of most of these subjects, and there can be no excuse to plead, beyond my own incapacity, if I fail to produce a work which shall hereafter be useful for reference, especially with regard to the merchant vessels of modern times. Though the enterprising traders of Tyre extended their commercial intercourse to all parts of the Mediterranean and even to the Northern and the Erythræan Seas, yet her merchants, “who were princes,” and her traffickers, who were “the great men of the earth,” have left no records of their vast commerce, nor of the vessels which were engaged in it. No mercantile man appears to have written an account of how he conducted his trade, or given to posterity a drawing of his ship; nor, indeed, to have recorded anything relating to the great maritime state to which he belonged. Our limited knowledge of Tyre is derived therefore almost exclusively from other sources. If these early navigators had taken one-half the pains to transmit to posterity the sum of their acquired knowledge, practical and historical, which the Egyptians have done, a vast amount of information would have been added to the science of ancient navigation and commerce. Unfortunately, almost every vestige of Phœnicia has been swept away, a significant example that the most extended commerce, enjoyed by a purely trading people, cannot alone save them from eventual insignificance and oblivion. In concluding these introductory remarks, I may be fairly permitted to indulge the hope that, from the vast stores of knowledge bequeathed to us, we may leave more lasting records of our maritime commerce than either Tyre or Carthage, and that the improved civilization and extensive colonial possessions of Great Britain may render her pre-eminence at sea and her commercial greatness much more enduring than the once celebrated maritime city of the Phœnicians, which has become “a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea,” and “a spoil to the nations.” [Sidenote: The first attempt to float, by means of a hollowed log, and raft.]