lay down arms; open your hatches, haul down all sails and furl them. Loose the lashings, and we will sheer off and hoist out our boats; but if you offer to fire or make sail again, expect no quarter for your lives." Boats are then lowered, and the captain, officers, and part of the crew of the prize taken on board the young beginner's ship. So much for the attack and capture of a vessel at sea in those days. In case, however, "the reader be curious to learn" something of the measures taken by merchantmen in Rogers' time to beat off an enemy, he is referred to "Defensive Sea Fighting" in Park's "Art of Fighting in Merchant Ships." From the "Table of Gunnery" given below it would seem that our ancestors' guns were stronger or their powder weaker than ours, the weight of a charge of powder given in it in some cases exceeding half the weight of the shot:-- A TABLE OF GUNNERY. -------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------- | Weight | Weight | Weight | Range | Range | of Gun. | of Shot. | of | Point | Extreme. | | | Powder. | blank. | -------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------- | lbs. | lbs. oz. | lbs. oz. | yards. | yards. Cannon Royal | 8,000 | 58 0 | 23 0 | 300 | 3,000 Demi-cannon | 5,200 | 32 0 | 15 0 | 300 | 3,000 24 Pounder | 4,800 | 24 0 | 11 0 | 300 | 3,000 12 Pounder | 3,000 | 12 0 | 8 0 | 295 | 2,900 Saker | 1,500 | 5 4 | 4 0 | 250 | 2,500 Faucon | 750 | 2 8 | 1 8 | 200 | 2,000 -------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------- SOME OBSERVATIONS ON FINDING THE LONGITUDE AT SEA. For want of correct timekeepers, a ship's longitude was, in the time of Queen Anne and for some time afterwards, an unsolved problem. But in the "Compleat Modern Navigator's Tutor, or The whole art of Navigation," published by one Joshua Kelly, of "Broad Street Wapping near Wapping New-stairs," in 1720, we are taught "five of the most rational ways of finding it." The learner is advised, however, "not to confide too much in them, or to omit any of the methods of a sea journal or other precautions to preserve a ship when she nears land." Among these methods eclipses of the moon and Jupiter's satellites of course come first. But of the first of these methods we are told that "it would be accurate and useful if we could have an eclipse of the moon every night," and of the second, that "the impractibility of managing a telescope twelve or fourteen feet long in the tossing rolling motion of a ship at sea, surrounds it with difficulties scarce to be remedy'd."