Who repeats the names of the young officers who pleaded for Hobson's chance to risk his life in the hull and hell of the Merrimac? Who mentions the scores of seamen who begged to be of the immortal seven who were his companions in that forlorn hope? In the long watch before Santiago the terror of our great battleships was the two Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers, those swift, fiendish sharks of the sea, engines of death and destruction, and yet, when the great battle came, it was the unprotected Gloucester, a converted yacht, the former plaything and pleasure-boat of a summer vacation, which, without hesitation or turning, attacked these demons of the sea and sunk them both. I have always thought it the most heroic and gallant individual instance of fighting daring in the war. It was as if some light-clad youth, with no defence but his sword, threw himself into the arena with armored gladiators and by his dash and spirit laid them low. And yet who has given a sword or spread a feast to that purest flame of chivalrous heroism, Richard Wainwright? Who recalls all the still more varied services of our Navy--its exploits and researches in the interest of science, its stimulus to international commerce, its surveys in foreign harbors, its charting of the sea and marking of the pathway of the merchant marine, its study of the stars, its contributions--in short, to all the interests of an enlightened and progressive country? May I suggest, therefore, that with this broader view of our Navy, as not an outside conception of our institutions, but an integral part of them, it is a partial conception that criticises its recent development and its continued developments in the future? It has not only given dignity and variety of service and strength to your government, but think how it is linked in with all your industrial interests, with the employment of large bodies of labor, with the consumption of all sorts of material stimulating marine construction, building docks, and contributing to this business activity and prosperity which are the features of this thrifty town. It is not too much to predict that the development of our navy is the beginning also of a new era of our merchant marine, in maritime construction, and, hence, in maritime transportation, of the American bottom carrying the American flag again on all the oceans of the globe.