Admiralty, Barham, the First Lord of the Admiralty, instantly issued orders which profoundly modified the dispositions of the fleets engaged in blockading the French ports and led directly to Calder's action off Finisterre, and in the sequel to the abandonment by Napoleon of all his projects of invasion and the destruction of the allied fleets at Trafalgar. There were giants in those days both afloat and ashore. But the giants afloat did not resent the interference of the giants ashore, and, as Mr Corbett has shown, the Trafalgar campaign was conducted with consummate sagacity by Barham, who embodied in himself the War Staff of the time. Such is the transcendent importance of intelligence, and of its collection, transmission, collation, interpretation, and translation into supreme executive orders. Its collection and transmission is mainly the function of cruising ships disposed either individually or in small groups for the purpose, and at such a distance from the main body of battleships as is not incompatible with the movements of the latter being controlled and directed, either by their immediate commanders, or by the War Staff at the centre, according to the information received from the outlying cruisers. Such cruising vessels may vary in size and strength from the modern battle-cruiser, so heavily armed and armoured as to be not incapable of taking a place, on occasion, in the line of battle, down to the smallest torpedo craft which is endowed with sufficient enduring mobility to enable her to keep the sea and to cruise as near as may be to the enemy's ports. I have already indicated the other collateral functions which will have to be discharged by torpedo craft in case of a blockade and pointed out the vital distinction which differentiates them from the small craft of the past in that in certain circumstances they are capable of taking a formidable part in a fleet action even as against the most powerful battleships. But we are here considering them solely from the point of view of their cruising functions, whether as guarding their own shores or watching those of the enemy with a view to fighting on occasion and to observation at all times. Their supports will be cruisers of larger size, disposed at suitable distances in the rear, and themselves supported in like manner by successive cordons or patrols of cruisers increasing in size and power, until we come to the battle fleet as the concentrated nucleus of the whole organization. This is merely an abstract or diagrammatic exposition of such an organization, and it is of course liable to almost infinite variation in the infinite variety of warlike operations at sea, but it serves to exhibit the _rationale_ of the differentiation of naval force into battleships, cruisers, and small craft.