All of this merely means that good judgment, based upon experience and compiled information, is about the most valuable bit of sea-going equipment that the deep-sea small-boat sailor can have. Nor does that apply only to small-boat sailors. Nor, again, is it always necessary for the sailor, merely because his boat is small, to feel that he must stay in port in heavy weather or founder if it come upon him while he is on the sea. Not by such a doctrine have the fishermen of Gloucester made for themselves the reputation that they have. Summer and winter they take their schooners out to the Grand Banks and live out the greatest storms that try those storm-tossed waters. From the deck of a 50-foot Gloucester fisherman I have seen the seas tower high before her bow, seemingly about to crush the craft, and have seen the mighty troughs, which, from the crests of the great seas, seemed abysmal in their depth, yet did the little vessel ride through them without so much as a splintered rail. These schooners come in loaded with fish and often encrusted with ice. It is true that their sails are sometimes split, their masts sometimes swept overboard. Yet is the fatality among such vessels light, despite the fact that they face most of the storms that blow each winter on the Banks. Had it not been that small boats can safely sail the seas it is difficult to see how we ever could have arrived at the era of great ships. Ancient history tells us of ships that, at least until the prime of Greece and Rome, could not by any stretch of the imagination be called large. Yet the old ships of the Phœnicians sailed, even before the days of Greece, all over the Mediterranean, out into the Atlantic, as far north as the English Channel, at least, and on one occasion, around Africa. Then came Greece, and ships grew somewhat in size. Then Rome appeared, and ships grew larger still, although most of them still were small, as always. By the time of Caligula (37-41 A. D.) Roman shipwrights had greatly increased the size of their large ships, as is proved by a ship now resting on the bottom of Lake Nemi in Italy. During and following the Dark Ages ships had again become small, and only gradually did they enlarge. Even by the time of the Spanish Armada a ship of 1,000 tons was considered huge. Yet such ships, as I said, were considered very large, not more than a handful of the more than three hundred ships in the Armada and the British fleet opposing it approaching such a measurement, and hardly more than three or four exceeding it. Among the 197 British ships that opposed the Armada but seven were more than 600 tons. [Illustration: A HUDSON RIVER STEAMER _The passenger steamers of the Hudson are large, speedy, and are capable of carrying thousand of excursionists._]