The opening of the Americas and the East to trade and colonization resulted in an expansion of ship-building such as the world had never before known, an opportunity of which an oar-driven ship could never have taken advantage. Portugal, for a time—owing to her many colonial possessions, which now have largely faded away—became a great sea power, which, however, shortly suffered eclipse. Spain, despite the terrible catastrophe that befell her great Armada, remained a power of real strength for a century longer. The Dutch, those hardy sailors from the low countries, for many a year sailed to and from their East Indian possessions, proudly conscious of the fact that they were supreme upon the seas. And the French, although their strength at sea was never clearly supreme, nevertheless built navies and sailed ships second to none, or at the least, to none but Britain. But one by one these sovereigns of the seas gave up the place to another, and the 18th Century saw a new ruler of the waves, when Great Britain at last bested Napoleonic France at the Nile, at Aboukir, and at Trafalgar. By this time ships had grown greatly in size, and by the opening of the 19th Century the great three-decked line-of-battle ships were more than 200 feet in length, were 55 feet broad, and displaced 3,000 tons or more. Such a ship could not be termed small even in the light of ships of a century later. But the opening years of the 19th Century brought forward an invention which, laughed at and disdained by “wind-jammers” for half a century, proved, at last, despite their jeers, the force that swept from the sea all but a handful of the proud vessels that for nearly five thousand years had spread their sails to the winds of Heaven and had gone to the uttermost parts of the earth. A hundred years after the _Charlotte Dundas_ had churned the waters of the Forth and Clyde Canal and the _Clermont_ had splashed with her paddle-wheels the waters of the Hudson, sailing ships had become rare, romantic links to connect the modern world with that adventurous period that lay before the era of invention and machinery. With slow steps the 19th Century ushered in the recognition of the power of steam—a new departure in the history of the world. But ere five score years had passed, the wheels of factories whirred in deafening array, electric motors whined with endless energy, and huge propellers, spiralling through the deep green sea, drove great ocean-going palaces from continent to continent, careless of winter’s winds or summer’s sultry calms, all but thoughtless of the powers of nature which, since the dawn of history, had been the ruling thought of all of those who have ventured on the surface of the deep. CHAPTER II THE DEVELOPMENT OF SAILS