Copper and gilt ornamentations were added to the end of the bowsprit on Henry VIII’s ships, says Mr. Oppenheim, whilst gilt crowns for the mastheads had been the practice for centuries. Before going into action a ship would sometimes coil her cable round the deck breast high and hang thereon mattresses and blankets as a kind of protection. And here we must say a word concerning the development of naval tactics. As in other maritime departments, so in regard to this England owed a great deal to Spanish influence. Naval warfare in the Mediterranean was already a science, and learned treatises had been written thereon. If the Spaniards were not a race of seamen by nature, at least they had developed the scientific side of the sailor’s life in advance of the English. The awakening from medievalism in marine matters which had spread to our own shores not unnaturally aroused an interest in the proper manner of controlling a fleet. The earliest set of fleet orders in English was that which appeared about the year 1530, written by Thomas Audley, and still preserved in a Harleian MS. This Thomas Audley wrote “A Book of Orders for the War both by Land and Sea,” at the command of Henry VIII. In effect these orders are the final expression of English medieval ideas before the introduction of artillery and the practice of broadside fire had started a new school of modern tactics. Audley’s fleet orders, based on the practice of previous centuries, insisted on the importance of getting the weather-gage of the enemy, laid down how to board an enemy--boarding in those days meaning, of course, engaging him in combat alongside--and denoted the sphere of an admiral’s action. In 1543 appeared the “Book of War by Sea and Land,” written by Jehan Bytharne, Gunner in Ordinary to the King. This contained a number of regulations for governing the fleet, for ornamenting and painting the ships, and for the use of flags both for celebrating a triumph and--this is important--for the purpose of signalling, as, for example, informing the flagship when the enemy had been espied. Bear in mind that in the Spanish Navy flag signalling had, following the Spanish advance towards science, become already a fine art. It is true that even in England this had been in vogue for centuries, and the earliest code is to be found in the “Black Book of the Admiralty,” and dates from about 1340. But the Spanish system was less crude and elementary.