The reign of James II gave a still greater impetus to the English naval service. There was an improvement in administration and organisation generally, thanks partly to the personal inclination of James towards maritime matters, and partly to the lessons which he and others had learned during the Anglo-Dutch sea fights. But as to placing naval education on a sound basis, there was no such thing in England till the end of the Stuart period, although across the Channel the French were seeing to it that their sailors obtained not only a thoroughly practical, but also an adequate theoretical training. The English midshipman came aboard for his first cruise a complete landsman with no training. He managed to learn the rudiments of seamanship from the boatswain, and to get a smattering of elementary navigation; yet it was anything but a satisfactory training. There was little enough science in the sailor’s work, and hundreds of ships were wrecked through lack of proper instruments, until, in the year 1676, the founding of Greenwich Observatory enabled nautical astronomy to be developed to the great advantage of ships and men. Thanks to the English overseas colonies and the Newcastle colliers, to which Boteler refers in his famous “Dialogues,” published in 1685; to the numbers of other coasters; and last, but most important of all, to the long protracted Dutch wars which had taught many a greenhorn how to use the sea, there was a large and growing body of seamen, many of whose descendants were to fight under Rodney, Hawke, Jervis, Nelson, and other famous admirals at a later date. [Illustration: THE “ORTHOGRAPHICK SIMMETRYE” OF A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SHIP. Being another of “Mr. Dummer’s Draughts.”]