The first sixty or seventy years of the nineteenth century saw the art of the seaman at its highest state of perfection. There was never anything to equal it either before or since in the achievements rendered by the sailors who manned the famous “wooden walls” of Nelson’s time, who took the stately East Indiaman backwards and forwards with so much ceremony and safety, or hurried along the tea clipper at a continuous rate which has never since been surpassed by any fleet of sail-propelled ships. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were royal dockyards at Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Deptford, Woolwich, and Sheerness; and here His Majesty’s ships were generally moored in the piping times of peace. The first three of these yards were governed by a resident commissioner, who superintended all the musters of the officers, artificers, and labourers employed in the dockyard. He controlled the payments, examined the accounts, contracts, etc., and generally regulated the dockyard. Large ships, such as those mighty wooden walls which could carry a hundred guns, were usually built in dry dock, with strong flood gates to prevent the tide from coming in. When the time came for launching, and it was spring tides, the gates were opened and the ship floated out. But small craft, such as frigates and corvettes, were built on the slips, and then launched by means of a cradle which sped down the ways, the latter having been previously greased with soap or tallow. [Illustration: LAUNCHING A MAN-OF-WAR IN THE YEAR 1805.] The oak of which these craft were built usually came from the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, and the New Forest, Hants. But as ships were built out in the open, the weather got into the wood and rotted it, so that sometimes a ship was condemned before she was ever put in commission; and, in any case, the life of some wooden walls was under ten years. Others lasted for a long period, as, for instance, Nelson’s _Victory_, which was built in the year 1765. The method of building was curiously medieval, and almost Viking-like in its simplicity. The timbers were secured by treenails to the planking. They were preferred to spike-nails or bolts, as the latter were liable to rust with the sea water and get loose. The thickness of the treenail was proportioned to the length of the ship, one inch being allowed to every hundred feet. In the Royal Navy and in the East India Service ships were always sheathed with copper to protect the hull against worms. The copper was quite thin, brown paper being inserted between the sheathing and the oak. Other ships than these two classes had thin deal boards nailed over the outside of the bottom for the same purpose.