Although no great naval battles have taken place to test the power of the steam navy of Britain, it has been occasionally demonstrated in the form of object lessons. The great Jubilee review of 1887 was a magnificent spectacle, when there were assembled at Spithead 135 ships of war, fully armed and manned, and ready to assert Britain’s sovereignty on the high seas. Two years later the exhibition was repeated in the presence of admiring Royalty. In January, 1896, shortly after President Cleveland’s threatening message to Congress, and while strained relations with Germany had arisen out of complications in South Africa, in an incredibly short space of time the famous “flying squadron” was mobilized and made ready for sea and any emergency that might transpire, without at all encroaching on the strength of the ordinary Channel fleet. The recent naval review in connection with Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, however, surpassed any previous display of the kind, not alone as a spectacular event, but as a telling demonstration of sea-power, such as no other nation possesses. On this occasion 166 British steamships of war were ranged in line extending to thirty miles in length, and this without withdrawing a single ship from a foreign station; the only regret expressed on this occasion being that not one of the old “wooden walls” was there with towering masts and billowy clouds of canvas to bring to mind the days and deeds of yore, and to emphasize the remarkable changes introduced by steam. The following table published by the London _Graphic_ exhibits in convenient form the numerical strength of the British navy at the beginning of 1897: