1853} 45,500 -- -- 1856}Russian War -- 76,000 -- 1857} -- -- 53,000 1914}The Present War 146,000 -- -- 1918} -- 450,000 -- "It appears at once from these figures that the naval expansion during earlier wars was in most cases much greater proportionately than it has been in this. Roughly the personnel in this war has been multiplied by three; in earlier wars it was increased six, seven, eight, or even nine fold, if we take the difference between the figures for 1792 and 1812. "It is a common error to suppose that our ships in the old wars were manned entirely by seamen. A knowledge of how the men were raised shows that this cannot have been so; and confirmation can be had from a very brief study of ships' muster books. Only about a third of the crew of a line-of-battle ship were, in the seaman's phrase, 'prime seamen.' The rest were either only partly trained or were frankly not sailor men. The _Victory_ at Trafalgar was not an ill-manned ship--here is an analysis of her crew: officers, commissioned and warrant, 28; petty officers, including marines, 63; able seamen, 213; ordinary seamen and boys, 225; landsmen, 86; marines, 137; artificers, 18; quarter gunners, 12; supernumeraries and domestics, 37. "During the whole of our naval history down to 1815 it was the invariable rule that in peace time the battle fleets were laid up unmanned, and only enough ships were kept in commission to 'show the flag' and to police the sea. This accounts for the very large increase of the naval personnel which immediately became necessary when there was a threat of war; and it accounts also for the difficulty which was always experienced in raising the men. This difficulty was even greater than we are apt to suppose, for the Merchant Service has never been able to give the navy more than a fraction of the total number of men needed, and the machinery for raising extra men has, until this war, always been of a most primitive nature.