Thus regarded, Trafalgar becomes of somewhat secondary interest as regards the tremendous strategical questions involved, but of profound importance by reason of the side-issue that the _Victory’s_ forward bulkhead was so slightly built that she sustained an immense number of casualties which would never have occurred had she been designed for the particular purpose that Nelson used her for at Trafalgar. The tactics of Trafalgar have merely a literary and sentimental interest now, and even the strategies which led to the battle are probably of little utility to the strategists of our own times. But the _Victory’s_ thin forward bulkhead profoundly affected, and to some extent still affects, modern British naval construction. Trafalgar, of course, sanctified for many a year “end-on approach,” and so eventually concentrated special attention on bulkheads. But previous to Trafalgar, the return of the _Victory_ after it for refit, and Seppings’ inspection of her, the subject of end-on protection had been ignored. The cogitations of Seppings helped to make what would have very much influenced history had any similar battle occurred in the years that followed his constructional innovations. Again, at an earlier period much naval history turned upon the ventilation of bilges. Improvements in this respect (devised by men never heard of to-day) enabled British ships to keep the seas without their crews being totally disabled by diseases which often overmastered their foes. The skill of the admirals, the courage of the crews, both form more exciting reading. Yet there is every indication to prove that this commonplace matter of bilges was the secret of victory more than once! Coming back to more recent times, the loss of the _Vanguard_, which cost no lives, involved greater subsequent constructional problems than did the infinitely more terrible loss of the _Captain_ a few years before. Who shall say on how many seeming constructional failures of the past, successes of the yet unborn future may not rest? A number of other things might be cited, but these suffice to indicate the particular perspective of this book, and to show why, if regarded as an orthodox “history” of the British Navy, it is occasionally in seemingly distorted perspective. To say that in the scheme of this book the ship-builder is put in the limelight instead of the ship-user, would in no way be precisely correct, though as a vague generalisation it may serve well enough. In exact fact each, of course, is and ever has been dependent on the other. Nelson himself was curtailed by the limitations of the tools provided for him. Had he had the same problems one or two hundred years before he would have been still more limited. Had he had them fifty or a hundred years later--who shall say?