In 1417, large ships known as “Dromons” were built at Southampton, and bought for the Crown, but these were more of the nature of “Royal Yachts” than warships. The principal British naval base at and about this period was at Calais, of which, at the time of the War of the Roses, the Earl of Warwick was the governor. The first act of the Regency of Henry VI was to sell by auction such ships as had been bought for the Crown under Henry V. The duty of keeping the Channel free from pirates was handed over to London merchants, who were paid a lump sum to do this, but did not do it at all effectively. Edward IV made some use of a Fleet to secure his accession, or later restoration. Richard III would seem to have realised the utility of a Fleet, and during his short reign he did his best to begin a revival of “the Navy” by buying some ships, which, however, he hired out to merchants for trade purposes; and so, at the critical moment, he had apparently nothing available to meet the mild over-sea expedition of Henry of Richmond. So--right up to _comparatively_ recent times--there was never any Royal Navy in the proper meaning of the word, nor even any organised attempt to create an equivalent, except on the part of those two Kings who we are always told were the worst Kings England ever had--John and Richard III. Outside these two, there is not the remotest evidence that anyone ever dreamed of “naval power,” “sea power,” or anything of the sort, till Henry VII became King of England, and founded the British Navy on the entirely unromantic principle that it was a financial economy. Such was the real and prosaic birth of the British Navy in relatively recent times. It was made equally prosaic in 1910 by Lord Charles Beresford, when he said, “Battleships are cheaper than war.” There is actually no poetry about the British Navy. There never has been--it will be all the better for us if there never is. It is merely a business-like institution founded to secure these islands from foreign invasion. Dibden in his own day, Kipling in ours, have done their best to put in the poetry. It has been pretty and nice and splendid. But over and above it all I put the words of a stoker whose name I never knew, “It’s just this--do your blanky job!” That is the real British Navy. Henry VII did not create this watchword, nor anyone else, except perhaps Nelson. III. THE TUDOR PERIOD AND BIRTH OF A REGULAR NAVY.