WHAT is a "Naval Brigade"? "Brigade" is a military term, and in our service an infantry brigade now consists of four battalions, with their head-quarters staff. Not long ago two battalions constituted a brigade. So that we see a brigade is the combination of a small number of complete units. In like manner a naval brigade is either, in the case of a single ship, a landing-force composed of her bluejackets and marines brigaded together, or, in the case of a fleet or squadron, of its various ships' companies. In a fleet of any size the naval brigade available for landing--if there was no chance of an attack by sea--might amount to two or three battalions formed out of seamen and stokers, and one of marines. It has frequently fallen to the lot of naval brigades to carry on a small campaign "on their own", but very often a naval brigade has been attached to an army on active service. A big book might be written on the services of British naval brigades, so that we cannot hope to do more than glance at a very few instances of their work in "soldiering on shore". "Naval Brigade", by the way, is not a very ancient term, though in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries we often find references to the employment of a "regiment" or "battalion" of seamen. This may possibly be because, although embarked as part complement of our men-of-war, the marines, who were in those times organized in regiments and not in one large corps, did not actually belong to the Admiralty, but to the War Office. They were landed together, if possible, in their own regiments, and became for the time being a part of the army, to which, in addition, a battalion of seamen--which, it is rather confusing to find, is sometimes referred to as a "marine regiment"--might often be attached. But seamen and marines were not in those times generally brigaded together, as they so frequently have been in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [Illustration: UNIFORMS OF THE BRITISH NAVY A. B. (Marching Order). 1st Class Petty Officer. Stoker.] Though for many a long day the sailor proper "had no use for soldiering", which he contemned as an inferior profession to his own, he was always a pretty useful man with the heavy gun. Naturally, if a man can make decent shooting with a weapon tossing about on an unstable platform, he finds it comparatively easy to hit his target on terra firma. One of the earliest references to the employment of seamen in operations on shore is at the siege of Leith--then held by French troops--in 1560. The town was beleaguered from seaward by the English fleet under Admiral Winter, and on the shore side by a combined English and Scots army; and in the list of troops detailed for an assault--which unfortunately proved unsuccessful--we find that the "Vyce-Admyralle of the Quene's Majestye's Schippes" was to furnish 500 men.