Everywhere the Royal Navy has proved itself worthy, nay, more than worthy, of its gallant ancestors and their gallant deeds. To quote Lord Charles Beresford, in a letter written to the London Chamber of Commerce: "The brilliant work of the Navy in clearing the North Sea and providing safety for the transport to France of their comrades in the sister service will be gratefully appreciated by the country. Such work could only have been effective by superb organization, loyalty to duty, and discipline, requiring not only caution but courage. The watching fleets of the present day have none of the charm and change to occupy their mind which accompanied the sailing-ship navy, making and shortening sail, trimming sails, tacking, and wearing, necessary for cruising on the look-out. There were no air-vessels, mines, submarines, or torpedoes in the old days, no under-water warfare. The strain upon officers and men of the sea-going fleet in these days is terrific: nothing to occupy their thoughts as in the days of sailing-ships." But with all this we know what the navy has done, and we know that it will never be found wanting. Only let us all try to emulate the spirit of thoroughness and devotion to duty which has made our navy what it is; let us all try to "do our bit", however small, and, in those inspired words of our great poet Shakespeare which we should always bear in mind-- "Nought shall England rue, If England to herself do prove but true". PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN _At the Villafield Press, Glasgow, Scotland_ * * * * * Transcriber's note: Obvious punctuation errors were corrected. The text uses both warships and war-ships. This, and other varied hyphenation, was retained. The text uses both Zeebrügge and Zeebrugge. The remaining corrections made are listed below. Page 6 and also on actual illustration near 192, the hyphen was removed from BLUE-JACKETS to reflect the many uses in the text. Page 44, "Mont-joie's" changed to "Mont-Joie's" (of the _Mont-Joie's_ passengers) Page 105, "intollerable" changed to "intolerable" (too intolerable to suffer the) Page 107, "ther" changed to "their" (written over to their) Page 130, "Greite" changed to "Griete" (_Dulle Griete_ or "Mad Marjery") Page 172, "fforged" changed to "forged" (forged cases to be shot) Page 182, "cassion" changed to "caisson" (caisson at least 17) Page 238, illustration caption, "Blucher" changed to "Blücher" (fate of the _Blücher_ in) Page 245, "markmanship" changed to "marksmanship" (was the marksmanship of her) Page 295, footnote 103, number of footnote added to citation. Footnote text: (Published in _The Sphere_)