That the American vessels showed a marked superiority in point of speed over British men-of-war and merchant ships during these two wars is the more remarkable from the fact that frigates had been built in England for a century and a half, as we have seen, and, while it is true that two vessels for the British Government were built at Portsmouth previous to the Revolutionary War--the _Faulkland_, fifty-four guns, in 1690, and the _America_, fifty guns, in 1740--still, at the outbreak of the Revolution, the shipwrights of America scarcely knew what a frigate was, and much less had thought of building one. It had been the policy of Great Britain to keep her American colonies as much as possible in ignorance concerning naval affairs, doubtless from fear of their growing ambition. They were therefore led to copy the models of French vessels, not only from choice, on account of their excellence, but from necessity as well. Thus it came about that the frigates of Great Britain and the United States were developed from the same source. A sailing ship is an exceedingly complex, sensitive, and capricious creation--quite as much so as most human beings. Her coquetry and exasperating deviltry have been the delight and despair of seamen’s hearts, at least since the days when the wise, though much-married, Solomon declared that among the things that were too wonderful for him and which he knew not, was “the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.” While scientific research has increased since Solomon’s time, it has not kept pace with the elusive character of the ship, for no man is able to tell exactly what a ship will or will not do under given conditions. Some men, of course, know more than others, yet no one has ever lived who could predict with accuracy the result of elements in design, construction, and rig. History abounds in instances of ships built for speed that have turned out dismal failures, and it has occasionally happened that ships built with no especial expectation of speed have proven fliers. It would seem, after ages of experience and evolution, that man should be able at last to build a sailing ship superior in every respect to every other sailing ship, but this is exactly what he cannot and never has been able to accomplish. A true sailor loves a fine ship and all her foibles; he revels in the hope that if he takes care of her and treats her fairly, she will not fail him in the hour of danger, and he is rarely disappointed. While all this is true in the abstract, yet it is not difficult to account for the performance of ships in retrospect, and in this particular matter, the superior speed of American frigates during the two wars with the mother country, it is quite easy to do so.