In ’22 M. Paixhans discharged his revolutionary treatise at the French nation, advocating, with a wealth of argument, a navy of steam-propelled warships armed with a few shell guns. Six years later a warning echo reverberated through Whitehall. Captain Sir John Ross published a volume on “Steam Navigation, with a System of the Naval Tactics peculiar to it,” in which, though his name was not mentioned, the arguments of M. Paixhans were set forth from an opposite point of view. The two books, starting with the same arguments, arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions. While Paixhans claimed that steam power offered important advantages to France, the English writer reached the gratifying conclusion that the change which steam would effect in naval affairs might be rendered favourable to this country. For coast defence alone steam vessels would be invaluable. The colonies would be safer from piracy. Passages, at present difficult or dangerous, would be made with speed and safety. Incidentally, an entirely new system of tactics would be evolved by the coming of steam; each ship-of-the-line would be escorted by a steam vessel, to tow her into position, and concentration of force would be obtained by such means as, harnessing two steamers to one sailing ship, so as to tow one half of the fleet to a position of vantage over the enemy. After the main action the steamers would themselves attack each other; and so on. Both French and English writers agreed that there would be a reversion to the ancient warfare of the galleys; the steamer, whose paddlewheels lent themselves readily to a pivot gun armament and to great powers of manœuvring, would always attack like a bull, facing the enemy, its bows presenting one or more large and well-protected cannon. Sir John Ross regarded the steamer, however, essentially as an auxiliary. M. Paixhans took a more sanguine view. “At this moment,” he wrote in May, ’22, “the English admiralty are building two steam vessels, each of thirty horsepower, one at Portsmouth and one at Plymouth, for tugging sailing ships held up by contrary winds. They commence by being the servitors of the ships-of-the-line; but it is their destiny to become their masters.”[143] But the views of Sir John Ross did not find favour at the Admiralty. In the presence of the revolution the authorities continued to steer a policy of passive resistance to all changes and methods which might have the effect of depreciating existing naval material; and Lord Melville himself penned, as a reply to the Colonial Office to a request for a steam mail service between two Mediterranean ports, the principle which guided the Board. They felt it their bounden duty (he wrote in 1828) to discourage, to the utmost of their ability, the employment of steam vessels, as they considered that the introduction of steam was calculated to strike a fatal blow at the naval supremacy of the Empire.[144][145]