With the expansion of merchant shipping and with the recognition of artillery as the main instrument of naval warfare fighting ships made a corresponding advance in size. The Commission of Reform of 1618, on whose report the subsequent reorganization of the Navy was based, held that the primacy of the big gun had at last been established. “Experience teacheth,” the Commissioners recorded, “how sea-fights in these days come seldom to boarding, or to great execution of bows, arrows, small shot and the sword, but are chiefly performed by the great artillery breaking down masts, yards, tearing, raking, and bilging the ships, wherein the great advantage of His Majesty’s navy must carefully be maintained by appointing such a proportion of ordnance to each ship as the vessel will bear.” They recognized the extravagance of small ships, and advised that in future the royal navy should consist of a nucleus of about thirty large ships, which with the merchant fleet should form one complete service; royal ships of over 800 tons; great ships of over 600 tons; middling ships of about 450 tons. They also formulated the chief requirements of naval construction in considerable detail. This pontifical pronouncement on ship dimensions was doubtless of value in connection with the contemporary project to which their work had reference; nevertheless it formed a dangerous precedent for future administrations. It shackled the genius of the shipbuilder. It degraded design. The ship, especially the timber-built sailing warship, was essentially a compromise between a number of conflicting elements. To obtain full value from his skill the designer required as free as possible a choice of means to his end; and any over-drawing of the specification, or surplusage of data beyond the barest requirements, tended to tie his hands and render impossible a satisfactory design. It was this over-specifying of dimensions in the interests of standardization which, as we shall presently see, stultified shipbuilding in England not only in the seventeenth but throughout the whole of the eighteenth century.