After the peace of 1674 the navy sank into inefficiency. The French navy, on the other hand, ascended in power with an extraordinary rapidity. By 1681 it had expanded so much under the fostering care of M. Colbert that it comprised no fewer than one hundred and fifteen ships of the line. In design, as apart from construction, French ships were superior to ours. In size especially they had an advantage, being universally larger than British ships of the same artillery force: an advantage based on the law, known to our own shipbuilders but never applied, that _the greater the dimensions of a ship, relatively to the weight she has to carry, the better she will sail_. So superior were some French ships which visited Spithead seen to be, that in imitation of them Sir Anthony Deane was ordered to design and build the _Harwich_; and from the plans of this ship nine others were ordered by parliament, the class constituting the greatest advance in naval architecture of that time. But this departure from precedent had little effect. In dimensions as compared with tonnage we continued parsimonious. In the face of French experience we cramped our ships to the requirements of the faulty “establishments”; and until the end of the century no increase in size took place except in the case of some ships laid down in the year 1682, when the threat of a war with Louis XIV not improbably caused them to be constructed on a more extensive scale than had ever before been in practice. In another respect our ships were inferior in design to those of our chief rivals: in the extreme degree of “tumble home” given to their sides. Adhering to ancient practice in this particular, in order to obtain advantages which have already been mentioned, we suffered increasingly serious disadvantages. The sides of our ships were so convex that, when sailing on a wind, every wave was guided upward to the upper deck, thereby keeping the crew continually wet. The deck space required for the efficient working of the sails was contracted. Moreover, ships having this high degree of convexity were more easily overset than were wall-sided ships. This exaggerated convexity had a striking effect on one feature of our construction, viz. the manner in which we affixed the chain-plates, to which the shrouds were secured, in a low position on the curve of the hull; while Holland and France raised them to a more convenient height--over the upper tier of guns, in their two-decked ships. On the other hand the horizontal lines of our ships were (in the absence of science) cleverly moulded. The after lines in particular were well suited for supporting the stern and at the same time allowing a free run of water to the rudder; other nations, overlooking the importance of this part of the vessel, adhered to the old-fashioned square tuck and stern which was a chief but unappreciated factor of the resistance to the passage of the vessel through water.