With many an old Sailor, on many an old ship, Who hoisted out many a barrel onto many an old slip, And went below to his hammock or to a can of flip Like an old Sailor of the Queen's And the Queen's old Sailor. With many an old brave captain we shall never know, Who walked the decks under the colours when the winds did blow, And made the planks red with his blood before they carried him below Like an old Sailor of the Queen's And the Queen's old Sailor. And in Davy Jones's Taverns may they sit at ease, With their old tarpaulin aprons over their old knees, Singing their old sea ballads and yarning of the seas Like good old Sailors of the Queen's And the Queen's old Sailors. --From _A Sailor's Garland_, edited by John Masefield. THE FLEETS BEHIND THE FLEET A MARITIME NATION I built the ships and I sailed the ships, and they lie in my havens fair, With the sea-god's salt on their crusted plates and the green of the sea nymph's hair; I built the ships and I sailed the ships, on the slack and the flowing tide; Will ye match my skill in the hulls I build on the narrow seas or wide? Will ye match my men from the oceans five, or better the work of their hands From the books that are writ or the tales that are told, the tales of the hundred lands? Cease to think of Britain's naval power in terms of battleships and cruisers and you begin to understand it. Think of it rather in terms of trade routes and navigation, of ship and dockyards, of busy ports and harbours, of a deeply indented coast line, 7,000 miles in length; of great rivers flowing into wide estuaries; of liners and tramps; weatherly east coast trawlers and burly Penzance luggers; of ancient fishing villages looking out from every bay and rocky inlet. Built by nature to be the home of a maritime people, inhabited by the descendants of sea-faring races, accessible only from other lands by water, every stone in the British Isles is fitted into a geographical foundation. Not many of us know it but we are none the less children of the sea and live by it. We are its captives and masters, imprisoned by it and forcing it to serve our needs. In the language daily on our lips are phrases salt as the ocean itself--we "make headway" and "weather a difficulty"; we are "taken aback," or "out of soundings" or have "the wind taken out of our sails," or discern "rocks ahead," or find "another shot in the locker." To the people who made this language the sea has been the "nursing mother." View it thus, and the Royal Navy becomes no more than a symbol, the expression of a peculiar national life. Science may think of it as the tough exterior hide, the armour, like that of the dinosaurus, with which nature in the process of evolution provides her mightiest creatures. It is in fact simply