for the honour of controlling the ships which maintain the country’s life-giving trade. In the time of the Elizabethans, before the East India Company; in the Spanish and Portuguese and Venetian trade supremacies, the pick of the nation were engaged in overseas commerce; and in the twentieth century, when so much technical knowledge, so much responsible capability are required of a man, none but the best types of officers and men should be accepted or offered. Permanent employment, good pay, pride in ship and service, high standard of accommodation, and the most careful selection of candidates will go a long way towards bringing about this desired end. In the olden days the sailor was a very gallant fellow, whose job it was to go aloft and lay out along a yard and handsail in the foulest weather. At sea he was heroic; on shore he was often a drunken reprobate. Things have altered. The modern shipman is just as gallant, as we know from his exploits afloat during the war. But he is better educated, uses his head more and his fists less. He reads and thinks and reasons for himself, and if he knows nothing of the old seafaring, he is highly skilled in the working of the hundreds of wonderful appliances which are essential to the modern merchant ship. To him the shore is not always symbolical of debauch. He is better treated than his ancestors, and his undoubted rights have begun to be respected. The result is that there is a general improvement going on through the Mercantile Marine not merely in regard to the ships themselves, but in the personnel. The romance of the sailing-ship days has to be merged to-day in the bigger romance of sea-borne trade. It is ridiculous to say, as one lecturer recently stated, that the Mercantile Marine has no fine traditions like the Navy, and therefore there is no enthusing force at the back of it. To make such a statement—and I regret to say that it was uttered by a distinguished merchant ship captain—is to be ignorant of sea history. During the recent war, during all the previous wars, through the ages of peace, back and back as far as we have any records, you will find the marine merchantman doing fine things, piling up the finest traditions. If that is not so, the whole purpose of this volume has been missed. I have endeavoured to show what the Mercantile Marine has done for the world throughout time in all kinds of ships. Sailors are a conservative race, and there is at heart very little difference between the best of each century. To them we all owe more than we can ever repay or even realise.