After scudding before the storm, the weather at last eased up. Then the ship set her foresail and mainsail and hove-to, and finally set the mizzen, main-topsail and fore-topsail, and with the wind S.W. ran a course E.N.E. Then they “got the starboard tacks aboard” and headed S.S.E. “We cast off our weather braces and lifts. We set in the lee braces and hauled forward by the weather bowlines and hauled them tight and belayed them, and hauled over the mizzen tack to windward and kept her full-and-by as near as she could lie.” That is to say, the ship was now trimmed to sail on a wind, the bowlines, which were connected by bridles to the leech of the sail, being used to keep the weather edge well hauled out tight, to make the canvas set properly. The mizzen, of course, was still a triangular, fore and aft sail. Finally on June 3, 1703, a boy on the topmast sighted land. It is a little difficult in this highly specialised twentieth century to appreciate the slight difference which existed between a merchant ship and a man-of-war. Between the men of the Merchant Service and those of the Navy there was thus little to choose. From the Elizabethan days most merchant ships of any size had to be armed for their own defence. Moreover the merchantman was as much privateer or pirate as he was freighter. He had to be a fighting man, whatever else he might be. Thus there was always at hand a reserve of crews which could be “imprest” into the Navy. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century the merchants were paying their crews thirty shillings a month, whilst the men in the Royal ships were receiving less than half this amount. The result was that for a time the merchant ships attracted the best seamen. It was from the Merchant Service that some of the most distinguished officers of the Royal Navy graduated. Admiral Benbow, for instance, had been an apprentice in the Merchant Service, and was eventually given command of a naval ship such as was usually given to a lieutenant. He was promoted later to captain and to flag rank. This caused jealousy and bad feeling, and the reader will remember that this Admiral, when attacking the enemy in 1702 in the West Indies, was basely deserted by some of his captains, but he carried on a running fight almost single-handed for five days.