This sea pressure having fulfilled its purpose, the English merchantmen were able to scoop up from exhausted nations the world’s maritime commerce; and the voyages of discovery, notably those of Dampier, Anson and Cook, together with the enterprising penetration of the East Indiamen, and to a smaller extent the West Indiamen (who enjoyed the benefits of free trade), opened up fresh avenues of commerce. The fighting fleets had opened up the oceans for the mercantile ships to bring home riches. By the year 1688 the annual clearance outwards from Great Britain was 191,000 tons of English shipping and 95,000 tons of foreign shipping. In a hundred years the nation had become supreme, simply because our forefathers, like any great business man, had possessed the imagination to see that the ocean was the road to wealth, and they had also not lacked the courage to put their maritime belief to the test. Thus in the year 1701-1702 its Mercantile Marine consisted of 3281 vessels of 261,222 tons, armed with 5660 guns and giving employment afloat to 27,196 men. During the eighteenth century wet docks had to be made both in the Thames and the Mersey, the first Marine Insurance Company came into being, and Lloyd’s Register of Shipping was started. The history of Lloyd’s is indicative of the progress of the Mercantile Marine. In the seventeenth century a number of underwriters used to meet in Edward Lloyd’s coffee-house in Tower Street for their business. In 1692 this coffee-house was removed to Lombard Street, and then, in 1774, Lloyd’s gave up the coffee-house and went to their premises in the Royal Exchange, where they have remained ever since. It is clear from Lloyd’s Register of Shipping that from 1764 to the end of that century most of the British ships were of not more than 300 tons; but we have to bear in mind two important facts. Firstly, the East Indian monopoly prevented competition, and therefore any stimulus to build anything larger; and secondly, from 1775 to 1815, with only small patches of peace, there was a long series of wars. These hostilities naturally caused the tonnage of commercial shipping to drop, but every time that peace was restored the figures began to go up again; so that in 1793, when war broke out with France, Great Britain possessed 16,079 merchant ships as compared with the 3281 at the commencement of the century. It was therefore an amazingly live industry, which required only a fair opportunity for its development.