But the time has not arrived to discuss the Victorian ships. The Mercantile Marine of the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth century had first to go through most trying times before the blessings of permanent peace should arrive. We who are now alive have not forgotten that for four years during the recent Great War the merchant shipping of the Allies was subject to the attacks of our enemies. But in the past it was for forty years, as we have already seen, the British mercantile vessels had to endure this danger, and it is our duty to observe how our seafaring forefathers carried on during those trying times. The fighting spirit was by no means confined to the Navy, and even apart from those forty years, there hardly seemed a long period when the trading ship could proceed upon her lawful occasions without fear of being attacked. If it was not a pirate, it was a privateer or a warship of some kind. But the merchantman still went about her business all the same, undaunted and undismayed. We are familiar with ancient works on naval tactics, but there is in the British Museum a rare and somewhat damaged volume, printed in the year 1702, called _The Art of Seafighting_, written by a retired merchant mariner named Robert Park of Ipswich. It was undertaken on behalf of the Merchant Service at a time when the privateers were so active. Park was a “whole-hogger,” who knew no difference between foolhardiness and courage. He was a real “hard-case” sailorman, typical of his time, who had no use for luxury, but was a firm believer in trade and liberty. In this volume he tells his readers how to prepare the ship for close-fighting, by making the bulkheads musket-proof, and so on. He tells them how a ship can be worked under fire without showing a man on deck, gives valuable hints on gunnery and the importance of sobriety in the duties of a gunner. In the third part of the book he gives the very same advice which the British Admiralty in the recent war used to issue to the steamship captains. Park sensibly reminds his brother seamen that they are merchantmen, that they are sent to sea not to fight, but to get their cargoes to port, and if possible they are to avoid engagement. Nevertheless it was a wicked crime to leave an attacked consort to become a prey to the enemy.