Dartmouth as a port of call for liners died hard, but the last line of steamships, the Donald Currie service to the Cape, went, and now it is divided between being a favourite yachting station and the home of the new Royal Naval College, which, transferred from its picturesque and makeshift old home aboard the _Britannia_ and _Hindostan_, now crowns the hill and nobly dominates the whole of Dartmouth in the great range of buildings overlooking the Dart. The ferryman who puts us across the Dart is full of information and as full of regrets about the _Britannia_ and _Hindostan_, the new Naval College, and the changed conditions of seafaring life, but with a sardonic smile he thinks the cadets will learn their business as well ashore as they have done afloat. “Why not?” he asks. “They don’t want no sailors nowadays. There _was_ a time when a sailor was never without his marline-spike an’ mallet. Now they’re all bloody Dagoes and Dutchies in the merchant sarvice, an’ engineers and stoke-hole men, with cold chisels, ’stead of knives, in the Navy. For a sailor—when there _were_ sailors, mind you—to be without his knife, why, he might every bit as well up’n give his cap’n a clump auver th’yed, so he might. An’ up _there_—” he jerked so contemptuous a thumb over his shoulder that it was almost a wonder the new flagstaff on the new central tower did not wilt—“up _there_ them young juicers is fed up with ’lectricity ’n things no Godfearing sailorman in _my_ time never heerd of.” Although it is designed in the Paltry Picturesque Eclectic Renaissance or Doll’s House, style with ornamental fripperies and fandangalums galore, the Naval College has the noblest of aspects, seen from down the harbour, or across the Dart, from Old Rock Ferry. Planted on the wooded summit of Mount Boone, the long range of buildings, backed by dark trees, sets just that crown and finish upon Dartmouth which suffices to raise the scenic character of the place from beauty to nobility. A curious feature of it is the clock in the central tower, which rings seafaring time ashore: so many “bells.” At sea the twelve hours are divided into three watches of four hours each, with a “bell” to every half-hour. Thus the “bells” rise with the half-hours to eight, when they begin again, with the completion of the first half-hour of the new watch. In this manner, the “bells” agree with shoregoing chimes only twice a day: at eight o’clock, morning and night. [Illustration: DARTMOUTH: THE “BRITANNIA” AND “HINDOSTAN,” AND THE NEW NAVAL COLLEGE.] [Illustration: FOSS STREET AND ST. SAVIOUR’S.]