Peter Simple, joining as a more than usually verdant specimen, intuitively obeyed when someone said, "Hand me that monkey's tail, youngster"; from which it was argued that he was not such a fool as he looked, and much was expected of him afterwards. In such fashion, for the most part, were our future admirals and captains pitchforked, as it were, into the Service, to swim or sink as best they might; and many were the anomalies which prevailed also in the senior ranks. Captains barely out of their teens, with grey-haired first-lieutenants to dry-nurse them; so-called midshipmen of any age up to thirty-five; and so on. Looking back on those days through the perspective of years--those days when our position as a naval Power was a-making year by year, and was completed at Trafalgar--we are apt to say that "the world went very well then." Curiously enough, there existed for many years, side by side with this rough and ready "pitchfork" system, "another way," as the cookery books have it, of getting into the Navy; and a way, moreover, which was fenced about with very precise regulations as to age, and involved a course of pretty hard study. That this mode of entry should have been made entirely optional, and consequently partial, seems strange; but such was the case. Anyone who is acquainted with Portsmouth Dockyard is familiar with the appearance of the old Naval College, standing just to the southward of the Commander-in-Chief's house; but comparatively few people, even among naval officers, know very much of its history, or when and why it was built. It is not clear at the present time at whose suggestion the Royal Naval Academy was instituted, but there is in existence in the Record Office a letter from the Lords of the Admiralty to the Navy Board--which was a kind of executive commission for carrying out all naval construction, etc.--dated March 3rd, 1729, which reads as follows:-- Gentlemen,--His Majesty having been pleased to direct, by Order in Council dated the 21st of last month, upon an humble memorial from this Board, that an Academy shall be erected in the Dockyard at Portsmouth for the better education and training up of forty young gentlemen for His Majesty's Service at sea, instead of the Establishment now in force for Voluntiers on board His Majesty's ships; We do hereby desire and direct you to consider and lay before us, as soon as conveniently may be, a draught or plan of such a building as you shall judge may be proper for the reception not only of the aforesaid forty young gentlemen, but also of a Mathematical Master, three Ushers, and a French Master, by whom they are to be instructed, together with an estimate of the charge thereof; and you are also to give us your opinion at what place in the yard the said building may be most conveniently erected.