In England, owing to alternate periods of stimulation and neglect by the authorities, the progress of shipbuilding was spasmodic. The roughness of the waters round our coasts, and along the Atlantic coasts of France, the Low Countries and North Western Europe, caused greater dependence to be placed in small vessels having good sea-going qualities and using sail whenever possible. The _Great Harry_ was begun in the reign of Henry VII. and finished in the reign of his uxorious successor, and is interesting as indicating that shipbuilders in England were even then able to turn out a sea-going vessel superior to anything afloat. Henry VIII. established royal shipbuilding yards at Woolwich and Deptford, and thus founded the modern navy, but few warships for the King’s service were built there in his time, and during his reign and for many a long year after it was the custom to hire merchant vessels and arm them--if they were not already armed to protect themselves against pirates--to augment the national fleet. Religious, no less than national, rivalry contributed, albeit unconsciously, to the development of the efficacy of the warship as a fighting unit. The enmity between Britain and Spain culminated, in Elizabeth’s reign, after a series of daring attacks by reckless Englishmen upon the Spanish fleet in preparation for the great attack upon England, in the dispatch of the Armada. Hawkins and one or two others foresaw that the advantage would lie with the fleet which could be most effectively manœuvred. The disparity between the Armada and the British fleet was not so great as many writers have represented, either in the size or number of the vessels; but the British vessels on the average were smaller, faster, and better handled; in other words, efficiency told against sheer weight of numbers. This was the last great sea-fight on the ocean in which oared ships took part; they were no match for their smaller and more speedy sailing antagonists. Structurally, most of the vessels of this time, the larger especially, were disfigured by high sterncastles, but early in the seventeenth century this encumbrance and many others had disappeared. Thence to the nineteenth century the development of warships was marked mainly by continual increases in their size, improving their form of hull and, consequently, their speed and buoyancy; augmenting their sail area and perfecting the square-rigged system; and adding to the number of gun decks and the number of guns carried; until the grand wooden three-deckers swept the seas in all their ponderous pride and majesty. Ships of the line of various ratings played their part, and were ably seconded by frigates, brigs, cutters, sloops and bomb-ketches. All these were in vogue less than a century ago, and though not forgotten, are looked upon as historical and romantic and interesting curiosities. * * * * *