The years 1905 and 1906 saw two of the most important steps forward in the history of warships, for they included the adoption of the turbine principle of warship propulsion and the “Dreadnought” principle of armament. The progress of the last fifty years, culminating in the _Dreadnoughts_, has been wonderful; already designs of vessels intended to relegate them to second place are under consideration. Type after type of battleship, cruiser, scout, gunboat, destroyer and torpedo-boat has followed in rapid succession of late years, and submarines have become an accomplished fact. He would be a foolish man who would prophesy that the end is in sight. There is nothing more marvellous in the world’s history than the tremendous development in marine engineering, in warship construction, in explosives, in armament, and in projectiles that has taken place in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and especially in the last twenty-five years. WARSHIPS AND THEIR STORY CHAPTER I FROM ANCIENT EGYPT TO THE INTRODUCTION OF ARTILLERY When did man first entrust himself afloat for purposes of war? and what was the type of vessel he employed? are questions which take us back almost to the earliest stages of historical human progress, concerning which all the knowledge of the antiquaries is but conjectural, a stage so remote that scientists have not yet determined how many thousands of years ago it existed. The earliest vessels thus employed must have been transports, and nothing else; but if employed as aids to aggression when the kings of the earth took counsel together and, impelled by avarice or a desire to assist in one another’s turbulent love affairs, or, for their own safety, convinced of the necessity of finding an outlet for the energies of their restless subjects, invaded the territories of their neighbours, the ships, whatever their nature, will have been of a size sufficient to receive any spoil or any prisoners worth the trouble of carrying back again. So far, however, as research has disclosed in those parts of the Near East where civilisation was cradled, there is no indication that man fought afloat--boat against boat, or fleet against fleet--until after a comparatively high stage of civilisation had been attained and shipbuilding had made enormous advances. Evelyn remarks: “Concerning men of war, fleets, and armadas for battel, that Minos was reported to be the author, which shows that manner of desperate combat on the waters to be neer as antient as men themselves, since the deluge.” Minos, he adds, disputed the empire of the seas with Neptune, but “these particulars may be uncertain.”[1]