Flag and Fleet | Page 3

June 20, 1743.
The ROYAL GEORGE
NELSON
FIGHTING THE GUNS ON THE MAIN DECK, 1782.
THE BLOWING UP OF L'ORIENT DURING THE BATTLE OF THE
NILE.
THE BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN, APRIL 2nd, 1801. (Note the
British line ahead.)
The VICTORY. Nelson's Flagship at Trafalgar, launched in 1765, and
still used as the flagship in Portsmouth Harbour.
TRAFALGAR. 21st October, 1805.

MODEL OF THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR. (Reproduced by
permission from the model at the Royal United Service Institution.)
THE SHANNON AND THE CHESAPEAKE.
THE ROYAL WILLIAM. Canadian built; the first boat to cross any
ocean steaming the whole way (1833), the first steamer in the world to
fire a shot in action (May 5, 1836).
BATTLESHIP.
Seaplane Returning after flight.
DESTROYER.
A PARTING SHOT FROM THE TURKS AT GALLIPOLI.
JELLICOE.
BEATTY.
LIGHT CRUISER.
H.M.S. Monmouth, Armoured Cruiser. Sunk at Coronel, November 1st,
1914.
BATTLESHIP FIRING A BROADSIDE.
Jellicoe's Battle Fleet in Columns of Divisions. 6.14 P.M.
THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND--PLAN II. Jellicoe's battle line formed
and fighting. 6:38 P.M.
British Submarine.
Minesweeper at work.
H.M. KING GEORGE V.

FLAG AND FLEET
BOOK I
THE ROWING AGE
CHAPTER I
THE VERY BEGINNING OP SEA-POWER
(10,000 years and more B.C.)
Thousands and thousands of years ago a naked savage in southern Asia
found that he could climb about quite safely on a floating log. One day
another savage found that floating down stream on a log was very
much easier than working his way through the woods. This taught him
the first advantage of sea-power, which is, that you can often go better
by water than land. Then a third savage with a turn for trying new
things found out what every lumberjack and punter knows, that you
need a pole if you want to shove your log along or steer it to the proper
place.
By and by some still more clever savage tied two logs together and
made the first raft. This soon taught him the second advantage of
sea-power, which is, that, as a rule, you can carry goods very much
better by water than land. Even now, if you want to move many big and
heavy things a thousand miles you can nearly always do it ten times
better in a ship than in a train, and ten times better in a train than by
carts and horses on the very best of roads. Of course a raft is a poor,
slow, clumsy sort of ship; no ship at all, in fact. But when rafts were the
only "ships" in the world there certainly were no trains and nothing like
one of our good roads. The water has always had the same advantage
over the land; for as horses, trails, carts, roads, and trains began to be
used on land, so canoes, boats, sailing ships, and steamers began to be
used on water. Anybody can prove the truth of the rule for himself by
seeing how much easier it is to paddle a hundred pounds ten miles in a

canoe than to carry the same weight one mile over a portage.
Presently the smarter men wanted something better than a little log raft
nosing its slow way along through dead shallow water when shoved by
a pole; so they put a third and longer log between the other two, with its
front end sticking out and turning up a little. Then, wanting to cross
waters too deep for a pole, they invented the first paddles; and so made
the same sort of catamaran that you can still see on the Coromandel
Coast in southern India. But savages who knew enough to take
catamarans through the pounding surf also knew enough to see that a
log with a hollow in the upper side of it could carry a great deal more
than a log that was solid; and, seeing this, they presently began making
hollows and shaping logs, till at last they had made a regular dug-out
canoe. When Christopher Columbus asked the West Indian savages
what they called their dug-outs they said canoas; so a boat dug out of a
solid log had the first right to the word we now use for a canoe built up
out of several different parts.
[Illustration: "DUG-OUT" CANOE]
Dug-outs were sometimes very big. They were the Dreadnought
battleships of their own time and place and people. When their ends
were sharpened into a sort of ram they could stave in an enemy's canoe
if they caught its side full tilt with their own end. Dug-out canoes were
common wherever the trees were big and strong enough, as in Southern
Asia, Central Africa, and on the Pacific Coast of America. But men
have always been trying to invent something better than what their
enemies have; and so they soon began putting different pieces together
to