408

HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

storekeepers ; which papers comprehending a compleat view of the generaladministration of this office, we have, for avoiding perplexities, spared theadding those other particular orders, which your Highness hath occasionallybeen led to the establishing, and which, though of no less importance to the wealeof the navy, yet being for the most part only supplemental to the said book,easie references may be had thereto, in any case wherein his Majesty, or yourHighness, shall, upon its perusal, think fit to call for any further informa-tion.

Which in all humility submitting to your Royal Highness,

We remain,

May it please your Royal Highness,

Your Royal Highness’s most obedient servants,

B. R. L M. T. M. R. P. I . C.

Navy Office,

17th April 1669.

The foregoing paper forms of itself a succinct account of the internal ma-nagement of the British navy during the last fifty years ; and the wonderfulaugmentation which it had experienced, fully proved the necessity of adoptingthe most active, as well as the most cautious measures, for the purpose ofpreventing its falling from that height which it had attained.

Though tranquillity might be considered as almost totally restored by thepeace of Bredah, yet not only prudence, but necessity, prevented the completedismantlement of the British navy. The piratical states of Barbary, notwith-standing the repeated chastisement their insolence had experienced, had recruited,and raised their marine to an height which it had never before reached. TheAlgerines alone possessed a force consisting of more than thirty sail, none of whichmounted less than thirty guns, and some of them more than fifty, so that this cir-cumstance induced England and Holland, soon as their own differences weresettled, to enter into a compact for the chastisement of this dangerous nest ofrobbers; but as though they considered it derogatory to their national honour toequip a force which might have effectually annihilated, at one stroke, all future

contest,