HISTORY OF MARINE ARCHITECTURE.

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render useless a tedious description, by referring to the Gibraltar, which whenin the service of Spain, was called the Phoenix, in allusion to her superiority tothe Princessa and the Monarca, which were of an inferior rate, and the Diligente,their companion, in which latter, the excellence of theory having been deterio-rated by the abuses in construction, it became through necessity degraded by theBritish shipwrights to the humiliating, inactive condition of a guardship duringthe remainder of the war.

Britain, on her part had not paid such serious attention to the scientific study ofthe subject as her rivals; she had contented herself with merely possessing a navyformidable in numbers, and rendered truly so by the skill and address of thoseemployed to direct and command it, but certainly inferior to that of her anta-gonists, considered either in a philosophical, or advantageous light. The numer-ous foes she had to contend with at one and the same period of time, requiredexertions of the most extraordinary nature, and varied so widely in their circum-stances, as almost to require two separate establishments. The dispute withthe colonies required a flotilla capable of penetrating every inlet, and suffici-ently numerous to form one uninterrupted chain, which should, if possible,prevent the unseen passage of a single vessel from the Gulph of St. Lawrenceto the Bay of Mexico. In Europe, the united fleets of France and Spain de-manded the opposition of armaments more powerful than had at any precedingperiod quitted the ports of Britain ; but the resources of the latter proved equalto the pressure, and every country on the face of the globe beheld with asto-nishment, some of them, probably, not without dissatisfaction, the gradual di-spersion of difficulties, which had, atfirst,been considered insurmountable, togetherwith an establishment, not merely competent to the purposes of security, but to thediscomfiture of that league which had proudly threatened and, perhaps, vowedin secret, its destruction.

Such was the maritime condition of Europe at the close of the year 1780.and it becomes almost totally unnecessary to step in the smallest degree beyondthe limits of that quarter of the world during the remainder of this history.An event took place, at the period just mentioned, which threatened at its com-mencement to create a complete revolution in the naval world, and prescribelaws not only to all those nations which were then at war, but establish an universalcode, by which the public conduct of all countries, when in a state of hostilitywith each other, was to be regulated. Although the avowed object of the con-federacy, which had long been forming, and was then on the point of beingpublished, held forth as a firfl: maxim, a general restriction in' particularpoints, yet it was most convincingly evident to the most shallow politician,Vol. III. G g that