board a ship set apart for the purpose, succeeded, were first subjected to every degree of temperature that the Admiralty are preparing to admit Captains between the freezing and the boiling point; and also, as pupils in this school. If a Captain in the the rate of expansion noted. Every time the Royal Navy, may go to a school of practice, surely length of a bar was admitted in the measurement, a Midshipman in the American Navy, might be its temperature was observed by a thermometer atsent to a school-ship, and study with profit and ad- tached, and also noted. And acting upon the mavantage to his country and himself, the theory as thematical, as well as the philosophical truth, that well as the practice of his profession. the ends of those bars, though brought together, Notwithstanding, that for many years, officers of were not in actual contact, the space between them the Royal Navy have had the advantage of a na- was at each time measured with the assistance of val college at Portsmouth, yet such have been the a nicely constructed micrometer. In the final deimprovements of late years in navigation, ship- termination of the base line, the bars were reduced building, surveying, and in every department of to a uniform temperature, in order to obtain their nautical science, that England now finds it expe- standard value. And to Mr. Hassler belongs the dient, not only to establish this college upon a new honor of having obtained the most accurately meaand more comprehensive plan, but of reeducating sured base line, that has ever been determined in any officers who have passed through it. Formerly country. The accuracy of this line will pervade the Spaniards were preeminent in hydrography. the whole survey. Charts constructed from old Spanish surveys, are yet considered by sailors as the most accurate charts of their day. But what was considered sufficiently accurate then, is gross and palpable error now, and would be utterly inadmissible in any survey of the present day. In one of the most important hydrographical surveys ever undertaken by any people, an argument entered into the data for calculating to the initiated, it is not only inviting, but extremely for the oblateness of the earth, as a spheroid, interesting and agreeable. This is a knowledge which produced an error of only nine inches, in which comes not by intuition. It may be learned the latitude aud longitude of places,-not on the in the school-ship, which proposes to teach both chart-but in actual position on the surface of the the theory and the practice of this, as well as of earth. In mathematics it is easier to be right every other branch of science, that pertains to the than wrong; and any error that is not less than the calling of a sailor. On certain days, an hour or least assignable quantity, is an error of magnitude. two spent in boats on the survey of the harbor And this error of nine inches in the sphericity of where the school-ship may be, would be a pleasant the earth, is deemed of sufficient magnitude by the recreation to the Midshipmen of the school. Much accomplished man of science at the head of that of the time besides allotted for relaxation, should be survey to be taken into account in the reconstruc-devoted, as well for health to the body, as for profit tion of his charts.

A work of such perfection is to form the standard which our officers, in their surveys, should seek to attain. But to those unaccustomed to the niceties of mathematical induction, and who have not been properly indoctrinated into the art of surveying accurately, no service can be more forbidding and unwelcome than hydrographical duty. Whereas,

to the mind, to the manly exercise of the seaman at the duties of his calling: among which, frequent training at the guns, firing at targets, and the like, should not be omitted.

It was but the other day, that the Board of Admiralty bought up at considerable expense and surpressed, on account of inaccuracy, charts of the straits of Magellan and of the coasts of Tierra del If the school-ship were a 74, she might have a Fuego, which had been constructed from the sur-tender for two months in the year, in which the veys of a public expedition sent out for the purpose Midshipmen could take their annual cruise at sea. of surveying those straits. Well may the college Indeed, this vessel might be advantageously emat Portsmouth be remodelled; and much better may ployed the rest of the year as a practical school something be done for our little school-ship, or for of seamanship for naval apprentices: a class of some plan of education in the American Navy. youth, who, if properly trained, are likely to prove The day has gone by, when in hydrographical sur- an invaluable acquisition to the Navy. For an veys, it was admissable to step off a base line, on a agreeable combination of the utile cum dulce, this tolerably level beach, and when that could not be cruise with the Midshipmen* might sometimes be found, to measure the height of a mast with a rope * In 1817, at the suggestion of Commodore Bainbridge yarn, and use that measurement as the argument (I think it was) the United States Brig Prometheus, Conin calculating the base line. More is thought of mander, now Commodore, Wadsworth, was sent, mar.ned inches now, than was then thought of fathoms. In principally with Midshipmen, to cruise on the coast. They the preliminary arrangements for that important were birthed on the birth-deck, as the sailors usually are; national work, now in progress along our own coast and were required to perform all the duties of the latter, not under the superintendence of Mr. Hassler, highly the decks, and cleaning the ship also. During this cruise, only in handing, reefing, and steering, but in holy-storing polished steel bars of uniform temper and dimen- they surveyed Portsmouth, and several other harbors. These sions were used for measuring the base line. They officers now recur to this cruise with pleasure; and allude

In the palmy days of geographical discovery,

extended, from our own coasts, to foreign countries. | had nothing to do. That sort of rude education acThe promise of a visit to the dock-yards of Eng- quired between the years of infancy and puberty— land and of France, would serve not merely to his life of hardihood, peril and adventure, may now stimulate the pupil at his studies, but it would have and then fit the sailor to weave in beauty his gosits advantages in other respects. It would tend to samer nets of fiction, or of travel; but such qualitake away from the tedium of the scholastic year, fications enable him by no means to manage the by constituting something pleasant and attractive to woof and web of more substantial learning-or look forward to. It would give a zest to the holy-qualify him for the analytical and synthetical inday, and serve as a sweetener to its rough duties vestigation of physical laws and the abstract prinTo make the profession of arms agreeable to those ciples of science. who take them up, is one of the first duties of those with whom the power rests. The most comely the question was tauntingly asked by a mariner, feature in the economy of a well-regulated ship, or in a military corps, is that which looks to the comfort and contentment of men and officers, and which seeks to make their duties as pleasant and agreeable as the nature of the service will allow them to be. The great secret of teaching too, is to make the duties of the school-room pleasures, if possible. Besides the charm which, in the young minds of its pupils, this cruise would prove in making the school-ship agreeable, they would reap the further advantages of visiting other Navy yards than their own; of examining all improvements, and of comparing the system of others with our own. Other advantages not less real than these, would result from such cruises.

It is curious and instructive too, to look back into the maritime history of the world. Until our own day, the sailor has been considered as a being who either did not require, or could not receive, the advantages of education. For the diffusion of knowledge among seamen, less has been done by all nations, than for any other class of citizens. When the needle and the astrolabe "had weaned creeping commerce from the coward shores ;" and printing, "giving wings to paper, emancipated knowledge from the cloister," Isabella encouraged the admission of books free of duty, "because, by promoting knowledge, they brought honor and profit to the kingdom." It was not till then, that the grandees of Spain began to think "letters might be no obstacle to the profession of arms;" and to send their sons to the schools of P. Martyr, tutor to the accomplished brother of broken-hearted Juana Loca. Three hundred and fifty years afterwards, the opinion of the Spanish grandees remains to be carried out in the United States of America, at least so far as it regards the profession of arms at sea. For hitherto, when asked to endow a naval school, government has replied in effect, that officers were wanted to fight, and that book learning was a thing with which a man-of-war's-man to their time in the Prometheus, as the most pleasant and instructive period of their life of Midshipmen. As I write, there is one of them sitting near, who says that he and those who were with him, learned more of their profession during this cruise of a few months, than they had learned in years before. Taking them as a class, those of these officers who remain, are the best officers of their grade in the Navy.

"what have you landsmen ever discovered?" "Navigation for seamen," was the reply. And a striking exemplification of how little the minds of seamen, in all ages, have been trained by education to the inductive process of reasoning, or to scientific research, is afforded by the fact, that but few inventions in art, or discoveries in science, have originated among them. Wedded to 'old notions,' they have been slow to adopt the improvements of others, and as a class are often found far behind the times."

The use of an implement, which, without the efficiency, took the place of the bee-hives of the ancients, has not been long exploded in maritime warfare. As late as the revolution, sailors have been known to attack their enemies with stink pots; and when closely pressed in chase, they were wont to cut away timbers, and saw bulwarks, that their vessel might have play, and work;' for the notion was that a ship, like a horse, would go the faster by straining.

Within my own recollection as a sailor, it was by no means uncommon, and before that it was general, to see vessels with bags to their topsails, for holding wind. These bags were known under the graceful term of 'flowing reefs;' and with the wind free, they were used under the idea that the more the sails could be made to belly out,' the more wind was in them; and therefore the faster the ship would go. The idea that the surface of actual impingement for the propelling power of the wind, is to be measured by the area of a plane from 'clue to ear-ring,' and contained between the head and foot ropes of a sail, has been acted on only of late years. And so far from a flowing reef now, a sail fits well only when it sets as 'flat as a board.'

Looking into the history of navigation, we find that the discovery of the magnet extends back beyond the reach of history; and that tradition is doubtful as to the inventor of the mariner's compass. But the intensity apparatus, the azimuth compass, the dipping needle and the diurnal variation instrument, with a variety of magnetometers, are all modern inventions, or comparatively recent improvements, which do not owe their origin to them that go down to the sea in ships.' The Dip Sector is the work of Dr. Wollaston; the sex

tant is an improvement on the quadrant, the inven- [lighted with a carbuncle. Turning from these tion of Dr. Hadley, and the most valuable instru- subjects to his gallipots and stills, he sought rement in modern navigation. I have seen the quad- creation in a hen-house, and there compounded rant used on board the Bonne Homme Richard by nostrums for the Prince of Wales, and cordials Paul Jones; it resembles its type of the present for the sick Queen of the relentless James. The day, quite as much as the Great Western and Bri-Raleigh cordial' is said to have effected as many tish Queen look like the offspring of Fulton's first miraculous cures in its day, as have since been steamer. A Frenchman, in 1500, was the first to performed by the pills and panaceas of more eninvent port-holes to ships. Men-of-war at that lightened times. Released from his prison walls, time carried their guns mounted over their bul- he again embarks to seek the land of his golden warks, like those of a battery 'en barbet.' Before dreams, and actually ascends the Oronoco a second this they had a castle built forward, and another time, in search of the gilded capital and glittering aft, as a sort of strong hold, to which the crew lake of El Dorado. Disheartened by losses and might retire to make their last stand. All that a fruitless search, the expedition is resolved into a remains of these castles in ships of the present swarm of pirates, to "look for homeward-bound day, is the name; 'unde' forecastle. Nine years Spanish men." Baffled here too, he again returns after the Frenchman had made known his disco- to his native land, and to prison, whence, after a very, Henry VII had the first double-decked ship short interval, he is brought to the scaffold. In built in England. She measured a thousand tons; the midst of such occupations, scenes and times, and though not so large as some of the Liverpool this man found leisure to write the first treatise packets of the 'Dramatic' line from New-York that ever appeared in the English language, on now are, was the largest ship in the English Navy. naval architecture. And without having been bred Sir Walter Raleigh, was among the first to argue to the seaman's calling, he wrote on the art of that a powerful Navy, as a means of British in- war at sea;' a subject, which he observes, 'has dependence and national glory, must needs con- never been handled by any man, ancient or mostitute an essential feature in the policy of Eng- dern.' His account of the fifteen-hour fight beland. A successful courtier, and the rival of tween Sir Richard Grenville's ship, and the whole Essex and of Cecil for the favor of Elizabeth, he Spanish fleet of 53 sail and 10,000 men, 'more was counted a man of learning in his day. And moveth the heart, than a trumpet.' After the though famed for "ditty and amorous odes," he Englishman had expended all his ammunition, he found time to contribute largely to navigation. A commanded his ship to be sunk, that nothing soldier in his youth, he was sent to quell a rebel- might remain of glory or of victory to the Spalion in that commonwealth of common woe'-as he niard.' Notwithstanding that naval architecture has described Ireland. In arms he behaved most va- been so much improved as an art-as a science— liantly, and without following the sea as a profes- it is comparatively but little in advance of the sion, obtained from his sovereign the rank of Ad-stage at which Sir Walter left it. The rule will miral. His feats before Cadiz and Fayal gained not work both ways-for though ships may be for him great renown. Dazzled with the splendor of a geographical fiction, he embarked for the new world, to spy out a land of 'barbaric pomp and gold,' called by the Spaniards, El Dorado. The warriors there were said to be female Amazons of singular prowess-and its capital to be a gorgeous city called Manoa, having its houses roofed with gold, and situated in the upper country,' on the lake Parima, the waters of which also rolled over their beds of golden sands. Disappointed, but not disheartened, he returned from the search, with all his bright visions flitting before him, to drag The fact that every nation, in sending out ships out in the tower, thirteen long and weary years of on voyages of discovery, has found it expedient to imprisonment. Here he was not idle, but employ- furnish them with men of science from private ed himself perhaps more usefully than ever before. life, is a striking comment on the system hitherto It was there that he wrote his History of the pursued by every nation in the, education of nauWorld,' the most remarkable work of the day. tical men. Cook, that beau ideal of a sailor, Often breaking its thread in his love for theologi- whose voyages have sent so many school-boys to cal disquisition, we find him with zeal and earnest- sea, was a man of sound mind, without the advanness engaging in the enquiry with Polemics con- tages of learning;-Sir Joseph Banks was his 'vade curring the locality of the orb of Paradise.' He mecum.' During the expedition of Captain Baudin gravely discusses whether the forbidden fruit were (now Admiral?) it was discovered that the virtue of not the prickly pear, and if Noah's ark were not all the spare magnetic needles had been impaired

·

built from models, models cannot be built from ships. It is well known, that while the first builders in New-York will charge $500, or $1000 for the model of one of their favorite ships, they will allow other builders to go on board, and afford them every facility for measuring all parts of the ship, conscious that without the model and drawings which are locked up in the model-room, her like cannot be built. Under a well-regulated system of naval instruction, would this have been said?

in consequence of rust. "All the articles provided | viz:-that hitherto the education of nautical men, by government," said he to a member of his scienti- has not been such as properly to train their minds, fic corps, as he unlocked his case of rusty needles, either to the inductive process of reasoning, or to "are shabby beyond description. Had they acted the systematic investigation of cause and effect. as I could have wished, they would have given us Lord Anson was the first to put in practice a syssilver instead of steel needles." This brings to tem of naval tactics, which has since been found to mind the extravagance with which an expedition be the greatest improvement ever made in mariof a more modern day was fitted out. It had a time warfare; and which alone has gained for Engcart blanche for its out-fits. One of our old com- land her celebrity on the water. I do not say to modores in amazement at the prodigality displayed discover, because like the man who had been in some of the articles, said to his Gunner of the speaking prose all his life without knowing it, Yard, "If you have any gold guns on charge, send neither Anson nor his contemporaries appear ever them to the Exploring Expedition." I have no to have discovered, that there was any thing redoubt, that under such circumstances, Captain markable or uncommon in his mode of attacking Baudin might have been furnished with silver the combined squadrons in 1747. For three sucneedles. When anything went wrong in the Expedition, the Frenchman had a way of rectifying it by "throwing his hat on deck and giving it two kicks," an expedient that is sometimes resorted to also in other Navies. His journal was filled with the most beautiful drawings, executed by one of the sailors, and is remarkable for nothing else but its wordy and barren pages.

cessive wars after this, the English officers, unmindful of Anson's fete, always adhered to the old plan of "preserving the line" in their fleet engagements. In all actions between single ships, the English were generally triumphant; yet, when they assembled their ships in fleets, and went into battle, it is remarkable that no decisive engagement took place during the whole course of these three Free-booting Lord Anson too was a strong-wars. That "Our Hawke did bang, Monsieur headed Englishman without education. "Mar- Conflans" forms no exception to this remark; for vellously frugal both of his speech and pen," he is the French on that occasion, not waiting to receive said to have been" round the world, but never in the attack, ran away, and were fairly overtaken it." His voyage was written by his stay-at- and picked up by the English.

home companion, the accomplished Robins. An- "Let any one imagine," says Clark, the exson destroyed Payta, after having pillaged its citi-pounder of the new system of tactics," a rencontre zens of a million and a half of dollars. He left of horsemen, where the parties, on coming to the the figure-head of his ship there, which a few ground appointed, had pushed their horses at full years ago was to be seen standing at the corner of speed, exchanging a few pistol-shots as they passed a square. He robbed the church; and one of his one another in opposite directions, at the distance sailors gave, with a cutlass, the image of Nuestra of forty or fifty yards, and then some idea may be Señora a gash on the cheek, which, to this day, formed of the effect of rencontres, where adverse remains as fresh and as bloody as it was at the fleets are brought to pass each other on opposite moment when the Maldito Ingles' fled, horror- tacks." When they engaged on the same tack, stricken, from her presence. The anniversary of the English always sought the windward—and the this sacrilegious act is still retained as a feast day French, as invariably, the leeward position. The in the church. Once a year, the priest exhibits former then running down, each ship for her oppoto a motley and superstitious crowd, the bleeding site, exposed themselves to the raking fire of the wound of Holy Virgin, “whose blood no art can enemy, for the sake of making the action general quench." Anson captured the Acapulco ship, along the whole line. In this manœuvre, the Engladen with the whole year's revenue of Mexico-lish generally suffered; and when they hauled up, the richest prize ever known. The story is some- so as to bring their broadsides to bear, the enemy, where told of his crew, when they were paid off, dressing up in cocked hats trimmed with gold lace. One of them appeared under a hat with silver trimmings. The rest were indignant at him, and were about to deal with him in no gentle terms, as a disgrace to his companions, their ship and the sea, when he explained, that there were no more gold trimmings in the place, and he had "made uncommon for fifty or sixty ships of the line, mountthe man charge for this hat all the same, as though|ing 4,000 or 5,000 guns, and manned by 35,000 or ́ it had been trimmed with gold." 40,000 seamen, to be engaged for hours, and to separate without the loss of a ship, and sometimes without even the loss of a man.

galling their van, would run down five or six miles to leeward, and then wait for the English to re-form, and to renew the attack. In this way it may be said, that the English did all the engaging and the French all the fighting. And if the English fleets ever captured a ship it was by accident, and in violation of their rules of fleet-fighting. It was not

But the point in the history of this remarkable man, to which I wish to call your particular attention, is a fact which serves better than any I have cited, to illustrate the proposition stated above-in

But it generally happened, that the English fleets, seeking the weather gage, and endeavoring to

"The winds and seas are Britain's wide domain, And not a sail but by permission spreads."

The whole secret of this new mode of attack, was nothing more than the introduction of the principle on the water, which has always governed generals in their operations on the land, viz.that of attacking the enemy in his most vulnerable

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into confusion. It is fully explained in one of the few productions that remain to us of Anson's“ frugal pen." Being convinced," says he-in his official account of the engagement of 1747 before alluded to-" being convinced that their whole aim was to gain time, in order to escape under cover of the night, I made signal for the whole fleet to pursue the enemy and attack them, without having The Centurion

make the action general, exposed themselves, by in the "guadia certaminis" of a people made their manner of closing with the enemy, to a raking drunk with success, it was boastfully and proudly fire; on which occasions, if they did not come off proclaimed to the world, worsted, they gained nothing of importance. Such was the affair off Minorca, in 1756, which doomed the unfortunate Byng. Pocock's, two years afterwards, in the East Indies, was no better. The same tactics prevailed in Arbuthnot's and Greaves' engagements off the Chesapeake. And on the Lakes, at a much later day, a like system had well nigh brought defeat upon the American arms. For our Perry, in his eagerness to make the action point, or of gaining the advantage by throwing him general, adhered to the old plan of "preserving the line," until his own ship had struck, and the enemy "would not have given sixpence for his squadron." Then, boarding the Niagara in an open boat, he resolved to make a desperate rally, and risk the fortune of the day upon a single cast. Dashing in that vessel, right between the Chippewa and Lady Prevost on one side, and the Detroit and Queen Charlotte on the other, he cut the line; and pouring any regard to the line of battle. in his raking broadsides right and left, in fifteen having got up with the sternmost ship of the eneminutes he made the enemy "ours." Before this, my began to engage her; upon which, two of the the action had continued for three hours; the Ame-largest of the enemy's ships bore down to her asricans had lost their flag-ship, and the English had The Namur, Defiance and Windsor, sustained comparatively little injury. In Keppel's (English,) being the headmost ships, soon entered engagement of 1778, off Ushant-in Byron's of the into the action, and after having disabled those following year off Granada-and in Rodney's of ships in such a manner that the ships astern must the year succeeding off Martinique, their fleets come up with them, they made sail a-head to prewere manœuvred after the same code of preservvent the van of the enemy making an escape." ing the line to make the action general. Under this system, one miscarriage at sea succeeded to another. Smarting under their effects, and wounded in pride, the whole English nation become restive from disaster. But instead of seeking the cause of the failure of her fleets, to which Anson unknowingly had long before given the clue, she cried out for the blood of guiltless officers. Admiral Byng, Anson's friend, whom he had appointed to the Mediterranean fleet, was sacrificed to appease the popular clamor—and as Voltaire said, pour encourager les autres. Keppel (who had been a Midshipman or Lieutenant in Anson's squadron,) was tried, and so were Matthews and other Admirals who "preserved the line."

In the midst of these national misfortunes, a landsman demonstrated for the officers the cause

of their failure, and issued from the beer-shops of London a new system of naval tactics, which Anson had ignorantly practised with success thirty years before; and which being now caught at by Rodney, Duncan, Howe and Nelson, triumphantly led them on to the most glorious victories. Disdaining the trammels of the old system, they boldly dashed right into the midst of the opposing ships, broke their lines, brought down their flags, and placed the sceptre of the seas once more within the grasp of England. Her foes were dismayed, and,

*Cooper's Naval Hist. vol. II, p. 395.

sistance.

It was on this occasion that the French commander paid the English freebooter the beautiful epigrammatic compliment, which gave rise to the remark that the "Frenchman had lost his battle to gain his point." His ship, the Invincible, was followed in the line by the Gloire. When he came on board the Admiral's ship to surrender himself a prisoner, stepping up to Lord Anson, and offering his sword, he good humoredly said, 'Monsieur, vous avez vaincu l'Invincible, et la Gloire vous suit."

Of the officers who were with Anson: Howe,

Byron, Keppel, Hyde Parker and Saunders, afterwards commanded fleets; but it does not appear that any one of them ever thought of adopting this mode of attack, until John Clark had stated from the beer-shops aforesaid, its advantages to Atkinson, the particular friend of Lord Rodney, and to Sir Charles Douglas, his Captain of the fleet. They repeated the text, and showed the diagram to his Lordship, who, in his brilliant achievment of April 1782, was the first to give the practical demonstration of the landsman's problem for 'cutting the line.' Though the first germ of this new system was undoubtedly developed in Anson's engagement of '47, to Clark belongs the honor of giving it, in mathematical proportions, the symmetry and form of a distinct proposition; and of showing, by his theoretical deductions, the glorious advantages of its practical operation.