e lowest offices of the forecastle to rank and distinction. One
of the most eminent of these officers was Sir Christopher Mings, who
entered the service as a cabin boy, who fell fighting bravely against
the Dutch, and whom his crew, weeping and vowing vengeance, carried to
the grave. From him sprang, by a singular kind of descent, a line of
valiant and expert sailors. His cabin boy was Sir John Narborough; and
the cabin boy of Sir John Narborough was Sir Cloudesley Shovel. To the
strong natural sense and dauntless courage of this class of men England
owes a debt never to be forgotten. It was by such resolute hearts that,
in spite of much maladministration, and in spite of the blunders and
treasons of more courtly admirals, our coasts were protected and the
reputation of our flag upheld during many gloomy and perilous years. But
to a landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called, seemed a strange
and half savage race. All their knowledge was professional; and their
professional knowledge was practical rather than scientific. Off their
own element they were as simple as children. Their deportment was
uncouth. There was roughness in their very good nature; and their talk,
where it was not made up of nautical phrases, was too commonly made
up of oaths and curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were
formed those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age, drew
Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion. But it does not appear that
there was in the service of any of the Stuarts a single naval officer
such as, according to the notions of our times, a naval officer ought
to be, that is to say, a man versed in the theory and practice of his
calling, and steeled against all the dangers of battle and tempest, yet
of cultivated mind and polished manners. There were gentlemen and there
were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not
gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.

The English navy at that time might, according to the most exact
estimates which have come down to us, have been kept in an efficient
state for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds a year. Four hundred
thousand pounds a year was the sum actually expended, but expended, as
we have seen, to very little purpose. The cost of the French marine was
nearly the same the cost of the Dutch marine considerably more. [48]

The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth century was, as
compared with other military and