ange.

LIFE AFLOAT. The general evolution of wooden sailing craft may be traced
out in Part I of Sir George Holmes's convenient little treatise on
_Ancient and Modern Ships_. There is no nautical dictionary devoted to
Elizabethan times. But a good deal can be picked up from the two handy
modern glossaries of Dana and Admiral Smyth, the first being an American
author, the second a British one. Smyth's _Sailor's Word Book_ has no
alternative title. But Dana's _Seaman's Friend_ is known in England
under the name of _The Seaman's Manual_. Technicalities change so much
more slowly afloat than ashore that even the ultra-modern editions of
Paasch's magnificent polyglot dictionary, _From Keel to Truck_, still
contain many nautical terms which will help the reader out of some of
his difficulties.

The life of the sea-dogs, gentlemen-adventurers, and
merchant-adventurers should be studied in Hakluyt's collection of
_Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discoveries_; though
many of his original authors were landsmen while a few were civilians as
well. This Elizabethan Odyssey, the great prose epic of the English
race, was first published in a single solemn folio the year after the
Armada--1589. In the nineteenth century the Hakluyt Society reprinted
and edited these _Navigations_ and many similar works, though not
without employing some editors who had no knowledge of the Navy or the
sea. In 1893 E.J. Payne brought out a much handier edition of the
_Voyages of the Elizabethan Seamen to America_ which gives the very
parts of Hakluyt we want for our present purpose, and gives them with a
running accompaniment of pithy introductions and apposite footnotes.
Nearly all historians are both landsmen and civilians whose sins of
omission and commission are generally at their worst in naval and
nautical affairs. But James Anthony Froude, whatever his other faults
may be, did know something of life afloat, and his _English Seamen in
the Sixteenth Century_, despite its ultra-Protestant tone, is well worth
reading.

HAWKINS. _The Hawkins Voyages_, published by the Hakluyt Society, give
the best collection of original accounts. They deal with three
generations of this famous family and are prefaced by a good
introduction. _A Sea-Dog of Devon_, by R.A.J. Walling (1907) is the best
recent biography of Sir John Hawkins.

DRAKE. Politics, policy, trade, and colonization were all dependent on
sea power; and just as the English Navy w