is way to windward against a
good stiff breeze. This achievement marked the dawn of the modern
sailing age.

And so it happened that in 1545 Henry, with a new-born modern fleet, was
able to turn defiantly on Francis. The English people rallied
magnificently to his call. What was at that time an enormous army
covered the lines of advance on London. But the fleet, though employing
fewer men, was relatively a much more important force than the army; and
with the fleet went Henry's own headquarters. His lifelong interest in
his navy now bore the first-fruits of really scientific sea power on an
oceanic scale. There was no great naval battle to fix general attention
on one dramatic moment. Henry's strategy and tactics, however, were new
and full of promise. He repeated his strategy of the previous war by
sending out a strong squadron to attack the base at which the enemy's
ships were then assembling; and he definitely committed the English
navy, alone among all the navies in the world, to sailing-ship tactics,
instead of continuing those founded on the rowing galley of immemorial
fame. The change from a sort of floating army to a really naval fleet,
from galleys moved by oars and depending on boarders who were soldiers,
to ships moved by sails and depending on their broadside guns--this
change was quite as important as the change in the nineteenth century
from sails and smooth-bores to steam and rifled ordnance. It was,
indeed, from at least one commanding point of view, much more important;
for it meant that England was easily first in developing the only kind
of navy which would count in any struggle for oversea dominion after the
discovery of America had made sea power no longer a question of coasts
and landlocked waters but of all the outer oceans of the world.

The year that saw the birth of modern sea power is a date to be
remembered in this history; for 1545 was also the year in which the
mines of Potosi first aroused the Old World to the riches of the New; it
was the year, too, in which Sir Francis Drake was born. Moreover, there
was another significant birth in this same year. The parole aboard the
Portsmouth fleet was _God save the King_! The answering countersign was
_Long to reign over us_! These words formed the nucleus of the national
anthem now sung round all the Seven Seas. The anthems of other countries
were born on land. _God save the King_! sprang from the navy and the
sea.

* * *