or, the dying dolphin effect curiously characteristic of
the passing period in which we were. This had always had a
recognition--_d'estime_, as the French say; but in my final year it
fell into the hands of a new instructor, who proceeded to glorify it
by amplification. He was a very accomplished man in his profession, a
student of it in all its branches, though there was among us a certain
understanding that he was not an eminently practical seaman; and he
eventually lost his life in what appeared to me a very unpractical
manner, being where it did not seem his business to be, and doing work
which a junior would probably have done better. We remember William
III. at the battle of the Boyne. "Your majesty, the Bishop of Derry
has been killed at the ford." "What business had he to be at the
ford?" was the unsympathetic answer. The text-book used by our new
instructor was by a French lieutenant, written in the thirties of the
century, and characterized by something of the peculiar French naval
genius. The simpler changes of formation were so simple that
complication could not be got into them; but, that happy stage past,
we went on to evolutions of huge masses of ships in three columns, in
which the changes of dispositions, from one order to another, became
subjects of trigonometrical demonstration, quite as troublesome as
Euclid. Sines, cosines, and tangents, of fractional angles figured
profusely in the processes; and in the result courses to be steered
would be laid down to an eighth of a point, when to keep a single
vessel, let alone a column, steady within half a point[5] was
considered good helmsmanship. There being no translation of the book,
our text was provided by copying, individually, from a manuscript
prepared by our teacher, which increased our labor; but, curiously
enough, the effect of the whole procedure was so to magnify the
subject as materially to increase the impression upon our minds.

This is really an interesting matter for speculation, as to what in
effect is practical. The mastery of conclusions, to which practical
effect never could have been given, served to drive home principles
which would have come usefully into play, had the sail era continued
and the United States maintained fleets of sailing battle-ships to
handle. For myself personally, when I came to write naval history,
long years after, I derived invaluable aid from the principles and the
simpler evolutions, thus assimilated and remem