had grown to 129 frigates, 416 sloops, &c., the total being 545.  Most of these were employed in defending commerce.  We all know how completely Napoleon’s project of invading the United Kingdom was frustrated.  It is less well known that the measures for defending our sea-borne trade, indicated by the figures just given, were triumphantly successful.  Our mercantile marine increased during the war, a sure proof that it had been effectually defended.  Consequently we may accept it as established beyond the possibility of refutation that that branch of our naval strategy at the time of Trafalgar which was concerned with the defence of our trade was rightly conceived and properly carried into effect.

As has been stated already, the defence of our sea-borne trade, being in practice the keeping open of our ocean lines of communication, carried with it the protection, in part at any rate, of our transmarine territories.  Napoleon held pertinaciously to the belief that British prosperity was chiefly due to our position in India.  We owe it to Captain Mahan that we now know that the eminent American Fulton—­a name of interest to the members of this Institution—­told Pitt of the belief held abroad that ‘the fountains of British wealth are in India and China.’  In the great scheme of naval concentration which the Emperor devised, seizure of British Colonies in the West Indies had a definite place.  We kept in that quarter, and varied as necessary, a force capable of dealing with a naval raid as well as guarding the neighbouring lines of communication.  In 1803 we had four ships of the line in the West Indian area.  In 1804 we had six of the same class; and in 1805, while the line-of-battle ships were reduced to four, the number of frigates was increased from nine to twenty-five.  Whether our Government divined Napoleon’s designs on India or not, it took measures to protect our interests there.  In January 1804 we had on the Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies stations, both together, six sail of the line, three smaller two-deckers, six frigates, and six sloops, or twenty-one ships of war in all.  This would have been sufficient to repel a raiding attack made in some strength.  By the beginning of 1805 our East Indies force had been increased; and in the year 1805 itself we raised it to a strength of forty-one ships in all, of which nine were of the line and seventeen were frigates.  Had, therefore, any of the hostile ships managed to get to the East Indies from the Atlantic or the Mediterranean ports, in which they were being watched by our navy, their chances of succeeding in their object would have been small indeed.