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.

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The Reformation quickened seafaring life in many ways.  After Henry’s excommunication every Roman Catholic crew had full Papal sanction for attacking every English crew that would not submit to Rome, no matter how Catholic its faith might be.  Thus, in addition to danger from pirates, privateers, and men-of-war, an English merchantman had to risk attack by any one who was either passionately Roman or determined to use religion as a cloak.  Raids and reprisals grew apace.  The English were by no means always lambs in piteous contrast to the Papal wolves.  Rather, it might be said, they took a motto from this true Russian proverb:  ‘Make yourself a sheep and you’ll find no lack of wolves.’  But, rightly or wrongly, the general English view was that the Papal attitude was one of attack while their own was one of defence.  Papal Europe of course thought quite the reverse.

Henry died in 1547, and the Lord Protector Somerset at once tried to make England as Protestant as possible during the minority of Edward VI, who was not yet ten years old.  This brought every English seaman under suspicion in every Spanish port, where the Holy Office of the Inquisition was a great deal more vigilant and businesslike than the Custom House or Harbor Master.  Inquisitors had seized Englishmen in Henry’s