ILLUSTRATIONS

Edward, Lord Hawke Frontispiece From an engraving by W. Holl, after the painting by Francis Cotes in the Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital.

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Plan of Byng’s Action off Minorca, May 20, 1756 48

George Brydges, Lord Rodney 148 From an engraving by Edward Finden, after the painting by W. Grimaldi.

Richard, Earl Howe 254 From a mezzotint engraving by R. Dunkarton, after the painting by John Singleton Copley.

John Jervis, Earl St. Vincent 320 From an engraving by J. Cook, after the painting by Sir William Beechey.

James, Lord De Saumarez 382 From an engraving by W. Greatbatch, after a miniature in possession of the family.

Edward Pellew, Lord Exmouth 428 From the original painting in the possession of Orr Ewing, Esq.

TYPES OF NAVAL OFFICERS

INTRODUCTORY

NAVAL WARFARE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The recent close of the nineteenth century has familiarized us with the thought that such an epoch tends naturally to provoke an estimate of the advance made in the various spheres of human activity during the period which it terminates.  Such a reckoning, however, is not a mere matter of more and less, of comparison between the beginning and the end, regardless of intermediate circumstances.  The question involved is one of an historical process, of cause and effect; of an evolution, probably marked, as such series of events commonly are, by certain salient incidents, the way-marks of progress which show the road traversed and the succession of stages through which the past has become the present.  Frequently, also, such development associates itself not only with conspicuous events, but with the names of great men, to whom, either by originality of genius or by favoring opportunity, it has fallen to illustrate in action the changes which have a more silent antecedent history in the experience and reflection of mankind.

The development of naval warfare in the eighteenth century, its advance in spirit and methods, is thus exemplified in certain striking events, and yet more impressively is identified with the great names of Hawke and Rodney.  The period of nearly half a generation intervened between their births, but they were contemporaries and actors, though to no large extent associates, during the extensive wars that occupied the middle of the century—­the War of the Austrian Succession, 1739-1748, and the Seven Years War, 1756-1763.  These two conflicts are practically one; the same characteristic jealousies and motives