end also furthered by the close watch of the French ports.  This blockade, as it is often, but erroneously, styled, Hawke was the first to maintain thoroughly and into the winter months; and in so doing he gave an extension to the practice of naval warfare, which amounted to a veritable revolution in naval strategy.  The conception was one possible only to a thorough seaman, who knew exactly and practically what ships could do; one also in whom professional knowledge received the moral support of strong natural self-confidence,—­power to initiate changes, to assume novel responsibility, through the inner assurance of full adequacy to bear it.

All this Hawke had.  The method, therefore, the holding the sea, and the exposure of heavy ships to weather before thought impossible, was well within the range of his ability,—­of his native and acquired faculties; but it is due to him to recognize the intellectual force, the originality, which lifted him above the accepted tradition of his predecessors, and by example transmitted to the future a system of warfare that then, as well as in his own hands, was to exercise a decisive effect upon the course of history.  It is also to be remembered that he took this weighty step with instruments relatively imperfect, and greatly so.  The bottoms of ships were not yet coppered; in consequence they fouled very rapidly, the result of which was loss of speed.  This meant that much greater power, press of canvas, was needed to force them through the water, and that they had to be sent frequently into port to be cleaned.  Thus they were less able than ships of later days to overtake an enemy, or to keep off a lee shore, while more intricate administration and more ships were required to maintain the efficiency of the squadron by a system of reliefs.  Hawke noted also another difficulty,—­the fatigue of the crews in cleaning their ships’ bottoms.  It was even more important to success, he said, to restore the seaman, worn by cruising, by a few days quiet and sleep in port, than to clean thoroughly at the expense of exhausting them.  “If the enemy should slip out and run,” he writes, “we must follow as fast as we can.”  Details such as these, as well as the main idea, must be borne in mind, if due credit is to be given to Hawke for one of the most decisive advances ever made in the practice of naval campaigning.

Some time, however, was to elapse before the close watch of the French ports became a leading feature in the naval policy of the government.  The early disasters of the war had forced the king, after much resistance, finally to accept the first Pitt as the leading minister of the Crown, in June, 1757.  Pitt’s military purpose embraced two principal objects:  1, the establishment of the British colonial system by the destruction of that of France, which involved as a necessary precedent the control of the sea by a preponderant navy; and, 2, the support of Frederic of Prussia, then engaged in his deadly contest