WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE WARSHIPS OF THE PRINCIPAL BY G. W. STEEVENS FELLOW OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD METHUEN & CO. 36, ESSEX STREET, W.C. LONDON PREFACE THE unkindest fate that this book or its author could encounter, is that the one should be accounted an attempt at original theory and research, or the other dubbed a naval expert. I am not an expert, and the following pages are not written for experts. They are merely an endeavour to interpret in some measure such sources of information upon naval matters as are open to the general public. But even these, unfortunately, make up a good body of print; and most men and women have neither the time nor the inclination to study and collate them. I have endeavoured to present their essence here in such a way that those who disagree with my opinions may be able to form conclusions of their own. A book of this kind must needs scamp a full recognition of its borrowings; it is wholly made up of borrowings. Many of these have been set down in their proper place. But there are others too great and too perpetually recurrent to be dealt with thus, unless the whole book were to be made up of footnotes and cross-references. For statistical matter I have pillaged without scruple the successive volumes of Brassey's Naval Annual, and Mr. Laird Clowes's Naval Pocket Book, as well as the principal newspapers. |