holds a place entirely by himself. The other British chiefs,
good as they were, were not conspicuously superior to the Hawkes
and Rodneys of an earlier day. Howe was a great commander, but
he did little more than just appear on the scene in the war.
Almost the same may be said of Hood, of whom Nelson wrote, 'He
is the greatest sea-officer I ever knew.'[45] There must have
been something, therefore, beyond the meritorious qualities of
our principal officers which helped us so consistently to victory.
The many triumphs won could not have been due in every case to
the individual superiority of the British admiral or captain to
his opponent. There must have been bad as well as good amongst
the hundreds on our lists; and we cannot suppose that Providence
had so arranged it that in every action in which a British officer
of inferior ability commanded a still inferior French commander
was opposed to him. The explanation of our nearly unbroken success
is, that the British was a thoroughly sea-going navy, and became
more and more so every month; whilst the French, since the close
of the American war, had lost to a great extent its sea-going
character and, because we shut it up in its ports, became less
and less sea-going as hostilities continued. The war had been
for us, in the words of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, 'a continuous
course of victory won mainly by seamanship.' Our navy, as regards
sea-experience, especially of the officers, was immensely superior
to the French. This enabled the British Government to carry into
execution sound strategic plans, in accordance with which the coasts
of France and its dependent or allied countries were regarded as
the English frontier to be watched or patrolled by our fleets.

[Footnote 45: Laughton, _Nelson's_Lett._and_Desp._ p. 71.]