their most nebulous and intangible shapes seem to have exerted an
ascertainable influence on the constitution of fleets.

Going back to the dawn of modern times, we note that at the opening of the
sixteenth century, when galley warfare reached its culmination, the
constitution was threefold, bearing a superficial analogy to that which we
have come to regard as normal. There were the galeasses and heavy galleys
corresponding to our battleships, light galleys corresponding to our
cruisers, while the flotilla was represented by the small "frigates,"
"brigantines," and similar craft, which had no slave gang for propulsion,
but were rowed by the fighting crew. Such armed sailing ships as then
existed were regarded as auxiliaries, and formed a category apart, as
fireships and bomb-vessels did in the sailing period, and as mine-layers do
now. But the parallel must not be overstrained. The distinction of function
between the two classes of galleys was not so strongly marked as that
between the lighter craft and the galleys; that is to say, the scientific
differentiation between battleships and cruisers had not yet been so firmly
developed as it was destined to become in later times, and the smaller
galleys habitually took their place in the fighting line.

With the rise of the sailing vessel as the typical ship-of-war an entirely
new constitution made its appearance. The dominating classification became
twofold. It was a classification into vessels of subservient movement using
sails, and vessels of free movement using oars. It was on these lines that
our true Royal Navy was first organised by Henry the Eighth, an expert who,
in the science of war, was one of the most advanced masters in Europe. In
this constitution there appears even less conception than in that of the
galley period of a radical distinction between battleships and cruisers. As
Henry's fleet was originally designed, practically the whole of the
battleships were sailing vessels, though it is true that when the French