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