existence, under the guise of the mastery of the sea, was only just
begun. Decade after decade, as that struggle waxed and waned but went
remorselessly on, the Navy grew in ships, the ships in tonnage and
weight of metal, and with their growth the demand for men, imperative
as the very existence of the nation, mounted ever higher and higher.
In 1756 fifty thousand sufficed for the nation's needs. By 1780 the
number had reached ninety-two thousand; and with 1802 it touched
high-water mark in the unprecedented total of one hundred and
twenty-nine thousand men in actual sea pay. [Footnote: _Admiralty
Records_ 7. 567-Navy Progress, 1756-1805. These figures are below
rather than above the mark, since the official returns on which they
are based are admittedly deficient.]

Beset by this enormous and steadily growing demand, the Admiralty, the
defensive proxy of the nation, had perforce to face the question as to
where and how the men were to be obtained.

The source of supply was never at any time in doubt. Here, ready to
hand, were some hundreds of thousands of persons using the sea, or
following vocations merging into the sea in the capacity of colliers,
bargemen, boatmen, longshoremen, fishermen and deep-sea sailors or
merchantmen, who constituted the natural Naval Reserve of an Island
Kingdom--a reserve ample, if judiciously drawn upon, to meet, and more
than meet, the Navy's every need.

The question of means was one more complicated, more delicate, and
hence incomparably more difficult of solution. To draw largely upon
these seafaring classes, numerous and fit though they were, meant
detriment to trade, and if the Navy was the fist, trade was the
backbone of the nation. The sufferings of trade, moreover, reacted