In the conditions of naval warfare the century now closed has seen a
revolution unparalleled in the rapidity of the transition and equalled
in degree only by the changes which followed the general introduction
of cannon and the abandonment of oars in favor of sails for the
propulsion of ships of war. The latter step was consequent, ultimately,
upon the discovery of the New World and of the sea-passage to India by
the Cape of Good Hope. The voyage to those distant regions was too long
and the remoteness from ports of refuge too great for rowing galleys, a
class of vessels whose construction unfitted them for developing great
size and for contending with heavy weather. The change of motive power
made possible and entailed a different disposition of the fighting
power, the main battery weight of ships being transferred from the bows
and sterns—end-on fire—to the broadsides. The combination of these
two new factors caused ships and fleets necessarily to be fought in a
different manner from formerly—entailed, to use the technical word,
new tactics.
The innovations thus briefly mentioned, though equally radical, were
much more gradual in their progress than those witnessed by our
generation. The latter have occurred not merely within the lifetime but
within the memory of many who are still among us. They are embraced,
easily and entirely, within the reign of Queen Victoria. It has been
said, plausibly, that if a naval officer who died half a century ago
could revisit the earth he would find himself more at home in the ships
of Elizabeth than in those of her present successor. No such sudden
and sharp contrast troubled the seamen of the earlier era. It is true
and interesting to note that the battle of Lepanto in 1573, although a
few vessels of broadside type therein exercised a decisive influence,
was fought chiefly by galleys, while in the contest with the Spanish
Armada in the English Channel fifteen years later sailing ships played
the leading part; but while the fact gives a valuable assistance to
precision of memory by fixing an approximate date when the one type was
definitely supplanted by the other, it remains that the turning-point
thus indicated was reached long after cannon and sails first were
used afloat, and that another century elapsed before the galley was
definitively abandoned.