"Let fall the topsails, hoist away--up anchor, round goes the capstan--
sheet home--haul taut the braces! and away we glide, to prove to our
countrymen that British sailors have not been sleeping on beds of roses
for the last quarter of a century since her gracious Majesty Queen
Victoria came to the throne." So wrote our author some forty years ago.
"Up anchor, full speed ahead," is, we suppose, the modern equivalent
for his nautical simile, and very prosaic and commonplace it sounds; but
we shall find that the romance of the Navy did not go out with the last
of the sailing frigates, and that the age of steam and electricity, of
enormous ironclads and rapid cruisers, affords as great a scope for
individual daring, resource, and heroism as the days of sailing frigates
and boarding parties; and that though in recent years our sailors have
not had many chances of using their weapons on the sea, the Naval
Brigade has taken its part in many an expedition, on land, and on all
occasions the British tar has proved himself a worthy successor to the
heroes of Trafalgar and the Nile.
During the earlier years of the Great Queen's reign her sailors had
little to do in the fighting line, though on the West Coast of Africa
the slave traffic gave occasion to many a lively skirmish, and on other
seas various events from time to time afforded an opportunity for
showing that their weapons were as effective as of old.