^{FN1 Ch4} Chatterton, English Seaman and the Colonization of America (London: Arrowsmith, 1930) pp. 13-14.

^{FN2 Ch4} As quoted by Chatterton, p. 27.

^{FN3 Ch4} As quoted by Chatterton, pp. 16-7. "What remains certain is that not till the year 1190 is the compass mentioned in Europe, where a French ballad distinctly makes reference to the needle which floated on a straw in water."

^{FN4 Ch4} Around 500 A.D., Ptolemy, an Egyptian mathematician living in Alexandria, described how an astrolabe was to work. It was an instrument designed to take altitudes but it could be used to solve problems of practical astronomy.

^{FN5 Ch4} James Cook sailed on the Endeavour from Plymouth on August 26, 1768, so that English scientists might observe and study the transit of Venus across the sun (June 3rd, 1769) at Tahiti. By this time England did have a chronometer of sufficient reliability to enable longitude to be calculated -- though, Cook did not have one with him on this first voyage. A man from Yorkshire, a carpenter and self-taught mathematician, by the name of John Harrison (1693-1776) had started to make such clocks as early as 1735 (the first ones were heavy brass and wood mechanisms). By 1762, Harris and his people had made a reliable clock, which measured up to Admiralty standards, and which was but twice the size as a pocket watch; one of these prize watches was carried by Cook when he set out on his second voyage to the South Pacific (July 1772 to July 1775).

^{FN6 Ch4} There are a number of scientific reasons why there are great circular routes which the winds and the ocean currents of the world travel. Among the influencing factors are the rotation of the earth, warm southern oceans and cold northern oceans, and large continental land masses.

^{FN7 Ch4} The direction which one ship's captain might give to another if his aim was to sail from Europe to America was, "steer so far south till you reach such-and-such latitude. You will then pick up the north-east trade winds that will carry you with fair breezes the whole way." (Chatterton, p. 28.) This large intercontinental wind system is doughnut shaped with the doldrums filling the centre. In the sultry doldrums a ship may lie for weeks. Unbearable calm, no progress with the rigging clanking to the swells of the ocean. A good many sailor would rather get caught in a wind storm than be caught in the mind numbing doldrums.

"Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Twas sad as sad could be ;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea !

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion ;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

-- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge.

^{FN8 Ch4} See Chatterton, p. 55.

^{FN9 Ch4} Murdoch, Vol. 3, Preface, pp. iv-v.

^{FN10 Ch4} H. G. Wells, A Short History of the World (1922) (Collins, 1953) p. 249.

^{FN11 Ch4} Found in Virginibus Puerisque, 1881, (London: Heinemann, 1924), pp. 87-8.

^{FN12 Ch4} "The English Admirals," Virginibus Puerisque, op. cit., p. 90. Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Camperdown (1731-1804), had blockaded the Dutch at the Texel with only two English warships and three small vessels, while 95 enemy ships lay inside the port. This blockade was a triumph of audacity and courage. By confusing signals and changing flags he made the Dutch admiral, De Winter, believe that a great fleet was in the distance.

^{FN13 Ch4} "The English Admirals," pp. 90-1.

^{FN14 Ch4} "The English Admirals," pp. 91-2.

^{FN15 Ch4} "The English Admirals," pp. 92-3.

^{FN16 Ch4} As quoted by McLennan at p. 297.

^{FN17 Ch4} For example, one might study the naval careers of the French naval officers Du Bois de la Motte and le Marquis Charry Des Gouttes: de la Motte was sent to the defence of Louisbourg in 1757, Des Gouttes in 1758. Both of these French naval officers, in the opinion of certain historians, failed in their duty to engage the British fleet when they ought to have, especially Des Gouttes in 1758. Both eventually became admirals. Compare this with the fate of Admiral John Byng (1704-57) of the British navy. He failed to engage the French fleet at Minorca in the Mediterranean in a manner thought to be appropriate by the British Admiralty. Admiral, or no, Byng was brought back to England under arrest and court-martialled. Found guilty of neglect, he was brought down to Portsmouth and was ceremoniously shot dead on the quarter deck of one of his ships, the Monarque.

^{FN18 Ch4} Document No. 284 in British Naval Documents (London: Navy Records Society, 1993).

^{FN19 Ch4} As attributed by George Macaulay Trevelyan, English Social History (Toronto: Longmans, Green; 1st Can ed., 1946) p. 348.

^{FN20 Ch4} A cat-o'-nine-tails was a whip with nine lashes and was used up until 1881, as an authorized instrument of punishment in the British navy and army.

^{FN21 Ch4} "... ship's stores of that day consisted but of salt pork, and beef, the latter being indifferently called funk or old horse. The biscuits, too, [because of] inferior corn, bad package, and old age soon generated weevils ... Bullied by their officers, and brutally flogged and punished for trifling faults, Jack's life could not have been a pleasant one; and we can hardly wonder that he often deserted, and sometimes mutinied. Yet, whenever a fight was imminent, or did actually occur, all bad treatment was banished from his mind, and he fought like a Britain." (Ashton, The Dawn of the XIXth Century in England, (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 5th ed., 1906), pp. 404-5.)

^{FN22 Ch4} Lord Rosebery, Pitt (London: MacMillan, 1891) at p. 134. Mutiny was not unheard of at the Halifax Station. In August of 1809, an attempted mutiny was carried out on HMS Columbine. In September six of her seamen were executed.

^{FN23 Ch4} It is not to be thought that only the British Navy handed out harsh discipline. The British army was also well known for it. Murdoch wrote of it: "On the 7 August [1800] a melancholy proceeding took place at Halifax. Eleven soldiers sentenced to death for acts of mutiny and desertion, were escorted with all solemnity behind the citadel by all the troops in garrison, viz., the Royal Newfoundland regiment, the Royal Nova Scotia regiment, 26th, 24th, 7th, and Royal artillery. The convicts were dressed in white, their coffins painted black, drawn on a cart before them. Two clergymen - Wright, (Protestant), and Burke, (Catholic) - attending them, a band playing some dirge. On the place of execution, eight were reprieved, and three who belonged to the Newfoundland regiment, were hanged at twenty minutes before 7, a.m." (Vol. 3, p. 195.)

^{FN24 Ch4} Lord Rosebery, Pitt (London: MacMillan, 1891) at p. 137.

^{FN25 Ch4} On the morning of the 1st of August, 1798, Nelson led the way in his flag ship between the shore and the anchored French fleet. In a terrible fight that lasted for twelve hours, the French fleet was destroyed. "Few victories," Green writes, "in history have produced more effective results than the battle of the Nile. The French flag was swept from the waters of the Mediterranean. All communications between France and Bonaparte's army was cut off; and his hopes of making Egypt a starting-point for the conquest of India fell at a blow." (Vol. X, p. 183.)

^{FN26 Ch4} Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 337-8. The timber in Great Britain was consumed by her navy such that by 1815 there was none available. Ship building supplies might be had from the northern forests of Europe if the British could get their carrying ships into the Baltic. Because of war this was not always possible. More and more, Britain had to turn to Canadian forests for their ship building supplies.

^{FN27 Ch4} Haydon's Autobiography (Oxford University Press, nd) at p. 114.

^{FN28 Ch4} Ashton, The Dawn of the XIXth Century in England, (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 5th ed., 1906), p. 405.

^{FN29 Ch4} There was a system of classifying warships. It originally referred to the rates of pay of their captains but by the late-17th century the Rate was calculated by the number of guns a ship carried. The ships of the line were the First to Fourth Rates. A First Rate ship was one of in excess of 100 guns; Second Rate, more than 90 guns; Third Rate were those which had 80, 74, 70 or 64 guns; Fourth Rate, 50 to 60 guns; Fifth Rate, 44, 40, 38, 36 or 32 guns; and Sixth Rate, 28, 24 and 20 guns. (http://www.nmm.ac.uk : 10/23/2005)

^{FN30 Ch4} Mahan, Sea Power in its Relations to The War of 1812 (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, 1905), Vol. 1, pp. 382-5.