Buonaparte's invasion-flotilla, and a summary of such proceedings on shore, including measures of state and the movements of armies, as may contribute to throw a light upon naval history.

Under the second head, I have given an account of all actions between frigate-squadrons or single ships, boat-attacks, shipwrecks, and other naval proceedings not reducible under the fleet or the colonial head ; and the third and last head takes in, as it specifies, all expeditions fitted out against the colonies of any of the belligerents. On first introducing this head, I have thought it requisite to enumerate the colonies possessed, at that period, by the different European powers.

It was in the " Naval Occurrences," that I first adopted the plan of exhibiting the comparative force of ships of war by a tabular statement. Before I introduced the plan into the present work, I consulted several naval officers; and they all agreed, that the statement conveyed to their minds the clearest idea of that which it was meant to express, the actual force of the combatants. A committee of the most scientific officers belonging to the American navy, having been ordered by the president to compute and report upon the relative strength of different classes of ships, compare them by the " weight of ball in a round." M. Dupin, in the second, or naval part of his " Voyages dans la Grande-Bretagne," a work of admitted science and research, wherever he has occasion to compare the force of two ships of war, adopts my mode, that of the broadside weight of metal. If it be the number and not the nature of the guns that decides the contest, what is to be understood by the frequent expression, "This ship is heavier than that ?" Does it mean that the ship bears about her more wood and iron work, and is therefore heavier; or that her guns are of a larger caliber, and the balls she discharges from them heavier ?

In reasoning upon the issue of any battle, I have found neither the talent nor the inclination, to dwell on the consequences which might or did accrue to either nation from success or failure. The merits of the combat, considered as a combat, I have fully detailed, and freely discussed ; and have left the field of politics open to those who know better how to traverse it. Disclaiming as I do all party-feeling, my task as an impar-

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