post-ships, and that simply because the command of them devolves upon post-captains. In the official register their station, when in ordinary, is nearly at the bottom of the list ; but, when in commission, they are removed to the rate, according to which the captain and officers receive their pay. The yachts, large and small, rank in the Abstracts with the hulks, hoys, and other excluded vessels. Every ship building, although, her keel may not have been laid, or a single timber of her frame cut out, is also included in the published lists. One instance may suffice. In January, 1796, a 120-gun ship, to be named the Caledonia (in lieu of a ship of 100 guns, ordered in November, 1794), was directed to be built, and appeared in Steel a few months afterwards; but the ship was not laid down until January, 1805, nor launched, until June, 1808. After all this, as it may well be called, paper-force has been added, the total at the foot of such periodical list is taken to denote, in an unrestricted sense, the numerical strength of the British navy.

On the other hand, as no foreign power publishes any regular list of her navy, the British have generally to glean their information from multifarious sources; such as, among others, the hasty and imperfect views of reconnoitring officers, the obscure and often contradictory statements of prisoners, and the loose paragraphs, and, not infrequently, studied misrepresentations, of the enemy's journals. And, after all, the sum-total of these driblets can have but a partial reference ; not covering, as it should do, the swarm of brigs, schooners, and armed small-craft, whose depredations on British commerce are, nevertheless, too important to be slighted. Hence, the numbers usually brought forward, as objects of comparison between the British and French navies, are wholly inadequate to the purpose, the cane being greatly excessive, the other, to about an equal extent, deficient.

An expected rupture with Spain, respecting Nootka-Sound, in 1790, and with Russia, respecting Turkey, in the following year, had occasioned so unexampled an activity in the English dock-yards, that, by the end of 1792, upwards of 60 of the 87 line-of-battle cruisers in the Abstract were in good condition. The excellent plan, which, at the recommendation of Sir Charles Middleton (afterwards Lord Barham), then comptroller of the navy, had been adopted since 1783, of setting apart for every seagoing ship, a large proportion of the material articles of her furniture and stores, as well as of stocking the magazines at the several dock-yards, with every description of imperishable stores, displayed itself in the extraordinary despatch with which the ships at the different ports were equipped for sea-service : so that, in a very few weeks after the order for arming had issued, the commissioned cruisers of the line became augmented from 26 to 54, and the total of the commissioned cruisers from 136 to upwards of 200.

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