Читать книгу A Merchant Fleet at War онлайн

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It is a common error to think of sea power in terms only of battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines. The secret of the spread of Anglo-Saxon civilisation, with its ideals of fair play, tolerance and personal liberty, its hatred of tyranny and love of justice, is not to be found as much in these emblems of organised violence as in merchant ships. Out of our island State the Merchant Fleet, a purely individualistic institution, developed by the compulsion of geographical necessities; the British people could not exist without ships even in days when their numbers were small and the standard of living was relatively low. The population has trebled in the last hundred years and the level of comfort of all classes has risen, and to-day the very existence of the 45,000,000 people of the British Isles, as well as their commercial and social relations with the other sections of the Empire, depends on the sufficiency and efficiency of the Mercantile Marine.

We possessed a trading Navy, with fine traditions of peace and war, long before we had a Fighting Navy. The owners of merchant ships for many centuries defended this country from raids and invasions, just as it was the early merchant-adventurers who laid the foundations of the Empire. Thus as far back as the reign of Athelstan, we find this Saxon king granting a Thaneship—or, as one might say, a knighthood—to every merchant who had been three voyages of length in his own trading vessel. It was largely with the ships of merchant owners that in 1212 the English, by raiding France, prevented a French invasion, and that in 1340 one of the greatest British naval victories was won over vastly superior forces at the battle of Sluys. And though, by the time of the Armada, merchant ships were but as it were the core of the fleets that fought and destroyed the threatened world domination of Spain, they played an exceedingly important part in that epoch-making struggle, which marked the emergence of this Island as a world power. Similarly the Indian Empire, the early American Colonies, and many other British Possessions all over the world, were founded by merchant shipping enterprise alone. From time immemorial, the British merchantman has carried the flag to the outermost parts of the world and thus helped to maintain its prestige.