How Britannia Came To Rule The Waves

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves" (Updated to 1900) by William Henry Giles Kingston. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves By William Henry Giles Kingston

Rome was not built in a day, nor has the glorious British Navy attained its present condition except by slow degrees, by numerous trials and experiments, by improvements gradually and cautiously introduced, and by the employment of a vast amount of thought, energy, and toil. We are apt to forget when we see an elaborate machine, the immense quantity of mental and physical exertion it represents, the efforts of the united minds perhaps of many successive generations, and the labour of thousands of workmen. I propose briefly to trace the progress which the British Navy has made from age to age, as well as its customs, and the habits of its seamen, with their more notable exploits since the days when this tight little island of ours first became known to the rest of the world.

In diesem Buch des Schriftstellers William H. G. Kingston (1814-1880) bekommt der Leser einen umfassenden Einblick in die Marinegeschichte von seinen Anfängen bis 1900. Es handelt sich hierbei um eine englischsprachige Ausgabe.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

In his lifetime William H. G. Kingston (1814-1880) was very popular for his adventure and voyage novels. In addition to his fictional writing he dealt a lot with British foreign affairs and colonial history. His book "How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves" gives a detailed overview of British naval history from the ancient times until late 19th century.Reprint of the original edition from the 19. century.

"[...]had to give place to Neptune, the long-honoured monarch of the main, and Amphitrite was introduced to keep him company. We recognise in the duckings, the sacrificial ablutions, and in the shaving and fining, the oaths and the penalty. When the hardy seamen of Great Britain first began to steer their ships across the line, they were undoubtedly accompanied by pilots and mariners of the Mediterranean. These, of course, taught them the ceremonies they had been in the habit of performing. The English, as may be supposed, made various additions and alterations suited to their rougher habits and ideas, and what at one time probably retained somewhat of the elegance of its classical origin, became the strange burlesque it now appears.[...]".