Page:Heresies of Sea Power (1906).djvu/331

Rh Assuredly not. They failed for other than constructional reasons: their size indeed helped them in their battles in the Channel, since relatively little impression was made upon them by the English vessels. Had the galleons been of moderate dimensions few probably would ever have passed the Straits of Dover.

In the Nelson era and thereabouts, size many a time proved advantageous, despite the already stated draw-backs that the mastodon then suffered from.

There is, for instance, the well-known case of the Revolutionnaire, 110, in Lord Howe's battle of 28th May, 1794. She was first engaged by the Bellerophon, 74, for an hour and a quarter. She was then engaged in succession by two other seventy-fours, but survived all three attacks of ships aggregating just double her gun fire, coming in succession against her. 'The concentration upon her,' says Captain Mahan, 'though eminently judicious, served to bring out vividly the advantage, which should never be forgotten, of one heavy ship over several smaller, though the force of the latter may, in the aggregate be much superior.'

Again, in the battle of Cape St. Vincent, the Santissima Trinidad, 130, though she bore the brunt of the British attack, was neither captured nor destroyed in the defeat sustained by the Spanish Fleet. Her dimensions saved her.

The teaching of history, therefore, is surely that, though men in ships of moderate dimensions have succeeded at times, in defeating men in big ships, the