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CHAPTER I.

CIVIL HISTORY OF NAVAL AFFAIRS TO 1066.

MONG the inhabitants of Britain, a large number have in all ages followed the sea. In the days of extreme antiquity, when the greater part of the island was covered with forests in which wild beasts, and possibly wilder human beings, roamed, knowing no law save that of the strongest; when marshes and lakes were more common, and watercourses broader, than they are now, and when there was little tillage, the seas and rivers yielded a readier harvest than the land.

So long as society remained unorganised, the man who planted a field gave to precarious fortune most valuable hostages in the shape of his labour and his seed. Any man more powerful than he might, without much trouble, deprive him of the fruit of both by driving him from his hard-won patch, and occupying it. Yet, even while society was in its earliest infancy, there was a certain kind of safety afloat for him who knew how to manage paddle and sail. He could not easily be ousted from his chosen fishing-grounds. To oust him—nay, seriously to interfere with him afloat—required not merely brute