Page:Royalnavyhistory01clow.djvu/37

B.C. 50.] need not suppose that the coast populations became suddenly orderly, and hastened to give up their primitive habits of piracy; and, indeed, we find that, a little later, these habits, far from having disappeared, were more firmly rooted than ever. Yet, for the time, the Britons paid or promised tribute, in order to keep Augustus at a distance; and, under Tiberius, they were wise enough to refrain from plundering certain soldiers of Germanicus, who were wrecked on their shores. The improvement may have been partly owing to the growth of central authority within the island; for it seems probable that Cymbeline, though monarch only of a portion of the country, attained much greater power and influence than had before been reached by any British prince, and was often able, more or less, directly to control nearly the whole of the southern part of the island. Even Cymbeline, however, was not always powerful enough to control all his dependents, nor all the members of his own family. Just before his death, he was dragged, apparently much against his will, into a serious difficulty with Rome; and, although he did not live to witness the invasion of the Emperor Claudius, he must have known, ere he breathed his last, that Britain, which, since the time of Cæsar, had been allowed to take very much its own course, was about to lose all semblance of independence.

Claudius was not opposed by sea; nor do ships seem to have played any part in the revolt under Boadicea in the time of Suetonius Paulinus. Indeed, during more than two hundred years, the country's naval progress went on so noiselessly as to have escaped the attention of historians. But progress under the Romans there must have been; for the bold and successful enterprise of Caius Carausius could not have terminated as it did, had not the leader had at his command not only good ships but also good seamen. The exploits of Carausius, and of his successor, will be found summarised in the next chapter. Progress continued steadily in the later days of the Roman dominion, when the ports as well as the fleet received much attention. The navy nearly always proved itself strong enough to repress piracy in the surrounding seas; and among the places which sprang into naval importance as military and commercial harbours or refuges were, according to Selden: Othona, which Camden identifies with Hastings; Dubris, now Dover; Lemmanis, now either Hythe or Limehill hard by it;