Page:The Development of Navies During the Last Half-Century.djvu/197

 of vessel is incomplete. It took centuries to produce the subdivision—or differentiation, as Admiral Colomb terms it in his Naval Warfare—of sailing ships into the several classes suited for the work then imposed on them. We cannot expect that, without the experience of conflict, the immense changes which the last half-century has seen in the composition of fleets will be found to have resulted in a series of types suited in all respects to the novel conditions of the next great naval war.