NAVAL Stores, comprehend all those particulars made use of, not only in the royal navy, but in every other kind of navigation; as timber and iron for shipping, pitch, tar, hemp, cordage, sail-cloth, gun-powder, ordnance, and fire-arms of every sort, ship-chandlery wares, &c.
NAVAL TACTICS is the art of ranging fleets in such order or disposition, as may be judged most convenient, either for attacking, defending, or retreating to the greatest advantage; and to regulate their several movements accordingly: it is not a science established on principles absolutely invariable, but founded on such reason as the alteration and improvement of arms must necessarily occasion in a course of time and experience; from which also will naturally result a difference in the construction of ships, in the manner of working them, and, in fine, in the total disposition and regulation of fleets and squadrons. We shall cursorily run through this succession and change of arms, &c. to the present improvement of our lines of battle, in order to make us the more sensible of the reasons
which have induced the moderns to prefer so advantageous a choice as they now follow in the arrangement of their ships.
The ancient galleys were so constructed as to carry several banks of oars, very differently disposed from those in our modern galleys, which, however, vary the least of any others from their ancient model. Advanced by the force of their oars, the galleys ran violently a-board of each other, and by the mutual encounter of their beaks and prows, and sometimes of their sterns, endeavoured to dash in pieces or sink their enemies.
The prow, for this purpose, was commonly armed with a brazen point or trident, nearly as low as the surface of the sea, in order to pierce the enemy's ships under the water. Some of the galleys were furnished with