Arguments from his personal experience
as to its value as a nursery for seamen. no hesitation in abandoning the Navigation Laws. An assertion more completely contradicted by all experience, Admiral Martin confidently stated, had never been uttered. The merchant service, he held, was everything to the navy, while the navy, he was convinced, could not exist without it. He was unable, adequately, to express his surprise at these loose assertions, for every person who remembered the muster of the navy immediately preceding the war in 1793, could not fail to know that the glorious victory of the 1st of June, 1794, under Lord Howe, was gained by the merchant seamen of the kingdom. We had not then, he said, 20,000 men, and these were scattered over the globe when the war broke out; it was, therefore, the merchant service that enabled us rapidly to man some sixty sail of the line, and double that number of frigates and smaller vessels. By promptly bringing together about 35,000 or 40,000 seamen of the mercantile marine, Admiral Gardner was able at once to proceed to the West Indies with seven sail of the line, nine frigates and sloops of war; Lord Hood to man twenty-two sail of the line, and a large number of frigates and sloops, with which he occupied Toulon and took Corsica; while, by its aid, other squadrons were sent to America and to the East Indies to protect our interests in those quarters. The command of seamen from the merchant service also enabled Lord Howe to occupy the Channel with twenty-seven sail of the line and numerous frigates, thereby affording security to our own homes, and the means of protecting our colonies and commerce by detached squadrons.
