Chapter I: The Sailing Ship (3)

For further evidence that it was the system and not the men at fault, we may note Charnock’s statement that, given a free hand, Englishmen proved themselves better shipbuilders than foreigners. “It stamps no inconsiderable degree of splendour on the opinion which even the arrogance of Spain felt itself compelled to hold in regard to the superior practical knowledge possessed by the British shipwrights in the construction and art of putting a vessel together, when brought in comparison with that of their own people. The builders in all the royal dockyards and arsenals, the Havanna excepted, were Britons.”

How many, we may wonder, of the ships shattered by Lord Nelson at Trafalgar were constructed by our countrymen? The _Victory_, which was to bear his flag, was laid down (we may note in passing) in the year 1759: she was 186 feet in length on the gun-deck, 52 feet broad, and of 2,162 tons burthen.

In 1774 the American war broke out. The colonists, who possessed a small but efficient frigate navy, were joined soon afterwards by France, and then by Spain, and Holland. Lord Rodney acknowledged the superiority of the French in speed, who, though his ships were equally clean with theirs, yet had the power daily to bring on an action. The war proved a rough test for our honest but unscientific construction. “In 1778, assailed by numerous enemies, England put forth all her naval strength. Powerful fleets had to be found simultaneously for the Channel, the North Sea, the East Indies, America, and the West Indies. Five years of such warfare proved exhausting, the ships on paying off in 1783 were in a terrible state of decay. Several foundered returning home, owing to their ill-construction and rickety condition; their iron bolts broke with the working, and the ships were mere bundles of boards. All this was owing to want of a better system of building, such as has since been brought to such perfection by Sir R. Seppings.”[27]

After the peace the size of the French ships continued to increase, and every effort was made to improve their design; but they were weak both in construction and material. Large three-deckers were once more built; the _Commerce de Marseille_, 120, was of such extraordinary dimensions that English critics thought that “size had now reached its ultimatum.” In 1786 the French abolished the use of shingle as ballast; it created a damp vapour between decks and gave a high centre of gravity. Iron ballast had been tried in the frigate _Iphigène_ with great success. “She was very easy in a sea when under her courses; her extremities were not overloaded with cannon; she mounted only 13 guns a side, whereas she had room for 15. She was the best sea boat, and fastest sailing ship, perhaps, ever built. Her length was more than four times her breadth.”[28]

In England, as witnessed by the formation of the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture, feeling was widespread at this time that something was lacking in our methods of ship construction. The navy was in process of reorganization by a great administrator. In 1784 Sir Charles Middleton created an establishment of naval stores. He took under consideration shortly afterwards the growing scarcity of timber and its more economical use. And in the course of his inquiry views were expressed on naval shipbuilding which had an influence on subsequent practice.

The conditions under which ships were built for the East India Company were far more scientific than those obtaining in the royal dockyards. The timber was more carefully picked, and better seasoned. The hulls were laid up under cover and well aired; they stood in frame for six months, and then, when the planks had been tacked on, they stood again, and no tree-nails were driven till all moisture had been dried out of the timber. In design they were in many ways superior; in fact, they were reputed the best and safest vessels in Europe.

Mr. Gabriel Snodgrass, the Company’s surveyor, under whose supervision, it was claimed, 989 ships had been built and repaired between the years 1757 and 1794, only one of which had been lost at sea, gave illuminating evidence. “I am of opinion,” he said, “that all the ships of the navy are too short, from ten to thirty feet according to their rates, And if ships in future were to be built so much larger as to admit of an additional timber between every port, and also if the foremost and aftermost gun-ports were placed a greater distance from the extremities, they would be stronger and safer, have more room for fighting their guns, and, I am persuaded, would be found to answer every other purpose much better than the present ships. The foremasts of all ships are placed too far forward; the ships are too lofty abaft, and too low in midships; they would be much better and safer, if their forecastles and quarter-decks were joined together; for if they carry two, three, or four tiers of guns, forward and abaft, they certainly ought to carry the same in midships, as it is an absurdity to load the extremities with more weight of metal than the midships. No ships, however small, that have forecastles and quarter-decks, should go to sea with deep waists: they certainly ought to have flush upper decks.”

Ships of the navy, he considered, were too weak; they had plenty of timber, but were deficient in iron fastenings, brackets, and standards. Knees should be of iron, which was lighter, cheaper, and stronger than wood. The bottoms of all navy ships were too thin; the wales and inside stuff too thick. He particularly recommended diagonal braces from keelson to gun-deck clamps: six or eight pairs of these, secured with iron knees or straps, should prevent ships from straining as they did. He would reduce the tumble-home given to the topsides, and thus add to the strength both of hulls and masts; he would abolish quarter-galleries and give less rake to the sterns. Finally, he would design ships so as to require a minimum of compass timber; make no use of oak where he could substitute fir or elm with propriety; and have all timbers cut as nearly to the square as possible, to conserve strength.

His evidence, ending in a recommendation to the government to improve the status of the naval shipwrights, has been handed down as a remarkable exposition of sound knowledge and good sense. The proposals were beneficial, so far as they went, but they did not go far enough: the whole system on which the hull timbers were disposed was wrong. The continuous increase in the size of ships was gradually exposing their weakness. And though in the next century a more scientific disposition was to be adopted, for some years yet construction continued on the ancient lines.[29]

The great wars with France, which broke out in the year 1792, found us adding both to the length and to the scantlings of our new ships. Three years before, the Admiralty had ordered two 110-gun ships to be built, of 2332 tons burthen. One of them, the _Hibernia_, not finished till the year 1805, was made more than eleven feet longer than originally intended. Both of these ships were established with 32-pounder guns for their main deck.[30] The unwieldy 42-pounder, used on the lower decks of first and second-rate ships, was now displaced, in most ships, by the more rapidly worked 32-pounder. Lord Keppel had tried, also, to substitute 32-pounders for 24-pounders on the main deck of the _Victory_ and other ships in commission, so as to establish them generally; but they were found too heavy on trial. He replaced 6-pounders by 12-pounders, however, on the quarter-decks and forecastles. Carronades were now making their appearance. In excellence of material and honesty of workmanship our fleets were pre-eminent.

The value of large dimensions was by this time discerned; where possible extra length was given to ships building and those under repair. Size still increased. The great _Commerce de Marseille_, brought home a prize by Lord Hood in ’94, was forthwith matched by the _Caledonia_, which, ordered in this year but not completed until 1810, was the greatest ship which had ever been built in this country. Still, side by side with news of world-shaking victories, came evidence of our ships’ inferiority in design. Not only the French, but the Spanish dockyards, produced vessels which could often outsail ours. Four large prizes taken at the battle off Cape St. Vincent surprised their new owners: “under their jury-masts, and poorly manned as they necessarily were, they beat all the English ships working into the Tagus.”[31]

As the great wars went on, Britain deployed a constantly increasing naval force. Prizes went to swell the number of ships put in commission. “Mr. Pitt was foremost in getting every possible ship to sea; and under this pressure rotten old ships were doubled and cross-braced and otherwise strengthened and rendered fully adequate to temporary service. Trafalgar followed, and the efforts of the civil departments were rewarded.”[32]

We have made little mention, in the foregoing pages, of the actual tonnage or dimensions of ships, for the reason that the figures would be for the most part unreliable or misleading in import. The basis on which tonnage was measured was constantly changing. It was difficult to obtain accurate measurements of the principal dimensions; length, especially, was an indeterminate dimension, and, in the days when a large fore and aft rake was given, the length of keel gave no indication of the over-all length. Even if the over-all dimensions could be accurately measured, they gave small information as to the form of the hull: the fullness or fineness of the lines, the form of the bow-curves and tuck, the position of the section of maximum breadth, both longitudinally and relatively to the water-line--proportions on which the sailing qualities of a ship largely depended. In the seventeenth century the tonnage figures were generally untrustworthy; the _Sovereign_ was quoted by three different authorities as being of 1141, 1637, and 1556 tons burthen. In the eighteenth century tonnage and dimensions possessed greater comparative value. We confine ourselves to quoting the following table of typical dimensions, taken from Charnock, showing the gradual expansion which took place in the hundred years which have just been reviewed.

---------------------+----------+-------+-------+------+-------
Establishment | Length | Keel |Breadth| Depth|Tonnage
|(gun-deck)| | | |
---------------------+----------+-------+-------+------+-------
1706 } | 171′ 9″ |139′ 7″| 49′ 3″|19′ 6″| 1809
1719 } 100-gun ships | 175′ 0″ |140′ 7″| 50′ 3″|20′ 1″| 1883
1745 } | 178′ 0″ |145′ 2″| 52′ 0″|21′ 6″| 2091
_Commerce de | | | | |
Marseille_ (120) | 208′ 4″ |172′ 0″| 54′ 9″|25′ ½″| 2747
_Caledonia_ (120) | 205′ 0″ |170′ 9″| 53′ 8″|23′ 2″| 2616
---------------------+----------+-------+-------+------+-------

§

The slow progress of naval architecture up to the end of the eighteenth century, an advance the rate of which may be gauged from the fact that, except for sheathing and pumps, no important improvement was patented between the years 1618 and 1800, has been characterized as consisting mainly of approximations to the successive forms and arrangements of Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and French ships, all of which had been in their turn superior to ours. Until the end of the eighteenth century the “bigotry of old practice” had effectually opposed any radical improvement, even though such improvement had been operating for years in foreign navies and were brought continually before the eyes of our professionals, embodied in captured prizes. In his _Naval Development of the Century_ Sir Nathaniel Barnaby has drawn attention to the remarkable similarity which existed between the _Caledonia_ of the early nineteenth, and the old _Sovereign_ of the seventeenth century: “Almost the only things of note were the reduction in height above water, forward and aft, and a slight increase in dimensions. The proportion between length and breadth had undergone but little change. There was almost the same arrangement of decks and ports; the same thin boarding in front of the forecastle; the same mode of framing the stern, the same disposition of the outside planking in lines crossing the sheer of the ports; nearly the same rig; the same external rudder-head, with a hole in the stern to admit the tiller; and probably the same mode of framing the hull. For the ships of 1810 had no diagonal framing of wood or iron, but the old massive vertical riders; no shelf or waterway to connect the beams with the sides; no fillings above the floor-head; and no dowels in the frames. Ships were still moored by hempen cables, and still carried immense stores of water in wooden casks.”

To Sir Robert Seppings was due the series of innovations in constructional method which placed shipbuilding on a relatively scientific basis and thereby rendered it capable of meeting the increasing demands involved in the growing size and force of warships. His scheme, some elements of which had already been tested in H.M. ships, was described in a paper read before the Royal Society in 1814. In the briefest language we will attempt to explain it.

In the theory of structures, a jointed figure formed of four straight sides is known as a _deficient_ frame, since it has not a sufficient number of members to keep it in stable equilibrium under any system of loading. A triangle, on the other hand, is a _perfect_ frame, since it has enough, and not more than enough, members to keep it in equilibrium however it may be loaded.

The hull of a timber-built ship consisted of a number of rigidly jointed frames or cells, some lying in horizontal, some in vertical, and some in intermediate planes: the unit cell being a quadrilateral, whose sides were formed by the frames and vertical riders and by the planks, wales, and horizontal riders. Practically all the materials composing the fabric of a ship were disposed either in planes parallel to the plane of the keel or in planes at right angles to it. And up to the end of the Napoleonic wars our ships, without appreciable exception, were built on this primitive quadrilateral system. The system was essentially weak. All warships showed a tendency to arch or hog--to become convex upwards, in the direction of their length--owing to the fact that the support which they derived from the water was relatively greater amidships than in the neighbourhood of their extremities. In the old days when ships were short in length this tendency was small, or, if appreciable, a remedy was found in working into the structures additional longitudinal and transverse riders, until the holds were not infrequently clogged with timber. But as ships increased in length, the forces tending to “break the sheer” of a ship and arch its keel increased in greater ratio than the ship’s power of resistance to the distortion; and by the end of the eighteenth century, in spite of the aid of iron knees, stronger fastenings, and improved material generally, the essential weakness of our mode of construction had been gradually exposed. The _Victory_ herself suffered from arching. The extremities of a 74-gun ship dropped six inches, sometimes, when she entered the water from the stocks. A similar tendency to hog took place also across the breadth of a ship, occasioned by the dead weight of her guns. When rolling in heavy weather the momentum of her top weights caused large racking stresses to be thrown on the joints between the frames and the deck-beams. The biographer of Admiral Symonds quotes Captain Brenton as follows: “I remember very well, when I was a midshipman in a 64-gun ship coming home from India, cracking nuts by the working of the ship. We put them in under the knees, as she rolled one way, and snatched them out as she rolled back again.”

From these remarks it will be clear that a new method of construction which, by substituting the triangle for the rectangle, prevented the distortion of a ship’s hull under the stresses of hogging and sagging, would constitute an important innovation: even more important if, in addition, the new method resulted in a large economy of material. Such a system Sir Robert Seppings introduced. Treating the hull as a girder liable to bend, he disposed the timbers to the best advantage to resist deformation. The rectangular system, wherein frames and riders formed rectangular cells with no other power of resisting distortion into rhomboids than that derived from the rigidity of the joints, had been proved inefficient; just as a common field gate would be inefficient, and would easily distort, if built up solely of vertical and horizontal timbers without any diagonal brace to make it a rigid figure. He solved the problem with the triangle. By bracing each quadrilateral cell with a diagonal timber he thereby divided it into two rigid and immovable triangles, and thus made the whole ship rigid. The quadrilateral, when braced, was known as a _trussed frame_. All the chief frames in the ships he trussed; and since all bending took place from the centre of the ship downwards to its ends, he made the trussed frames symmetrical about the centre: the diagonals sloped forward in the after body, and aft in the fore body, so as to resist the arching by extension. The truss frame was embodied, not only in the lower part of the vessel (where its effect in resisting longitudinal bending was comparatively small), but in the more nearly vertical planes, and even in the topsides between the gun-ports (where it was most effective). Its use was estimated to result in the saving of nearly two hundred oak trees in the building of a 74-gun ship.

This was one element of Seppings’ system. The others were: the filling in of the spaces between the ground frames of the ship, so as to oppose with a continuous mass of timber the tendency of the lower parts to compress longitudinally, and to form a thick and solid bottom; the omission of the interior planking below the orlop clamps; the connection of the beams with the frames by means of shelf-pieces, waterways, and side binding-strakes to the deck; and the laying of the decks diagonally.

In two other important respects Seppings improved on previous construction.

At Trafalgar the _Victory_, during her end-on approach to the enemy line, was raked, and her old-fashioned forecastle, with its thin flat-fronted bulkhead rising above the low head, was riddled and splintered. This and similar experiences led to the introduction by the Surveyor of an improved bow, formed by prolonging the topsides to meet in a high curved stem, which not only deflected raking shot, but also consolidated the bow into a strong wedge-shaped structure supporting a lofty bowsprit, and capable of being armed to give ahead fire from a number of guns.

Similarly the weakness of ships’ sterns was remedied. The broad flat overhanging stern which had been given to our ships throughout the eighteenth century was not only structurally, but defensively weak. In many actions, but notably in Admiral Cornwallis’ fighting retreat from the French in 1795, the weakness of our stern fire had been severely felt; and, especially in view of the possible adaptation of steam to ship propulsion, at this time foreshadowed, the desirability of an improvement was evident. Seppings abolished the flat stern in all new two- and three-deckers, substituting sterns circular (as seen from above), more compactly embodied, and having ports and embrasures in them for guns capable of fire along divergent radii. The circular stern gave place, after a few years, to an elliptical stern, which presented a more graceful appearance and afforded increased protection to the rudder-head. “The principal curves visible in it,” it was said, “harmonize so well with the sheer lines of the ship, that she appears to float lightly and easily upon the water.”

In the opening years of the new century important advances were made, too, in the organization of the royal dockyards. The interests of naval architecture were served notably by Sir Samuel Bentham, brother of the famous jurist and an ex-shipwright, who acquired honours in Russia and returned to England to be Civil Architect and Engineer to the navy. Bentham became a courageous Commissioner, and did much to stamp out abuses and to encourage efficiency; he was instrumental in checking the sale of stores, in abolishing “chips,” in introducing steam pumps, block machinery, and dry dock caissons, in improving the methods of building ships and of mounting carronades.

But still naval architecture, considered either as an art or as a science, was stagnant. As a class the Surveyors were men of very restricted education--“there is scarcely a name on the list of any eminence as a designer or a writer.” Those who ordered ships at the Board were “busy politicians, or amateurs without a knowledge of science, or sailors too impatient of innovation to regard improvements.” In no other profession, perhaps, were theory and practice so out of sympathy with each other. The native art of the builder was numbed and shackled, by the restrictions imposed upon him as to tonnage and dimensions; the study of ship form, with a view to analysing the forces under which sailing ships moved by wind through water and to discovering the laws which those forces obeyed, was still mainly an academic pastime of the Society for Improving Naval Architecture, and outside the province of the naval authorities. Our ships were still formed on no rational principle. Captured French ships served as models to be copied. Often our builders would make fanciful variations from the originals--a little more sheer, a little more beam, etc. etc.--and as often they spoiled their copies. Whenever they followed closely the forms and features of the originals they succeeded in producing vessels which were pronounced to be among the best ships in the navy.

With this state of affairs, it is no matter for surprise that much of the new construction of the period was of small value. “Sir Joseph Yorke produced a set of corvettes, longer and narrower than brigs, none of which answered; and they were sold out of the service. Then came the ‘Forty Thieves,’ a small class of 74’s; but in justice to the designer, Sir H. Peake (who copied them from a French ship), it must be added that his lines were altered by the Navy Board, and the vessels were contract-built. Lord Melville built half a dozen ‘fir frigates,’ which neither sailed nor stood under canvas. The 22-gun and 28-gun donkey frigates ‘could neither fight nor run away’; it was dangerous to be on board them; and the bad sailing of such vessels was the chief cause of our ill success in the American War. The old 10-gun brigs, or ‘floating coffins,’ as they were significantly styled, were equally dangerous and unsightly. They had no room to fight their guns; no air between decks, which were only five feet high; extra provisions and stores were piled above hatches; and the fastest of them sailed no more than eight or nine knots.”[33]

The merchant service was in even worse plight. The tonnage rules had had a deplorable effect upon merchant shipping. The ancient method of assessing a ship’s burthen was by measuring the product of its length and breadth and depth, and dividing this by a constant number, which varied, at different periods, from 100 to 94. Early in the eighteenth century, however, a simplification was innocently made: the depth of the average ship being half the beam, a new formula was approved--length multiplied by half the square of the beam, divided by 94.[34] The result might have been anticipated. Dues being paid only on the length and breadth, vessels were given great depth of hold, full lines, and narrow beam. Absolved by the convoy system from trusting to their own speed for self-protection, English merchantmen became slugs: flat-bottomed, wall-sided boxes, monstrosities of marine architecture of which it was said that they were ‘built by the mile and served out by the yard.’

To raise the skill and status of our builders, the Committee of Naval Revision of 1806 presided over by Lord Barham advised the establishment of an official school, in which the more highly gifted apprentices might study the science involved in naval architecture. In 1811 the school was opened at Portsmouth, with Dr. Inman, a senior wrangler, as president. Ships were designed by Dr. Inman and his pupils excellent in many respects, and generally on an equality with those of the Surveyor and the master shipwrights. Yet still they were very imperfect. The official designs were hampered, not only by the hereditary prejudices and dogmas and by the cautious timidity of the builders themselves, but by the restrictions still imposed by the Navy Board, who insisted on a certain specified armament in combination with a totally inadequate specified tonnage: who laid down incompatible conditions, in short, under which genius itself must fail of producing a satisfactory result.

The chains were broken in 1832.

In that year, when the whole administration of the navy was in process of reorganization, the office of Surveyor was offered to and accepted by a naval officer, Captain W. Symonds, R.N.: accepted by him on the condition that he should be given a free hand in design and allowed to decide himself of what tonnage and dimensions every ship should be. Sir Robert Seppings was superannuated. The school of naval architecture was abolished. The sensation produced was powerful. “Except on matters of religion,” said Sir James Graham, when the appointment was being debated in the House of Commons some years afterwards, “I do not know any difference of opinion which has been attended with so much bitterness--so much anger--so much resentment, as the merits of Sir W. Symonds and the virtues of his ships.”

These violent differences and resentments have long since been composed, and Sir William Symonds has been accorded the position due to him in the history of naval architecture. His opponents, those who had resented his appointment as against the best interests of the service, rejoiced that he had freed ship design from the traditional restrictions under which it had stagnated; his chief admirers were led in the course of time to agree in the desirability of having as Surveyor a man thoroughly grounded in the scientific principles underlying the motion of bodies through water, their stability in water, and all the forces acting on a ship at sea.

In the year 1821 Lieutenant Symonds, while holding an appointment at Malta, had designed and built for himself a yacht which he called _Nancy Dawson_. Yachting had at this date become a national sport, and the interest of influential patrons in sailing matches was already acting as a stimulus to the study of ship form. The chief cause of the beneficial reaction from the indifference of former generations, says his biographer, was the establishment of the Yacht Club, after the peace of 1815, and the interest which men of rank and fortune henceforth took in shipbuilding, and in procuring the best native models.[35] So great was the success of the _Nancy Dawson_, that (in his own words) he was led to believe that he had hit upon a secret in naval architecture; while experiments on other sailing boats seemed to confirm him in his principles. Great breadth of beam and extraordinary sharpness--in fact, what was described as “a peg-top section”--were the characteristic features of his system, with a careful attention to stowage, the stand of the masts, and the cut and setting of the sails.

“Upon this most slender basis was the whole fabric of Sir William’s subsequent career built. The yacht gained him the notice of noblemen and others, then followed a pamphlet on naval architecture (in which the defects of existing ships were pointed out, and great breadth of beam and rise of floor advocated); then came a promise from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville, that he should build a sloop of war on his plans, which he did, the vessel being called the _Columbine_ (promotion intervening); then further patronage from the Duke of Portland and the Duke of Clarence, the latter of whom, when he became Lord High Admiral, ordered him to lay down a 40-gun frigate (promotion again intervening); then the building of the _Pantaloon_, 10-gun brig, for the Duke of Portland, from whom the Admiralty purchased her; then the patronage of that most mischievous civilian First Lord, Sir J. Graham; then the order for the _Vernon_, 50-gun frigate; and then, in ’32, the Surveyorship of the Navy.”[36]

To Sir Edward Reed and other shipbuilding officers the appointment of this brilliant amateur to the supreme control of the department seemed an act of war, not only on professional architects, but upon naval architecture itself. They admitted the success of the Symondite ships in speed and certain sailing qualities, but denied the correctness of his principles and strenuously resisted his innovations. A great breadth of beam was particularly objectionable to the scientific builder; not only did it imply a large resistance to the passage of the ship through water, but it contributed to an excess in metacentric height, abnormal stiffness, and an uneasy motion. “For a time his opinions triumphed; but after a while the principles expounded by his subordinates (Creuze, Chatfield, and Read) were accepted as correct, while not a single feature of Sir William’s system of construction is retained, except certain practical improvements which he introduced.”[37]

‘Victoria’
Breadth = 59′ 2″
Length = 204′

‘Caledonia’
Breadth = 53′ 6″
Length = 205′

Fig: 1.

‘Vernon’
Breadth = 52′
Length = 176′

‘Barham’
Breadth = 47′ 10″
Length = 173′ 8″

Fig: 2.

TYPICAL SECTIONS OF “SYMONDITE” AND CONTEMPORARY SHIPS]

Nevertheless his opponents, as before remarked, freely acknowledged the value of his services to the country, especially in breaking down the restrictions which had hitherto been imposed on constructors in respect of dimensions. His biographer pays tribute to the intuitive genius which enabled him to tell at a glance the trim required for a sailing ship, and to sketch out, as a brilliant impromptu, the best form of hull. But were these efforts entirely spontaneous? Were they not the reward of hidden and persistent work, observation, and calculation, carried out for years by the young officer who never let a sailing ship come near him without contriving to board her and ascertain her principal properties and dimensions? Here, surely, is the undramatic but praiseworthy method by which he attained success: a method, essentially scientific, which enabled its user, even without knowledge of other important principles governing ship design, to perform a national service in revolutionizing our methods of naval architecture.

Under the control of Sir William Symonds the improvement in the form and qualities of our ships, begun under the surveyorship of Sir Robert Seppings, continued to progress. Ship dimensions increased, and now bore a more correct relation to the dead-weight of armament, stores, and crew, which they had to carry. All classes from cutters to first-rates carried a more generous beam, and gained by the novel feature. Sounder rules were devised, partly as the result of a succession of sailing trials, for the pitching of masts and the methods of stowing. In short, naval architecture entered upon a new and promising era. Foreign observers recorded the progress made. Instead of being servile imitations of the products of French and Spanish models the vessels which flew the English flag became objects of admiration to all the world.

From a Cottonian MS. in the British Museum]