How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves

How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves by William Henry Giles Kingston is about the various conquests of the British Empire and the effect on its dominance over the seas. Excerpt: "Rome was not built in a day, nor has the glorious British Navy attained its present condition except by slow degrees, by numerous trials and experiments, by improvements gradually and cautiously introduced, and by the employment of a vast amount of thought, energy, and toil. We are apt to forget when we see an elaborate machine, the immense quantity of mental and physical exertion it represents, the efforts of the united minds perhaps of many successive generations, and the labor of thousands of workmen."