Extracts from the "Author's Preface"

. . . .Commander Charles Napier Robinson, R.N., has contributed an excursus on naval costume, which must greatly enhance the value of this book to the student of naval history, for on this subject the author of "The British Fleet" is our greatest authority.

The text, however, would be but an inadequate medium to bring home to the reader what the Navy of old was, and the Navy of today is like, were it not for Mr Norman Wilkinson's beautiful series of water-colours with which the book is illustrated.

Mr Wilkinson has not contented himself with simply painting a series of typical warships but illustrates for us some of the most glorious achievements and exploits of our forefathers, and those incidents in the fleet life of the Navy today that the landsman has but rare opportuaties of witnessing. In his work Mr Norman Wilkinson has been both historically and artistically successful; and, moreover, he has had the advantage of having his seascape and illustration of the material of the fleet most ably supplemented by a series of sketches in colour from the brush of Mr J. Jellicoe, depicting the costume of the seaman from the earliest days to the present. These most delightful sketches give a human interest both to the text and Mr Wilkinson's pictures that would otherwise be lacking. Their absolute accuracy is assured from the fact that they are reproduced from Commander Robinson's collection of prints and illustrative of the social side of sea life, probably one of, if not the most complete, that has ever been brought together.

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