Excerpt from The British Tar in Fact and Fiction

In order to illustrate the personality of the seaman as described in successive periods by his contemporaries, we have ransacked a whole literature, pursuing our re searches through many curious by-paths in order to reach new sources of information. In so doing we have both of us learned a great deal about the sea service of a kind not to be found in any ordinary History of the Navy. Indeed, it may truly be said that no one has yet produced an adequate and wholly satisfactory work on the subject which we mapped out before us. We have enjoyed many advantages, and not least of them to find our labours lightened by the volumes of the Navy Records Society, that admirable library for which we are indebted in the main to Professor Sir John Knox Laughton, r.n., to whose exertions in the field of naval literature every writer on the subject in the future, as well as those for many years past, must owe a deep debt of gratitude.

When the work as originally projected had been com pleted, and the proofs read, Mr. Leyland was happily inspired to propose two introductory chapters, in which, by the light of what follows, he has described the place of the sea officer and the seaman in naval history and literature. If this volume is admitted to have any value as a serious contribution to naval history, I feel that it will be mainly because of the inclusion of those chap ters. Mr. Leyland disclaims any direct didactic purpose, but the lesson is there manifest to every one, and it is not only for the youngsters who are entering naval life, but for all who realise the importance to the British Empire of the Navy which protects its communications and guards its heart.

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