ABSTRACT
As a historical topic, the conjunction 'Britain and the Sea' might not stand much in need of explanation. An island people poised just beyond the edge of the European mainland - tot o divisos orbe, 'wholly cut off from the world', as Virgil thought10 - would be expected to entertain not only an economic but a deeply affectionate bond with the surrounding sea. Indeed, Cleasby could take comfort in any number of openly nationalist accounts of Britain's patriotic pact with the ocean. Shakespeare famously had John of Gaunt reminisce about a 'sceptred isle' that was 'bound in with the triumphant sea', protected by nature 'Against infection and the hand of war';11 in this triumphalism he was seconded a few decades later by Edmund Waller, who, speaking in the Long Parliament early in the Civil War, thought that 'God and nature have given us the sea as our best guard against our enemies; and our ships, as our greatest glory above other nations'.12 In the 18th century, James Thomson elevated the sentiment into the hyperbole that Britannia has been ruling the waves ever since 'Britain first, at Heaven's command, / Arose from out the azure main',13 and yet a century later, Robert Louis Stevenson added that Britain's relation to the ocean is the natural stuff of literature: 'The sea is our approach and bulwark; it has been the scene of our greatest triumphs and dangers, and we are accustomed in lyrical strains to claim it as our own.'14 No doubt the Tory historian James
Anthony Froude would have agreed wholeheartedly: 'After their own island, the sea is the natural home of Englishmen'.15
