Seven of these war vessels belong to a special squadron, the maintenance
of which is partially paid for by the colonial governments; and, by
agreement with the Imperial Government, the ships are to be employed in
Australasian waters solely for the defence of Australia and New Zealand.
Besides this force, most of the colonial governments maintain a naval
reserve of their own, highly efficient, perhaps, as a land force, but,
owing to the lack of vessels and of money, scarcely to be considered
seriously of value as a naval defence force.

The merchant shipping trade of Australia, measured by the entering and
clearing returns from all Australian ports, now reaches about 18,000,000
tons annually, of which about one-third is entered or cleared from the
ports of the mother-colony. The returns do not separate purely local
tonnage from the other shipping of the British empire, but out of the
above 18,000,000 tons some 16,000,000 tons are classed as British, and
Australia as a whole contributes no mean proportion of that amount.

Here ends this account of the naval pioneers of Australia. We have already
said that this work is biographical rather than historical. All that we
have attempted is not to sketch the progress of the colony--as a colony,
for the first twenty years of its existence, no element of progress was in
it--but to show how certain naval officers, in spite of the difficulties
of the penal settlement days, in spite very often of their own unfitness
for this to them strange service, did their work well, not perhaps always
governing wisely, but holding to ground won in such circumstances and by
such poor means as men with more brains and less "grit" would have
abandoned as untenable.

Arthur Phillip landed in a desert, obtained a footing on the land, and