Thus the British Navy is really national because it is natural; it has cohered out of hundreds of accidental adventures of ships and shipmen before Chaucer's time and after it.

There he saw daily the shipman of the Canterbury Tales just home in his good ship Maudelayne, with the fascination of unknown lands in his clothes and conversation.

So long as Mordred kept the shipmen from the sand, he wrought them much mischief.