"To pretend to Universal Monarchy without Fleets was long since looked upon, as a politick chimaera ... whoever commands the ocean, commands the trade of the world, and whoever commands the trade of the world, commands the riches of the world, and whoever is master of that, commands the world itself."
John Evelyn Navigation and Commerce, their Origin and Progress (London, 1674), pp. 15-17 and 32-3
Cited as a preface in Rodger, NAM, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815 ( Allen Lane, 2004)