It's a marriage. If the navy is to prey on another nations shipping, it must perforce protect one's own commercial interests. And the relationship of prey and predator seems to have depended upon being at war, the practice being both a cause and a result of war.

I'm finding it a little difficult to wrap my head around the difference between "necessitated" and "made it possible". If a navy made colonies possible the colonies also necessitated the navy and the colonies made it possible to pay for the navy which made them possible.

The life of a British merchant sailor seems to have been a bit more tolerable than that of a poor bloke in His Majesty's service. That seems to have been an existence not worth enduring.

And while I think your assessment of the remainder of my post being a "minefield" is accurate, certainly controversial, I also believe those points are self-evident. Which isn't the greatest endorsement of any position.

Arf