It was just about the turn of the century that both the Royal Navy and the Royal Mail recognised the need for fast vessels for scouting and for carrying messages and mail to and from the United Kingdom and her dominions and colonies overseas. These newly recognised tasks required new designs of vessels and new opportunities for invention. Gower was among those who saw a vessel as a single entity in which all the parts, hull, rigging, sails and, in Gower's view, the crew, should relate to each other in ways appropriate to the task to be performed. This entailed giving greater consideration to designing the vessel as a whole, rather than leaving it to the various crafts to perform their respective works as best they could. Today, we would call his approach "holistic".