Hawkins's ship's company was, as he himself informs
us, an unusually loose one. Nevertheless, we find them
"gathered together every morning and evening to serve
God;" and a fire on board which only Hawkins's presence
of mind prevented from destroying ship and crew
together, was made use of by the men as an occasion to
banish swearing out of the ship.
"With a general consent of all our company, it was
ordained that there should be a palmer or ferula which should
be in the keeping of him who was taken with an oath; and
that he who had the palmer should give to every one that
he took swearing, a palmads with it and the femla; and
whosoever at the time of evening or morning prayer was
found to have the palmer, should have three blows given
him by the captain or the master; and that he should still
be bound to free himself by taking another, or else to run
in danger of continuing the penalty, which, being executed
a few days, reformed the vice, so that in three days together
was not one oath heard to be sworn."
The regulations for Luke Fox's voyage commenced
thus:--
"For as much as the good success and prosperity of every
action doth consist in the due service and glorifying of God,
knowing that not only our being and preservation, but the
prosperity of all our actions and enterprises do immediately
depend on His Almighty goodness and mercy; it is
provided-
"First, that all the company, as well officers as others,
shall duly repair every day twice at the call of the bell to
hear public prayers to be read, such as are authorized by the
church, and that in a godly and devout manner, as good
Christians ought.
"Secondly, that no man shall swear by the name of God,
or use any profane oath, or blaspheme His holy name."
To symptoms such as these, we cannot but attach a
very different value when they are the spontaneous growth
of common minds, unstimulated by sense of propriety
or rules of the service, or other official influence lay or
ecclesiastic, from what we attach to the somewhat similar
ceremonials in which, among persons whose position is
conspicuous, important enterprises are now and then
inaugurated.
We have said as much as we intend to say of the
treatment by the Spaniards of the Indian women. Sir
Walter Raleigh is commonly represented by historians
as rather defective, if he was remarkable at all, on the
moral side of his character. Yet Raleigh can declare
proudly, that all the time he was on the Oronooko,
"neither by force nor other means had any of his men
intercourse with any woman there;" and the narrator of
the incidents of Raleigh's last voyage acquaints his
correspondent "with some particulars touching the
government of the fleet, which, although other men in
their voyages doubtless in some measure observed, yet
in all the great volumes which have been written
touching voyages, there is no precedent of so godly
severe and martial government, which not only in itself
is laudable and worthy of imitation, but is also fit to be
written and engraven on every man's soul that coveteth
to do honour to his country."
Once more, the modern theory of Drake is, as we
said above, that he was a gentleman-like pirate on a
large scale, who is indebted for the place which he fills
in history to the indistinct ideas of right and wrong
prevailing in the unenlightened age in which he lived.
and who therefore demands all the toleration of our
own enlarged humanity to allow him to remain there.
Let us see how the following incident can be made to
coincide with this hypothesis:--
A few days after clearing the channel on his first great
voyage, he fell in with a small Spanish ship, which he
took for a prize. He committed the care of it to a
certain Mr. Doughtie, a person much trusted by, and
personally very dear to him, and this second vessel was
to follow him as a tender.
In dangerous expeditions into unknown seas, a second
smaller ship was often indispensable to success; but
many finely-intended enterprises were ruined by the
cowardice of the officers to whom such ships were
entrusted; who shrank as danger thickened, and again
and again took advantage of darkness or heavy weather
to make sail for England and forsake their commander.
Hawkins twice suffered in this way; so did Sir Humfrey
Gilbert; and, although Drake's own kind feeling for
his old friend has prevented him from leaving an exact
account of his offence, we gather from the scattered hints
which are let fall, that he, too, was meditating a similar
piece of treason. However, it may or may not have
been thus. But when at Port St Julien, "our General,"
says one of the crew,--
"Began to inquire diligently of the actions of Mr. Thomas
Doughtie, and found them not to be such as he looked for,
but tending rather to contention or mutiny, or some other
disorder, whereby, without redresse, the success of the
voyage might greatly have been hazarded. Whereupon the
company was called together and made acquainted with
the particulars of the cause, which were found, partly by Mr.
Doughtie's own confession, and partly by the evidence of
the fact, to be true, which, when our General saw, although
his private affection to Mr. Doughtie (as he then, in the
presence of us all, sacredly protested) was great, yet the
care which he had of the state of the voyage, of the
expectation of Her Majesty, and of the honour of his country,
did more touch him, as indeed it ought, than the private respect
of one man; so that the cause being thoroughly heard, and
all things done in good order as near as might be to the
course of our law in England, it was concluded that Mr.
Doughtie should receive punishment according to the
quality of the offence. And he, seeing no remedy but
patience for himself, desired before his death to receive the
communion, which he did at the hands of Mr. Fletcher, our
minister, and our General himself accompanied him in that
holy action, which, being done, and the place of execution
made ready, he, having embraced our General, and taken
leave of all the company, with prayers for the Queen's
Majesty and our realm, in quiet sort laid his head to the
block, where he ended his life. This being done, our
General made divers speeches to the whole company,
persuading us to unity, obedience, love, and regard of our
voyage, and for the better confirmation thereof, willed every
man the next Sunday following to prepare himself to receive
the communion, as Christian brethren and friends ought to
do, which was done in very reverent sort, and so with good
contentment every man went about his business."
The simple majesty of this anecdote can gain nothing
from any comment which we might offer upon it. The
crew of a common English ship organizing, of their own
free motion, on that wild shore, a judgment hall more
grand and awful than any most elaborate law court,
with its ermine and black cap, and robes of ceremony
for mind as well as body, is not to be reconciled with
the pirate theory, which we may as well henceforth put
away from us.
Of such stuff were the early English navigators; we
are reaping the magnificent harvest of their great
heroism; and we may see once more in their history
and in what has arisen out of it, that on these deep
moral foundations, and on none others, enduring
prosperities, of what kind so-ever, politic or religious,
material or spiritual, are alone in this divinely-governed
world permitted to base themselves and grow. Whereever
we find them they are still the same. In the courts
of Japan or of China, fighting Spaniards in the Pacific,
or prisoners among the Algerines, founding colonies
which by and by were to grow into enormous transatlantic
republics, or exploring in crazy pinnaces the
fierce latitudes of the Polar seas, they are the same
indomitable God-fearing men whose life was one great
liturgy. "The ice was strong, but God was stronger,"
says one of Frobisher's men, after grinding a night and
a day among the icebergs, not waiting for God to come
down and split them, but toiling through the long hours,
himself and the rest fending off the vessel with poles
and planks, with death glaring at them out of the ice
rocks, and so saving themselves and it. Icebergs were
strong, Spaniards were strong, and storms, and corsairs,
and rocks, and reefs, which no chart had then noted--
they were all strong, but God was stronger, and that was
all which they cared to know.
Out of the vast number it is difficult to make wise
selections, but the attention floats loosely over
generalities, and only individual men can seize it and hold
it fast. We shall attempt to bring our readers face to
face with some of these men; not, of course, to write
their biographies, but to sketch the details of a few
scenes, in the hope that they may tempt those under
whose eyes they may fall to look for themselves to
complete the perfect figure.
Some two miles above the port of Dartmouth, once
among the most important harbours in England, on a
projecting angle of land which runs out into the river
at the head of one of its most beautiful reaches, there
has stood for some centuries the Manor House of
Greenaway. The water runs deep all the way to it from
the sea, and the largest vessels may ride with safety
within a stone's throw of the windows. In the latter
half of the sixteenth century there must have met, in
the hall of this mansion, a party as remarkable as could
have been found anywhere in England. Humfrey and
Adrian Gilbert, with their half-brother, Walter Raleigh,
here, when little boys, played at sailors in the reaches of
Long Stream; in the summer evenings doubtless rowing
down with the tide to the port, and wondering at the
quaint figure-heads and carved prows of the ships which
thronged it; or climbing on board, and listening, with
hearts beating, to the mariners' tales of the new earth
beyond the sunset; and here in later life, matured men,
whose boyish dreams had become heroic action, they
used again to meet in the intervals of quiet, and the
rock is shown underneath the house where Raleigh
smoked the first tobacco. Another remarkable man, of
whom we shall presently speak more closely, could not
fail to have made a fourth at these meetings. A sailor
boy of Sandwich, the adjoining parish, John Davis,
showed early a genius which could not have escaped
the eye of such neighbours, and in the atmosphere of
Greenaway he learned to be as noble as the Gilberts,
and as tender and delicate as Raleigh. Of this party,
for the present we confine ourselves to the host and
owner, Humfrey Gilbert, knighted afterwards by Elizabeth.
Led by the scenes of his childhood to the sea
and to sea adventures, and afterwards, as his mind
unfolded, to study his profession scientifically, we find
him as soon as he was old enough to think for himself,
or make others listen to him, "amending the great
errors of naval sea cards, whose common fault is to
make the degree of longitude in every latitude of one
common bigness;" inventing instruments for taking
observations, studying the form of the earth, and
convincing himself that there was a north-west passage, and
studying the necessities of his country, and discovering
the remedies for them in colonization and extended
markets for home manufactures, and insisting with so
much loudness on these important matters that they
reached the all-attentive ears of Walsingham, and
through Walsingham were conveyed to the Queen.
Gilbert was examined before the Queen's Majesty and
the Privy Council, the record of which examination he
has himself left to us in a paper which he afterwards
drew up, and strange enough reading it is. The most
admirable conclusions stand side by side with the
wildest conjectures; and invaluable practical discoveries,
among imaginations at which all our love for him cannot
hinder us from smiling; the whole of it from first to last
saturated through and through with his inborn nobility
of nature.
Homer and Aristotle are pressed into service to prove
that the ocean runs round the three old continents, and
America therefore is necessarily an island. The gulf
stream which he had carefully observed, eked out
by a theory of the primum mobile, is made to demonstrate
a channel to the north, corresponding to Magellan's
Straits in the south, he believing, in common with
almost every one of his day, that these straits were
the only opening into the Pacific, the land to the
south being unbroken to the Pole. He prophecies a
market in the East for our manufactured linen and
calicoes:--
"The Easterns greatly prizing the same, as appeareth
in Hester where the pomp is expressed of the great
King of India, Ahasuerus, who matched the coloured
clothes wherewith his houses and tents were apparelled,
with gold and silver, as part of his greatest treasure."
These and other such arguments were the best
analysis which Sir Humfrey had to offer of the spirit
which he felt to be working in him. We may think
what we please of them. But we can have but one
thought of the great grand words with which the
memorial concludes, and they alone would explain the
love which Elizabeth bore him:--
"Never, therefore, mislike with me for taking in hand any
laudable and honest enterprise, for if through pleasure
or idleness we purchase shame, the pleasure vanisheth,
but the shame abideth for ever.
"Give me leave, therefore, without offence, always to
live and die in this mind: that he is not worthy to live
at all that, for fear or danger of death, shunneth his
country's service and his own honour, seeing that death
is inevitable and the fame of virtue immortal, wherefore
in this behalf routare vel lintere sperno."
Two voyages which he undertook at his own cost,
which shattered his fortune, and failed, as they naturally
might, since inefficient help or mutiny of subordinates,
or other disorders, are inevitable conditions under which
more or less great men must be content to see their great
thoughts mutilated by the feebleness of their instruments,
did not dishearten him, and in June, 1583, a last
fleet of five ships sailed from the port of Dartmouth,
with commission from the Queen to discover and take
possession from latitude 45^0 to 50^0 north--a voyage not
a little noteworthy, there being planted in the course of
it the first English colony west of the Atlantic. Elizabeth
had a foreboding that she would never see him again.
She sent him a jewel as a last token of her favour, and
she desired Raleigh to have his picture taken before he
went.
The history of the voyage was written by a Mr.
Edward Hayes, of Dartmouth, one of the principal
actors in it, and as a composition it is more remarkable
for fine writing than any very commendable thought in
the author. But Sir Humfrey's nature shines through the
infirmity of his chronicler; and in the end, indeed, Mr.
Hayes himself is subdued into a better mind. He had
lost money by the voyage, and we will hope his higher
nature was only under a temporary eclipse. The fleet
consisted (it is well to observe the ships and the size of
them) of the Delight, 120 tons; the barque Raleigh, 200
tons (this ship deserted off the Land's End); the Golden
Hinde and the Swallow, 40 tons each; and the Squirrel,
which was called the frigate, 10 tons. For the uninitiated
in such matters, we may add, that if in a vessel
the size of the last, a member of the Yacht Club would
consider that he had earned a dub-room immortality if
he had ventured a run in the depth of summer from
Cowes to the Channel Islands.
"We were in all," says Mr. Hayes, "260 men, among
whom we had of every faculty good choice. Besides,
for solace of our own people, and allurement of the savages,
we were provided of music in good variety, not omitting
the least toys, as morris dancers, hobby horses, and
May-like conceits to delight the savage people."
The expedition reached Newfoundland without accident.
St. John's was taken possession of, and a colony
left there, and Sir Humfrey then set out exploring along
the American coast to the south; he himself doing all
the work in his little 10-ton cutter, the service being too
dangerous for the larger vessels to venture on. One of
these had remained at St. John's. He was now accompanied
only by the Delight and the Golden Hinde, and
these two keeping as near the shore as they dared, he
spent what remained of the summer, examining every
creek and bay, marking the soundings, taking the bearings
of the possible harbours, and risking his life, as
every hour he was obliged to risk it in such a service, in
thus leading, as it were, the forlorn hope in the conquest
of the New World. How dangerous it was we shall
presently see. It was towards the end of August.
"The evening was fair and pleasant, yet not without
token of storm to ensue, and most part of this Wednesday
night, like the swan that singeth before her death, they in
the Delight continued in sounding of drums and trumpets
and fifes, also winding the cornets and haughtboys, and
in the end of their jollity left with the battell and ringing
of doleful knells."
Two days after came the storm; the Delight struck
upon a bank, and went down in sight of the other vessels,
which were unable to render her any help. Sir Humfrey's
papers, among other things, were all lost in her; at the
time considered by him an irreparable misfortune. But
it was little matter; he was never to need them. The
Golden Hinde and the Squirrel were now left alone of the
five ships. The provisions were running short, and the
summer season was closing. Both crews were on short
allowance; and with much difficulty Sir Humfrey was
prevailed upon to be satisfied for the present with what
he had done, and to lay off for England.
"So upon Saturday, in the afternoon, the 31st of
August, we changed our course, and returned back for
England, at which very instant, even in winding about,
there passed along between us and the land, which we
now forsook, a very lion, to our seeming, in shape, hair,
and colour; not swimming after the manner of a beast
by moving of his feet, but rather sliding upon the water
with his whole body, except his legs, in sight, neither yet
diving under and again rising as the manner is of whales,
porpoises, and other fish, but confidently showing himself
without hiding, notwithstanding that we presented
ourselves in open view and gesture to amaze him. Thus
he passed along, turning his head to and fro, yawning
and gaping wide, with ougly demonstration of long teeth
and glaring eyes; and to bidde us farewell, coming fight
against the Hinde, he sent forth a horrible voice, roaring
and bellowing as doth a lion, which spectacle we all beheld
so far as we were able to discern the same, as men prone
to wonder at every strange thing. What opinion others
had thereof, and chiefly the General himself, I forbear to
deliver. But he took it for Bonum Omen, rejoicing that he
was to war against such an enemy if it were the devil."
We have no doubt that he did think it was the devil;
men in those days believing really that evil was more
than a principle or a necessary accident, and that in all
their labour for God and for right, they must make their
account to have to fight with the devil in his proper person.
But if we are to call it superstition, and if this were
no devil in the form of a roaring lion, but a mere great
seal or sea-lion, it is a more innocent superstition to
impersonate so real a power, and it requires a bolder
heart to rise up against it and defy it in its living terror,
than to sublimate it away into a philosophical principle,
and to forget to battle with it in speculating on its origin
and nature. But to follow the brave Sir Humfrey,
whose work of fighting with the devil was now over, and
who was passing to his reward. The 2nd of September
the General came on board the Golden Hinde "to make
merry with us." He greatly deplored the loss of his
books and papers; and Mr. Hayes considered that the
loss of manuscripts could not be so very distressing,
and that there must have been something behind, certain
gold ore, for instance, which had perished also--
considerations not perhaps of particular value. He was
full of confidence from what he had seen, and talked
with all eagerness and warmth of the new expedition
for the following spring. Apocryphal gold-mines still
occupying the minds of Mr. Hayes and others, who were
persuaded that Sir Humfrey was keeping to himself some
such discovery which he had secretly made, and they
tried hard to extract it from him. They could make
nothing, however, of his odd ironical answers, and their
sorrow at the catastrophe which followed is sadly blended
with disappointment that such a secret should have
perished. Sir Humfrey doubtless saw America with
other eyes than theirs, and gold-mines richer than
California in its huge rivers and savannahs.
"Leaving the issue of this good hope (about the gold),"
continues Mr. Hayes, "to God, who only knoweth the truth
thereof, I will hasten to the end of this tragedy, which must
be knit up in the person of our General, and as it was God's
ordinance upon him, even so the vehement persuasion of
his friends could nothing avail to divert him from his wilful
resolution of going in his frigate; and when he was
entreated by the captain, master, and others, his well-wishers
in the Hinde, not to venture, this was his answer--'I will
not forsake my little company going homewards, with whom
I have passed so many storms and perils.'"
Albeit, thinks the writer, who is unable to comprehend
such high gallantry, there must have been something on
his mind of what the world would say of him, "and it
was rather rashness than advised resolution to prefer
the wind of a vain report to the weight of his own life,"
for the writing of which sentence we will trust the
author, either in this world or the other, has before this
done due penance and repented of it.
Two-thirds of the way home they met foul weather
and terrible seas, "breaking short and pyramid-wise."
Men who had all their lives "occupied the sea" had
never seen it more outrageous. "We had also upon
our mainyard an apparition of a little fire by night,
which seamen do call Castor and Pollux."
"Monday, the ninth of September, in the afternoon, the
frigate was near cast away oppressed by waves, but at that
time recovered, and giving forth signs of joy, the General,
sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried unto us in the
Hinde so often as we did approach within hearing, 'We
are as near to heaven by sea as by land,' reiterating the
same speech, well beseeming a soldier resolute in Jesus
Christ, as I can testify that he was. The same Monday
night, about twelve of the clock, or not long after, the frigate
being a-head of us in the Golden Hinde, suddenly her lights
were out, whereof as it were in a moment we lost the sight;
and withal our watch cried, 'The General was cast away,'
which was too true."
So stirbt ein Held. It was a fine end for a mortal
man. We will not call it sad or tragic, but heroic and
sublime; and if our eyes water as we write it down,
it is not with sorrow, but with joy and pride.
"Thus faithfully," concludes Mr. Hayes (in some degree
rising above himself), "I have related this story, wherein
some spark of the knight's virtues, though he be
extinguished, may happily appear; he remaining resolute to a
purpose honest and godly as was this, to discover, possess,
and reduce unto the service of God and Christian piety,
those remote and heathen countries of America. Such is
the infinite bounty of God, who from every evil deriveth good,
that fruit may grow in time of our travelling in these
North-Western lands (as has it not grown?), and the crosses,
turmoils, and afflictions, both in the preparation and
execution of the voyage, did correct the intemperate humours
which before we noted to be in this gentleman, and made
unsavoury and less delightful his other manifold virtues.
"Thus as he was refined and made nearer unto the image
of God, so it pleased the Divine will to resume him unto
Himself, whither both his and every other high and noble
mind have always aspired."
Such was Sir Humfrey Gilbert; we know but little
more of him, and we can only conjecture that he
was still in the prime of his years when the Atlantic
swallowed him. Like the gleam of a landscape lit
suddenly for a moment by the lightning, these few
scenes flash down to us across the centuries; but what
a life must that have been of which this was the
conclusion! He was one of a race which have ceased to
be. We look round for them, and we can hardly
believe that the same blood is flowing in our veins.
Brave we may still be, and strong perhaps as they,
but the high moral grace which made bravery and
strength so beautiful is departed from us for ever.
Our space is sadly limited for historical portrait
painting; but we must find room for another of that
Greenaway party whose nature was as fine as that of
Gilbert, and who intellectually was more largely gifted.
The latter was drowned in 1583. In 1585 John Davis
left Dartmouth on his first voyage into the Polar seas;
and twice subsequently he went again, venturing in
small ill-equipped vessels of thirty or forty tons into the
most dangerous seas. These voyages were as remarkable
for their success as for the daring with which they
were accomplished, and Davis's epitaph is written on the
map of the world, where his name still remains to
commemorate his discoveries. Brave as he was, he is
distinguished by a peculiar and exquisite sweetness of
nature, which, from many little facts of his life, seems to
have affected every one with whom he came in contact
in a remarkable degree. We find men, for the love of
Master Davis, leaving their firesides to sail with him,
without other hope or motion; and silver bullets were
cast to shoot him in a mutiny; the hard rude natures of
the mutineers being awed by something in his carriage
which was not like that of a common man. He has
written the account of one of his northern voyages
himself; one of those, by the by, which the Hakluyt
Society have mutilated; and there is an imaginative
beauty in it, and a rich delicacy of expression, which is
a true natural poetry, called out in him by the first sight
of strange lands and things and people.
To show what he was, we should have preferred, if
possible, to have taken the story of his expedition into
the South Seas, in which, under circumstances of singular
difficulty, he was deserted by Candish, under whom
he had sailed; and after inconceivable trials, from famine,
mutiny, and storm, ultimately saved himself and his
ship, and such of the crew as had chosen to submit to
his orders. But it is a long history, and will not admit
of being mutilated. As an instance of the stuff of which
it was composed, he ran back in the black night in a
gale of wind through the Straits of Magellan, by a chart
which he had made with the eye in passing up. His
anchors were lost or broken; the cables were parted.
He could not bring up the ship; there was nothing for
it but to run, and he carried her safe through along
a channel often not three miles broad, sixty miles
from end, and twisting like the reaches of a river.
For the present, however, we are forced to content
ourselves with a few sketches out of the north-west
voyages. Here is one, for instance, which shows how
an Englishman could deal with the Indians. Davis had
landed at Gilbert's Sound, and gone up the country
exploring. On his return, he found his crew loud in
complaints of the thievish propensities of the natives,
and urgent to have an example made of some of them.
On the next occasion he fired a gun at them with blank
cartridge; but their nature was still too strong for them.
"Seeing iron," he says, "they could in no case forbear
stealing; which, when I perceived, it did but minister
to me occasion of laughter to see their simplicity, and I
willed that they should not be hardly used, but that our
company should be more diligent to keep their things,
supposing it to be very hard in so short a time to make
them know their evils."
In his own way, however, he took an opportunity of
administering a lesson to them of a more wholesome
kind than could be given with gunpowder and bullets
Like the rest of his countrymen, he believed the savage
Indians in their idolatries to be worshippers of the devil.
"They are witches," he says; "they have images in
great store, and use many kinds of enchantments."
And these enchantments they tried on one occasion to
put in force against himself and his crew.
"Being on shore on the 4th day of July, one of them
made a long oration, and then kindled a fire, into which
with many strange words and gestures he put divers things,
which we supposed to be a sacrifice. Myself and certain
of my company standing by, they desired us to go into
the smoke. I desired them to go into the smoke, which
they would by no means do. I then took one of them
and thrust him into the smoke, and willed one of my
company to tread out the fire, and spurn it into the sea,
which was done to show them that we did contemn their
sorceries."
It is a very English story--exactly what a modern
Englishman would do; only, perhaps, not believing that
there was any real devil in the case, which makes a
difference. However, real or not real, after seeing him
patiently put up with such an injury, we will hope the
poor Greenlander had less respect for the devil than
formerly.
Leaving Gilbert's Sound, Davis went on to the north-west,
and in lat. 63^0 fell in with a barrier of ice, which
he coasted for thirteen days without finding an opening.
The very sight of an iceberg was new to all his crew;
and the ropes and shrouds, though it was midsummer,
becoming compassed with ice,--
"The people began to fall sick and faint-hearted--
whereupon, very orderly, with good discretion, they
entreated me to regard the safety of mine own life, as well
as the preservation of theirs; and that I should not,
through overbouldness, leave their widows and fatherless
children to give me bitter curses.
"Whereupon, seeking counsel of God, it pleased His
Divine Majesty to move my heart to prosecute that which
I hope shall be to His glory, and to the contentation of
every Christian mind."
He had two vessels, one of some burthen, the other a
pinnace of thirty tons. The result of the counsel which
he had sought was, that he made over his own large
vessel to such as wished to return, and himself "thinking
it better to die with honour than to return with
infamy," went on, with such volunteers as would follow
him, in a poor leaky cutter, up the sea now called
Davis's Straits, in commemoration of that adventure,
4^0 north of the furthest known point, among storms and
icebergs, by which the long days and twilight nights
alone saved him from being destroyed, and, coasting
back along the American shore, discovered Hudson's
Straits, supposed then to be the long-desired entrance
into the Pacific. This exploit drew the attention of
Walsingham, and by him Davis was presented to
Burleigh, "who was also pleased to show him great
encouragement." If either these statesmen or Elizabeth
had been twenty years younger, his name would have
filled a larger space in history than a small corner of the
map of the world; but if he was employed at all in the
last years of the century, no vales sacer has been found
to celebrate his work, and no clue is left to guide us.
He disappears; a cloud falls over him. He is known
to have commanded trading vessels in the Eastern seas,
and to have returned five times from India. But the
details are all lost, and accident has only parted the
clouds for a moment to show us the mournful setting
with which he, too, went down upon the sea.
In taking out Sir Edward Michellthorne to India, in
1604, he fell in with a crew of Japanese, whose ship
had been burnt, drifting at sea, without provisions, in
a leaky junk. He supposed them to be pirates, but he
did not choose to leave them to so wretched a death,
and took them on board, and in a few hours, watching
their opportunity, they murdered him.
As the fool dieth, so dieth the wise, and there is no
difference; it was the chance of the sea, and the ill
reward of a humane action--a melancholy end for such
a man--like the end of a warrior, not dying Epaminondas-like
on the field of victory, but cut off in some poor
brawl or ambuscade. But so it was with all these men.
They were cut off in the flower of their days, and few
indeed of them laid their bones in the sepulchres of their
fathers. They knew the service which they had chosen,
and they did not ask the wages for which they had not
laboured. Life with them was no summer holyday, but
a holy sacrifice offered up to duty, and what their
Master sent was welcome. Beautiful is old age--beautiful
as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious
summer. In the old man, nature has fulfilled her work;
she loads him with her blessings; she fills him with
the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his
children and his children's children, she rocks him
softly away to a grave, to which he is followed with
blessings. God forbid we should not call it beautiful.
It is beautiful, but not the most beautiful. There is
another life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with
bleeding feet and aching brow; the life of which the
cross is the symbol; a battle which no peace follows,
this side the grave; which the grave gapes to finish,
before the victory is won; and--strange that it should
be so--this is the highest life of man. Look back
along the great names of history; there is none whose
life has been other than this. They to whom it has
been given to do the really highest work in this earth--
whoever they are, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian,
warriors, legislators, philosophers, priests, poets, kings,
slaves--one and all, their fate has been the same--the
same bitter cup has been given to them to drink; and
so it was with the servants of England in the sixteenth
century. Their life was a long battle, either with the
elements or with men, and it was enough for them to
fulfil their work, and to pass away in the hour when
God had nothing more to bid them do. They did not
complain, and why should we complain for them?
Peaceful life was not what they desired, and an
honourable death had no terrors for them. Theirs was
the old Grecian spirit, and the great heart of the
Theban poet lived again in them:--
thanein d' oisin anagka
ti ke tis ananumon geras en skoto
kathemenos epsoi matan, apanton
kalon ammoros
"Seeing" in Gilbert's own brave words, "that death
is inevitable, and the fame of virtue is immortal;
wherefore in this behalf mutare vel timere sperno."
In the conclusion of these light sketches we pass
into an element different from that in which we have
been lately dwelling. The scenes in which Gilbert and
Davis played out their high natures were of the kind
which we call peaceful, and the enemies with which
they contended were principally the ice and the wind,
and the stormy seas and the dangers of unknown and
savage lands; we shall close amidst the roar of cannon,
and the wrath and rage of battle. Hume, who alludes
to the engagement which we are going to describe,
speaks of it in a tone which shows that he looked at it
as something portentous and prodigious; as a thing to
wonder at--but scarcely as deserving the admiration
which we pay to actions properly within the scope of
humanity--and as if the energy which was displayed in
it was like the unnatural strength of madness. He
does not say this, but he appears to feel it; and he
scarcely would have felt it, if he had cared more deeply
to saturate himself with the temper of the age of which
he was writing. At the time all England and all the
world rang with the story. It struck a deeper terror,
though it was but the action of a single ship, into the
hearts of the Spanish people--it dealt a more deadly
blow upon their fame and moral strength, than the
destruction of the Armada itself; and in the direct
results which arose from it, it was scarcely less
disastrous to them. Hardly, as it seems to us, if the most
glorious actions which are set like jewels in the history
of mankind are weighed one against the other in the
balance, hardly will those 300 Spartans who in the
summer morning sate "combing their long hair--for
death" in the passes of Thermopylae, have earned a
more lofty estimate for themselves than this one crew
of modern Englishmen.
In August, 1591, Lord Thomas Howard, with six
English line-of-battle ships, six victuallers, and two or
three pinnaces, were lying at anchor under the Island
of Florez. Light in ballast and short of water, with
half their men disabled by sickness, they were unable
to pursue the aggressive purpose on which they had been
sent out. Several of the ships' crews were on shore:
the ships themselves "all pestered and rommaging,"
with everything out of order. In this condition they
were surprised by a Spanish fleet consisting of 53
men-of-war. Eleven out of the twelve English ships obeyed
the signal of the Admiral, to cut or weigh their anchors
and escape as they might. The twelfth, the Revenge,
was unable for the moment to follow; of her crew of
190, 90 being sick on shore, and, from the position
of the ship, there was some delay and difficulty in
getting them on board. The Revenge was commanded
by Sir Richard Grenville, of Bideford, a man well
known in the Spanish seas, and the terror of the Spanish
sailors; so fierce he was said to be, that mythic
stories passed from lip to lip about him, and, like Earl
Talbot or Coeur de Lion, the nurses at the Azores
frightened children with the sound of his name. "He
was of great revenues," they said, "of his own inheritance,
but of unquiet mind, and greatly affected to
wars," and from his uncontrollable propensities for
blood-eating, he had volunteered his services to the
Queen; "of so hard a complexion was he, that I (John
Huighen von Linschoten, who is our authority here,
and who was with the Spanish fleet after the action)
have been told by divers credible persons who stood
and beheld him, that he would carouse three or four
glasses of wine, and take the glasses between his teeth
and crush them in pieces and swallow them down."
Such he was to the Spaniard. To the English he was a
goodly and gallant gentleman, who had never turned his
back upon an enemy, and was remarkable in that
remarkable time for his constancy and daring. In this
surprise at Florez he was in no haste to fly. He first
saw all his sick on board and stowed away on the
ballast, and then, with no more than 100 men left him
to fight and work the ship, he deliberately weighed,
uncertain, as it seemed at first, what he intended to do.
The Spanish fleet were by this time on his weather bow,
and he was persuaded (we here take his cousin Raleigh's
beautiful narrative and follow it in his words) "to cut
his mainsail and cast about, and trust to the sailing of
the ship."
"But Sir Richard utterly refused to turn from the enemy,
alledging that he would rather choose to die than to
dishonour himself, his country, and her Majesty's ship,
persuading his company that he would pass through their two
squadrons in spite of them, and enforce those of Seville to
give him way, which he performed upon diverse of the foremost,
who, as the mariners term it, sprang their luff, and fell
under the lee of the Revenge. But the other course had
been the better: and might right well have been answered in
so great an impossibility of prevailing: notwithstanding, out
of the greatness of his mind, he could not be persuaded."
The wind was light; the San Philip, "a huge highcarged
ship" of 1500 tons, came up to windward of
him, and, taking the wind out of his sails, ran aboard
him.
"After the Revenge was entangled with the San Philip,
four others boarded her, two on her larboard and two on
her starboard. The fight thus beginning at three o'clock in
the afternoon continued very terrible all that evening. But
the great San Philip, having received the lower tier of the
Revenge, shifted herself with all diligence from her sides,
utterly misliking her first entertainment. The Spanish ships
were filled with soldiers, in some 200, besides the mariners,
in some 500, in others 800. In ours there were none at all,
besides the mariners, but the servants of the commander
and some few voluntary gentlemen only. After many interchanged
vollies of great ordnance and small shot, the
Spaniards deliberated to enter the Revenge, and made
divers attempts, hoping to force her by the multitude of
their armed soldiers and musketeers; but were still repulsed
again and again, and at all times beaten back into their own
ship or into the sea. In the beginning of the fight the
George Noble, of London, having received some shot through
her by the Armadas, fell under the lee of the Revenge, and
asked Sir Richard what he would command him; but being
one of the victuallers, and of small force, Sir Richard bade
him save himself and leave him to his fortune."
A little touch of gallantry, which we should be
glad to remember with the honour due to the brave
English heart who commanded the George Noble; but
his name has passed away, and his action is an in
memoriam, on which time has effaced the writing.
All that August night the fight continued, the stars
rolling over in their sad majesty, but unseen through the
sulphur clouds which hung over the scene. Ship
after ship of the Spaniards came on upon the Revenge,
"so that never less than two mighty galleons were at
her side and aboard her," washing up like waves upon a
rock, and failing foiled and shattered back amidst the
roar of the artillery. Before morning fifteen several
armadas had assailed her, and all in vain; some had
been sunk at her side; and the rest, "so ill approving
of their entertainment, that at break of day they
were far more willing to hearken to a composition, than
hastily to make more assaults or entries." "But as the
day increased so our men decreased, and as the light
grew more and more, by so much the more grew our
discomfort, for none appeared in sight but enemies,
save one small ship called the Pilgrim, commanded
by Jacob Whiddon, who hovered all night to see the
success, but in the morning bearing with the Revenge
was hunted like a hare among many ravenous hounds--
but escaped."
All the powder in the Revenge was now spent, all
her pikes were broken, 40 out of her 100 men killed,
and a great number of the rest wounded. Sir Richard,
though badly hurt early in the battle, never forsook
the deck till an hour before midnight; and was then
shot through the body while his wounds were being
dressed, and again in the head; and his surgeon was
killed while attending on him. The masts were lying
over the side, the rigging cut or broken, the upper
works all shot in pieces, and the ship herself, unable to
move, was settling slowly in the sea; the vast fleet of
Spaniards lying round her in a ring like dogs round a
dying lion, and wary of approaching him in his last
agony. Sir Richard seeing that it was past hope,
having fought for fifteen hours, and "having by
estimation eight hundred shot of great artillery through
him," "commanded the master gunner, whom he knew
to be a most resolute man, to split and sink the ship,
that thereby nothing might remain of glory or victory
to the Spaniards; seeing in so many hours they were
not able to take her, having had above fifteen hours
time, above ten thousand men, and fifty-three men-of-war
to perform it withal; and persuaded the company,
or as many as he could induce, to yield themselves
unto God and to the mercy of none else; but as they
had, like valiant resolute men, repulsed so many
enemies, they should not now shorten the honour of
their nation by prolonging their own lives for a few
hours or a few days."
The gunner and a few others consented. But such
daimonie arete was more than could be expected of
ordinary seamen. They had dared do all which did
become men, and they were not more than men, at
least than men were then. Two Spanish ships had
gone down, above 1500 men were killed, and the
Spanish Admiral could not induce any one of the
rest of his fleet to board the Revenge again,
"doubting lest Sir Richard would have blown up himself
and them knowing his dangerous disposition." Sir Richard
lying disabled below, the captain finding the Spaniards
as ready to entertain a composition as they could be
to offer it, gained over the majority of the surviving
crew; and the remainder then drawing back from
the master gunner, they all, without further consulting
their dying commander, surrendered on honourable
terms. If unequal to the English in action, the
Spaniards were at least as courteous in victory. It is
due to them to say, that the conditions were faithfully
observed. And "the ship being marvellous unsavourie,"
Alonzo de Bacon, the Spanish Admiral, sent his boat
to bring Sir Richard on board his own vessel.
Sir Richard, whose life was fast ebbing away, replied,
that "he might do with his body what he list, for that
he esteemed it not; and as he was carried out of the
ship he swooned, and reviving again, desired the company
to pray for him."
The Admiral used him with all humanity, "commending
his valour and worthiness, being unto them a
rare spectacle and a resolution seldom approved." The
officers of the rest of the fleet, too, John Higgins tells
us, crowded round to look at him, and a new fight
had almost broken out between the Biscayans and the
"Portugals," each claiming the honour of having boarded
the Revenge.
"In a few hours Sir Richard, feeling his end approaching,
showed not any sign of faintness, but spake these words
in Spanish, and said, 'Here die I, Richard Grenville, with
a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life
as a true soldier ought to do that hath fought for his
country, queen, religion, and honour. Whereby my soul
most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall always
leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true
soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.'
When he had finished these or other such like words,
he gave up the ghost with great and stout courage, and
no man could perceive any sign of heaviness in him."
Such was the fight at Florez, in that August of 1591,
without its equal in such of the annals of mankind as
the thing which we call history has preserved to us;
scarcely equalled by the most glorious fate which the
imagination of Barrere could invent for the Vengeur;
nor did it end without a sequel awful as itself.
Sea battles have been often followed by storms, and
without a miracle; but with a miracle, as the Spaniards
and the English alike believed, or without one, as we
moderns would prefer believing, "there ensued on this
action a tempest so terrible as was never seen or heard
the like before." A fleet of merchantmen joined the
armada immediately after the battle, forming in all 140
sail; and of these 140, only 32 ever saw Spanish harbour.
The rest all foundered, or were lost on the Azores.
The men-of-war had been so shattered by shot as to be
unable to carry sail, and the Revenge herself, disdaining
to survive her commander, or as if to complete his own
last baffled purpose, like Samson, buried herself and
her 200 prize crew under the rocks of St. Michael's.
"And it my well be thought and presumed," says John
Huyghen, "that it was no other than a just plague purposely
sent upon the Spaniards; and that it might be truly said,
the taking of the Revenge was justly revenged on them;
and not by the might of force of man, but by the power
of God. As some of them openly said in the Isle of
Terceira, that they believed verily God would consume
them, and that he took part with the Lutherans and heretics
... saying further, that so soon as they had thrown
the dead body of the Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Grenville
overboard, they verily thought that as he had a devilish
faith and religion, and therefore the devil loved him, so
he presently sunk into the bottom of the sea and down
into hell, where he raised up all the devils to the revenge
of his death, and that they brought so great a storm and
torments upon the Spaniards, because they only maintained
the Catholic and Romish religion. Such and the like
blasphemies against God they ceased not openly to utter."
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