Jean Paul the German poet said that God had given to France the empire
of the land, to England the empire of the sea, and to his own country
the empire of the air. The world has changed since Jean Paul's days.
The wings of France have been clipped: the German Empire has become a
solid thing: but England still holds her watery dominion; Britannia
does still rule the waves, and in this proud position she has spread
the English race over the globe; she is peopling new Englands at the
Antipodes; she has made her Queen Empress of India; and is in fact the
very considerable phenomenon in the social and political world which
all acknowledge her to be. And all this she has achieved in the course
of three centuries, entirely in consequence of her predominance as an
ocean power. Take away her merchant fleets, take away the navy that
guards them,--her empire will come to an end, her colonies will fall
off like leaves from a withered tree, and Britain will become once
more an insignificant island in the North Sea, for the future students
in Australian and New Zealand universities to discuss the fate of in
their debating societies.
How the English navy came to hold so extraordinary a position is worth
reflecting on. Much has been written on it, but little, as it seems to
me, which touches the heart of the matter. We are shown the power of
our country growing and expanding. But how it grew; why, after a sleep
of so many hundred years, the genius of our Scandinavian forefathers
suddenly sprang again into life,--of this we are left without
explanation.
The beginning was undoubtedly the defeat of the Spanish Armada in
1588. Down to that time the sea sovereignty belonged to the Spaniards,
and had been fairly won by them. The conquest of Granada had
stimulated and elevated the Spanish character. The subjects of
Ferdinand and Isabella, of Charles V., and Philip II., were
extraordinary men and accomplished extraordinary things. They
stretched the limits of the known world; they conquered Mexico and
Peru; they planted their colonies over the South-American continent;
they took possession of the great West-Indian islands, and with so
firm a grasp that Cuba at least will never lose the mark of the hand
which seized it. They built their cities as if for eternity. They
spread to the Indian Ocean, and gave their monarch's name to the
Philippines. All this they accomplished in half a century, and as it
were, they did it with a single hand; with the other they were
fighting Moors and Turks, and protecting the coasts of the
Mediterranean from the corsairs of Tunis and Constantinople.
They had risen on the crest of the wave, and with their proud _Non
Sufficit Orbis_ were looking for new worlds to conquer, at a time when
the bark of the English water-dogs had scarcely been heard beyond
their own fishing grounds, and the largest merchant vessel sailing
from the port of London was scarce bigger than a modern coasting
collier. And yet within the space of a single ordinary life these
insignificant islanders had struck the sceptre from the Spaniards'
grasp and placed the ocean crown on the brow of their own sovereign.
How did it come about? What Cadmus had sown dragons' teeth in the
furrows of the sea, for the race to spring from who manned the ships
of Queen Elizabeth, who carried the flag of their own country round
the globe, and challenged and fought the Spaniards on their own coasts
and in their own harbors?
The English sea power was the legitimate child of the Reformation. It
grew, as I shall show you, directly out of the new despised
Protestantism. Matthew Parker and Bishop Jewell, the judicious Hooker
himself, excellent men as they were, would have written and preached
to small purpose without Sir Francis Drake's cannon to play an
accompaniment to their teaching. And again, Drake's cannon would not
have roared so loudly and so widely, without seamen already trained in
heart and hand to work his ships and level his artillery. It was to
the superior seamanship, the superior quality of English ships and
crews, that the Spaniards attributed their defeat. Where did these
ships come from? Where and how did these mariners learn their trade?
Historians talk enthusiastically of the national spirit of a people
rising with a united heart to repel the invader, and so on. But
national spirit could not extemporize a fleet, or produce trained
officers and sailors to match the conquerors of Lepanto. One slight
observation I must make here at starting, and certainly with no
invidious purpose. It has been said confidently,--it has been
repeated, I believe, by all modern writers,--that the Spanish invasion
suspended in England the quarrels of creed, and united Protestants and
Roman Catholics in defense of their Queen and country. They remind us
especially that Lord Howard of Effingham, who was Elizabeth's admiral,
was himself a Roman Catholic. But was it so? The Earl of Arundel, the
head of the House of Howard, was a Roman Catholic, and he was in the
Tower praying for the success of Medina Sidonia. Lord Howard of
Effingham was no more a Roman Catholic than--I hope I am not taking
away their character--than the present Archbishop of Canterbury or the
Bishop of London. He was a Catholic, but an English Catholic, as those
reverend prelates are. Roman Catholic he could not possibly have been,
nor any one who on that great occasion was found on the side of
Elizabeth. A Roman Catholic is one who acknowledges the Roman Bishop's
authority. The Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth, had pronounced her
deposed, had absolved her subjects from their allegiance and forbidden
them to fight for her. No Englishman who fought on that great occasion
for English liberty was, or could have been, in communion with Rome.
Loose statements of this kind, lightly made, fall in with the modern
humor. They are caught up, applauded, repeated, and pass unquestioned
into history. It is time to correct them a little.