the growth and the aggressions of Holland. Was she or England to be
sovereign of the sea? And was an English ship, figuratively speaking, to
bow to a Dutch one when she met her? Selden offered the world precedents
enough on our behalf. That King John should have claimed a universal
striking to the Royal flag was surely proof that what might impress the
foreigner as an extraordinary pretension was founded on the unquestioned
rights of our predecessors. Edward III., in his commissions to his
admirals, repeatedly styled himself sovereign of the English seas,
affirming, with perfect justice, that he derived the title from his
progenitors. In Hakluyt there is preserved a curious metrical
admonition, presumably written in or about the sixth year of the reign
of Edward IV., entitled “De politia conservatira Maris,” with a heading
to the general introduction that runs thus: “Here beginneth the prologue
of the processe of the libel of the English policie, exhorting all
England to keep the sea, and namely the narrow sea; shewing what profite
commeth thereof, and also what worship and salvation to England, and to
all Englishmen.” It will be owned that the anonymous author’s appeal was
not addressed to deaf ears. An immortal proof of British resolution in
this direction occurs in the reign of Queen Mary. Lord William Howard,
created Baron of Effingham, was sent with a fleet of twenty-eight sail
presumably to guard the coast, but in reality to escort Philip of Spain,
whose own fleet, however, consisted of one hundred and sixty vessels.
His admiral came sailing along with the Spanish flag flying at his
masthead, which so offended Lord William Howard that he fired a shot at
him and forced him to strike or haul down his colours before he would
make his compliments to the prince.[22] This was followed by another
lively example of a like kind. When the Spanish fleet went to fetch Anne
of Austria, who was in Flanders, Sir John Hawkins, with a small squadron
of her Majesty’s ships, was riding in Cattewater. The Spanish admiral
endeavoured to pass without saluting. Sir John sent a shot at the
Admiral’s rigging, but no notice was taken of it. A second shot fired
went clean through the Spaniard’s hull. On this the Don sent an officer
of distinction with compliments and complaints to Sir John Hawkins, who
refused to admit the officer or hear what he had to say; but simply
required him to tell his admiral that, having neglected to pay the
respect due to the Queen of England, in her seas and port, he must not
expect to lie there but to be off within twelve hours. Sir John’s flag
was flying on the _Jesus of Lubeck_; to this ship came the Spaniard full
of remonstrance, declaring he knew not what to make of the treatment he
had received, seeing that there was peace between the two Crowns. “Put
the case, sir,” said Sir John, “that an English fleet came into any of
the King, your master’s, ports, his Majesty’s ships being there, and
those English ships should carry their flags in their tops, would not
you shoot them down and beat the ships out of your port?” The Spaniard
confessed himself in the wrong, and submitted to the penalty the English
Admiral imposed.
Footnote 22:
To strike is to lower. The old salutation was the striking or lowering
of the top-sail. The introduction of the topgallant-sail must have
rendered this courtesy extremely inconvenient.
It was the Hollander, however, who gave the English most trouble in
regard to the honour of the flag. In or about 1604 Sir William Monson
was cruising with a fleet with instructions to assert the superiority in
the British seas which came to James I. from his ancestors. Sir William
has told the story himself in his “Naval Tracts.” On his return to
Calais in July, 1605, he found an addition of six ships to the Dutch
squadron he had left off Dover three days before. One of them was the
Admiral’s. “Their object,” he says, “in coming in shew was to beleaguer
the Spaniards who were then at Dover.” As Sir William approached, the
Dutch Admiral struck his flag thrice, meaning that the Spaniards as well
as others should conclude that, by continuing to “wear” his flag, he
represented a sovereignty of the sea as complete as that of the English.
Sir William requested him to take in his flag; he refused, alleging that
he had struck it three times, which he held was acknowledgment enough.
There was some discussion, after which he was told that if he did not
salute, the British Admiral would weigh anchor and fall down to him, and
then the force of the ships should determine the question; “for rather
than I would suffer his flag to be worn in view of so many nations as
were to behold it, I resolved to bury myself in the sea.” “The Admiral,
it seems, on better advice,” adds Sir William, “took in his flag and
stood immediately off to sea, firing a gun for the rest of the fleet to
follow him. And thus I lost my guest the next day at dinner as he had
promised.” Amongst others who witnessed this was Sciriago, the Spanish
General, who told Sir William that if the Hollanders had worn their
flag, times had strangely altered in England, for he remembered his old
master King Philip the Second being shot at by the Lord Admiral of
England for wearing his flag in the narrow seas when he came to marry
Queen Mary.
In spite of treaties of peace between England and Holland, the trouble
about the fishing continued. Disputes arose over the payment of the
assize-herring in Scotland, and the Dutch sent ships of war to protect
their herring-boats against the penalties which must attend the refusal
to pay the licence money. In 1609 King James issued a proclamation
concerning fishing, in which it was stated that commissioners had been
authorized “at London for our realms of England and Ireland, and at
Edinburgh for our realm of Scotland,” to issue licences to such foreign
vessels as intend to fish for the whole or any part of the year, and
that the licences were to be taken out “upon pain of such chastisements
as shall be fit to be inflicted upon such as are wilful offenders.” The
fishing quarrel rose to a height again in 1618, but it does not appear
that the honour of the flag was involved in these trawling politics
until 1652. In that year Commodore Young encountered a Dutch man-of-war
whose captain refused to salute the English colours. The commodore sent
a boat with a polite request that the Dutchman would strike; but mynheer
answered very honestly that the States had threatened to take off his
head if he struck; whereupon a fight began, with the result that the
Dutchman had to haul down his colours. This was on May 14; on the 19th
Van Tromp bore down upon Blake, who was lying off Dover. Blake sent
three shots at the Dutch flag as a hint; which Tromp answered with a
broadside, and then followed an action that lasted till nine at night,
when, Blake being reinforced, the Dutch made off. Peace was made in
1654. In that treaty nothing was said as to our sovereignty in respect
to the fisheries, but amongst other articles was the acknowledgment of
the dominion of the English at sea and the agreement to strike to the
meteor bunting. But the prowess of Admiral Blake may have provided for
this without any obligation of specification; for in this year, coming
to an anchor off Cadiz, a Dutch Admiral who was there would not hoist
his flag whilst Blake was present. Indeed, such was the awe in which
Blake was held, that the Algerines, merely with the idea of obtaining
his favour, made a point of overhauling the Sallee rovers for English
prisoners and sending all they found to him.
The honour of the flag seems a noticeable element in the origin of the
war of 1665. Sir John Lawson, in command of a squadron of ships, was in
the Mediterranean with De Ruyter. The Dutch admiral saluted the English
flag, a compliment which Lawson refused to return, alleging that his
orders did not allow him to strike to the subjects of any king or State
whatever. It may be supposed that such treatment pretty liberally
envenomed the soul of the fine old Dutchman, who, when he was shortly
afterwards sent to commit hostilities against us, made sail on that
adventure with a hot heart. In 1674 we find the Dutch in the treaty of
peace professing to understand a point that in spite of previous
treaties they had refused to admit. In the treaty with Cromwell they had
agreed that their ships should salute the English, and in subsequent
treaties the same undertaking appears. But their usual apology for
failure was that striking was a mere matter of civility, and that if
they declined to pull off their hat there was no obligation upon them to
do so. But by 1674 the political atmosphere had been cleared by British
cannons, and the Dutch were now able to distinguish. The treaty ended
the doubt; what was before styled courtesy was here confessed a right.
Not only was the extent of the British sovereignty clearly defined; the
State undertook that whole fleets, as well as separate ships, “should
strike their sails to any fleet or single ship carrying the King’s flag,
as the custom was in the days of his ancestors.” It was said by
Secretary Coke in a letter addressed by order of Charles I. to Sir
William Boswell, Ambassador at the Hague, “This cannot be doubted, that
whosoever will encroach upon him (the King) by sea, will do it by land
also, when they see their time. To such presumption ‘Mare Liberum’ gave
the first warning piece, which must be answered with a defence of ‘Mare
Clausum,’ not so much by discourses, as by the louder language of a
powerful navy, to be better understood when overstrained patience seeth
no hope of preserving her right by other means.”
“The spirits of your fathers,
Shall start from every wave,”
sings Campbell, and in Coke’s words one finds a noble example of the
sort of message those spirits knew how to deliver. What has been done
for the honour of the flag by a language louder than discourses may be
easily traced through the Rookes, the Shovels, the Mansels, the Howes,
the Rodneys, Keppels, Nelsons.
How has that honour broadened since the days of striking topsails!
Colonial men-of-war are now entitled to fly the flag of the British
Navy. There was obviously much deliberation before the resolution was
arrived at in respect of the Gayundah, a vessel that has the honour to
signally advance that great scheme of federation which is occupying the
minds of all English-speaking men. Indeed, it is perfectly obvious that
no flag could be so fitly flown at the masthead or peak of our Colonial
men-of-war as those same colours which the heroism of the grandsires of
our distant kinsmen rendered emblematic of power, justice, and freedom.
The British national flag is the Union Jack. This consists of the
blended crosses of St. George, red; of St. Andrew, white; of St.
Patrick, red, marginating Scotland’s cross so as to admit of a portion
of the white being shown. These several crosses combined upon a blue
ground form that meteor flag of which the poet writes, though not
certainly that noble piece of bunting which, we are reminded by the same
poet in the same song—
“Has braved a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze.”
The wishes of the Colonials were eminently honourable and loyal, and the
gratification of their desires in respect of a flag whose glory and
traditions are certainly not less theirs than they are ours should prove
a source of sincere satisfaction to the people of this country. For the
honour of the flag! We know what that inspiration has done for us of
old, and how it must influence in the future the world-wide
English-speaking races whose artillery shall thunder under the shadow of
Britain’s blood-red cross.[23] Without his flag what would be fighting
or even mercantile Jack? We all know how old Commodore Dance, at the
head of his little squadron of tea ships, put to flight the formidable
Frenchman bristling with tiers of cannon. Even under the red flag,
symbol of peaceful trade, there have been performed many noble and
valorous exploits, and it is no doubt the memory of scores of brilliant
deeds performed by the British merchant sailor that excites the regret
very widely felt that in these times, when the water is smooth, and the
political barometer fairly high, the foreigners in their hundreds should
be driving the English mariner out of his legitimate home—the British
forecastle.
Footnote 23:
In the last century the Union flag, as it was called, bore these
words:— “For the Protestant Religion and for the Liberty of England.”
The flags of that time are thus described: THE JACK.—Blue, charged
with a saltire argent and a cross gules, bordered argent. MERCANTILE
FLAG: Red, with a franc-quarter argent, charged with a cross gules.
There seems to have been two royal standards, the colour unsettled,
some saying that it ought to be yellow, others white. One was charged
with a quartered escutcheon of England, Scotland, France and Ireland.
The other royal flag is described as “quarterly, the first and fourth
quarter counter-quartered, in which the first and fourth azure, three
fleurs-de-lis or the royal arms of France, quartered with the imperial
ensigns of England, which are in the second and third gules, eight
lions passant; gardant in pale.” The rest of this description, so far
as I can make out the heraldic jargon, seems to represent the Royal
Standard of to-day.
Formerly, if a council of war was to be held at sea, the Admiral hung
his flag in the main-shrouds, that is, in the lower rigging; the
vice-admiral in the fore-shrouds; and the rear-admiral in the
mizzen-shrouds.
But it is to naval story that we must turn for nearly all of what
pertains to the honour of the flag. The contests have been tough and
sharp touching the “doffing” question. Whether it was our duty to bow
first to the haughty Spaniard at sea, as he maintained, or whether it
was for him to “make a leg” at the sight of good Queen Bess’s flag, was
a question for Drake and Raleigh, for Hawkins and that noble gentleman
Charles Howard, Baron of Effingham, to settle, just as Blake and Monk
and Ascue and Commodore Young, as has been shown, decided the same
matter with reference to the broomstick of the brave and desperate
Dutchman. It was the sailor of Queen Elizabeth’s day, however, that made
the flag the emblem which the world has ever since recognized it to be.
The story of Sir Robert Mansell, Admiral of the “narrow seas,” as the
English Channel was then termed, is typical of our naval history from
the first chapter of it. He went to Gravelines to receive the Spanish
Ambassador, whilst Sir Jerome Turner, his Vice-Admiral, attended at
Calais for the French Ambassador. “But,” says the quaint historian, “the
Frenchman coming first and hearing the Vice-Admiral was to attend him,
the Admiral the other, in a scorn put himself in a passage boat in
Calais and came forth with flag in top. Instantly Sir Jerome Turner sent
to know of the Admiral what he should do. Sir Robert Mansell sent him
word to shoot and strike him if he would not take in the flag. This, as
it made the flag be pulled in, caused a great complaint, and it was
believed it would have undone Sir Robert Mansell, the French faction put
it so home; but he maintained the act and was the better beloved of his
Sovereign ever after to his death.”
Even the old pirates talked of the honour of their flag! a very dismal
piece of bunting, indeed, consisting of a skull, cross-bones, and
hour-glass on a black ground. Yet let such records as “Tom Cringle’s
Log,” which are very true history, though disguised with the mask of
fiction, bear witness to the furious heroism with which those murderous
savages, in earrings and sashes, in ringlets and jack-boots, fought for
the abhorred flag at their masthead, swaying in masses half-naked at
their cannons, and occasionally blowing themselves to pieces in their
efforts to sink the enemy, just as ancient mariners tell of mutilated
sharks twisting round to get at their own wounds in their dreadfully
gluttonous desire to eat themselves up. Nelson stormed in among the
Frenchmen and the Spaniards with six flags flying in different parts of
his rigging, because he could not endure to think of the possibility of
a stray shot making him look, even for a breathless moment, to have
struck. There is very little change between the flags of his time and
those of ours. Of course this regards the colours as shown by
men-of-war; in signalling Marryatt’s Code—as all other codes which
existed prior to the clever combinations of the author of “Peter
Simple”—has made way for the International Code. In the British Navy
flags are either red, white, or blue, and are hoisted at one or another
of the royal mastheads, according to the rank of the Admiral. This has
been the custom for centuries. Previous to 1801 the Union flag, as it
was called, bore only the Crosses of St. George and St. Andrew; but it
was then, as after, appropriated to the Admiral of the Fleet, who was
regarded as the first military officer under the Lord High Admiral.
Indeed, the history of our flags is the history of our Navy. Much of the
interest one finds in reading the old accounts of naval battles lies in
waiting to see who was the first to strike. Just as a ship looks
glorified when “dressed”—that is to say, when she has hung out all her
colours from peak end to mastheads, and from mastheads to the end of the
flying-jibboom, and thence to the water—so is our national marine story
radiant with the flags, pennons, and “ancients,” which flutter through
it, sometimes blowing saucily, sometimes riven and seared with flame and
bullet, sometimes a mangled rag valiantly hanging by a nail at the top
of the mast, or “seized” in the rigging, whilst below it the battle
rages like a thunderstorm. It is, indeed, in these days, almost
inconceivable that mortal men should ever have been able to achieve for
the honour of their flag the triumphs which rendered the British colours
the terror they became. Campbell, Brenton, James, Naval Chronicles,
Annual Registers, Maritime Records of all sorts and descriptions teem
with illustrations of dauntless bravery, of headlong fearlessness such
as might make one believe that the Jacks of those days not only bore a
charmed life, but were giants as mighty in stature as the early Irish
are supposed to have been, to judge from the colossal remains that are
occasionally dug up in various parts of that “kingdom.” It is impossible
to read the voyage of Anson or the accounts of the early explorers of
the South Seas without a feeling of pity for the miserable terror
aroused in the Spaniards, the half-castes, and blacks by the sight of
the English flag or by the sound of an English voice. The way the story
usually runs is—the vessel is seen to approach, is recognized as an
English South Seaman; whereupon the Governor collects all his plate and
treasure, piles it into waggons drawn by mules, which he sends up
country, and then hastily follows, occasionally, in his fright, leaving
his wife behind him. A wretched priest is sent off in a boat pulled by
shivering blacks, and, with teeth chattering, suggests a compromise,
which the English regard as a stratagem to furnish the Governor with
time enough to make good his escape. So they send the priest ashore with
a polite intimation that if, by a certain hour, so many thousands of
ducats and dollars, not to mention silver candlesticks and golden
crucifixes, are not brought off and safely stowed away in their hold,
they will sack and burn the town. If the Governor fails to comply, then
we are admitted to a humiliating spectacle. The English row ashore, and
find the coast lined with troops; but as the boats approach the troops
retire, and by the time the keels have grounded upon the beach, the
Governor’s army, along with a band of music and several hundreds of
horsemen, are to be observed watching the proceedings of the English
from the top of a very lofty hill. Such was the honour of the flag! Such
is it still, and such is it sure to remain in the hands of those distant
children of Old England who will grasp the halliards by which it is
hoisted.
But let the humble “driver,” the obscure trawler, have his merit too.
Were the herring woven into the symbolism of the Royal Standard it would
not be amiss. When you hear the pensive cry of “fine bloaters,” or the
melodious rattle of “Caller herrin,” think how much the honour of the
flag owes to that kind of fish. The sovereignty of the sea is still
ours, but to justify our inheritance we ought really to suffer our souls
to be tinged with the old Parliamentary spirit in our response to the
cries of our fishermen calling upon the country to help them against the
Flemish “devil” in the North Sea, and the drift-net-cutting weapon of
the Calais smacksmen in our “narrow waters.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE NAVAL OFFICER’S SPIRIT._
In Admiral Hobart Pasha’s sketches are many well told stories, all of
them delivered with the rough simplicity of the seamen. The most
striking is a slaving yarn. Some boats were in pursuit of a vessel, full
to the hatches with negroes. One of them, swept forward by desperate
rowers, succeeded in getting close under her bows, and a man in her
sprang aboard, “like a chamois.” The slaver was going through it at six
knots, and the boat, from which the man had leapt, do what the oarsmen
would, dropped astern. In a few moments was heard the report of a
pistol, and the vessel suddenly swept round into the wind, all aback,
and her way stopped. The boats thereupon dashed alongside, and after a
short struggle took possession of the brig. “There we found our
lieutenant standing calmly at the helm, which was a long wooden tiller.
He it was who had jumped on board alone, shot the man at the helm, put
the said helm down with his leg, while in his hand he held his other
pistol, with which he threatened to shoot any one who dared to touch
him.”
The date of this is not given, but it falls well within living, indeed,
within comparatively recent memory, and, like much else that is told in
this autobiography, serves as an example of the survival of a spirit
which makes our naval history as lively as if the annals were due to the
imagination of the Scotts, Marryats, and Coopers of romance, and
certainly far more inspiring and stirring than the choicest novels could
prove.
It has always seemed to me as if the whole philosophy and spirit of
British naval history lay in that memorable remark of Blake: “It is not
for us to mind State affairs. We are to prevent foreigners from fooling
us.” It is the broad humorous simplicity of the old salt, his shrewd
perception and unadorned habit of going to work, that make all about him
fascinating reading. Lord Anson said to Captain Campbell, after the
defeat of Conflans, “The king will knight you if you think proper.”
“Troth, my lord,” responded the captain, “I ken nae use that will be to
me.” “But your lady may like it,” said Anson. “Weel, then,” replied
Campbell, “His majesty may knight her if he pleases.” One finds the same
curious sturdiness in demanding rights as in rejecting honours. There is
nothing in this way to beat Admiral Vernon’s letter, dated June 30,
1774, to the Secretary to the Admiralty. During his retirement he had
been passed over in a promotion of flag-officers. “That I might not,” he
wrote, “by any be thought to be one that would decline the public
service, I have thought proper to remind their lordships I am living,
and have, I thank God, the same honest zeal reigning in my breast that
has animated me on all occasions to approve myself a faithful and
zealous subject and servant to my Royal master; and if the first Lord
Commissioner has represented me in any other light to my Royal master,
he has acted with a degeneracy unbecoming the descendant from a noble
father, whose memory I reverence and esteem, though I have no
compliments to make to the judgment or conduct of the son.”
The first lord was Daniel, Earl of Winchelsea. Long service at the
cannon had taught the old sea-dogs the virtue of thunder.
In the account of the loss of the _Earl of Abergavenny_, it is stated
that a midshipman was appointed to guard the spirit-room. The sailors
pressed eagerly upon him. “Give us some grog!” they cried; “it will be
all one an hour hence.” “I know we must die,” replied the gallant young
officer, coolly, “_but let us die like men_!” Armed with a brace of
pistols, he kept his place even while the ship was sinking. Byron has
employed this incident in “Don Juan.” The captain of the _Earl of
Abergavenny_ was John Wordsworth, brother of the poet.
There is an extraordinary instance of naval spirit preserved in
“Burnaby’s Travels in North America,” published in 1775. Captain St.
Loe, commander of an English man-of-war lying in Boston harbour, being
ashore on a Sunday, was taken into custody for walking on the Lord’s
Day. On Monday he was carried before a justice and fined. Refusing to
pay, he was sentenced to sit in the stocks one hour during the time of
change. The sentence was executed. Whilst the captain sat in durance,
the magistrates gravely admonished him to respect in future the
wholesome laws of the province, and he was further exhorted for ever
after to reverence and keep holy the Sabbath Day. At the expiration of
the hour he was liberated. On regaining the use of his legs he stood up,
expressed himself as greatly edified by the lesson he had learned, and
declared himself so thoroughly converted as to rejoice the hearts of the
Boston saints. He acted his part so well that he became extremely
popular among the godly folks, who, on the day fixed for the sailing of
the ship, accepted his invitation to dine with him on board. He gave
them a capital dinner, plied them with bowls and bottles, and in a short
time the whole ship resounded with their roaring merriment. On a sudden
a body of sailors burst into the cabin, laid hold of the saints and
pinioned them, then dragged them on deck, where they were stripped and
tied up. How many lashes the boatswain and his mates dealt them is not
stated; but the story goes that “when they had suffered the whole of the
discipline, which had flayed them from the nape of the neck to the hams,
the captain took a polite leave, earnestly begging them to remember him
in their prayers. They were then let down into the boat that was waiting
for them, the crew saluted them with three cheers, and Captain St. Loe
made sail.”