“Whether it be wise in men to do such actions or no, I am sure it is
so in States to honour them.”—SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.
THERE is one story of the wars of Rome which I have always very much
envied for England. Germanicus was going down at the head of the legions
into a dangerous river—on the opposite bank the woods were full of
Germans—when there flew out seven great eagles which seemed to marshal
the Romans on their way; they did not pause or waver, but disappeared
into the forest where the enemy lay concealed. “Forward!” cried
Germanicus, with a fine rhetorical inspiration, “Forward! and follow the
Roman birds.” It would be a very heavy spirit that did not give a leap
at such a signal, and a very timorous one that continued to have any
doubt of success. To appropriate the eagles as fellow-countrymen was to
make imaginary allies of the forces of nature; the Roman Empire and its
military fortunes, and along with these the prospects of those individual
Roman legionaries now fording a river in Germany, looked altogether
greater and more hopeful. It is a kind of illusion easy to produce. A
particular shape of cloud, the appearance of a particular star, the
holiday of some particular saint, anything in short to remind the
combatants of patriotic legends or old successes, may be enough to change
the issue of a pitched battle; for it gives to the one party a feeling
that Right and the larger interests are with them.
If an Englishman wishes to have such a feeling, it must be about the sea.
The lion is nothing to us; he has not been taken to the hearts of the
people, and naturalised as an English emblem. We know right well that a
lion would fall foul of us as grimly as he would of a Frenchman or a
Moldavian Jew, and we do not carry him before us in the smoke of battle.
But the sea is our approach and bulwark; it has been the scene of our
greatest triumphs and dangers; and we are accustomed in lyrical strains
to claim it as our own. The prostrating experiences of foreigners
between Calais and Dover have always an agreeable side to English
prepossessions. A man from Bedfordshire, who does not know one end of
the ship from the other until she begins to move, swaggers among such
persons with a sense of hereditary nautical experience. To suppose
yourself endowed with natural parts for the sea because you are the
countryman of Blake and mighty Nelson, is perhaps just as unwarrantable
as to imagine Scotch extraction a sufficient guarantee that you will look
well in a kilt. But the feeling is there, and seated beyond the reach of
argument. We should consider ourselves unworthy of our descent if we did
not share the arrogance of our progenitors, and please ourselves with the
pretension that the sea is English. Even where it is looked upon by the
guns and battlements of another nation we regard it as a kind of English
cemetery, where the bones of our seafaring fathers take their rest until
the last trumpet; for I suppose no other nation has lost as many ships,
or sent as many brave fellows to the bottom.
There is nowhere such a background for heroism as the noble, terrifying,
and picturesque conditions of some of our sea fights. Hawke’s battle in
the tempest, and Aboukir at the moment when the French Admiral blew up,
reach the limit of what is imposing to the imagination. And our naval
annals owe some of their interest to the fantastic and beautiful
appearance of old warships and the romance that invests the sea and
everything sea-going in the eyes of English lads on a half-holiday at the
coast. Nay, and what we know of the misery between decks enhances the
bravery of what was done by giving it something for contrast. We like to
know that these bold and honest fellows contrived to live, and to keep
bold and honest, among absurd and vile surroundings. No reader can
forget the description of the _Thunder_ in _Roderick Random_: the
disorderly tyranny; the cruelty and dirt of officers and men; deck after
deck, each with some new object of offence; the hospital, where the
hammocks were huddled together with but fourteen inches space for each;
the cockpit, far under water, where, “in an intolerable stench,” the
spectacled steward kept the accounts of the different messes; and the
canvas enclosure, six feet square, in which Morgan made flip and
salmagundi, smoked his pipe, sang his Welsh songs, and swore his queer
Welsh imprecations. There are portions of this business on board the
_Thunder_ over which the reader passes lightly and hurriedly, like a
traveller in a malarious country. It is easy enough to understand the
opinion of Dr. Johnson: “Why, sir,” he said, “no man will be a sailor who
has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail.” You would fancy any
one’s spirit would die out under such an accumulation of darkness,
noisomeness, and injustice, above all when he had not come there of his
own free will, but under the cutlasses and bludgeons of the press-gang.
But perhaps a watch on deck in the sharp sea air put a man on his mettle
again; a battle must have been a capital relief; and prize-money,
bloodily earned and grossly squandered, opened the doors of the prison
for a twinkling. Somehow or other, at least, this worst of possible
lives could not overlie the spirit and gaiety of our sailors; they did
their duty as though they had some interest in the fortune of that
country which so cruelly oppressed them, they served their guns merrily
when it came to fighting, and they had the readiest ear for a bold,
honourable sentiment, of any class of men the world ever produced.
Most men of high destinies have high-sounding names. Pym and Habakkuk
may do pretty well, but they must not think to cope with the Cromwells
and Isaiahs. And you could not find a better case in point than that of
the English Admirals. Drake and Rooke and Hawke are picked names for men
of execution. Frobisher, Rodney, Boscawen, Foul-Weather, Jack Byron, are
all good to catch the eye in a page of a naval history. Cloudesley
Shovel is a mouthful of quaint and sounding syllables. Benbow has a
bulldog quality that suits the man’s character, and it takes us back to
those English archers who were his true comrades for plainness, tenacity,
and pluck. Raleigh is spirited and martial, and signifies an act of bold
conduct in the field. It is impossible to judge of Blake or Nelson, no
names current among men being worthy of such heroes. But still it is odd
enough, and very appropriate in this connection, that the latter was
greatly taken with his Sicilian title. “The signification, perhaps,
pleased him,” says Southey; “Duke of Thunder was what in Dahomey would
have been called a _strong name_; it was to a sailor’s taste, and
certainly to no man could it be more applicable.” Admiral in itself is
one of the most satisfactory of distinctions; it has a noble sound and a
very proud history; and Columbus thought so highly of it, that he
enjoined his heirs to sign themselves by that title as long as the house
should last.
But it is the spirit of the men, and not their names, that I wish to
speak about in this paper. That spirit is truly English; they, and not
Tennyson’s cotton-spinners or Mr. D’Arcy Thompson’s Abstract Bagman, are
the true and typical Englishmen. There may be more _head_ of bagmen in
the country, but human beings are reckoned by number only in political
constitutions. And the Admirals are typical in the full force of the
word. They are splendid examples of virtue, indeed, but of a virtue in
which most Englishmen can claim a moderate share; and what we admire in
their lives is a sort of apotheosis of ourselves. Almost everybody in
our land, except humanitarians and a few persons whose youth has been
depressed by exceptionally æsthetic surroundings, can understand and
sympathise with an Admiral or a prize-fighter. I do not wish to bracket
Benbow and Tom Cribb; but, depend upon it, they are practically bracketed
for admiration in the minds of many frequenters of ale-houses. If you
told them about Germanicus and the eagles, or Regulus going back to
Carthage, they would very likely fall asleep; but tell them about Harry
Pearce and Jem Belcher, or about Nelson and the Nile, and they put down
their pipes to listen. I have by me a copy of _Boxiana_, on the
fly-leaves of which a youthful member of the fancy kept a chronicle of
remarkable events and an obituary of great men. Here we find piously
chronicled the demise of jockeys, watermen, and pugilists—Johnny Moore,
of the Liverpool Prize Ring; Tom Spring, aged fifty-six; “Pierce Egan,
senior, writer of _Boxiana_ and other sporting works”—and among all
these, the Duke of Wellington! If Benbow had lived in the time of this
annalist, do you suppose his name would not have been added to the
glorious roll? In short, we do not all feel warmly towards Wesley or
Laud, we cannot all take pleasure in _Paradise Lost_; but there are
certain common sentiments and touches of nature by which the whole nation
is made to feel kinship. A little while ago everybody, from Hazlitt and
John Wilson down to the imbecile creature who scribbled his register on
the fly-leaves of _Boxiana_, felt a more or less shamefaced satisfaction
in the exploits of prize-fighters. And the exploits of the Admirals are
popular to the same degree, and tell in all ranks of society. Their
sayings and doings stir English blood like the sound of a trumpet; and if
the Indian Empire, the trade of London, and all the outward and visible
ensigns of our greatness should pass away, we should still leave behind
us a durable monument of what we were in these sayings and doings of the
English Admirals.
Duncan, lying off the Texel with his own flagship, the _Venerable_, and
only one other vessel, heard that the whole Dutch fleet was putting to
sea. He told Captain Hotham to anchor alongside of him in the narrowest
part of the channel, and fight his vessel till she sank. “I have taken
the depth of the water,” added he, “and when the _Venerable_ goes down,
my flag will still fly.” And you observe this is no naked Viking in a
prehistoric period; but a Scotch member of Parliament, with a smattering
of the classics, a telescope, a cocked hat of great size, and flannel
underclothing. In the same spirit, Nelson went into Aboukir with six
colours flying; so that even if five were shot away, it should not be
imagined he had struck. He too must needs wear his four stars outside
his Admiral’s frock, to be a butt for sharp-shooters. “In honour I
gained them,” he said to objectors, adding with sublime illogicality, “in
honour I will die with them.” Captain Douglas of the _Royal Oak_, when
the Dutch fired his vessel in the Thames, sent his men ashore, but was
burned along with her himself rather than desert his post without orders.
Just then, perhaps the Merry Monarch was chasing a moth round the
supper-table with the ladies of his court. When Raleigh sailed into
Cadiz, and all the forts and ships opened fire on him at once, he scorned
to shoot a gun, and made answer with a flourish of insulting trumpets. I
like this bravado better than the wisest dispositions to insure victory;
it comes from the heart and goes to it. God has made nobler heroes, but
he never made a finer gentleman than Walter Raleigh. And as our Admirals
were full of heroic superstitions, and had a strutting and vainglorious
style of fight, so they discovered a startling eagerness for battle, and
courted war like a mistress. When the news came to Essex before Cadiz
that the attack had been decided, he threw his hat into the sea. It is
in this way that a schoolboy hears of a half-holiday; but this was a
bearded man of great possessions who had just been allowed to risk his
life. Benbow could not lie still in his bunk after he had lost his leg;
he must be on deck in a basket to direct and animate the fight. I said
they loved war like a mistress; yet I think there are not many mistresses
we should continue to woo under similar circumstances. Trowbridge went
ashore with the _Culloden_, and was able to take no part in the battle of
the Nile. “The merits of that ship and her gallant captain,” wrote
Nelson to the Admiralty, “are too well known to benefit by anything I
could say. Her misfortune was great in getting aground, _while her more
fortunate companions were in the full tide of happiness_.” This is a
notable expression, and depicts the whole great-hearted, big-spoken stock
of the English Admirals to a hair. It was to be “in the full tide of
happiness” for Nelson to destroy five thousand five hundred and
twenty-five of his fellow-creatures, and have his own scalp torn open by
a piece of langridge shot. Hear him again at Copenhagen: “A shot through
the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and he observed to one of his
officers with a smile, ‘It is warm work, and this may be the last to any
of us at any moment;’ and then, stopping short at the gangway, added,
with emotion, ‘_But_, _mark you—I would not be elsewhere for
thousands_.’”
I must tell one more story, which has lately been made familiar to us
all, and that in one of the noblest ballads in the English language. I
had written my tame prose abstract, I shall beg the reader to believe,
when I had no notion that the sacred bard designed an immortality for
Greenville. Sir Richard Greenville was Vice-Admiral to Lord Thomas
Howard, and lay off the Azores with the English squadron in 1591. He was
a noted tyrant to his crew: a dark, bullying fellow apparently; and it is
related of him that he would chew and swallow wineglasses, by way of
convivial levity, till the blood ran out of his mouth. When the Spanish
fleet of fifty sail came within sight of the English, his ship, the
_Revenge_, was the last to weigh anchor, and was so far circumvented by
the Spaniards, that there were but two courses open—either to turn her
back upon the enemy or sail through one of his squadrons. The first
alternative Greenville dismissed as dishonourable to himself, his
country, and her Majesty’s ship. Accordingly, he chose the latter, and
steered into the Spanish armament. Several vessels he forced to luff and
fall under his lee; until, about three o’clock of the afternoon, a great
ship of three decks of ordnance took the wind out of his sails, and
immediately boarded. Thence-forward, and all night long, the _Revenge_,
held her own single-handed against the Spaniards. As one ship was beaten
off, another took its place. She endured, according to Raleigh’s
computation, “eight hundred shot of great artillery, besides many
assaults and entries.” By morning the powder was spent, the pikes all
broken, not a stick was standing, “nothing left overhead either for
flight or defence;” six feet of water in the hold; almost all the men
hurt; and Greenville himself in a dying condition. To bring them to this
pass, a fleet of fifty sail had been mauling them for fifteen hours, the
_Admiral of the Hulks_ and the _Ascension_ of Seville had both gone down
alongside, and two other vessels had taken refuge on shore in a sinking
state. In Hawke’s words, they had “taken a great deal of drubbing.” The
captain and crew thought they had done about enough; but Greenville was
not of this opinion; he gave orders to the master gunner, whom he knew to
be a fellow after his own stamp, to scuttle the _Revenge_ where she lay.
The others, who were not mortally wounded like the Admiral, interfered
with some decision, locked the master gunner in his cabin, after having
deprived him of his sword, for he manifested an intention to kill himself
if he were not to sink the ship; and sent to the Spaniards to demand
terms. These were granted. The second or third day after, Greenville
died of his wounds aboard the Spanish flagship, leaving his contempt upon
the “traitors and dogs” who had not chosen to do as he did, and engage
fifty vessels, well found and fully manned, with six inferior craft
ravaged by sickness and short of stores. He at least, he said, had done
his duty as he was bound to do, and looked for everlasting fame.
Some one said to me the other day that they considered this story to be
of a pestilent example. I am not inclined to imagine we shall ever be
put into any practical difficulty from a superfluity of Greenvilles. And
besides, I demur to the opinion. The worth of such actions is not a
thing to be decided in a quaver of sensibility or a flush of righteous
commonsense. The man who wished to make the ballads of his country,
coveted a small matter compared to what Richard Greenville accomplished.
I wonder how many people have been inspired by this mad story, and how
many battles have been actually won for England in the spirit thus
engendered. It is only with a measure of habitual foolhardiness that you
can be sure, in the common run of men, of courage on a reasonable
occasion. An army or a fleet, if it is not led by quixotic fancies, will
not be led far by terror of the Provost Marshal. Even German warfare, in
addition to maps and telegraphs, is not above employing the _Wacht am
Rhein_. Nor is it only in the profession of arms that such stories may
do good to a man. In this desperate and gleeful fighting, whether it is
Greenville or Benbow, Hawke or Nelson, who flies his colours in the ship,
we see men brought to the test and giving proof of what we call heroic
feeling. Prosperous humanitarians tell me, in my club smoking-room, that
they are a prey to prodigious heroic feelings, and that it costs them
more nobility of soul to do nothing in particular, than would carry on
all the wars, by sea or land, of bellicose humanity. It may very well be
so, and yet not touch the point in question. For what I desire is to see
some of this nobility brought face to face with me in an inspiriting
achievement. A man may talk smoothly over a cigar in my club
smoking-room from now to the Day of Judgment, without adding anything to
mankind’s treasury of illustrious and encouraging examples. It is not
over the virtues of a curate-and-tea-party novel, that people are abashed
into high resolutions. It may be because their hearts are crass, but to
stir them properly they must have men entering into glory with some pomp
and circumstance. And that is why these stories of our sea-captains,
printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full of bracing moral influence,
are more valuable to England than any material benefit in all the books
of political economy between Westminster and Birmingham. Greenville
chewing wineglasses at table makes no very pleasant figure, any more than
a thousand other artists when they are viewed in the body, or met in
private life; but his work of art, his finished tragedy, is an eloquent
performance; and I contend it ought not only to enliven men of the sword
as they go into battle, but send back merchant clerks with more heart and
spirit to their book-keeping by double entry.
There is another question which seems bound up in this; and that is
Temple’s problem: whether it was wise of Douglas to burn with the _Royal
Oak_? and by implication, what it was that made him do so? Many will
tell you it was the desire of fame.
“To what do Cæsar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their
renown, but to fortune? How many men has she extinguished in the
beginning of their progress, of whom we have no knowledge; who brought as
much courage to the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them
off in the first sally of their arms? Amongst so many and so great
dangers, I do not remember to have anywhere read that Cæsar was ever
wounded; a thousand have fallen in less dangers than the least of these
he went through. A great many brave actions must be expected to be
performed without witness, for one that comes to some notice. A man is
not always at the top of a breach, or at the head of an army in the sight
of his general, as upon a platform. He is often surprised between the
hedge and the ditch; he must run the hazard of his life against a
henroost; he must dislodge four rascally musketeers out of a barn; he
must prick out single from his party, as necessity arises, and meet
adventures alone.”
Thus far Montaigne, in a characteristic essay on _Glory_. Where death is
certain, as in the cases of Douglas or Greenville, it seems all one from
a personal point of view. The man who lost his life against a henroost,
is in the same pickle with him who lost his life against a fortified
place of the first order. Whether he has missed a peerage or only the
corporal’s stripes, it is all one if he has missed them and is quietly in
the grave. It was by a hazard that we learned the conduct of the four
marines of the _Wager_. There was no room for these brave fellows in the
boat, and they were left behind upon the island to a certain death. They
were soldiers, they said, and knew well enough it was their business to
die; and as their comrades pulled away, they stood upon the beach, gave
three cheers, and cried “God bless the king!” Now, one or two of those
who were in the boat escaped, against all likelihood, to tell the story.
That was a great thing for us; but surely it cannot, by any possible
twisting of human speech, be construed into anything great for the
marines. You may suppose, if you like, that they died hoping their
behaviour would not be forgotten; or you may suppose they thought nothing
on the subject, which is much more likely. What can be the signification
of the word “fame” to a private of marines, who cannot read and knows
nothing of past history beyond the reminiscences of his grandmother? But
whichever supposition you make, the fact is unchanged. They died while
the question still hung in the balance; and I suppose their bones were
already white, before the winds and the waves and the humour of Indian
chiefs and Spanish governors had decided whether they were to be unknown
and useless martyrs or honoured heroes. Indeed, I believe this is the
lesson: if it is for fame that men do brave actions, they are only silly
fellows after all.
It is at best but a pettifogging, pickthank business to decompose actions
into little personal motives, and explain heroism away. The Abstract
Bagman will grow like an Admiral at heart, not by ungrateful carping, but
in a heat of admiration. But there is another theory of the personal
motive in these fine sayings and doings, which I believe to be true and
wholesome. People usually do things, and suffer martyrdoms, because they
have an inclination that way. The best artist is not the man who fixes
his eye on posterity, but the one who loves the practice of his art. And
instead of having a taste for being successful merchants and retiring at
thirty, some people have a taste for high and what we call heroic forms
of excitement. If the Admirals courted war like a mistress; if, as the
drum beat to quarters, the sailors came gaily out of the forecastle,—it
is because a fight is a period of multiplied and intense experiences,
and, by Nelson’s computation, worth “thousands” to any one who has a
heart under his jacket. If the marines of the _Wager_ gave three cheers
and cried “God bless the king,” it was because they liked to do things
nobly for their own satisfaction. They were giving their lives, there
was no help for that; and they made it a point of self-respect to give
them handsomely. And there were never four happier marines in God’s
world than these four at that moment. If it was worth thousands to be at
the Baltic, I wish a Benthamite arithmetician would calculate how much it
was worth to be one of these four marines; or how much their story is
worth to each of us who read it. And mark you, undemonstrative men would
have spoiled the situation. The finest action is the better for a piece
of purple. If the soldiers of the _Birkenhead_ had not gone down in
line, or these marines of the _Wager_ had walked away simply into the
island, like plenty of other brave fellows in the like circumstances, my
Benthamite arithmetician would assign a far lower value to the two
stories. We have to desire a grand air in our heroes; and such a
knowledge of the human stage as shall make them put the dots on their own
i’s, and leave us in no suspense as to when they mean to be heroic. And
hence, we should congratulate ourselves upon the fact that our Admirals
were not only great-hearted but big-spoken.
The heroes themselves say, as often as not, that fame is their object;
but I do not think that is much to the purpose. People generally say
what they have been taught to say; that was the catchword they were given
in youth to express the aims of their way of life; and men who are
gaining great battles are not likely to take much trouble in reviewing
their sentiments and the words in which they were told to express them.
Almost every person, if you will believe himself, holds a quite different
theory of life from the one on which he is patently acting. And the fact
is, fame may be a forethought and an afterthought, but it is too abstract
an idea to move people greatly in moments of swift and momentous
decision. It is from something more immediate, some determination of
blood to the head, some trick of the fancy, that the breach is stormed or
the bold word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting an ugly weir in a
canoe has exactly as much thought about fame as most commanders going
into battle; and yet the action, fall out how it will, is not one of
those the muse delights to celebrate. Indeed it is difficult to see why
the fellow does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at,
unless on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that is why; and I
suspect it is at least ten per cent. of why Lord Beaconsfield and Mr.
Gladstone have debated so much in the House of Commons, and why Burnaby
rode to Khiva the other day, and why the Admirals courted war like a
mistress.