ELIZABETH (viii), 1558-87--THE SEAMEN
As before we postponed the story of Ireland, in order to give a consecutive
narrative down to the point at which the interaction of Irish and English
affairs became marked and definite, so we have hitherto deferred
consideration of the most tremendous factor in the Elizabethan evolution,
the development of the Island nation into the greatest Ocean Power in the
world. The charter of the Queen of the Seas was drawn by the Tudor seamen,
and received its seal when the great Armada perished. It is time therefore
to see how it came about that England was able to challenge and to shatter
the Power which threatened to dominate the world.
[Sidenote: The New World]
Throughout the Middle Ages, until what we conveniently term, from the
English point of view, the Tudor Period, the European peoples were
confined to the European Continent and the adjacent islands. In Asia
and in Mediterranean Africa the Mohammedan races were a militant
barrier to expansion. The discoveries of Columbus and Vasco da Gama
opened new fields, whereof the inheritance was destined to the nations
who should achieve the dominion of the Ocean. Always important, the
capacity for maritime development now became the primary condition of
ultimate greatness. The fact was at the first recognised by Spain and
Portugal; and an immediate incentive was given to those two Powers, and
something of a check to the rest, when Pope Alexander VI., with an
authority as yet unchallenged, divided between them the newly found
countries and the lands still to be discovered. Acquiescence in the
award was limited; with the ecclesiastical revolt from Rome it
vanished; but Spaniards and Portuguese were already in full possession
of vast territories before their exclusive title to the whole was
called in question.
[Sidenote: The English Marine before Elizabeth]
Nevertheless, more than before, the eyes of statesmen were turned to
the sea and the eyes of merchants to the ocean. The nucleus of a Royal
Navy was formed by Henry VII., and his son very greatly increased the
number of the King's ships and built many tall vessels. The merchants
of Bristol and the western ports made daring voyages in hitherto
unexplored and half-explored waters, as we have seen; while the general
activity of the mercantile marine was greatly increased.
Prosperity, and as a necessary result, enterprise, suffered a check
under the disastrous financial conditions prevalent in the reigns of
Edward and Mary; yet the closing months of Edward's reign had been
marked by the departure of the expedition of Willoughby and Chancellor
in search of a North-East Passage; while several voyages to the Guinea
Coast--whither William Hawkins had sailed in Henry's day--were
undertaken by John Lock and Towerson, during the reign of Mary. We have
seen also how the young hot-heads of Protestantism had taken to
privateering in the Channel, in the name of Patriotism and true
Religion. That course was reprehensible enough; but it led at least to
the cultivation of the art of seamanship. On the other hand, that art
suffered from a curious draw-back. The partial cessation of the
practice of fasting which accompanied the development of Protestantism
reacted on the fishing trade, which was the regular school of sailors;
insomuch that not only Somerset but Cecil in Elizabeth's time, proposed
ordinances in favour of fasting, simply and solely to check the
collapse of that industry.
[Sidenote: The Royal Navy]
The Royal Navy developed by Henry VIII. was allowed perforce to decay
under his two immediate successors. According to the most authentic
lists, [Footnote: Sir W. Laird Clowes, _The Royal Navy_, vol. i.,
pp. 419 ff. Throughout this chapter, the figures for tonnage are
adopted from this work.] in 1548 there were 53 ships in the Fleet, with
a total tonnage of about 11,000. In 1558 there were but 26, with a
tonnage of little more than 7,000. During the first half of Elizabeth's
reign, the numbers were not increased; in 1575 there were but 24
vessels; but the tonnage had risen 50 per cent., and was within 10 per
cent, of what Henry had bequeathed to Edward. When the Armada came, in
the twenty-ninth year of Elizabeth's reign, 34 ships of the Royal Navy
were engaged, which had a slight superiority [Footnote: Clowes,
_Royal Navy_, i., p. 561.] of armament over any equal number of
the enemy's fleet. The aggregate tonnage is given [Footnote:
_Ibid_., p. 588.] as 15 per cent. more than that of Henry's 53--an
average per ship of very nearly double. It is clear therefore that the
policy of strengthening the navy was not neglected; but it took the
form of acquiring not more ships, but larger and better fighting
craft. [Footnote: Corbett, _Drake and the Tudor Navy_, i., pp. 370
ff. It is pointed out (p. 372) that medium sized ships were regarded as
better weapons in general than those of the largest size.] The
multiplication of smaller craft would have been a far less effective
means for achieving the desired end. The Royal Navy, a creation of the
century, was not supposed to constitute the naval defences of the
country. It occupied a position among the marine fighting force
analogous to that of our white troops in India to-day; who form only
one-third of the army there while reckoned and intended to be its
mainstay.
[Sidenote: Privateering]
It is possible that in the simple legitimate processes of trade, the
merchant captains would never have learnt the art of extracting every
ounce of value out of their ships as fighting machines; certainly they
would not have developed the very marked supremacy in gunnery which was
so decisive a feature in the contest with Spain. The mere temptations
of successful barter would not have sufficed to attract the fiery and
alert young gentlemen of Devon or elsewhere, and the daring mariners
who revelled in meeting and overcoming any apparent odds. But the
circumstances of the time presented to the men, who in other days would
have found no outlet for their energies but in land-service abroad, the
opportunity of giving those energies a wider scope in the more exacting
but also more inspiring service by sea: where richer prizes were to be
won, with greater risk no doubt, but risk which called every faculty of
manhood into vigorous play.
[Sidenote: Piracy?]
It has become the common practice to apply the term "piracy" at large
to the doings of the Elizabethan seamen; but a single category which
embraces Captain Kidd and Francis Drake ceases to imply any very
specific condemnation. The suggestion that their acts were on the same
moral plane is absurd. The "piracy" of the great Elizabethans was
compatible with a clean conscience. At the present day we rightly
account a man a murderer who slays another in his own private quarrel;
but we do not give that name to one who two centuries ago killed his
man in a duel. We decline to recognise the validity of the reasoning by
which men justified such acts to themselves; but before the fallacy in
that reasoning was understood, the degree of guilt involved in acting
upon it was something very different from what it would be to-day. In
the same way, a century ago honourable and honest men countenanced
smuggling; but we do not classify them with footpads. Yet a similar
confusion of thought is involved in this indiscriminate application of
the term piracy, unless we emphasize the fact that in this connexion it
must be divested of its ordinary moral connotation.
Plain sea-robbers there were, not a few, who had no compunction about
seizing and looting any vessel of any nationality except--for politic
reasons--their own. The records show clearly enough that there were
plenty of these, who found harbourage in the Scillies or on the Irish
Coast, or even on the English Channel, or would lie in wait to cut out
peaceable traders of any nation almost at the mouth of the Thames. The
Government took little enough pains to repress them. They did not
attack their own countrymen, and were a useful source for recruiting:
but they were indisputably Pirates.
[Sidenote: Volunteers]
Then there were the privateers who had a colour for their depredations;
professedly volunteers on the side of recognised belligerents. As it
was considered legitimate for troops of English volunteers to fight for
the revolted Netherland States, while the Government refused to
acknowledge that their doing so constituted an act of war against
Spain; so Englishmen were allowed to man ships and sail under the flag
of the Huguenots of Rochelle, carrying a commission to wage war on
"Papist" ships, French, or others regarded as in alliance with them.
This was not piracy in the accepted sense, though it was not perhaps
very far removed from it in the majority of cases. The kind of
fanaticism which, two hundred years after Elizabeth's accession,
elevated Frederick the Great into "the Protestant Hero" could easily,
without conscious insincerity, make Religion an excuse for spoiling the
Papists in Elizabeth's day; and the privateers who looted a Spanish
vessel or one carrying Spanish treasure or merchandise believed as a
rule that they were thereby laying up treasure in Heaven as well as on
Earth, Their Ethics were derived from the Old Testament; and they
looked upon the "Idolaters" very much as the Israelites were told by
the prophets to look upon the Philistines, or Amalek, or Ammon.
[Sidenote: Reprisal]
Moreover it must be borne in mind that as concerned the raiding of
Spanish ships, the Government balanced the injury done against the
grievances of the British sailors and ships seized in Spanish ports by
the Inquisition. So long as the Spanish King refused to interfere with
the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, the English Queen in effect
refused to interfere with acts of reprisal. If these rovers could have
been caught and hanged at the yard-arm, she could hardly have
protested; but as breaches of international amity the practices were
very much on a par. In the technical sense, that they made war on their
own account on the ships of a theoretically friendly Power, the rovers
of this class were no doubt pirates; what we have to recognise is that
the normal condition of affairs was one unknown to the law-books, a
state of quasi-war; having no little resemblance to that prevalent for
centuries on the Anglo-Scottish border, where it was not to be expected
that the Wardens of the Marches on the one side would carry out their
duties while the Wardens on the other side were neglecting theirs with
the connivance of the Government. And in this case, Philip's connivance
at the proceedings of the Inquisition was open and avowed; by
consequence, the English Government refused to treat the proceedings of
the privateers as piracy; and again by consequence the privateers
considered themselves to be acting in a perfectly legitimate, not to
say laudable, manner, in treating the enemy's commerce precisely as
they would have done under a state of declared war.
No doubt the desire of plunder was usually a stronger incentive than
either retaliation or religion. Privateering was not _per se_
admirable or praiseworthy. But it was something entirely different from
what we understand by Piracy pure and simple. And manifestly it
provided a very excellent and efficient school for the sons of a nation
which was about to challenge the Colossus of the South for the title to
the Empire of the Seas.
[Sidenote: The Explorers]
But while privateering bred in numbers men who knew how to handle and
fight their ships, something more was needed to produce a race of great
captains; something which was provided by the vast fields opened to
exploration. Here was to be found the necessary training in calculated
daring, in conquering seemingly impossible obstacles, in defying
apparently insurmountable dangers, in rising to overwhelming
emergencies, in learning to a nicety what it was possible for
seamanship to accomplish.
[Endnote: Spain in America]
At the opening of Elizabeth's reign, Spain and Portugal were
practically and theoretically in possession of the inheritance of the
explorers and the Conquistadores. The latter Power held complete sway
on the African Guinea Coast, and in the Indian Ocean, undisturbed by
European rivals; while the Pope had bestowed upon it so much of the New
World as lies East of the mouth of the Amazon--in effect, what lies
behind the coast-line of Brazil. All that lies west of the mouth of the
Amazon he had bestowed upon Spain; and this gift the swords of
Spaniards had made good. In the West India Islands, their head-quarters
were the Island and port of San Domingo (Hayti). From Florida, north,
to the mouth of the Amazon, south, all was Spanish territory. On the
Atlantic coast: Mexico had Vera Cruz with its haven of San Juan
d'Ulloa; on Darien was Nombre de Dios; on the _Tierra Firma_ known
to the English as the Spanish Main lay Cartagena and several other
ports of varying importance. On the Pacific coast, the most notable
spots were Panama, the port whither came the treasure ships from Peru
to transport their stores by land to Nombre de Dios; Lima, the great
city of Peru, which had its port of Callao; and further south the town
of Santiago and the harbour of Valparaiso. The straits of Magellan, the
only known entry for ships to the Pacific from the Atlantic, were
deemed virtually impassable, while Tierra del Fuego was supposed to be
the head of another Continent extending continuously to the south. In
all these regions, the Spaniard claimed an absolute monopoly, and the
right of excluding foreign vessels and foreign trade from what he
regarded as Spanish waters.
It is chiefly with transactions on these seas and territories that we
are concerned, in giving some account of the rovers, who first in their
private capacity challenged the power of Spain, and then led the
English fleets to their triumph over the "Invincible" Armada.
[Sidenote: John Hawkins's early voyages, 1562-1566]
First on the roll stands the name of John Hawkins--greatest of the
"sea-dogs" till his fame was surpassed by the mightiest of all, Francis
Drake. In Henry's day his father, old William Hawkins, had won high
repute, for himself as a sailor and for his countrymen as honourable
dealers, by his voyages to the Guinea coast, where the Portuguese were
in very evil odour, and to the Brazils. John Hawkins fell as far behind
his father in the latter respect as he surpassed him in the former: for
he was responsible for initiating the Slave-trade. His first notable
voyage was made in 1562, when he sailed to the Guinea coast, purchased
or kidnapped from the African chiefs some three hundred negroes,
crossed the Ocean, and sold them to the Spaniards in Hayti (or
Hispaniola). In 1564 he sailed again with four ships; but on reaching
America he was told at Rio de La Hacha and Cartagena that the traffic
was forbidden. The Englishmen, however, held that these regulations
were invalid, as a contravention of ancient treaty rights of free trade
with the Spanish dominions. The Spaniards for their part were willing
enough to find an excuse for transgressing their orders, which was
given by a slight display of force; and Hawkins came home again with
large profits, after visiting Florida where there were Huguenot
settlers, and Newfoundland where fishing fleets of all nations
congregated. It is noteworthy that while the Queen herself and sundry
of her courtiers had a large pecuniary interest in these ventures of
Hawkins, Cecil conscientiously declined to have part or lot in them,
now or later: lawlessness being to him a thing abominable.
Philip was naturally indignant at the Englishman's method of overriding
his trade regulations, and Hawkins had to lie quiet for a time; but in
1567 he sailed for the third time, taking with him his young cousin
Francis Drake.
[Sidenote: San Juan d'Ulloa 1567]
For a while all went well. The Spaniards wanted to buy in spite of the
regulations; though at Rio de La Hacha Hawkins had to emphasise the
advantages of trading with him by seizing the town in force. But when
he started for home, contrary winds and storms compelled him to put
back to the Mexican port of San Juan d'Ulloa (Vera Cruz) to refit his
three vessels. He was well received; but while he was in harbour, a
Spanish fleet of thirteen sail arrived. The entry was narrow, and
Hawkins could have held them at bay; but his theory was that he was
behaving in a perfectly regular and well-conducted manner. For three
days there was a peaceful interchange of courtesies; then without
warning the Spaniards attacked him. Two of his ships succeeded in
escaping, despite the heavy odds against them, taking a number of
survivors from the third. But next day they parted company; Hawkins's
ship was terribly overcrowded; a hundred of his men, by their own
desire, were landed--to fall into the hands of the Inquisition; and
Hawkins and Drake finally reached England separately with a remnant of
their crews, and the loss of all that had been gained in the first
stages of the venture.
[Sidenote: Francis Drake]
Now the Spaniards manifestly had a very good case for arresting Hawkins
on the ground of his overriding forcibly the regulations which they
were, in their own view at least, entitled to make: but they had chosen
to receive him hospitably and attempt his capture by flagrant treachery.
When his men fell into their hands, they might have been tried as
participators in his lawlessness; but the crime laid to their charge
was heresy. It is small wonder then that the feeling inspired by the
affair of San Juan d'Ulloa was: first, that the Inquisition, claiming
itself to be above international law, was outside international law, a
tyranny which should be fought without regard to law: second, that
Spain had no more right to the wealth of the New World than any one
else; third, that since in the New World she elected to rule not by
legal methods but by the high hand, it was legitimate to ignore law in
dealing with her. There and then Francis Drake, now twenty-seven years
old, made up his mind that he would for his own hand wage war on Spain
and the Inquisition in the New World. If to do so was piracy, Drake
resolved to become a pirate. But he assuredly did not conceive himself
to be a pirate; nor were his motives the same; and his methods were
utterly unstained by the blood-thirstiness and cruelty inseparably
associated with the title. He was rather an Ocean knight-errant,
smiting and spoiling, and incidentally enriching himself, but in
knightly fashion and for a great cause: not a miscellaneous robber, but
a scourge of the enemies of his country and his faith.
[Sidenote: The Venture of 1572]
Drake laid his plans with care and deliberation, making two more
voyages in small vessels to the West Indies to acquire thorough
knowledge and information, before starting on the first of his great
expeditions. Then in 1572, some months before the _rapprochement_
with Spain which followed St. Bartholomew, he sailed for the Spanish
Main; his whole force consisting of three small ships of a burden
ranging from 25 to 70 tons [Footnote: _Royal Navy,_ i., p. 621.]
with picked crews numbering in all 111 men. With this small company,
arriving by night, he fell suddenly upon Nombre de Dios, a principal
port of embarkation on the Isthmus of Darien. The surprise was not
complete, and though the resistance of the Spaniards was overcome and a
large capture of silver ingots was effected, Drake himself was somewhat
severely wounded. One of the ships went home; the other two with the
commander remained, and took several prizes. But this did not satisfy
him, and he conceived the daring scheme of landing and crossing the
Isthmus, to intercept the trains of treasure on their way overland from
Panama. In February he got, from a tree-top, his first sight of the
Pacific. He succeeded in ambushing a small train of mules laden with
gold, and, on his way back, another large one laden with silver. Then
where he expected to meet his own ships he found a Spanish squadron;
but undaunted by this ill-fortune, reached the shore undiscovered,
improvised a raft, put to sea, found his own ships, and returned to
Plymouth a rich man: having won golden opinions from the Cimmaroons--
escaped slaves of the district--from the contrast between the English
and the Spanish methods of treating them.
[Sidenote: 1575 John Oxenham]
This was but the precursor of that most famous of his voyages which
made his name more terrible to the Spaniards than that of John Hawkins
had ever been. More than four years, however, elapsed before that
expedition started; and in the interval one of his lieutenants, John
Oxenham in 1575 undertook his own disastrous venture, [Footnote: The
details of his story are familiar to all readers of Westward Ho.] which
well illustrates the boldness of conception and audacity of execution
that characterise the Elizabethan seamen. His plan was a development of
Drake's Darien exploit. On reaching the Isthmus, he hid his ship and
guns, crossed the mountains as Drake had done, built himself a pinnace,
and first of all Englishmen sailed on the Pacific. He captured two
treasure-ships, which of course had never dreamed of meeting a hostile
vessel; but allowed the crews to depart. Naturally a force was soon in
pursuit. Oxenham, with a fourth of their numbers, attacked them: half
his men were killed in the fight, and nearly all the rest including
Oxenham himself were put to death. Drake had already started before the
news reached England.
[Sidenote: Drake's great voyage, 1577]
In December 1577 Drake sailed from Plymouth with five ships; himself on
board the largest, the _Pelican_, of 100 tons. His purpose was to
invade the Pacific by the straits of Magellan. Therefore, after
touching at the Cape Verde Islands, he made not for the Spanish Main
but for Patagonia. Here at Port St. Julian occurred the famous episode
of the execution of Thomas Doughty, [Footnote: See the examination of
the authorities and the evidence in Corbett, _Drake and the Tudor
Navy_, i., ch. viii.] on charges which may be summed up as those of
treason and incitement to mutiny, wherewith was apparently mixed up a
conviction on Drake's part that Doughty exercised witch-craft to bring
on bad weather. It is not improbable at least that Doughty was really
acting in the interests of that party in England which was opposed to
the whole policy of the raid, and believed that he would have at his
back Lord Burghley, from whom the objects of the expedition were
supposed, erroneously, to be a secret. The Straits were reached at the
end of August; but were scarcely passed when a storm parted the ships.
John Winter, Drake's second in command, after waiting some while, gave
his consorts up for lost and returned home. The Pelican, which Drake
had re-christened the Golden Hind, alone remained to carry on the
adventurous voyage. The precise course taken by the ships in the storms
at this time is uncertain: but it seems clear that in some way or other
Drake obtained satisfactory evidence that Tierra del Fuego was only an
island, and that the Pacific could be reached by rounding Cape Horn.
[Footnote: _State Papers, Spanish_, iii., p. 341. See also Corbett,
i., pp. 269, 270.]
[Sidenote: Drake in the Pacific, 1578]
In due time then, when there seemed to be no more prospect of being
rejoined by Winter, the Pelican proceeded on its expedition. In
December, Drake astonished Valparaiso by sailing in and seizing a prize
and stores: no one had dreamed of an English ship in the Pacific.
Thence he proceeded, exploring the coast, and creating general alarm,
till he reached Callao, the port of Lima; where he secured a prize,
with which he started in pursuit of a great treasure ship known as the
Cacafuego, which he learnt had sailed a few days before. A couple of
ships were sent after him; so he cleared out his prize, left it adrift
for his pursuers to recover, and showed them a clean pair of heels.
After a long pursuit, and the capture of more minor prizes--which he
let go, after taking what he wanted, leaving intact the private
property of those on board--he overtook the Cacafuego, securing an
immense treasure and some exceedingly useful charts.
[Sidenote 1: Drake in the Northern Pacific 1579]
[Sidenote 2: The return, 1580]
Satisfied, after securing two more prizes, with the damage done to
Spain, and the rich spoils collected, he turned his attention to
geographical discoveries; for in passing Magellan's Strait he had had
two predecessors, but none in the northern regions which he had now
reached. Finding harbourage on the Californian coast, he repaired the
Pelican thoroughly, and then proceeded on a voyage of circumnavigation;
the spring of 1579 being now well advanced. His first idea was to look
for that imagined North East Passage, in the search for which
Willoughby had lost his life nearly five and twenty years before: and
with this object in view he sailed some hundreds of miles further North
than any explorers in the Pacific had hitherto gone. Coming, however,
to the conclusion that he was not equipped for such a venture as this
promised to be, he again returned to California to refit. There he
established most friendly relations with the natives, who were anxious
to deify him: and thence he started again to find his way across the
Pacific to the Cape of Good Hope. After much intricate and dangerous
navigation among the Spice Islands-in the course of which Drake made a
treaty with the Sultan of Ternate, and the Pelican was all but lost on
a reef-she rounded the Cape in January, sailing into Plymouth Sound on
September 26th, 1580, a little less than three years from the day when
she began her voyage. Drake was the first commander who conducted a
circumnavigation from start to finish. His precursors had died on the
voyage, and left their ships to be brought home by subordinates.
Luckily perhaps for Drake, he arrived just at the time when Philip's
subjects were aiding the Irish rebellion; and the English Queen could
claim that her great subject had been doing to Spain nothing so bad as
what Philip was countenancing in Ireland. Burghley alone refused to
have part or lot in the profits of what he held to be a lawless exploit,
but the rigid Walsingham applauded. Drake was knighted, and his name
was on every lip. More than that, the whole performance imbued English
sailors with an un-conquerable conviction that they were more than a
match for all the maritime power of Spain, and with an ardent longing
to put that conviction to the proof. Drake was the idol not only of
every seaman who had sailed under him, but of the entire English People.
Hawkins after 1567 and Drake after 1580 made no more great voyages for
their own hand. Hawkins, a past master in all that concerned ships and
shipping, was presently appointed Treasurer and practically controller
of the Royal Navy, and brought the Queen's ships to a high pitch of
perfection. Drake became, practically if not nominally, the first of
the Queen's admirals. Both, with two more among the explorers of whom
we have still to speak, were to play leading parts in the fight with
the Armada.
[Sidenote: Various Voyages, 1576-88]
Of these two, the more famous is Martin Frobisher, who in the early
sixties was one of the captains who made war on Philip's ships in the
English Channel. Between 1576 and 1578, he made three voyages in search
of the North West Passage-accompanied on two of them by the second
explorer referred to, Edward Fenton-visiting Greenland and exploring
Frobisher's Strait. [Footnote: Now known to be not a Strait but a Bay.]
The ships with which he made the first voyage were of no more than 25
and 20 tons [Footnote: _Royal Navy,_ i., p. 624.] respectively. In
1582 Fenton captained another expedition, which seems to have been
intended for Magellan but got no further than the Brazils, returning
after a successful engagement with some Spanish ships. Another
circumnavigation was accomplished by Thomas Cavendish (1586-8), who
wrought great damage to the Spanish settlements, burning as well as
looting, and brought home considerable spoils; but this expedition was
undertaken when England and Spain were technically at war.
Just before Cavendish sailed, John Davis, second to no English explorer
save Drake, commenced his series of Arctic voyages, learned much of
ice-navigation, and on the third voyage in 1587 discovered Davis'
Strait. These Arctic expeditions were of course quite unconnected with
the Spanish struggle; but while they exemplified the magnificent spirit
of English sailors, they also materially advanced English seamanship.
[Sidenote: Raleigh]
In these years preceding the Armada, there were those who, not content
with adventure and exploration by sea, made the first tentative efforts
from which in after days was to spring the vast colonial dominion of
Britain. There was hardly one of these enterprises which was not
directly due to the initiative, the exertions, and the persistence of
Walter Raleigh. Others no doubt took their share, whether moved by his
arguments or in a miscellaneous spirit of adventure; but Raleigh's was
the vision of a New England beyond the seas; a goal to dream of and to
strive for through weary years of failure and disappointment: an ideal
which appealed at once to an intellect among the keenest and an
imagination among the boldest of a time which abounded in keen
intellects and bold imaginations.
[Sidenote: Gilbert]
As early as 1578, when he was but six and twenty, Raleigh took part in
one such abortive venture, along with his half-brother the enthusiast
and dreamer Humphrey Gilbert: the same man whose paradoxical barbarity
in Ireland [Footnote: See p. 311, _ante_.] we have already
noticed: a barbarity very difficult at first sight to reconcile with
the high chivalrous spirit, the odd sentimentality, and the fundamental
piety which, besides his absolutely fearless courage, characterised Sir
Humphrey in a degree only a little more marked than numbers of his
contemporaries. A few years later, in 1583, Gilbert made his second
disastrous attempt to establish a colony in "Norumbega," the name given
to a vague region in the Northern parts of North America. Five ships
sailed. The attempt was a complete failure, and on the return voyage
Sir Humphrey went down with the little _Squirrel_, the smallest of
his ships, which foundered with all hands. The last time a consort was
within hail, he greeted her with the natural expression of his faithful
and courageous soul--"we are as near God by sea as by land". The story
is worth pausing over, for it is supremely characteristic. We may call
these men what we will; they persuaded themselves of the righteousness
of acts which shock an age in some respects more sensitive; but they
wrought mightily for England, and a main source of their triumphs was
their trust in the God whose cause they identified with their own, a
faith which was a living, impelling, force.
[Sidenote: Virginia]
Raleigh had not accompanied the expedition though he was one of the
promoters. In the following year he dispatched an expedition for
exploration and settlement in Norumbega, which took possession of a
district in what is now Carolina, naming it Virginia in honour of the
Virgin Queen. Thither, again on an expedition of Raleigh's, went Sir
Richard Grenville with Ralph Lane and others a year later (1585). Lane
remained with a company of a hundred men at Roanoake; Grenville
accomplished a characteristic feat of arms against a Spaniard on his
way home. But when after another year Raleigh sent succours to his
colony, the company was found to have withdrawn, having been taken off
by Drake's flotilla after he had accomplished his raid on Cartagena.
[Footnote: see p.334, _ante_.] Grenvilie however, reappearing,
left a small party. In 1587 Raleigh sent again; Grenville's party had
vanished, but a new colony was left. Twice again he sent, in 1590 and
in 1602, but both times without success. The colonists, except some
half dozen, had been massacred. The path to Empire is whitened by the
bones of the Pioneers. In the reign of the Virgin Queen, the attempt to
colonise Virginia failed utterly; but the failure was the precursor of
ultimate triumph. The United States owe their being to Sir Walter
Raleigh.