By 1580, the year of Drake's return, Spain and England were fast moving toward the war that had been bound to come ever since the Old World had found the riches of the New.
The battle grounds of rival sea-powers had been shifting farther and farther west since history began. Now the last step was to come. We have seen already that the centre of the world's sea trade had moved for thousands of years from south-eastern Asia toward north-western Europe, and that in the fifteenth century it was pretty well divided between Venice and the Hansa Towns. This was only natural, because Venice was in the middle of southern Europe and the Hansa Towns were in the middle of northern Europe. The two were therefore well placed to receive, store, and distribute the bulk of the oversea trade. In a word, Venice (on the Adriatic) and the Hansa Towns (mostly on what is now the German coast) were the great European central junctions of oversea trade; while the Atlantic states of Spain and Portugal, France and England were only terminal points, that is, they were at the end of the line; for the Atlantic ended the world to the west.
The discovery of a rich New World changed all that. Venice and the Hansa Towns became only stations by the way; while the new grand central junction of the world was bound to be somewhere among the Atlantic states of England, France, Portugal, and Spain. When these four countries became rivals for this junction England won, partly because she had the advantage of being an island, and thus safe from invasion by land, but mostly because her men were of the fighting kindred of the sea. Yet she had to fight hard to win; she had to fight hard to keep what she won; and we all know how hard she has just had to fight again for the real "Freedom of the Seas."
Her first great rival, Spain, was stronger than ever in 1580, because it was then that Philip II added Portugal, as well as all the oversea possessions of Portugal to his own enormous empire. He felt that if he could only conquer England, then the dream of his father, Charles V, would certainly come true, and he would be the master of the world. France also stood in his way, but only by land; and if he had England and England's sea-power he could make short work of France. His having Portugal gave him much that he needed for his "Invincible Armada": plenty of ships, sailors at least as good as his own, new ports and new islands, like the Azores, and the "wealth of All the Indies"—for he now had the Portuguese trade with the Indies as well as his own with the West.
Luckily for England, Philip was a landsman, no soldier, and very slow. So England struck first, but at New Spain, not, Old, because Elizabeth would not have open war if she could help it. She had enemies in Scotland, enemies in France, a few at home, and millions in Spain. Besides, she was cleverer at playing off one against the other than in managing a big war; and, like most people everywhere, even in our own sea-girt Empire now, she never quite understood how to make war at sea.
In 1585 London was all agog about Sir Francis Drake again; for he was to command the "Indies Voyage" against New Spain, with Frobisher, of North-West-Passage fame, as his Vice-Admiral, and Knollys, the Queen's own cousin, as Rear-Admiral. There were twenty-one ships and twenty-three hundred men; with Carleill, a first-class general, to command the soldiers ashore. Drake's crew of theGolden Hindcame forward to a man, among them gigantic Tom Moone, the lion of the boarding parties. It is quite likely that Shakespeare went down with the crowds of Londoners who saw the fleet set sail from Woolwich; for the famous London vessel,Tiger, which he mentions both inMacbethand inTwelfth Night, was one of Drake's fleet.
Drake's written plan proves that he was not only a daring raider but a very great admiral as well. It marked down for attack all the places in New Spain the taking of which would knock the sea trade there to pieces, because they were the same by sea as railway junctions are by land. More than this, he planned to hold Havana, so that the junctions he destroyed could not be made to work again, as from there he could pounce on working parties anywhere else.
Drake first swooped down on San Domingo in Hayti, battering the walls from the sea while Carleill attacked them by land. The Spaniards had been on their guard, so no treasure was found. Drake therefore put the town to ransom and sent his Maroon servant to bring back the Spanish answer. But the Spanish messenger ran his lance into the Maroon and cantered away. The Maroon dragged himself back and fell dead at Drake's feet. Drake sent word to say he would hang two Spaniards a day till the one who had killed his Maroon was hanged himself. No answer having come in next morning, two Spanish friars were strung up. Then the offender was brought in and hanged by the Spaniards in front of both armies. After this Drake burnt a fresh bit of the town each day till the Spaniards paid the ransom.
The next dash was for Cartagena on the mainland of South America. The Spaniards felt safe from a naval attack here, as the harbour was very hard to enter, even with the best of Spanish pilots. But Drake did this trick quite easily without any pilot at all; and, after puzzling the Spaniards by his movements, put Carleill ashore in the dark just where the English soldiers could wade past the Spanish batteries under cover at the weakest spot. When Carleill reached the barricade his musketeers fired into the Spaniards' faces and wheeled off to let the pikemen charge through. After a fierce hand-to-hand fight the Spaniards ran. The town gave in next day. Having been paid its ransom Drake sailed for the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine in Florida and utterly destroyed it, then went on to Sir Walter Raleigh's colony of Roanoke, in what is now North Carolina, and thence home.
He had missed the yearly treasure fleet by only half a day. He had lost so many men by sickness that he had no chance of taking and holding Havana. And the ransoms were less than he had hoped for. But he had done enough to cripple New Spain for the next few years at any rate. Arrived at Plymouth he wrote to London, saying, "There is now a very great gap opened, very little to the liking of the King of Spain."
But the King, stung to the quick, went on with his Armada harder than before, and in 1587 had it more than half ready in Lisbon and Cadiz. Then Drake "singed King Philip's beard" by swooping down on Cadiz and smashing up the shipping there; by going on to Cape St. Vincent, which he seized and held with an army while his ships swept off the fishing craft that helped to feed the great Armada; and by taking "the greatest ship in all Portugal, richly laden, to our Happy Joy." This was the best East Indies treasure ship, loaded with silks and spices, jewels and gold, to the value of many millions. But, better than even this, Drake found among her papers the secrets of the wonderful trade with the East, a trade now taken over by the Spaniards from the conquered Portuguese. With these papers in English hands the English oversea traders set to work and formed the great East India Company on the last day of the year 1600. This Company—founded, held, and always helped by British sea-power—went on, step by step, for the next two hundred and fifty-seven years, after which India, taken over by the British Crown, at last grew into the present Indian Empire, a country containing three times as many people as the whole population of the United States, and yet a country which is only one of the many parts of the British Empire all round the Seven Seas.
Crippled by English sea-power both in New Spain and Old, threatened by English sea-power in his trade with the Far East, and harassed by English sea-power everywhere between Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, where the Duke of Parma was preparing an army for the invasion of England, King Philip kept working on with murder in his heart. At last, in the summer of 1588, his Great Invincible Spanish Armada seemed to be as Great, Invincible, and Spanish as he could ever hope to make it. All the landlubbers, even in England, thought it very great indeed; and most of them think so still. The best Spanish soldiers, like all the few really good Spanish sailors, had very grave doubts. Those who knew the English Navy best expected nothing but disaster: their letters still remain to prove it. But most people, then as now, knew nothing about navies; and so the Armada went on collecting ships and men together, heartening the landsmen of Spain, and disheartening far too many landsmen in England.
The fatal weakness of the Great Armada was its being out of date. Though little better than an ancient floating army, it had to fight what then was the one really modern fleet; and this was its undoing. Time out of mind, as we have seen already, battles on the water had always been made as much like battles on the land as the wit of man could make them. They were fought by soldiers under generals, not by sailors under admirals. They were fought mostly on the platforms of huge rowboats called galleys; and the despised galley-slaves were almost the only seamen. Even the officers and men who handled the clumsy old sailing craft, or the still clumsier sail aboard a galley, were thought to be next door to nobodies; for their only work was to fit their craft together like so many bits of land in order that the soldiers might have the best imitation of a "proper field." The main bodies of these floating armies drew up in line-abreast (that is, side by side) charged each other end-on, and fought it out hand-to-hand on the mass of jammed-together platforms. No such battle was ever fought far from the land; for a good breeze would make the platforms wobble, while no galley could survive a gale.
These ancient rowboat battles on calm coastal waters lasted till Lepanto in 1571. Guns, muskets, and sailing craft were all used at Lepanto. But the main fighting was done on galley platforms, and not so very differently done from the way the Greeks and Persians fought at Salamis twentycenturiesbefore. Then, after less than twentyyears, the Armada, though better than the Spaniards at Lepanto, was sent across the open sea to fight a regular sea-going fleet, whose leaders were admirals, whose chief fighting men were sailors, whose movements were made under sail, and whose real weapon was the shattering broadside gun. It was ancient Spanish floating army against modern English Sea-Dog fleet.
Philip's silly plan was that the Armada should make for the Straits of Dover, where it would see that Parma's Spanish army had a safe passage from Flanders into England. Philip had lost his best admiral, Santa Cruz, and had put the Armada in charge of Medina Sidonia, a seasick landlubber, whom he ordered not to fight any more than could possibly be helped until Parma had reached England. Parma, who was a good soldier, saw at once what nonsense it was to put the army first and navy second in the fighting, because, even if he could get into England, his lines of communication with the bases in Flanders and Spain could never be safe until Drake's fleet had been beaten. He knew, as all soldiers and all sailors know, that unless you have a safe road over which to bring your supplies from your base to your front your fleets and armies must simply wither away for want of these supplies—for want of men, arms, food, and all the other things a fleet and army need. Therefore he wanted the fleet to fight first, so as to clear, or try to clear, safe roads across the sea. After these roads, or "lines of communication" between the bases and the front, had been cleared he would try to conquer England with his Spanish army.
But Philip went his own silly way; and Elizabeth, his deadly enemy, nearly helped him by having some silly plans of her own. She and her Council (all landsmen, and no great soldier among them) wanted to divide the English fleet so as to defend the different places they thought the Armada might attack. This would also please the people; for most people do like to see ships and soldiers close in front of them, even when that is quite the wrong place for the ships and soldiers to be. Of course this plan could never have worked, except in favour of the Spaniards, who might have crushed, first, one bit of the English fleet, and then another, and another, though they had no chance whatever against the united whole.
Drake's own perfect plan was to take the whole fleet straight to Lisbon and beat the Armada as it tried to get out. This would have given him an enormous advantage; first, because he would have found the Armada at once, instead of having to search for it after it had sailed; secondly, because he could have crushed it ship by ship as it came out of the Tagus; and, thirdly, because this defeat of the Armada off the coast of Portugal would certainly prevent Parma from taking his army from Flanders into England. On the 30th of March, 1588, a day to be forever remembered in the history of sea-power, Drake wrote all this from Plymouth to the Queen and her Councillors. One civilian, Sir Francis Walsingham, saw at once that Drake was right. But the others shook their heads; while even those who thought Drake knew better than they did were afraid to let the fleet go so far away, because the people liked the comfort of seeing it close beside the coast. Drake's way was the way of Nelson, Jellicoe, Beatty, and all the greatest seamen. But he was not allowed to try it till the 7th of July, when the Armada had left Lisbon and was in the harbour of Corunna at the northwest corner of the Spanish coast. And even then the Queen kept him so short of stores that he could not have waited there to take the best chance.
When almost in sight of Spain a roaring sou'wester blew up; so, being unable to wait, he had to come back to Plymouth on the 12th. Then for a week the English fleet was taking in stores as hard as it could. Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord High Admiral of England, was in command as the Great Officer of State who represented the Queen. But he was a very sensible man, who, knowing that Drake was the greatest seaman in the world, let him do the fighting in the proper way.
One of Drake's Men-of-War that Fought the Great Armada in 1588.[Illustration: One of Drake's Men-of-Warthat Fought the Great Armada in 1588.]
One of Drake's Men-of-War that Fought the Great Armada in 1588.[Illustration: One of Drake's Men-of-Warthat Fought the Great Armada in 1588.]
The southwest wind that blew Drake back brought the Armada out and up the English Channel. Howard and Drake, their desperate week of taking in stores at last quite done, were playing a game of bowls on the green when Captain Fleming, of the ever famousGolden Hind, rushed up to say the Spaniards were in sight of the Lizard, only sixty miles west. Drake, knowing perfectly well what time there was to spare, and how best to calm the people looking on, said, "There's time to finish the game first and the Spaniards after." But the fleet got its sailing orders on the spot; and all that fateful night the ships were working out of Plymouth Sound. The Queen and her politicians, though patriotic as any Sea-Dog, had, by keeping Drake so short of stores, very nearly got their own fleet caught in just the same way as Drake had wished to catch the Great Armada, that is, coming out of port, ship by ship, against a united fleet outside. But Philip's silly plan, the clumsiness of the Armada, and, above all, the supreme skill of the English Sea-Dogs, put everything to rights again.
Next morning Drake was safely out at sea in the Channel, with fifty-four ships, when he sighted a dim blur toward the west. This was the Great Invincible Armada. Rain killed the wind, and the English lay under bare poles, unseen by the Spaniards, who still left some of their idle sails swinging to and fro. The great day had come at last. Philip's Armada had drunk toDer Tag(the day) of England's overthrow just as the Germans did three centuries later; and nearly all the Spaniards thought that thirty thousand Spaniards on the water were more than a match for fifteen thousand English. But the Spaniards were six thousand short, through sickness and desertion, and of the remaining twenty-four thousand little more than a quarter were seamen. The rest were soldiers, with many camp-followers. The fifteen thousand English, on the other hand, were nearly all on board; and most of them had been trained to sea fighting from their youth up. The Spaniards were one-quarter seamen and three-quarters landsmen. The English were three-quarters seamen and one-quarter landsmen; and most of these landsmen were like the Marines of the present day, "soldier and sailor too." Nor was this the only difference that helped to seal the fate of the doomed Armada. For not only were the English seamen twice as many and twice as good as the Spanish seamen, but in the numbers of their trained seamen-gunners the English beat the Spaniards no less than ten to one: and guns were the weapons that decided the issue of the day, just as they did at Jutland in our recent war against the Germans.
A little before sunset the mist lifted, and the Spaniards, to their intense surprise, saw the whole English fleet together. Every big ship in the Armada sent boats hurrying off to know what orders Sidonia had to give them. But Sidonia had none. That the Sea-Dogs had worked out of Plymouth so quickly and were all together in a single fleet was something he had not reckoned on, and something Philip's silly plan had not provided for. Still, the Armada had one advantage left, the weather-gage; for the southwest wind was piping up again, blowing from the Armada to the English. Yet even this advantage was soon lost, not by any change of wind, but by English seamanship. For while eight English vessels held the attention of the Armada, by working about between it and the shore, the rest of Drake's fleet stole off to sea, got safely out of sight, tacked to windward with splendid skill, edged in toward the Armada when sea-room west of it was gained, and then, next morning, to the still more intense surprise of the Armada, came down to attack it, having won the weather-gage by sailing round behind it in the night.
This was the decisive stroke. The fight itself was simply the slaughter of a floating army by a fleet. The Spaniards fought like heroes, day after slaughterous day. But their light guns, badly served by ill-trained crews, fired much too high to hull the English ships "'twixt wind and water," that is, to smash holes in their sides along the water-line. On the other hand, the English had more and better guns, far more and far better seaman-gunners, and vessels managed by the sea's own "handy men." They ran in with the wind, just near enough to make their well-aimed cannon-balls most deadly on the Spanish water-line, but never so near that the Spaniards could catch them with grappling hooks and hold them fast while the Spanish soldiers boarded. Another way the skilful English had was to turn their broadside against the enemy's end-on. This, whether for a single ship or for a fleet, is called "crossing the T"; and if you will look at a T you will see that guns firing inward from the whole length of the cross-stroke have a great advantage over guns firing back from the front of the up-stroke. In other words, the broad front converges on the narrow front and smashes it.
The crowded Spaniards sailed on, the whole week long, before the pursuing English in the "eagle formation," with the big ships forming the body and the lighter ones the wings: good enough for ancient battles like Lepanto, but of no use against a modern fleet like Drake's. Most of them could hardly have been more nearly useless if they had been just so many elephants fighting killer whales at sea. Do what they could, they could not catch the nimble Sea-Dogs who were biting them to death. But they still fought on. Their crowded soldiers were simply targets for the English cannon-balls. Sometimes the Spanish vessels were seen to drip a horrid red, as if the very decks were bleeding. But when, at the end of the week, Sidonia asked Oquendo, "What are we to do now?", Oquendo, a dauntless warrior, at once replied: "Order up more powder!"
The Spaniards at last reached Calais and anchored in the Roads. But, when the tidal stream was running toward them full, Drake sent nine fire-ships in among them. There was no time to get their anchors up; so they cut their cables, swung round with the tide in horrible confusion, dashing into one another in the dark, and headed for the shallows of the Flemish coast. This lost them their last chance of helping Parma into England. But it also saved Parma from losing the whole of his army at sea. Once more the brave, though cruel, Spaniards tried to fight the English fleet. But all in vain. This was the end. It came at Gravelines, on the 29th of July 1588, just ten days after Captain Fleming of theGolden Hindhad stopped Drake's game of bowls at Plymouth. North, and still north, the beaten Armada ran for its life; round by the stormy Orkneys, down the wild waters of the Hebrides and Western Ireland, strewing the coasts with wreckage and dead men, till at last the few surviving ships limped home.
ARMADA OFF FOWEY (Cornwall) as first seen in the English Channel.[Illustration: ARMADA OFF FOWEY (Cornwall)as first seen in the English Channel.]
ARMADA OFF FOWEY (Cornwall) as first seen in the English Channel.[Illustration: ARMADA OFF FOWEY (Cornwall)as first seen in the English Channel.]
There never was a better victory nor one more clearly gained by greater skill. Nor has there ever been a victory showing more clearly how impossible it is to keep sea empires safe without a proper navy.
But, after all, it is the whole Sea-Dog war, and not any single battle or campaign, that really made those vast changes in world-history which we enjoy today. For we owe it to the whole Sea-Dog breed that the fair lands of North America are what they are and not as Spain might otherwise have made them. The Sea-Dogs won the English right of entry into Spain's New World. They, strange as it may seem, won French rights, too; for Spain and France were often deadly enemies, and Spain would gladly have kept the French out of all America if she had only had the fleet with which to do it. Thus even the French-Canadians owe Drake a debt of gratitude for breaking down the great sea barriers of Spain.
"The Invincible Armada" could not, of course, have been defeated without much English bravery. And we know that the Queen, her Councillors, and the great mass of English people would have fought the Spanish army bravely enough had it ever landed. For even Henry V, calling to his army at the siege of Harfleur,
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;Or close the wall up with our English dead!
was no braver than Queen Elizabeth addressing her own army at Tilbury Fort, the outwork of London, when the Armada was sailing up the Channel: "I am only a poor weak woman. But I have the heart of a king; and of a King of England too."
There can be no doubt whatever that both leaders and followers must have good hearts, and have them in the right place too; and that the heart of England beat high throughout this great campaign. But good heads, rightly used, are equally needed in war. Sea-Dog courage counted for much against the Great Armada; but Sea-Dog skill for more.
If you want a fight in which the Sea-Dog hearts might well have quailed against appalling odds, then turn to the glorious end of Drake's old flagship, theRevenge, when her new captain, Sir Richard Grenville, fought her single-handed against a whole encircling fleet of Spain.
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE ON BOARD THE REVENGE receiving the surrender of Don Pedro de Valdes.[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE ON BOARD THEREVENGEreceiving the surrender of Don Pedro de Valdes.]
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE ON BOARD THE REVENGE receiving the surrender of Don Pedro de Valdes.[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE ON BOARD THEREVENGEreceiving the surrender of Don Pedro de Valdes.]
Grenville, Drake, and Sir Philip Sidney had been among those members of Parliament who had asked Queen Elizabeth to give Sir Walter Raleigh a Royal Charter to found the first of the English oversea Dominions—the colony on Roanoke Island in what is now North Carolina. Grenville himself went out to Roanoke. He was a born soldier of fortune and "first-class fighting man"; an explorer, scout, and pioneer; but not a colonist at all. On his return from founding Raleigh's colony his boats were swept away in a storm just before he saw a Spanish treasure ship. But he made his carpenter put together some sort of boat with bits of boxes; and in this he boarded the Spaniard, just reaching her deck before his makeshift craft went down.
On the 1st of September, 1591, theRevenge, with Grenville in command of her less than two hundred men, was at "Flores in the Azores" when Don Alonzo de Bazan arrived with fifty-three ships of Spain. The little English squadron under Lord Thomas Howard had no chance against this overwhelming force. So it put to sea just in time to escape destruction. But when Howard saw that theRevengewas being surrounded he gallantly came back and attacked the Spaniards in rear; while the littleGeorge Nobleof London ran alongside theRevenge, offering to stand by through thick and thin. Grenville ordered her off, and Howard himself also retired, seeing no chance whatever of helping theRevengeand every chance of losing all his own ships.
Then, at three in the afternoon, the whole Spanish fleet closed in on theRevenge, which had only one hundred men really fit for duty. The rest were sick. Grenville, who had sworn he would cut down the first man who touched a rope while there still seemed a chance to escape, now refused the Spanish summons to surrender and prepared to fight to the last. Trimming his sails as carefully as if for a yacht race he ran down close-hauled on the starboard tack, right between the two divisions of the Spanish fleet, till the flagship, three times the size of theRevenge, ranged up on his weather side, thus blanketing his canvas and stealing the wind. As theRevengelost way the ships she had passed on the other side began ranging up to cut her off completely. But meanwhile her first broadside had crashed into the flagship, which hauled off for repairs and was replaced by two more ships. The fight raged with the utmost fury all that sunny afternoon and far into the warm dark night. Two Spaniards were sunk on the spot, a third sank afterwards, and a fourth could only be saved by beaching. But still the fight went on, the darkness reddened by the flaming guns.
Maddened to see one English ship keeping their whole fleet of fifty-three at bay the Spaniards closed in till theRevengewas caught fast by two determined enemies. In came the Spanish grapplings, hooking fast to theRevengeon either side. "Boarders away!" yelled the Spanish colonels. "Repel Boarders!" shouted Grenville in reply. And the boarders were repelled, leaving a hundred killed behind them. Only fifty English now remained. But they were as defiant as before, giving the Spaniards deadly broadsides right along the water-line, till two fresh enemies closed in and grappled fast. Again the boarders swarmed in from both sides. Again the dauntless English drove them back. Again the English swords and pikes dripped red with Spanish blood.
But now only twenty fighting men were left, while Grenville himself had been very badly wounded twice. Two fresh enemies then closed in, grappled, boarded, fought with fury, and were barely driven back. After this there was a pause while both sides waited for the dawn. Four hundred Spaniards had been killed or drowned and quite six hundred wounded. A hundred Sea-Dogs had thus accounted for a thousand enemies. But they themselves were now unable to resist the attack the Spaniards seemed unwilling to resume; for the first streak of dawn found only ten men left with weapons in their hands, and these half dead with more than twelve hours' fighting.
"Sink me the ship, Master Gunner!" was the last order Grenville gave. But meanwhile the only two officers left alive, both badly wounded, had taken boat to treat for terms; and the terms had been agreed upon. Don Bazan promised, and worthily accorded, all the honours of war. So Grenville was carefully taken on board the flagship, laid in Don Bazan's cabin, and attended by the best Spanish surgeon. Then, with the Spanish officers standing before him bareheaded, to show him all possible respect, Grenville, after thanking them in their own language for all their compliments and courtesies, spoke his farewell to the world in words which his two wounded officers wrote home:
"'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 Queen and Country, honour and religion.' And when he had said these and other such like words he gave up the ghost with a great and stout courage."
At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,And a pinnace, like a flutter'd bird, came flying from far away:"Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty three!"
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He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.
"Shall we fight or shall we fly?Good Sir Richard, tell us now,For to fight is but to dip!There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set."And Sir Richard said again: "We be all good Englishmen.Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,For I never turn'd my back upon Don or devil yet."
********
Sir Richard spoke and he laugh'd, and we roar'd a hurrah, and so,The littleRevengeran on sheer into the heart of the foe,With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,And the littleRevengeran on thro' the long sea-lane between.
Thousands of their soldiers look'd down from their decks and laugh'd,Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craftRunning on and on, till delay'dBy their mountain-likeSan Philipthat, of fifteen hundred tons,And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,Took the breath from our sails, and we stay'd.
And while now the greatSan Philiphung above us like a cloudWhence the thunderbolt will fallLong and loud,Four galleons drew awayFrom the Spanish fleet that day,And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,And the battle-thunder broke from them all.
But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went,Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,And a dozen times we shook 'em off as a dog that shakes his earsWhen he leaps from the water to the land.
And the sun went down, and the stars came out farover the summer sea,But never a moment ceased the fight of the oneand the fifty-three.Ship after ship, the whole night long, theirhigh-built galleons came,Ship after ship, the whole night long, with herbattle-thunder and flame;Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew backwith her dead and her shame.For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and socould fight us no more—God of battles, was ever a battle like thisin the world before?
For he said "Fight on! fight on!"Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck;And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck.But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,And he said 'Fight on! fight on!'
And the night went down, and the sun smiled out farover the summer sea,And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round usall in a ring;But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd thatwe still could sting,So they watch'd what the end would be.And we had not fought them in vain,But in perilous plight were we,Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,And half of the rest of us maim'd for life,
In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;And the sick men down in the hold were most of themstark and cold,And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powderwas all of it spent;And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;But Sir Richard cried in his English pride,"We have fought such a fight for a day and a nightAs may never be fought again!We have won great glory, my men!And a day less or moreAt sea or ashore,We die—does it matter when?Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain!Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!"
And the gunner said, "Ay, ay," but the seamen made reply:"We have children, we have wives,And the Lord hath spared our lives.We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow."And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.
And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:"I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do:With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!"And he fell upon their decks, and he died.
And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheapThat he dared her with one little ship and his English few;Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,But they sank his body with honour down into the deep,And they mann'd theRevengewith a swarthier alien crew,And away she sail'd with her loss and long'd for her own;When a wind from the lands they had ruin'd awoke from sleep,And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and theirmasts and their flags,And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'dnavy of Spain,And the littleRevengeherself went down by the island cragsTo be lost evermore in the main.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The Dutch Wars, which lasted off and on for fifty years (1623-1673), were caused by rivalry in oversea trade. In the sixteenth century the Dutch and English had joined forces against the Portuguese, who had tried to keep them out of the East Indies altogether. But when once the Portuguese were beaten the allies fell out among themselves, the Dutch got the upper hand, and, in 1623, killed off the English traders at Amboyna, one of the Moluccas. War did not come for many years. But there was always some fighting in the Far South East; and Amboyna was never forgotten.
The final step toward war was taken when the British Parliament passed the famous Navigation Act of 1651. By this Act nothing could be brought into England except in English ships or in ships belonging to the country from which the goods came. As the Dutch were then doing half the oversea freight work of Europe, and as they had also been making the most of what oversea freighting England had lost during her Civil War, the Act hit them very hard. But they did not want to fight. They had troubles of their own at home. They also had a land frontier to defend. And they wanted to keep their rich sea freight business without having to fight for it. But the British were bent on war. They remembered Amboyna. They did not see why the Dutch should keep other shippers out of the East Indies. And it angered them to see the Dutch grow rich on British trade taken away while the British were busy with a war.
When things are in such a state the guns almost go off by themselves. Captain Young, with three ships, met three Dutch men-of-war in the Channel and fired at the first that refused to salute according to the Custom of the Sea. Then the great British admiral, Blake, fired at the great Dutch admiral, van Tromp, for the same reason. A hot fight followed in each case; but without a victory for either side. At Dungeness, however, van Tromp with eighty ships beat Blake with forty, and swept the Channel throughout the winter of 1652-3. But in February, when the fleets were about equal, the British got the better of him in the Straits of Dover, after a running fight of three days. Blake being wounded, Monk led the fleet to another victory in May. But the dogged Dutch were not yet beaten; and it was not till the last of July that the final battle came.
Monk made straight for the Dutch line at six in the morning. For nine hours the fight went on, the two fleets manoeuvring with great skill and fighting furiously every time they came together. Each time they separated to manoeuvre again some ships were left behind, fighting, disabled, or sinking. The British attacked with the utmost courage. The Dutch never flinched. And so noon passed, and one, and two o'clock as well. Van Tromp's flag still flew defiantly; but van Tromp himself was dead. When the fleets first met he had been killed by a musket-shot straight through his heart. When they first parted the flag for a council of war was seen flying from his ship. The council of Dutch admirals hurriedly met, decided to keep his flag aloft, so as not to discourage their men, took orders from his second-in-command, and met the British as bravely as before. But after nine hours fighting their fleet broke up and left the field, bearing with it the body of van Tromp, the lion of the Dutch, and by far the greatest leader who had as yet withstood the British on the sea.
SAILING SHIP. The Pilgrim Fathers crossed in a similar vessel (1620).[Illustration: SAILING SHIP.The Pilgrim Fathers crossed in a similar vessel (1620).]
SAILING SHIP. The Pilgrim Fathers crossed in a similar vessel (1620).[Illustration: SAILING SHIP.The Pilgrim Fathers crossed in a similar vessel (1620).]
This great battle off the coast of Holland made the Dutch give in. They were divided among themselves; the merchants keeping up a republic and a navy, but the nobles and inland people wishing for a king and army to make the frontier safe. The British, though also divided among themselves, had the advantages of living on an island, of having settled what kind of government they would obey for the time being, and of having at the head of this government the mighty Cromwell, one of the greatest masters of the art of war the world has ever seen.
Cromwell understood warfare on the sea, though his own magnificent victories had been won on land. He also understood the three things Britain needed then to make and keep her great: first, that she should be strong enough to make foreigners respect her; secondly, that her oversea trade should be protected by a strong navy; and thirdly, that she should begin to found a British Empire overseas, as foreigners always tried to shut the British out of their own oversea dominions.
In 1654 a fleet and army were sent against the Spanish West Indies; for, though there was no war with Spain in Europe, there never was any peace with Spaniards overseas. Cromwell's orders, like those of Pitt a hundred years later, were perfect models of what such orders ought to be. He told the admiral and general exactly what the country wanted them to do, gave them the means of doing it, and then left them free to do it in whatever way seemed best on the spot. But the admiral and general did not agree. King's men and Cromwell's men had to be mixed together, as enough good Cromwellians could not be spared so far away from home. The leaders tried to stand well with both sides by writing to the King; and every other trouble was made ten times worse by this divided loyalty. Jamaica was taken. But the rest was all disgraceful failure.
A very different force sailed out the same year under glorious Blake, who soon let Spaniards, Italians, and Barbary pirates know that he would stand no nonsense if they interfered with British vessels in the Mediterranean. The Italian princes were brought to book, as the Spaniards had just been brought to book at Malaga. Then Blake swooped down on the Moorish pirates' nest at Tunis, sinking every vessel, silencing the forts, and forcing the pirates to let their Christian slaves go free. After this the pirates of Algiers quickly came to terms without waiting to be beaten first.
Meanwhile the frightened Spaniards had stopped the treasure fleet of 1655. But next year they were so short of money that they had to risk it; though now there was open war in Europe as well as in New Spain. Running for Cadiz, the first fleet of treasure ships fell into British hands after very little fighting; and Londoners had the satisfaction of cheering the thirty huge wagon-loads of gold and silver booty on its way to safekeeping in the Tower.
All that winter Blake was cruising off the coast of Spain, keeping the seaways open for friends and closed to enemies, thus getting a strangle-hold under which the angry Spaniards went from bad to worse. In the spring his hardy vigil met with its one reward; for he learnt that the second treasure fleet was hiding at Santa Cruz de Teneriffe in the Canary Islands, within a hundred miles of north-western Africa. Teneriffe was strongly fortified, as it was a harbour of refuge between Spain and her oversea possessions, both East and West. It was also very strong by nature, being surrounded by mountains, subject to dead calms and sudden storms, and lying snugly at the inner end of a big deep bay. But Blake knew the brave Spaniards for the lubbers they have always been at sea. So, on the 20th of April, 1657, he ran in with wind and tide, giving the forts at the entrance more than they bargained for as he dashed by. Next, ranging alongside, he sank, drove ashore, or set on fire every single Spanish vessel in the place. Then he went out with the tide, helped by the breeze which he knew would spring up with the set of the sun.
This perfect feat of daring skill, though sometimes equalled by the Navy, has never been surpassed; and when Blake died on his way home the people mourned their sudden loss as they have never mourned except for Nelson and for Drake.
The Dutch quickly took up the East India trade dropped by the beaten Spaniards, started their general oversea freighting again, and were soon as dangerous rivals as before. The Dutch at home were very much afraid of war, because their land frontier was threatened by France, while their seaways were threatened by England. But they could not make the Dutch East India Company keep its promises; for oversea companies in those days were mostly a law to themselves; and, in this case, the Dutch at home, though afraid to say so, quite agreed with the Dutch overseas in wishing to shut out the British from all the rich trade with the East. The new British Government, under sly and selfish Charles II, was eager to show that it would care as much for British sea trade as great Cromwell had. So it did not take long to bring on a war.
The first battle was fought on the 3rd of June, 1665, and won by the British, who broke through the Dutch line. The Dutch retreat, however, was magnificently covered by van Tromp's son, Cornelius; and the Duke of York (brother to Charles II and afterwards himself King James II) flinched from pressing home a finishing attack. Next year Monk, a really great commander, fought the famous Four Days Battle in the Downs, (11-14 June 1666). He was at first weaker in numbers than de Ruyter, the excellent Dutch admiral; but he skilfully struck one part of the Dutch line very hard before the rest could support it. On the second and third days the Dutch, do what they could, were quite unable to crush him. Both sides had some bad ships and bad crews; but as the Dutch had more of these than the British had they suffered the greater loss by flinching.
On the fourth day Monk was helped by gallant Prince Rupert, cousin to Charles II and by far the best of all the Stuarts. The Government of Charles, afraid that Louis XIV would send the French to join the Dutch, had just done one of those foolish things that are always done when scared civilians try to manage fleets and armies for themselves. They had sent Rupert off to guard against the French, thus risking a double defeat, by weakening Monk in front of the Dutch and Rupert in front of the French (who never came at all) instead of leaving the whole fleet together, strong enough to fight either enemy before the two could join. Rupert came in the nick of time; for, even with his fresh ships to help Monk through this last and most desperate day, de Ruyter and van Tromp were just enough stronger to win. But the fighting had been so deadly to both sides that the Dutch were in no condition to go on.
Again there was some very bad behaviour on both sides, especially among the court favourites. But Charles never thought of punishing these men for deserting Monk, any more than he thought of honouring the memory of Sir Christopher Myngs, Rupert's second-in-command, who fell, mortally wounded, at the end of the fight, after having done all that skill and courage could possibly do to turn the fortune of the day. Myngs was one of those leaders whom men will follow anywhere; and in the diary of Samuel Pepys, a good official at Navy headquarters in London, we may see the shame of Charles shown up by the noble conduct of the twelve picked British seamen who, after following Myngs to the grave, came forward, with tears in their eyes, to ask this favour: "We are here a dozen of us who have long served and honoured our dead commander, Sir Christopher Myngs. All we have is our lives. But if you will give us a fire-ship we will do that which shall show how we honour his memory by avenging his death on the Dutch."
Even the King did his best for the fleet now, as he was afraid to meet Parliament without a British victory. After immense exertions Monk and Rupert met de Ruyter and van Tromp, with almost equal forces, on the 25th of July, at the mouth of the Thames, and closed in so fiercely that there was hardly any manoeuvring on either side. Locked together in a life-or-death struggle the two fleets fought all day long. Next morning the British again closed in, and again the desperate fight began. But several Dutch captains flinched this time; and so de Ruyter, hoping the next shot would kill him, retired defeated at last.
The following year (1667) the Dutch came back and sank a British fleet at Chatham; for Charles and his vile favourites were doing for the British Navy what de Ruyter's flinching captains had been doing for the Dutch.
The Peace of Breda ended this second Dutch war in disgrace. But the Treaty of Dover, in 1670, brought on the third Dutch war with even greater shame; for Charles now sold himself to Louis XIV, who thus bought the Royal Navy for an attack on the Dutch, by which he and Charles were to benefit at the expense of all the rest. The French and British fleets, worked by the hidden hands of their two kings, grew suspicious of each other and failed to win a victory. The Dutch fought with the courage of despair and came through with the honours of war. But, worn out by their efforts, and unable to defend themselves by both land and sea, they soon lost their position as one of the Great Powers, and have never won it back.