tinued by Kingsley, who "went to Froude for history," fed by Mr. Arber with his reprints of Markham and of Raleigh's Report, and completed by Tennyson's "Ballad of the Fleet." Sir Richard Grenville again became a hero, but strangely altered. He reappeared in Froude as "a godly and gallant gentleman, who had never turned his back upon an enemy, and was remarkable in that remarkable time for his constancy and daring." He makes a sufficiently romantic figure in "Westward Ho!" and in the "Ballad of the Fleet" he "makes his gesture" in an imposing way. Tennyson's men and women rarely do more than make a gesture. But this new Sir Richard, who is only "goodly and gallant," or has been too obviously influenced by Mr. Maurice, working through Mr. Kingsley, is, though meritorious, not credible. He who lectures so wisely in "Westward Ho!" on elementary morals, and who says in the "Ballad of the Fleet❞— person, who knew that heathen gods and goddesses ought never to be left out of an heroic poem, and that decency required him to call Sir Richard "Thetis paramour." Then Sir William Monson, of the "Naval Tracts," could see nothing in the Grenville's fate more worthy of remark than this:-that it "truly verified" "the old saying, that a wilful man is the cause of his own woe." Monson was the forerunner of the modern naval officer. "Now, Mr. O'Farrall," said O'Brien, "I only wish to point out to you that I trust neither I, nor any one in this ship, cares a fig about the whizzing of a shot or two about our ears, when there is anything to be gained by it, either for ourselves or for our country; but I do care a great deal about losing even the leg or the arm, much more the life, of any of my men, when there's no occasion for it; so in future, recollect it's no disgrace to keep out of the way of a battery, when all the advantage is on their side." That is the voice of the modern naval officer, and of common sense. Cochrane listened to it when in 1805, and in these same waters round the Azores, he saved the Pallas from a French squadron by running, To the Inquisition dogs, and the devildoms and also by a miracle of cool seamanship. There was not a little of Grenville in Cochrane, but if he had repeated Grenville's defiance he would have been a pure madman, doing that for which the code of honor of his time held no excuse. The difficulty has been to see that both men were right in their time. Southey, who ought to have known better, for he had translated "Amadis of Gaul," and "Palmerin of England," was puzzled by Grenville. Southey has put it in print that Sir Richard “cannot be justified for entering into the action in which he lost his life;" but Southey added that "he supported it so bravely that he raised the character of the British Navy, and thereby well entitled himself to the place which he continues to hold in its annals." But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore, I should count myself the coward, if I left them, my Lord Howard, of Spain, is too mild and too modern for the part the real man played in the world. If Grenville's aim had been to save his men, he would have cut his mainsail, and cast about, and trusted to the sailing of the ship. It was his clear duty; and, if that was his purpose, he was fool and madman when "he utterly refused to turn from the enemy . . . persuading his company that he would pass through the two squadrons in despite of them, and enforce those of Seville to give him way." If we want to understand how he came to do what he did, and yet was neither fool nor madman, we must look at the man in his own place. First, then, Sir Richard Grenville belonged to a race to which a good fight and its own honor were far more than the lives of men-much more than their own, and incomparably more than their followers. He was the son of Sir Roger Grenville, who was lost in the Mary Rose at Spithead during the French invasion of 1545, and the grandson of Sir Richard Grenville, who was Marshal of Calais to Henry VIII. Through those two, and a long line of gentlemen of Cornwall and Devon, he claimed to go back to Rolf the Ganger, and through him and another long line of Norse jarls to Odin. One does not ask a gentleman to prove a pedigree like that by charter and seisin. The Grenvilles justified their Norse blood by their characters. The race did not end, nor even culminate, in Sir Richard of the Revenge. He was the grandfather of Sir Bevil Grenville, who headed the western rising for the king in the Civil War, and fell fighting against the Parliament at Lansdowne. Sir Bevil Grenville, again, was grandfather to the Grace Grenville who was mother of the great Carteret of the eighteenth century-the wit, scholar, statesman, and magnificent great noble. It was a race of chiefs and fighting men which kept its quality of aristocratic valor, and its passionate individuality, across centuries. The Norse nobles who would not submit to Harold Fairhair, would have understood Carteret thoroughly. They drank mead out of horns, and listened to the Skalds. He drank burgundy, and quoted Homer. But these are trifles, and in essentials they were much the same stamp of man. Sir Richard, who stood nearer the Middle Ages, and amid the equally sudden and wonderful expansion of character, passion, and faculty in the whole people which marks the great queen's reign, had a chance of keeping even closer to the original Viking type. We must not expect to find him such a man as Monson in his age, or many excellent officers since, who have been abundantly brave, but cool, sensible, looking to the good that was to be got for self or country by fighting, and by "good" meaning the practical, material advantages. He was a noble in a wider than the technical English sense; one whose blood was purer than others, who inherited with it the claim to lead, the obligation to set an example, the disposition to prefer death in battle, and the firm conviction that it was his right to sacrifice the lives of his followers if he could thereby earn honor for himself and his house. Their honor was to die with their lord. The little known of him, and of his actions before 1591, goes to show that this was his code. He was born about 1540, and in 1566 applied for leave to go abroad to fight against the Turks in Hungary. It has been said that he fought at Lepanto in 1571; but in 1570 and in the following year he was member of Parliament in England, and we cannot believe in Lepanto, though one would wish to believe if one could. For his religion, we know that in 1570 he made a declaration of his submission to the Act for Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service. He filled the office of sheriff, and, in fact, played his part as a country gentleman. He went beyond it, and entered the life of adventure of his time when he joined Sir Humphrey Gilbert in his colonizing schemes. There was kinship between Grenville and the Gilberts and Raleighs. He made two voyages to the West Indies and Virginia in 1585 and 1586, landing in the Spanish islands to levy contributions, taking prizes, and showing the Spaniards the unpleasant side of their maxim: that there was no peace beyond the Line. Once he took a prize by boarding her on a raft made of cases, which sank immediately after he and his men had reached the deck. The colonists, whom he carried to Virginia, and his fellow-adventurers with Raleigh took a view of him which is worth considering, Froude in hand. Ralph Lane complained to Walsingham that he was "of an intolerable pride, and an insatiable ambition." and that he, Lane, desired to be freed from the place in which Grenville was "to carry any authority in chief.” Linschoten, who was at the Azores when the fight took place, heard probably that he was "of nature cruel, so that his own people hated him for his tyranny and feared him much." Linschoten tells strange tales of his ways: "He was of so hard a complection, that as he continued among the Spanish captains while they were at dinner or supper with him, he would carouse three or four glasses of wine, and in a bravery take the glasses between his teeth and crush them in pieces and swallow them down, so that oftentimes the blood ran out of his mouth, without any harm at all unto him." It can be done; but one does not see the Sir Richard Grenville of "Westward Ho!" doing this act or drunken "bravery." Yet, if we do not believe Linschoten for this, why is he to be accepted as a witness for the last speech, which yet is too like life, too much beyond the Dutchman's power of invention, to be rejected? It may shock the faith of some who imagine him consumed by horror of the "devildoms of Spain" to hear of Grenville's dinners and suppers with Spanish captains; but nothing is more probable. In the intervals of fighting, noble enemies could and did meet and hunt together, and carouse. Grenville was on pleasant terms enough with the Spaniards in his voyage of 1585-between one piece of plunder and another. The Spanish hidalgo and the English gentleman had more in common with each other than either had with the plebeians on his own side. When Götz of the Iron Hand, being then about to fall upon a caravan, saw the wolves come out of the wood and begin to worry the sheep, he stood up in his stirrups and shouted, "Good luck to us all, gentlemen!" The brave Götz had a share of the saving quality of humor. It has been denied to such as cannot feel happy with a fighting man, till they have diluted him to the point at which he becomes fit to be presented to a young ladies' boarding-school. What, then, we know of Sir Richard Grenville is this: that he was proud to a degree which some found intolerable, ambitious, fierce, of a heavy hand on his subordinates, and of a soaring valor. In 1591 he was about fifty, and his ambition had not been satisfied, for he was not among the great men about the queen. One whose voice was sure to be always for war would have no friend in Burleigh, and Elizabeth, though she might like him well enough as courtier and captain, would keep him aloof from her council. With such a man ambition might direct itself towards making a splendid end. In 1591 Grenville, who had never yet held an important command for the queen, was chosen to go as viceadmiral to Lord Thomas Howard on a voyage to the Isles. These voyages were common both with the queen's ships and with private adventurers, and very often the two combined. The object was to wait for the Spanish treasure ships, which put in at the Azores for water and stores on the way home. In 1590 an English squadron had cruised round the Azores to no purpose, and had returned without a prize. Philip had not recovered from the loss of the Armada, and had been constrained to order his ships not to sail from America, for he knew that the English would be in wait, and he could afford no protection. It was a disastrous necessity; since it went far to stop his supplies, and it exposed his ships to the ravages of the "teredo," the boring worm of tropical seas. So by 1591 he could wait no longer for his treasure, and he had reconstructed a squadron in Spain. Still, he ordered the convoythe flota-to come late: partly because he hoped that the ships of Lord Thomas Howard would be constrained to return home by want of provisions, partly because he wanted time to complete the squadron which was to meet the convoy and see it safe back to Spain. But Lord Thomas was kept well supplied with provisions from home by means of victuallers. These were armed, and very capable of taking prizes, but not a match for a heavy galleon; most of them being of from ninety to one hundred and twenty tons. Meanwhile, another English squadron, belonging to the Earl of Cumberland and other adventurers, was prowling on the coast of Spain. So in August the position was this. The flota was on its way home, having left the Gulf of Florida, and having stood to the north till it was on the fortieth parallel, well out of the easterly trade winds, and above the Sargasso Sea. It was badly bored by the worm; in need of docking-which it could not get in the West Indies; overladen with accumulations of merchandise. It had already suffered heavy loss from storms. And now it was rolling along before the westerly winds of the North Atlantic; as helpless a mass of booty as any admiral could wish to see sail into his hands. And Lord Thomas Howard was cruising between Flores and Corvo, the two most westerly of the Azores. He had with him six of the queen's ships, the Bark Raleigh, belonging to Sir Walter, two or three private vessels, and the victuallers-sixteen sail in all. There was fever and scurvy among his men, as was commonly the case after a cruise of any length, when large crews were crowded into small ships; when food was saved by putting six upon the rations of four; when the ballast was of shingle or sand; when the galley fire stood on the ballast, which was soaked in bilge water enriched by all the drainings of the vessel. Cumberland was watching on the coast of Spain. In Cadiz a Spanish squadron was being fitted for sea under the command of Don Alonso de Bazan, the brother of the Marquess of Santa Cruz, who was to have commanded the Armada. It consisted of fifty-three vessels, twenty of them warships, and the others "urcas,"-victuallers carrying food for the galleons and the homecoming flota. Don Alonso sailed towards the end of August and was sighted at once by Cumberland's ships. One of them, the Moonshine, commanded by a Captain Middleton, kept company with the slow sailing Spaniards till it was sure that they were heading for the Azores. Then Middleton stood on to warn Lord Thomas. On the 31st August he found him at the north end of Flores at anchor. Some of his men were ashore getting water, some of the sick with scurvy had been landed. Middleton had headed the Spaniards by a very little. His message was hardly given before Bazan's fleet was seen coming on, probably round the south end of the island which stretches from south to north. Lord Thomas was clearly surprised. He had never expected to have to deal with a fighting fleet from Spain. Of the ships with him four were of the second rank of the queen's vessels-his own flagship, the Defiance, the Revenge, the Bonaventure, commanded by Captain Crosse, the Lion, of which George Fenner was captain. Two, the Foresight, Captain Vavassor, and the Crane, Captain Duffield, were smaller. The Bark Raleigh might pass among the queen's ships. But the private ships and the victuallers were small craft, good to take merchantmen, but not to fight galleons. To a sensible officer the one course was to get to sea, and to windward of the Spaniards, as fast as possible. If Don Alonso was allowed to come up on the west side of the island before the English had time to stand out, he might get the wind of them and pin them against the land. Although the Elizabethan seamen enjoy a reputation for desperate valor, their fighting with the Spanish galleons was commonly very cautious. It was their regular course to get to windward, and then to rely on their heavier guns and better gunnery, to make the most of a long bowls fight. The queen had few ships, and was very chary of them. Her officers knew that they would not easily be forgiven for losing a vessel; and so they played for safety in battle. The course followed by Lord Thomas was, therefore, perfectly consistent with the practice of the time; even if it had not been dictated by the circumstances of this particular case. And but for the presence of Grenville in the fleet, all the ships would have got off; there would have been no action with the Spaniards; and the voyage to the Isles of 1591 would have been no more memorable than the voyage of Hawkins and Frobisher in 1590, or the later cruises of Essex and Raleigh, and Sir Richard Levison. It was probably about midday that the English Squadron began to put to sea, and the last of the queen's ships to go was the Revenge. According to Monson's version of the story, Grenville had persuaded himself that the Spanish ships belonged to the long-expected "flota" from the Indies. But this is clearly impossible. Sir Richard Grenville must have heard Middleton's message, and must have known that these were not the Indian ships, even if the course Don Alonso de Bazan was steering did not tell him as much. Raleigh's report, that his cousin strived to pick up the men on shore, is no doubt the correct one. And for two reasons. The Revenge was one of the best sailors among the queen's ships, and would naturally be chosen when quick work might be required. Then, we may feel confident that a gentleman who was about to show such a fixed determination not to run when he had picked up the men, was eminently unlikely to incur the disgrace of deserting her Majesty's subjects. destiny, let us take a look at her. She is of "the second sort of the queen's ships," a vessel of five hundred tons,. and is shorter than a clipper of that tonnage. She is also broader in the beam, and built higher. Fore and aft she has castles, which are shut off from the space between by solid barriers called cobridges. The space between is called the waist, and is lower than the castles. If it is invaded by the enemy, the crew can take refuge behind the cobridges, and clear the deck by their fire. She carries a heavy armament of two demi cannon, thirty-two pounds; four cannon petroes or perriers, twenty-four pounds; ten culverins, seventeen pounds; six demi culverins, nine pounds; five sakars, five pounds; and fourteen small pieces-forty-six pieces of ordnance in all. (Our ships were always more heavily armed than the Spaniards, and our arms were better.) Her crew is of two hundred and fifty men, but there was not that number available on the 31st August, 1591. Eighty or ninety sick were lying on the reeking ballast below. Many were dead, and Raleigh gives one hundred as the number of those fit to fight and work. Sir Richard Hawkins says that the queen paid wages to two hundred and sixty men, "as by the pay books doth appear;" but this may mean that she paid the families of those who had fallen. The balance of evidence is that the Revenge is short-handed; not that she is crowded with extra men, as she must have been if the queen paid two hundred and sixty survivors. She has three masts, with a lateen sail on the mizen, square sails on the main and fore, and a bowsprit, at the end of which is shipped an upright mast with a small square spritsail. She is not painted black with a white band in the modern fashion, but in some bright color, perhaps in more than one, and is freely carved and gilded at bow and stern and round the portholes. And she flies the English ensign, the red cross of St. George, and probably also the banner of Sir Richard. The reader, by the way, must not let Mr. Kingsley perBefore the Revenge goes to fulfil her suade him that the Spaniards of the The Anyhow, the sick being duly on board, and there being nothing to delay him, Sir Richard followed the admiral. One little victualler, the George Noble, of London, had remained with the Revenge. When the two stood out from the anchorage there must have been a great gap between them and the ships around Lord Thomas Howard. admiral had gained the wind "very hardly," says Raleigh. He had, in fact, just had time to cross the route of the Spaniards, who were coming up from the south, and he had worked out to the west and north. As Don Alonso de Bazan held on, he placed himself in the space between the bulk of the English squadron and the Revenge with her little attendant victualler. If Grenville endeavored to reach his admiral by the course he was following, he must pass through the Spanish fleet. This is what nobody expected he would attempt to do in "so great an impossibility of prevailing." And Linschoten was told that the men were standing with their hands on the sheets, expecting the order to go about. And, in effect, by turning before the wind and running to the north-east, Grenville might have headed the Spaniards, and have rejoined his admiral even if it had been necessary to round Corvo. |