THE SEA IS HIS

 _Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known. --Psalm LXXVII. V. 19. _

 The Sea is His: He made it, Black gulf and sunlit shoal From barriered bight to where the long Leagues of Atlantic roll: Small strait and ceaseless ocean He bade each one to be: The Sea is His: He made it-- And England keeps it free. 

 By pain and stress and striving Beyond the nations' ken, By vigils stern when others slept, By lives of many men; Through nights of storm, through dawnings Blacker than midnights be-- This sea that God created, England has kept it free. 

 Count me the splendid captains Who sailed with courage high To chart the perilous ways unknown-- Tell me where these men lie! To light a path for ships to come They moored at Dead Man's quay; The Sea is God's--He made it, And these men made it free. 

 Oh little land of England, Oh mother of hearts too brave, Men say this trust shall pass from thee Who guardest Nelson's grave. Aye, but these braggarts yet shall learn Who'd hold the world in fee, The Sea is God's--and England, England shall keep it free. 

 --R. E. VERNÈDE. 

[Frontispiece: VIKING MAN-OF-WAR. ]

FLAG AND FLEET

HOW THE BRITISH NAVY WON THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

BY

WILLIAM WOOD

Lieutenant-Colonel, Canadian Militia; Member of the Canadian SpecialMission Overseas; Editor of "The Logs of the Conquest of Canada";Author of "All Afloat: A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways";"Elizabethan Sea Dogs: A Chronicle of Drake and his Companions"; and"The Fight for Canada: A Naval and Military Sketch. "

WITH A PREFACE BY

ADMIRAL-OF-THE-FLEET SIR DAVID BEATTY G. C. B. , O. M. , G. C. V. O. , Etc. , Etc. 

TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

OF CANADA, LTD. , AT ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE

1919

COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1919, BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED

To

_Admiral-of-the-Fleet_

_Lord Jellicoe_

 _In token of deep admiration And in gratitude for many kindnesses during the Great War I dedicate this little book, Which, published under the auspices of The Navy League of Canada and approved by the Provincial Departments of Education, Is written for the reading of Canadian Boys and Girls_

PREFACE

BY

Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir David Beatty, G. C. B. , O. M. , G. C. V. O. , etc. 

In acceding to the request to write a Preface for this volume I ammoved by the paramount need that all the budding citizens of our greatEmpire should be thoroughly acquainted with the part the Navy hasplayed in building up the greatest empire the world has ever seen. 

Colonel Wood has endeavored to make plain, in a stirring and attractivemanner, the value of Britain's Sea-Power. To read his _Flag and Fleet_will ensure that the lessons of centuries of war will be learnt, andthat the most important lesson of them all is this--that, as an empire, we came into being by the Sea, and that we cannot exist without the Sea. 

DAVID BEATTY, 2nd of June, 1919. 

INTRODUCTION

Who wants to be a raw recruit for life, all thumbs andmuddle-mindedness? Well, that is what a boy or girl is bound to bewhen he or she grows up without knowing what the Royal Navy of ourMotherland has done to give the British Empire birth, life, and growth, and all the freedom of the sea. 

The Navy is not the whole of British sea-power; for the MerchantService is the other half. Nor is the Navy the only fighting force onwhich our liberty depends; for we depend upon the United Service of seaand land and air. Moreover, all our fighting forces, put together, could not have done their proper share toward building up the Empire, nor could they defend it now, unless they always had been, and arestill, backed by the People as a whole, by every patriot man and woman, boy and girl. 

But while it takes all sorts to make the world, and very many differentsorts to make and keep our British Empire of the Free, it is quite astrue to say that all our other sorts together could not have made, andcannot keep, our Empire, unless the Royal Navy had kept, and keepstoday, true watch and ward over all the British highways of the sea. None of the different parts of the world-wide British Empire are joinedtogether by the land. All are joined together by the sea. Keep theseaways open and we live. Close them and we die. 

This looks, and really is, so very simple, that you may well wonder whywe have to speak about it here. But man is a land animal. Landsmenare many, while seamen are few; and though the sea is three timesbigger than the land it is three hundred times less known. History isfull of sea-power, but histories are not; for most historians knowlittle of sea-power, though British history without British sea-poweris like a watch without a mainspring or a wheel without a hub. Nowonder we cannot understand the living story of our wars, when, as arule, we are only told parts of _what_ happened, and neither _how_ theyhappened nor _why_ they happened. The _how_ and _why_ are the fleshand blood, the head and heart of history; so if you cut them off youkill the living body and leave nothing but dry bones. Now, in our longwar story no single _how_ or _why_ has any real meaning apart fromBritish sea-power, which itself has no meaning apart from the RoyalNavy. So the choice lies plain before us: either to learn what theNavy really means, and know the story as a veteran should; or elseleave out, or perhaps mislearn, the Navy's part, and be a raw recruitfor life, all thumbs and muddle-mindedness. 

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE ROWING AGE

WHEN SOLDIERS FOUGHT ROWBOAT BATTLES BESIDE THE SHORES OF THE OLD WORLD

From the Beginning of War on the Water to King Henry VIII's First Promise of a Sailing Fleet 1545

CHAPTER

 I THE VERY BEGINNING OF SEA-POWER (10, 000 years and more B. C. ) II THE FIRST FAR WEST (The last 5, 000 years B. C. ) III EAST AGAINST WEST (480 B. C. -146 B. C. ) IV CELTIC BRITAIN UNDER ROME (55 B. C. -410 A. D. ) V THE HARDY NORSEMAN (449-1066) VI THE IMPERIAL NORMAN (1066-1451) VII KING OF THE ENGLISH ERA (1545)

BOOK II

THE SAILING AGE

WHEN SAILORS FOUGHT ON EVERY OCEAN AND THE ROYAL NAVY OF THE MOTHER COUNTRY WON THE BRITISH COMMAND OF THE SEA BOTH IN THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW

DRAKE TO NELSON

1585-1805

PART I--THE SPANISH WAR

 VIII OLD SPAIN AND NEW (1492-1571) IX THE ENGLISH SEA-DOGS (1545-1580) X THE SPANISH ARMADA (1588)

PART II--THE DUTCH WAR

 XI THE FIRST DUTCH WAR (1623-1653) XII THE SECOND AND THIRD DUTCH WARS (1665-1673)

PART III--THE FRENCH WAR

 XIII THE FIRST WAR AGAINST LOUIS XIV (1689-1697) XIV THE SECOND WAR AGAINST LOUIS XIV (1702-1713) XV WAR AGAINST FRANCE AND SPAIN (1739-1748) XVI PITT'S IMPERIAL WAR (1756-1763) XVII THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1775-1783) XVIII NELSON (1798-1805) XIX "1812"

BOOK III

THE AGE OF STEAM AND STEEL

WHEN THE BRITISH COMMAND OF THE SEA SAVED THE WORLD FROM GERMAN SLAVERY IN THE GREATEST OF ALL WARS

1914-1918

PART I--A CENTURY OF CHANGE (1814-1914)

 XX A CENTURY OF BRITISH-FRENCH-AMERICAN PEACE (1815-1914) XXI A CENTURY OF MINOR BRITISH WARS (1815-1914)

PART II--THE GREAT WAR (1914-1918)

 XXII THE HANDY MAN XXIII FIFTY YEARS OF WARNING (1864-1914) XXIV WAR (1914-1915) XXV JUTLAND (1916) XXVI SUBMARINING (1917-1918) XXVII SURRENDER! (1918) XXVIII WELL DONE!

POSTSCRIPT THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

[Transcriber's note: The following two errata items have been appliedto this e-book. ]

ERRATA

Page XIII. For "Henry VII's" read "Henry VIII's. "

Page 254. L. 20 for "facing the Germans" read "away from Scheer, "

ILLUSTRATIONS

VIKING MAN-OF-WAR. . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

"DUG-OUT" CANOE

ROMAN TRIREME--A vessel with three benches of oars

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR'S TRANSPORTS

Eddystone Lighthouse, 1699. The first structure of stone and timber. Build for Trinity House by Winstanley and swept away in a storm. Eddystone Lighthouse, 1882. The fourth and present structure, erectedby Sir J. N. Douglass for Trinity House. 

The _Santa Maria_, flagship of Christopher Columbus when he discoveredAmerica in 1492. Length of keel, 60 feet. Length of ship proper, 93feet. Length over all, 128 feet. Breadth, 26 feet. Tonnage, fulldisplacement, 233. 

DRAKE

One of Drake's Men-of-War that Fought the Great Armada in 1588. 

ARMADA OFF FOWEY (Cornwall) as first seen in the English Channel. 

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE ON BOARD THE _REVENGE_ receiving the surrender of DonPedro de Valdes. 

SAILING SHIP. The Pilgrim Fathers crossed in a similar vessel (1620). 

LA HOGUE, 1692. 

H. M. S. _Centurion_ engaged and took the Spanish Galleon _NuestraSenhora de Capadongo_, from Acapulco bound to Manila, off Cape EspirituSanto, Philippine Islands, June 20, 1743. 

The _ROYAL GEORGE_

NELSON

FIGHTING THE GUNS ON THE MAIN DECK, 1782. 

THE BLOWING UP OF _L'ORIENT_ DURING THE BATTLE OF THE NILE. 

THE BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN, APRIL 2nd, 1801. (Note the British lineahead. )

The _VICTORY_. Nelson's Flagship at Trafalgar, launched in 1765, andstill used as the flagship in Portsmouth Harbour. 

TRAFALGAR. 21st October, 1805. 

MODEL OF THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR. (Reproduced by permission from themodel at the Royal United Service Institution. )

THE _SHANNON_ AND THE _CHESAPEAKE_. 

THE _ROYAL WILLIAM_. Canadian built; the first boat to cross any oceansteaming the whole way (1833), the first steamer in the world to fire ashot in action (May 5, 1836). 

BATTLESHIP. 

Seaplane Returning after flight. 

DESTROYER. 

A PARTING SHOT FROM THE TURKS AT GALLIPOLI. 

JELLICOE. 

BEATTY. 

LIGHT CRUISER. 

H. M. S. _Monmouth_, Armoured Cruiser. Sunk at Coronel, November 1st, 1914. 

BATTLESHIP FIRING A BROADSIDE. 

Jellicoe's Battle Fleet in Columns of Divisions. 6. 14 P. M. 

THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND--PLAN II. Jellicoe's battle line formed andfighting. 6:38 P. M. 

British Submarine. 

Minesweeper at work. 

H. M. KING GEORGE V. 

FLAG AND FLEET

BOOK I

THE ROWING AGE

CHAPTER I

THE VERY BEGINNING OP SEA-POWER

(10, 000 years and more B. C. )

Thousands and thousands of years ago a naked savage in southern Asiafound that he could climb about quite safely on a floating log. Oneday another savage found that floating down stream on a log was verymuch easier than working his way through the woods. This taught himthe first advantage of sea-power, which is, that you can often gobetter by water than land. Then a third savage with a turn for tryingnew things found out what every lumberjack and punter knows, that youneed a pole if you want to shove your log along or steer it to theproper place. 

By and by some still more clever savage tied two logs together and madethe first raft. This soon taught him the second advantage ofsea-power, which is, that, as a rule, you can carry goods very muchbetter by water than land. Even now, if you want to move many big andheavy things a thousand miles you can nearly always do it ten timesbetter in a ship than in a train, and ten times better in a train thanby carts and horses on the very best of roads. Of course a raft is apoor, slow, clumsy sort of ship; no ship at all, in fact. But whenrafts were the only "ships" in the world there certainly were no trainsand nothing like one of our good roads. The water has always had thesame advantage over the land; for as horses, trails, carts, roads, andtrains began to be used on land, so canoes, boats, sailing ships, andsteamers began to be used on water. Anybody can prove the truth of therule for himself by seeing how much easier it is to paddle a hundredpounds ten miles in a canoe than to carry the same weight one mile overa portage. 

Presently the smarter men wanted something better than a little lograft nosing its slow way along through dead shallow water when shovedby a pole; so they put a third and longer log between the other two, with its front end sticking out and turning up a little. Then, wantingto cross waters too deep for a pole, they invented the first paddles;and so made the same sort of catamaran that you can still see on theCoromandel Coast in southern India. But savages who knew enough totake catamarans through the pounding surf also knew enough to see thata log with a hollow in the upper side of it could carry a great dealmore than a log that was solid; and, seeing this, they presently beganmaking hollows and shaping logs, till at last they had made a regulardug-out canoe. When Christopher Columbus asked the West Indian savageswhat they called their dug-outs they said _canoas_; so a boat dug outof a solid log had the first right to the word we now use for a canoebuilt up out of several different parts. 

[Illustration: "DUG-OUT" CANOE]

Dug-outs were sometimes very big. They were the Dreadnoughtbattleships of their own time and place and people. When their endswere sharpened into a sort of ram they could stave in an enemy's canoeif they caught its side full tilt with their own end. Dug-out canoeswere common wherever the trees were big and strong enough, as inSouthern Asia, Central Africa, and on the Pacific Coast of America. But men have always been trying to invent something better than whattheir enemies have; and so they soon began putting different piecestogether to make either better canoes or lighter ones, or to make anykind that would do as well as or better than the dug-out. Thus theancient Britons had coracles, which were simply very open basket-workcovered with skins. Their Celtic descendants still use canvas coraclesin parts of Wales and Ireland, just as the Eskimos still useskin-covered kayaks and oomiaks. The oomiak is for a family with alltheir baggage. The kayak--sharp as a needle and light as a feather--isfor a well-armed man. The oomiak is a cargo carrier. The kayak is aman-of-war. 

When once men had found out how to make and use canoes they had alsofound out the third and final principle of sea-power, which is, that ifyou live beside the water and do not learn how to fight on it you willcertainly be driven off it by some enemy who has learnt how to fightthere. For sea-power in time of war simply means the power to use thesea yourself while stopping the enemy from using it. So the first dutyof any navy is to keep the seaways open for friends and closed toenemies. And this is even more the duty of the British Navy than ofany other navy. For the sea lies between all the different parts ofthe British Empire; and so the life-or-death question we have to answerin every great war is this: does the sea unite us by being underBritish control, or does it divide us by being under enemy control?United we stand: divided we fall. 

At first sight you would never believe that sea-power could be lost orwon as well by birchbarks as by battleships. But if both sides havethe same sort of craft, or one side has none at all, then it does notmatter what the sort is. When the Iroquois paddled their birch-barkcanoes past Quebec in 1660, and defied the French Governor to stopthem, they "commanded" the St. Lawrence just as well as the BritishGrand Fleet commanded the North Sea in the Great War; and for the samereason, because their enemy was not strong enough to stop them. Whichever army can drive its enemy off the roads must win the war, because it can get what it wants from its base, (that is, from theplaces where its supplies of men and arms and food and every other needare kept); while its enemy will have to go without, being unable to getanything like enough, by bad and roundabout ways, to keep up the fightagainst men who can use the good straight roads. So it is with navies. The navy that can beat its enemy from all the shortest ways across thesea must win the war, because the merchant ships of its own country, like its men-of-war, can use the best routes from the bases to thefront and back again; while the merchant ships of its enemy must eitherlose time by roundabout voyages or, what is sure to happen as the wargoes on, be driven off the high seas altogether. 

The savages of long ago often took to the water when they found theland too hot for them. If they were shepherds, a tyrant might seizetheir flocks. If they were farmers, he might take their land away fromthem. But it was not so easy to bully fishermen and hunters who couldpaddle off and leave no trace behind them, or who could build forts onislands that could only be taken after fights in which men who livedmostly on the water would have a much better chance than men who livedmostly on the land. In this way the water has often been more the homeof freedom than the land: liberty and sea-power have often gonetogether; and a free people like ourselves have nearly always won andkept freedom, both for themselves and others, by keeping up a navy oftheir own or by forming part of such an Empire as the British, wherethe Mother Country keeps up by far the greatest navy the world has everseen. 

The canoe navies, like other navies, did very well so long as no enemycame with something better. But when boats began to gain ground, canoes began to lose it. We do not know who made the first boat anymore than we know who made the first raft or canoe. But the man wholaid the first keel was a genius, and no mistake about it; for the keelis still the principal part of every rowboat, sailing ship, and steamerin the world. There is the same sort of difference between any craftthat has a keel and one that has not as there is between animals whichhave backbones and those which have not. By the time boats were firstmade someone began to find out that by putting a paddle into a notch inthe side of the boat and pulling away he could get a stronger strokethan he could with the paddle alone. Then some other genius, thousandsof years after the first open boat had been made, thought of making adeck. Once this had been done, the ship, as we know her, had begun herglorious career. 

But meanwhile sails had been in use for very many thousands of years. Who made the first sail? Nobody knows. But very likely some Asiaticsavage hoisted a wild beast's skin on a stick over some very simplesort of raft tens of thousands of years ago. Rafts had, and stillhave, sails in many countries. Canoes had them too. Boats and shipsalso had sails in very early times, and of very various kinds: somemade of skins, some of woven cloth, some even of wooden slats. But noancient sail was more than what sailors call a wind-bag now; and theywere of no use at all unless the wind was pretty well aft, that is, more or less from behind. We shall presently find out that tacking, (which is sailing against the wind), is a very modern invention; andthat, within three centuries of its invention, steamers began to oustsailing craft, as these, in their turn, had ousted rowboats and canoes. 

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST FAR WEST

(The last 5000 years B. C. )

This chapter begins with a big surprise. But it ends with a bigger onestill. When you look first at the title and then at the date, youwonder how on earth the two can go together. But when you rememberwhat you have read in Chapter I you will see that the countries at theAsiatic end of the Mediterranean, though now called the Near East, werethen the Far West, because emigrants from the older lands of Asia hadgone no farther than this twelve thousand years ago. Then, as you readthe present chapter, you will see emigrants and colonies moving fartherand farther west along the Mediterranean and up the Atlantic shores ofEurope, until, at last, two thousand years before Columbus, the new FarWest consisted of those very shores of Spain and Portugal, France andthe British Isles, from which the whole New Western World of North andSouth America was to be settled later on. The Atlantic shores ofEurope, and not the Mediterranean shores of Asia and of Egypt, arecalled here "The First Far West" because the first really Westernpeople grew up in Europe and became quite different from all theEastern peoples. The Second Far West, two thousand years later, wasAmerica itself. 

_Westward Ho!_ is the very good name of a book about adventures inAmerica when this Second Far West was just beginning. "Go West!" wasthe advice given to adventurous people in America during the nineteenthcentury. "The Last West and Best West" is what Canadians now calltheir own North-West. And it certainly is the very last West of all;for over there, across the Pacific, are the lands of southern Asia fromwhich the first emigrants began moving West so many thousand years ago. Thus the circuit of the World and its migrations is now complete; andwe can at last look round and learn the whole story, from Farthest Eastto Farthest West. 

Most of it is an old, old story from the common points of view; and ithas been told over and over again by many different people and in manydifferent ways. But from one point of view, and that a most importantpoint, it is newer now than ever. Look at it from the seaman's pointof view, and the whole meaning changes in the twinkling of an eye, becoming new, true, and complete. Nearly all books deal with thethings of the land, and of the land alone, their writers forgetting ornot knowing that the things of the land could never have been what theyare had it not been for the things of the sea. Without the vastlyimportant things of the sea, without the war fleets and merchant fleetsof empires old and new, it is perfectly certain that the world couldnot have been half so good a place to live in; for freedom and the seatend to go together. True of all people, this is truer still of us;for the sea has been the very breath of British life and liberty eversince the first hardy Norseman sprang ashore on English soil. 

Nobody knows how the Egyptians first learnt ship-building from thepeople farther East. But we do know that they were building ships inEgypt seven thousand years ago, that their ninth king was called Betou, which means "the prow of a ship", and that his artists carved picturesof boats five hundred years older than the Great Pyramid. Thesepictures, carved on the tombs of the kings, are still to be seen, together with some pottery, which, coming from the Balkans, shows thatBetou had boats trading across the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Apicture carved more than six thousand years ago shows an Egyptian boatbeing paddled by fourteen men and steered with paddles by three more onthe right-hand side of the stern as you look toward the bow. Thus the"steer-board" (or steering side) was no new thing when its present nameof "starboard" was used by our Norse ancestors a good many hundredyears ago. The Egyptians, steering on the right-hand side, probablytook in cargo on the left side or "larboard", that is, the "load" or"lading" side, now called the "port" side, as "larboard" and"starboard" sounded too much alike when shouted in a gale. 

Up in the bow of this old Egyptian boat stood a man with a pole to helpin steering down the Nile. Amidships stood a man with acat-o'-nine-tails, ready to slash any one of the wretched slavepaddlers who was not working hard. All through the Rowing Age, forthousands and thousands of years, the paddlers and rowers were the sameas the well-known galley-slaves kept by the Mediterranean countries torow their galleys in peace and war. These galleys, or rowingmen-of-war, lasted down to modern times, as we shall soon see. Theydid use sails; but only when the wind was behind them, and never whenit blew really hard. The mast was made of two long wooden spars setone on each side of the galley, meeting at the head, and strengthenedin between by braces from one spar to another. As time went on betterboats and larger ones were built in Egypt. We can guess how strongthey must have been when they carried down the Nile the gigantic blocksof stone used in building the famous Pyramids. Some of these blocksweigh up to sixty tons; so that both the men who built the barges tobring them down the Nile and those who built these huge blocks into thewonderful Pyramids must have known their business pretty well athousand years before Noah built his Ark. 

The Ark was built in Mesopotamia, less than five thousand years ago, tosave Noah from the flooded Euphrates. The shipwrights seem to havebuilt it like a barge or house-boat. If so, it must have been aboutfifteen thousand tons, taking the length of the cubit in the Biblestory at eighteen inches. It was certainly not a ship, only some sortof construction that simply floated about with the wind and currenttill it ran aground. But Mesopotamia and the shores of the PersianGulf were great places for shipbuilding. They were once the home ofadventurers who had come West from southern Asia, and of the famousPhoenicians, who went farther West to find a new seaboard home alongthe shores of Asia Minor, just north of Palestine, where they were inthe shipping business three thousand years ago, about the time of theearly Kings of Israel. 

These wonderful Phoenicians touch our interest to the very quick; forthey were not only the seamen hired by "Solomon in all his glory" butthey were also the founders of Carthage and the first oversea traderswith the Atlantic coasts of France and the British Isles. Their storythus goes home to all who love the sea, the Bible, and Canada's twoMother Lands. They had shipping on the Red Sea as well as on theMediterranean; and it was their Red Sea merchant vessels that coastedArabia and East Africa in the time of Solomon (1016-976 B. C. ). Theyalso went round to Persia and probably to India. About 600 B. C. Theyare said to have coasted round the whole of Africa, starting from theRed Sea and coming back by Gibraltar. This took them more than twoyears, as they used to sow wheat and wait on shore till the crop wasripe. Long before this they had passed Gibraltar and settled thecolony of Tarshish, where they found silver in such abundance that "itwas nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon. " We do not knowwhether it was "the ships of Tarshish and of the Isles" that first feltthe way north to France and England. But we do know that manyPhoenicians did trade with the French and British Celts, who probablylearnt in this way how to build ships of their own. 

CHAPTER III

EAST AGAINST WEST

(480-146 B. C. )

For two thousand years Eastern fleets and armies tried to conquerEurope. Sometimes hundreds of years would pass without an attack. Butthe result was always the same--the triumph of West over East; and thecause of each triumph was always the same--the sea-power of the West. Without those Western navies the Europe and America we know today couldnever have existed. There could have been no Greek civilization, noRoman government, no British Empire, and no United States. First, thePersians fought the Greeks at Salamis in 480 B. C. Then Carthage foughtRome more than two hundred years later. Finally, the conquering Turkswere beaten by the Spaniards at Lepanto more than two thousand yearsafter Salamis, but not far from the same spot, Salamis being ten milesfrom Athens and Lepanto a hundred. 

Long before Salamis the Greeks had been founding colonies along theMediterranean, among them some on the Asiatic side of the Aegean Sea, where the French and British fleets had so much to do during theGallipoli campaign of 1915 against the Turks and Germans. Meanwhilethe Persians had been fighting their way north-westwards till they hadreached the Aegean and conquered most of the Greeks and Phoeniciansthere. Then the Greeks at Athens sent a fleet which landed an armythat burnt the city of Sardis, an outpost of Persian power. ThereuponKing Darius, friend of the Prophet Daniel, vowed vengeance on Athens, and caused a trusty servant to whisper in his ear each day, "Master, remember Athens!"

Now, the Persians were landsmen, with what was then the greatest armyin the world, but with a navy and a merchant fleet mostly manned byconquered Phoenicians and Greek colonists, none of whom wanted to seeGreece itself destroyed. So when Darius met the Greeks at Marathon hisfleet and army did not form the same sort of United Service that theBritish fleet and army form. He was beaten back to his ships andretired to Asia Minor. But "Remember Athens!" was always in his mind. So for ten years he and his son Xerxes prepared a vast armada againstwhich they thought no other force on earth could stand. But, like theSpanish Armada against England two thousand years later, this Persianhost was very much stronger ashore than afloat. Its army was so vastthat it covered the country like a swarm of locusts. At theworld-famous pass of Thermopylae the Spartan king, Leonidas, waited forthe Persians. Xerxes sent a summons asking the Greeks to surrendertheir arms. "Come and take them, " said Leonidas. Then wave after waveof Persians rushed to the attack, only to break against the dauntlessGreeks. At last a vile traitor told Xerxes of another pass (which theGreeks had not men enough to hold, though it was on their flank). Hethus got the chance of forcing them either to retreat or be cut off. Once through this pass the Persians overran the country; and all theSpartans at Thermopylae died fighting to the last. 

Only the Grecian fleet remained. It was vastly out-numbered by thePersian fleet. But it was manned by patriots trained to fight on thewater; while the Persians themselves were nearly all landsmen, and sohad to depend on the Phoenicians and colonial Greek seamen, who werenone too eager for the fray. Seeing the Persians too densely massedtogether on a narrow front the Greek commander, Themistocles, attackedwith equal skill and fury, rolled up the Persian front in confusion onthe mass behind, and won the battle that saved the Western World. ThePersians lost two hundred vessels against only forty Greek. But it wasnot the mere loss of vessels, or even of this battle of Salamis itself, that forced Xerxes to give up all hopes of conquest. The real reasonwas his having lost the command of the sea. He knew that thevictorious Greeks could now beat the fighting ships escorting hissupply vessels coming overseas from Asia Minor, and that, without theconstant supplies of men, arms, food, and everything else an armyneeds, his army itself must wither away. 

Two hundred and twenty years later the sea-power of the Roman West beatboth the land- and sea-power of the Carthaginian East; and for the verysame reason. Carthage was an independent colony of Phoenicians whichhad won an empire in the western Mediterranean by its sea-power. Itheld a great part of Spain, the whole of Sardinia, most of Sicily, andmany other islands. The Romans saw that they would never be safe aslong as Carthage had the stronger navy; so they began to build one oftheir own. They copied a Carthaginian war galley that had beenwrecked; and meanwhile taught their men to row on benches set upashore. This made the Carthaginians laugh and led them to expect aneasy victory. But the Romans were thorough in everything they did, andthey had the best trained soldiers in the world. They knew theCarthaginians could handle war galleys better than they couldthemselves; so they tried to give their soldiers the best possiblechance when once the galleys closed. They made a sort of drawbridgethat could be let down with a bang on the enemy boats and there heldfast by sharp iron spikes biting into the enemy decks. Then theirsoldiers charged across and cleared everything before them. 

[Illustration: ROMAN TRIREME--A vessel with three benches of oars]

The Carthaginians never recovered from this first fatal defeat at Mylaein 260 B. C. , though Carthage itself was not destroyed for more than acentury afterwards, and though Hannibal, one of the greatest soldierswho ever lived, often beat the Romans in the meantime. All sorts ofreasons, many of them true enough in their way, are given forHannibal's final defeat. But sea-power, the first and greatest of all, is commonly left out. His march round the shores of the westernMediterranean and his invasion of Italy from across the Alps willremain one of the wonders of war till the end of history. But the merefact that he had to go all the way round by land, instead of straightacross by water, was the real prime cause of his defeat. His forcessimply wore themselves out. Why? Look at the map and you will seethat he and his supplies had to go much farther by land than the Romansand their supplies had to go by water because the Roman victory overthe Carthaginian fleet had made the shortest seaways safe for Romansand very unsafe for Carthaginians. Then remember that carrying men andsupplies by sea is many times easier than carrying them by land; andyou get the perfect answer. 

CHAPTER IV

CELTIC BRITAIN UNDER ROME

(55 B. C. -410 A. D. )

When Caesar was conquering the Celts of Western France he found thatone of their strongest tribes, the Veneti, had been joined by twohundred and twenty vessels manned by their fellow-Celts from southernBritain. The united fleets of the Celts were bigger than any Romanforce that Caesar could get afloat. Moreover, Caesar had nothing butrowboats, which he was obliged to build on the spot; while the Celtshad real ships, which towered above his rowboats by a good ten feet. But, after cutting the Celtic rigging with scythes lashed to poles, thewell-trained Roman soldiers made short work of the Celts. The Battleof the Loire seems to have been the only big sea fight the Celts ofBritain ever fought. After this they left the sea to their invaders, who thus had a great advantage over them ashore. 

The fact is that the Celts of the southern seaports were the only oneswho understood shipbuilding, which they had learnt from thePhoenicians, and the only ones who were civilized enough to unite amongthemselves and with their fellow-Celts in what now is France but thenwas Gaul. The rest were mere tribesmen under chiefs who were oftensquabbling with one another, and who never formed anything like anall-Celtic army. For most of them a navy was out of the question, asthey only used the light, open-work, basket-like coracles covered withskins--about as useful for fighting the Romans at sea as bark canoeswould be against real men-of-war. The Roman conquest of Britain wastherefore made by the army, each conqueror, from Caesar on, winningbattles farther and farther north, until a fortified Roman wall wasbuilt across the narrow neck of land between the Forth and Clyde. Along these thirty-six miles the Romans kept guard against the Pictsand other Highland tribes. 

The Roman fleet was of course used at all times to guard the seawaysbetween Britain and the rest of the Roman Empire, as well as to carrysupplies along the coast when the army was fighting near by. This gavethe Romans the usual immense advantage of sea-transport overland-transport, never less than ten to one and often very much more. The Romans could thus keep their army supplied with everything itneeded. The Celts could not. Eighteen hundred years after Caesar'sfirst landing in Britain, Wolfe, the victor of Quebec, noticed the sameimmense advantage enjoyed by King George's army over Prince Charlie's, owing to the same sort of difference in transport, King George's armyhaving a fleet to keep it well supplied, while Prince Charlie's hadnothing but slow and scanty land transport, sometimes more dead thanalive. 

The only real fighting the Romans had to do afloat was against theNorsemen, who sailed out of every harbour from Norway round to Flandersand swooped down on every vessel or coast settlement they thought theyhad a chance of taking. To keep these pirates in check Carausius wasmade "Count of the Saxon Shore". It was a case of setting a thief tocatch a thief; for Carausius was a Fleming and a bit of a piratehimself. He soon became so strong at sea that he not only kept theother Norsemen off but began to set up as a king on his own account. He seized Boulogne, harried the Roman shipping on the coasts of France, and joined forces with those Franks whom the Romans had sent into theBlack Sea to check the Scythians and other wild tribes from the East. The Franks were themselves Norsemen, who afterwards settled in Gaul andbecame the forefathers of the modern French. So Rome was nowthreatened by a naval league of hardy Norsemen, from the Black Sea, through the Mediterranean, and all the way round to that "Saxon Shore"of eastern Britain which was itself in danger from Norsemen living onthe other side of the North Sea. Once more, however, the Romans wonthe day. The Emperor Constantius caught the Franks before they couldjoin Carausius and smashed their fleet near Gibraltar. He then went toGaul and made ready a fleet at the mouth of the Seine, near Le Havre, which was a British base during the Great War against the Germans. Meanwhile Carausius was killed by his second-in-command, Allectus, whosailed from the Isle of Wight to attack Constantius, who himself sailedfor Britain at the very same time. A dense fog came on. The twofleets never met. Constantius landed. Allectus then followed himashore and was beaten and killed in a purely land battle. 

This was a little before the year 300; by which time the Roman Empirewas beginning to rot away, because the Romans were becoming softer andfewer, and because they were hiring more and more strangers to fightfor them, instead of keeping up their own old breed of first-classfighting men. By 410 Rome itself was in such danger that they tooktheir last ships and soldiers away from Celtic Britain, which at oncebecame the prey of the first good fighting men who came that way;because the Celts, never united enough to make a proper army or navy oftheir own, were now weaker than ever, after having had their countrydefended by other people for the last four hundred years. 

CHAPTER V

THE HARDY NORSEMAN

(449-1066)

The British Empire leads the whole world both in size and population. It ended the Great War with the greatest of all the armies, thegreatest of all the navies, and the greatest of all the mercantilemarines. Better still, it not only did most towards keeping itsown--which is by far the oldest--freedom in the world, but it also didmost towards helping all its Allies to be free. There are many reasonswhy we now enjoy these blessings. But there are three without which wenever could have had a single one. The first, of course, is sea-power. But this itself depends on the second reason, which, in its turn, depends upon the third. For we never could have won the greatestsea-power unless we had bred the greatest race of seamen. And we nevercould have bred the greatest race of seamen unless we ourselves hadbeen mostly bred from those hardy Norsemen who were both the terror andthe glory of the sea. 

Many thousands of years ago, when the brown and yellow peoples of theFar South-East were still groping their way about their steamy Asianrivers and hot shores, a race of great, strong, fair-haired seamen wasgrowing in the North. This Nordic race is the one from which mostEnglish-speaking people come, the one whose blood runs in the veins ofmost first-class seamen to the present day, and the one whosedescendants have built up more oversea dominions, past and present, than have been built by all the other races, put together, since theworld began. 

To the sturdy Nordic stock belonged all who became famous as Vikings, Berserkers, and Hardy Norsemen, as well as all the Anglo-Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Normans, from whom came most of the people that made theBritish Empire and the United States. "Nordic" and "Norse" are, therefore, much better, because much truer, words than "Anglo-Saxon", which only names two of the five chief tribes from which mostEnglish-speaking people come, and which is not nearly so true as"Anglo-Norman" to describe the people, who, once formed in England, spread over southern Scotland and parts of Ireland, and who have alsogone into every British, American, or foreign country that has everbeen connected with the sea. 

When the early Nordics outgrew their first home beside the Baltic theybegan sailing off to seek their fortune overseas. In course of timethey not only spread over the greater part of northern Europe but wentas far south as Italy and Spain, where the good effects of theirbracing blood have never been lost. They even left descendants amongthe Berbers of North Africa; and, as we have learnt already, some ofthem went as far east as the Black Sea. The Belgians, Dutch, andGermans of Caesar's day were all Nordic. So were the Franks, from whomFrance takes its name. The Nordic blood, of course, became more orless mingled with that of the different peoples the Nordic tribessubdued; and new blood coming in from outside made further changesstill. But the Nordic strain prevailed, as that of the conquerors, even where the Nordic folk did not outnumber all the rest, as theycertainly did in Great Britain. The Franks, whose name meant "freemen", at last settled down with the Gauls, who outnumbered them; sothat the modern French are a blend of both. But the Gauls were thebest warriors of all the Celts: it took Caesar eight years to conquerthem. So we know that Frenchmen got their soldier blood from bothsides. We also know that they learnt a good deal of their civilizationfrom the Romans and passed it on to the empire-building Normans, whobrought more Nordic blood into France. The Normans in their turnpassed it on to the Anglo-Saxons, who, with the Jutes and Danes, formthe bulk, as the Normans form the backbone, of most English-speakingfolk within the British Empire. The Normans are thus the great bond ofunion between the British Empire and the French. They are theFranco-British kinsfolk of the sea. 

We must not let the fact that Prussia borders on the North Sea and theBaltic mislead us into mistaking the Prussians for the purest offspringof the Nordic race. They are nothing of the kind. Some of the finestNordics did stay near their Baltic home. But these became Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes; while nearly all the rest of the cream of thismighty race went far afield. Its Franks went into France by land. ItsNormans went by sea. Others settled in Holland and Belgium and becamethe Dutch and Flemings of today. But the mightiest host of hardyNorsemen crossed the North Sea to settle in the British Isles; and fromthis chosen home of merchant fleets and navies the Nordic British havethemselves gone forth as conquering settlers across the Seven Seas. 

The Prussians are the least Nordic of all the Germans, and most Germansare rather the milk than the cream of the Nordic race; for the creamgenerally sought the sea, while the milk stayed on shore. ThePrussians have no really Nordic forefathers except the TeutonicKnights, who killed off the Borussi or Old-Prussian savages, aboutseven hundred years ago, and then settled the empty land with theirsoldiers of fortune, camp-followers, hirelings, and serfs. These gangshad been brought together, by force or the hope of booty, from anywhereat all. The new Prussians were thus a pretty badly mixed lot; so theTeutonic Knights hammered them into shape as the newer Prussians whomFrederick the Great in the eighteenth century and Bismarck in thenineteenth turned into a conquering horde. The Kaiser's newestPrussians need no description here. We all know him and them; and whatbecame of both; and how it served them right. 

The first of the hardy Norsemen to arrive in England with a regularfleet and army were the two brothers, Hengist and Horsa, whom the Celtsemployed to defend them against the wild Picts that were swarming downfrom the north. The Picts once beaten, the Celts soon got into thesame troubles that beset every people who will not or can not fight forthemselves. More and more Norsemen kept coming to the Isle of Thanet, the easternmost point of Kent, and disputes kept on growing betweenthem and the Celts over pay and food as well as over the division ofthe spoils. The Norsemen claimed most of the spoil, because theirsword had won it. The Celts thought this unfair, because the countrywas their own. It certainly was theirs at that time. But they haddriven out the people who had been there before them; so when they werethemselves driven out they suffered no more than what they once hadmade these others suffer. 

Presently the Norsemen turned their swords on the Celts and began aconquest that went on from father to son till there were hardly anyCelts left in the British Isles outside of Wales, the Highlands ofScotland, and the greater part of Ireland. Every place easily reachedfrom the sea fell into the hands of the Norsemen whenever they chose totake it; for the Celts never even tried to have a navy. This, ofcourse, was the chief reason why they lost the war on land; because theNorsemen, though fewer by far at first, could move men, arms, andsupplies ten times better than the Celts whenever the battlefields wereanywhere near the sea. 

Islands, harbours, and navigable rivers were often held by theNorsemen, even when the near-by country was filled with Celts. Theextreme north of Scotland, like the whole of the south, became Norse, as did the northern islands of Orkney and Shetland. Scapa Flow, thatmagnificent harbour in the Orkneys, was a stronghold of Norsemen manycenturies before their descendants manned the British Grand Fleet thereduring the recent war. The Isle of Man was taken by Norsemen. Dublin, Waterford, and other Irish cities were founded by them. They attackedWales from Anglessey; and, wherever they conquered, their armies werebased on the sea. 

If you want to understand how the British Isles changed from a Celticto a Nordic land, how they became the centre of the British Empire, andwhy they were the Mother Country from which the United States wereborn, you must always view the question from the sea. Take the sea asa whole, together with all that belongs to it--its islands, harbours, shores, and navigable rivers. Then take the roving Norsemen as thegreatest seamen of the great seafaring Nordic race. Never mind theconfusing lists of tribes and kings on either side--the Jutes andAnglo-Saxons, the Danes and Normans, on one side, and the Celts ofEngland, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, on the other; nor yet thedifferent dates and places; but simply take a single bird's-eye view ofall the Seven Seas as one sea, of all the British Norsemen as oneAnglo-Norman folk, and of all the centuries from the fifth to thetwentieth as a single age; and then you can quite easily understand howthe empire of the sea has been won and held by the same strong"Hardy-Norseman" hands these fifteen hundred years. 

There is nothing to offend the Celts in this. They simply tried to dowhat never can be done: that is, they tried to hold a sea-girt countrywith nothing but an army, while their enemy had an army and a fleet. They fought well enough in the past on many a stricken field to saveany race's honour; and none who know the glorious deeds of the reallyCeltic Highland, Welsh, or Irish regiments can fail to admire them now. But this book is about seamen and the sea, and how they have changedthe fate of landsmen and the land. So we must tell the plain truthabout the Anglo-Norman seamen without whom there could be no BritishEmpire and no United States. The English-speaking peoples owe a greatdeal to the Celts; and there is Celtic blood in a good many who are ofmostly Nordic stock. But the British Empire and the American Republicwere founded and are led more by Anglo-Normans than even Anglo-Normansknow. For the Anglo-Normans include not only the English and theirdescendants overseas but many who are called Scotch and Irish, because, though of Anglo-Norman blood, they or their forefathers were born inScotland or Ireland. Soldiers and sailors like Wellington, Kitchener, and Beatty are as Anglo-Norman by descent as Marlborough, Nelson, andDrake, though all three were born in Ireland. They are no more IrishCelts than the English-speaking people in the Province of Quebec areFrench-Canadians. They might have been as good or better if born IrishCelts or French-Canadians. But that is not the point. The point issimply a fact without which we cannot understand our history; and it isthis: that, for all we owe to other folk and other things than fleets, our sea-girt British Empire was chiefly won, and still is chiefly kept, by warriors of the sea-borne "Hardy-Norseman" breed. 

THE SEA-FARER

 Desire in my heart ever urges my spirit to wander, To seek out the home of the stranger in lands afar off. There is no one that dwells on earth so exalted in mind, So large in his bounty, nor yet of such vigorous youth, Nor so daring in deeds, nor to whom his liege lord is so kind, But that he has always a longing, a sea-faring passion For what the Lord God shall bestow, be it honour or death. No heart for the harp has he, nor for acceptance of treasure, No pleasure has he in a wife, no delight in the world, Nor in aught save the roll of the billows; but always a longing, A yearning uneasiness hastens him on to the sea. 

_Anonymous_. 

_Translated from the Anglo-Saxon_. 

CHAPTER VI

THE IMPERIAL NORMAN

(1066-1451)

The Celts had been little more than a jumble of many different tribesbefore the Romans came. The Romans had ruled England and the south ofScotland as a single country. But when they left it the Celts had letit fall to pieces again. The Norsemen tried, time after time, to makeone United Kingdom; but they never quite succeeded for more than a fewyears. They had to wait for the empire-building Normans to teach themhow to make, first, a kingdom and then an empire that would last. 

Yet Offa, Edgar, and Canute went far towards making the first step bytrying to raise a Royal Navy strong enough to command at least theEnglish sea. Offa, king of Mercia or Middle England (757-796) had nosooner fought his way outwards to a sure foothold on the coast than hebegan building a fleet so strong that even the great EmperorCharlemagne, though ruling the half of Europe, treated him on equalterms. Here is Offa's good advice to all future kings of England: "Hewho would be safe on land must be supreme at sea. " Alfred the Great(871-901) was more likely to have been thinking of the navy than ofanything else when, as a young man hiding from the Danes, he forgot toturn the cakes which the housewife had left him to watch. Anyhow hetried the true way to stop the Danes, by attacking them before theylanded, and he caused ships of a new and better kind to be built forthe fleet. Edgar (959-975) used to go round Great Britain every yearinspecting the three different fleets into which his navy was divided;one off the east of England, another off the north of Scotland, and thethird in the Irish Sea. It is said that he was once rowed at Chesteron the River Dee by no less than eight kings, which showed that he wasfollowing Offa's advice by making his navy supreme over all theneighbouring coasts of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. 

After Edgar's death the Danes held command of the sea. They formed thelast fierce wave of hardy Norsemen to break in fury on the Englishshore and leave descendants who are seamen to the present day. Nelson, greatest of all naval commanders, came from Norfolk, where Danish bloodis strongest. Most of the fishermen on the east coast of Great Britainare of partly Danish descent; and no one served more faithfully throughthe Great War than these men did against the submarines and mines. King George V, whose mother is a Dane, and who is himself a first-rateseaman, must have felt a thrill of ancestral pride in pinning V. C. 'sover their undaunted hearts. Fifty years before the Norman conquestCanute the Dane became sole king of England. He had been chosen Kingof Denmark by the Danish Fleet. But he was true to England as well;and in 1028, when he conquered Norway, he had fifty English vesselswith him. 

Meanwhile another great Norseman, Leif Ericsson, seems to havediscovered America at the end of the tenth century: that is, he was aslong before Columbus as Columbus was before our own day. In any caseNorsemen settled in Iceland and discovered Greenland; so it may even bethat the "White Eskimos" found by the Canadian Arctic Expedition of1913 were the descendants of Vikings lost a thousand years ago. TheSaga of Eric the Red tells how Leif Ericsson found three new countriesin the Western World--Helluland, Markland, and Vinland. As two ofthese must have been Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which Cabotdiscovered with his English crew in 1497, it is certain that Canada wasseen first either by Norsemen or by their descendants. 

The Norse discovery of America cannot be certainly proved like thediscoveries made by Cabot and Columbus. But one proved fact telling infavour of the Norsemen is that they were the only people who builtvessels "fit to go foreign" a thousand years ago. All other peoplehugged the shore for centuries to come. The Norsemen feared not anysea. 

Some years ago a Viking (or Warrior's) ship, as old as those used byEricsson, was found in the "King's Mound" in Gokstad, Southern Norway. Seated in her was the skeleton of the Viking Chief who, as the customused to be, was buried in his floating home. He must have stood wellover six foot three and been immensely strong, judging by his deepchest, broad shoulders, and long arms fit to cleave a foeman at asingle stroke. This Viking vessel is so well shaped to stand thebiggest waves, and yet slip through the water with the greatest ease, that she could be used as a model now. She has thirty-two oars and abig square sail on a mast, which, like the one in the old Egyptian boatwe were talking of in Chapter II, could be quickly raised or lowered. If she had only had proper sails and rigging she could have tackedagainst the wind. But, as we shall soon see, the art of tacking wasnot invented till five centuries later; though then it was done by anEnglish descendant of the Vikings. 

Eighty foot long and sixteen in the beam, this Viking vessel must havelooked the real thing as she scudded before a following wind or dashedahead when her thirty-two oars were swept through the water bysixty-four pairs of the strongest arms on earth. Her figure-head hasgone; but she probably had a fierce dragon over the bows, just ready tostrike. Her sides were hung with glittering shields; and when merelandsmen saw a Viking fleet draw near, the oars go in, the swords comeout, and Vikings leap ashore--no wonder they shivered in their shoes!

It was in this way that the Normans first arrived in Normandy and madea home there in spite of Franks and Gauls, just as the Danes madeEnglish homes in spite of Celts and Anglo-Saxons. There was no navy tooppose them. Neither was there any fleet to oppose William theConqueror in 1066, when he crossed the Channel to seize the EnglishCrown. Harold of England had no great fleet in any case; and what hehad was off the Yorkshire coast, where his brother had come to claimthe Crown, backed by the King of Norway. The Battle of Hastings, whichmade William king of England, was therefore a land battle only. Butthe fact that William had a fleet in the Channel, while Harold had not, gave William the usual advantage in the campaign. From that day tothis England has never been invaded; and for the best of allreasons--because no enemy could ever safely pass her fleet. 

[Illustration: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR'S TRANSPORTS]

The Normans at last gave England what none of her other Norsemen gaveher, the power of becoming the head and heart of the future BritishEmpire. The Celts, Danes, Jutes, and Anglo-Saxons had been fusingtogether the iron of their natures to make one strong, united Britishrace. The Normans changed this iron into steel: well tempered, stronger than iron could be, and splendidly fit for all the great workof imperial statesmen as well as for that of warriors by land and sea. 

The Normans were not so great in numbers. But they were very great inleadership. They were a race of rulers. Picked men of Nordic stock tostart with, they had learnt the best that France could teach them:Roman law and order and the art of founding empires, Frankish love offreedom, a touch of Celtic wit, and the new French civilization. Theywent all over seaboard Europe, conquerors and leaders wherever theywent. But nowhere did they set their mark so firmly and so lastinglyas in the British Isles. They not only conquered and became leadersamong their fellow-Norsemen but they went through most of CelticScotland, Ireland, and Wales, founding many a family whose descendantshave helped to make the Empire what it is. 

William the Conqueror built a fleet as soon as he could; for only a fewof the vessels he brought over from Normandy were of any use asmen-of-war. But there were no great battles on the water till the oneoff the South Foreland more than a century after his death. He and thekings after him always had to keep their weather eye open for Danes andother rovers of the sea as well as for the navy of the kings of France. But, except when Henry II went to Ireland in 1171, there was no greatexpedition requiring a large fleet. Strongbow and other ambitiousnobles had then begun conquering parts of Ireland on their own account. So Henry recalled his Englishmen, lest they should go too far withouthim, and held a court at which they promised to give him, as theirliege overlord, all the conquests they either had made or might make. Henry, who understood the value of sea-power, at once granted themwhatever they could conquer, except the seaports, which he would keepfor the Crown. 

When Henry died Richard the Lion-Hearted and Philip Augustus of Franceagreed to join in a great Crusade. Zeal for the Christian religion andlove of adventure together drew vast numbers of Crusaders to the HolyLand. But sea-power also had a great deal to do with the Crusades. The Saracens, already strong at sea in the East, were growing so muchstronger that Western statesmen thought it high time to check them, lest their fleets should command the whole Mediterranean and perhapsthe seas beyond. 

In 1190 Richard joined his fleet at Messina, in Sicily, where rovingNormans were of course to be found as leaders in peace and war. Vinesauf the historian, who was what we should now call a warcorrespondent, wrote a glowing account of the scene. "As soon as thepeople heard of his arrival they rushed in crowds to the shore tobehold the glorious King of England, and saw the sea covered withinnumerable galleys. And the sound of trumpets from afar, with thesharper blasts of clarions, resounded in their ears. And they saw thegalleys rowing near the land, adorned and furnished with all kinds ofarms, with countless pennons floating in the breeze, ensigns at thetops of lances, the beaks of the galleys beautified by painting, andglittering shields hanging from the prows. The sea looked as if it wasboiling from the vast number of oar blades in it. The trumpets grewalmost deafening. And each arrival was greeted with bursts ofcheering. Then our splendid King stood up on a prow higher than allthe rest, with a gorgeously dressed staff of warriors about him, andsurveyed the scene with pleasure. After this he landed, beautifullydressed, and showed himself graciously to all who approached him. "

The whole English fleet numbered about two hundred and thirty vessels, with stores for a year and money enough for longer still. A southerlygale made nearly everybody sea-sick; for the Italian rowers in thegalleys were little better as seamen than the soldiers were, being usedto calm waters. Some vessels were wrecked on the rocks of Cyprus, whentheir crews were robbed by the king there. This roused theLion-Hearted, who headed a landing party which soon brought KingComnenus to his senses. Vinesauf wrote to say that when Comnenus suedfor peace Richard was mounted on a splendid Spanish war-horse anddressed in a red silk tunic embroidered with gold. Red seems to havebeen a favourite English war colour from very early times. The red St. George's Cross on a white field was flown from the masthead by thecommander-in-chief of the fleet, just as it is today. On another flagalways used aboard ship three British lions were displayed. 

After putting Comnenus into silver chains and shutting him up in acastle Richard set two governors over Cyprus, which thus became thefirst Eastern possession of the British Crown. Seven centuries laterit again came into British hands, this time to stay. Richard thensailed for the siege of Acre in Palestine. But on the way he met aTurkish ship of such enormous size that she simply took Vinesauf'sbreath away. No one thought that any ship so big had ever been builtbefore, "unless it might be Noah's Ark", Richard had a hundred galleys. The Turkish ship was quite alone; but she was a tough nut to crack, forall that. She was said to have had fifteen hundred men aboard, whichmight be true, as soldiers being rushed over for the defence of Acrewere probably packed like herrings in a barrel. As this was the firstEnglish sea fight in the Crusades, and the first in which a King of allEngland fought, the date should be set down: the 7th of June, 1191. 

The Turk was a very stoutly built vessel, high out of the water andwith three tall masts, each provided with a fighting top from whichstones and jars of Greek fire could be hurled down on the galleys. Shealso had "two hundred most deadly serpents, prepared for killingChristians. " Altogether, she seems to have been about as devilish acraft as even Germans could invent. As she showed no colours Richardhailed her, when she said she was a French ship bound for Acre. But asno one on board could speak French he sent a galley to test her. Assoon as the Englishmen went near enough the Turks threw Greek fire onthem. Then Richard called out: "Follow me and take her! If sheescapes you lose my love for ever. If you take her, all that is in herwill be yours. " But when the galleys swarmed round her she beat themoff with deadly showers of arrows and Greek fire. There was a pause, and the galleys seemed less anxious to close again. Then Richardroared out: "If this ship escapes every one of you men will be hanged!"After this some men jumped overboard with tackle which they made fastto the Turkish rudder. They and others then climbed up her sides, having made ropes fast with grapnels. A furious slashing and stabbingfollowed on deck. The Turks below swarmed up and drove the Englishoverboard. Nothing daunted, Richard prepared to ram her. Forming uphis best galleys in line-abreast he urged the rowers to their utmostspeed. With a terrific rending crash the deadly galley beaks bit home. The Turk was stove in so badly that she listed over and sank like astone. It is a pity that we do not know her name. For she foughtoverwhelming numbers with a dauntless courage that nothing couldsurpass. As she was the kind of ship then called a "dromon" she mightbe best remembered as "the dauntless dromon. "

King John, who followed Richard on the throne of England, should beknown as John the Unjust. He was hated in Normandy, which PhilipAugustus of France took from him in 1204. He was hated in England, where the English lords forced him to sign Magna Charta in 1215. Falseto his word, he had no sooner signed it than he began plotting to getback the power he had so shamefully misused; and the working out ofthis plot brought on the first great sea fight with the French. 

Looking out for a better king the lords chose Prince Louis of France, who landed in England next year and met them in London. But Johnsuddenly died. His son, Henry III, was only nine. So England wasruled by William Marshal, the great Earl of Pembroke, one of the ablestpatriots who ever lived. Once John was out of the way the Englishlords who had wrung from him the great charter of English libertiesbecame very suspicious of Louis and the French. A French army wasbesieging Lincoln in 1217, helped by the English followers of Louis, when the Earl Marshal, as Pembroke is called, caught this Anglo-Frenchforce between his own army and the garrison, who joined the attack, andutterly defeated it in a battle the people called the Fair of Lincoln. Louis, who had been besieging Dover, at once sent to France for anotherarmy. But this brought on the battle of the South Foreland, which wasthe ruin of his hopes. 

The French commander was Eustace the Monk, a Flemish hireling who hadfought first for John and then for Louis. He was good at changingsides, having changed from monk to pirate because it paid him better, and having since been always up for sale to whichever side would payhim best. But he was bold and skilful; he had a strong fleet; and bothhe and his followers were very keen to help Louis, who had promisedthem the spoils of England if they won. Luckily for England thisdanger brought forth her first great sea commander, Hubert de Burgh:let his name be long remembered. Hubert had stood out against Louis asfirmly as he had against John, and as firmly as he was again to faceanother bad king, when Henry III tried to follow John's example. Hubert had refused to let Louis into Dover Castle. He had kept him outduring the siege that followed. And he was now holding this key to theEnglish Channel with the same skill and courage as was shown by thefamous Dover Patrol throughout the war against the Germans. 

Hubert saw at once that the best way to defend England from invasionwas to defeat the enemy at sea by sailing out to meet him. This is astrue today as ever. The best possible way of defending yourself alwaysis to destroy the enemy's means of destroying you; and, with us of theBritish Empire, the only sure way to begin is to smash the enemy'sfleet or, if it hides in port, blockade it. Hubert, of course, hadtrouble to persuade even the patriotic nobles that his own way was theright one; for, just as at the present day, most people knew nothing ofthe sea. But the men of the Cinque Ports, the five great seaports onthe south-east coast of England, did know whereof they spoke when theyanswered Hubert's call: "If this tyrant Eustace lands he will lay thecountry waste. Let us therefore meet him while he is at sea. "

Hubert's English fleet of forty ships sailed from Dover on the 24th ofAugust, 1217, and steered towards Calais; for the wind wassouth-south-east and Hubert wished to keep the weather gage. For sixhundred years to come, (that is, till, after Trafalgar, sails gave wayto steam), the sea commanders who fought to win by bold attack alwaystried to keep the weather gage. This means that they kept on thewindward side of the enemy, which gave them a great advantage, as theycould then choose their own time for attacking and the best weak spotto attack, while the enemy, having the wind ahead, could not move halfso fast, except when running away. Hubert de Burgh was the firstcommander who understood all about the weather gage and how to get it. Even the clever Eustace was taken in, for he said, "I know these clevervillains want to plunder Calais. But the people there are ready forthem. " So he held his course to the Forelands, meaning to round intothe mouth of Thames and make for London. 

Then Hubert bore down. His fleet was the smaller; but as he had theweather gage he succeeded in smashing up the French rear before therest could help it. As each English vessel ranged alongside it threwgrappling irons into the enemy, who were thus held fast. The Englisharchers hailed a storm of well aimed arrows on the French decks, whichwere densely crowded by the soldiers Eustace was taking over to conquerEngland. Then the English boarded, blinding the nearest French withlime, cutting their rigging to make their vessels helpless, anddefeating the crews with great slaughter. Eustace, having lost theweather gage, with which he had started out that morning, could onlybring his fleet into action bit by bit. Hubert's whole fleet foughttogether and won a perfect victory. 

More than a century later the unhappy Hundred Years War (1336-1431)broke out. All the countries of Western Europe took a hand in it atone time or another. Scotland, which was a sort of sub-kingdom underthe King of England, sided with France because she wished to beindependent of England, while the smaller countries on the easternfrontier of France sided with England because they were afraid ofFrance. But the two great opponents were always France and England. The Kings of England had come from Normandy and other parts of what isnow France and what then were fiefs of the Crown of France, as Scotlandwas a fief of the Crown of England. They therefore took as muchinterest in what they held in France as in their own out-and-outKingdom of England. Moreover, they not only wanted to keep what theyhad in France but to make it as independent of the French King as theScotch King wanted to make Scotland independent of them. 

In the end the best thing happened; for it was best to have bothkingdoms completed in the way laid out by Nature: France, a greatland-power, with a race of soldiers, having all that is France now; andEngland, the great sea-power, with a race of sailors, becoming one ofthe countries that now make up the United Kingdom of the British Isles. But it took a hundred years to get the English out of France, and muchlonger still to bring all parts of the British Isles under a singleking. 

In the fourteenth century the population of France, including all theFrench possessions of the English Crown, was four times the populationof England. One would suppose that the French could easily have driventhe English out of every part of France and have carried the war intoEngland, as the Romans carried their war into Carthage. But Englishsea-power made all the difference. Sea-power not only kept Frenchmenout of England but it helped Englishmen to stay in France and win manya battle there as well. Most of the time the English fleet held thecommand of the sea along the French as well as along the English coast. So the English armies enjoyed the immense advantage of sea-transportover land-transport, whenever men, arms, horses, stores, food, andwhatever else their armies needed could be moved by water, while theFrench were moving their own supplies by land with more than ten timesas much trouble and delay. 

Another and most important point about the Hundred Years War is this:that it does not stand alone in history, but is only the first of thetwo very different kinds of Hundred Years War which France and Englandhave fought out. The first Hundred Years War was fought to decide theabsolute possession of all the lands where Frenchmen lived; and France, most happily, came out victorious. The second Hundred Years War(1689-1815) was fought to decide the command of the sea; and Englandwon. When we reach this second Hundred Years War, and more especiallywhen we reach that part of it which was directed by the mighty Pitt, weshall understand it as the war which made the British Empire of today. 

The first big battle of the first Hundred Years War was fought in 1340between the French and English fleets at Sluys, a little seaport up ariver in the western corner of what is Holland now. King Philip ofFrance had brought together all the ships he could, not only Frenchones but Flemish, with hired war galleys and their soldiers and slaveoarsmen from Genoa and elsewhere. But, instead of using this fleet toattack the English, and so clear the way for an invasion of England, helet it lie alongside the mudbanks of Sluys. Edward III, the futurevictor of Cressy, Poitiers, and Winchelsea, did not take long to seizeso good a chance. The French fleet was placed as if on purpose toensure its own defeat; for it lay at anchor in three divisions, eachdivision with all the vessels lashed together, and the whole three inone line with a flank to the sea. The English officers who had landedto look at it saw at once that if this flank was properly attacked itcould be smashed in on the next bit of the line, and that on the next, and so on, before the remaining bits could come to the rescue. On theturn of the tide Edward swooped down with his best ships, knocked thisflank to pieces, and then went on till two divisions had been rolled upin complete confusion. Then the ebb-tide set out to sea; and theGenoese of the third division mostly got away. 

Ten years later (1350) the English for the first time fought a Spanishfleet and won a battle sometimes called Winchelsea and sometimesEspagnols-sur-mer or Spaniards-on-the-sea. Edward III had swornvengeance against the Basque traders from the coast of Spain who hadplundered the English vessels coming in from France. So he made readyto attack the Spanish Basques sailing home from Antwerp, where they hadhired Flemings and others to join the fray. This time each fleet waseager to attack the other; and a battle royal followed. On the fineafternoon of the 28th of August King Edward sat on the deck of hisflagship listening to Sir John Chandos, who was singing while theminstrels played. Beside him stood his eldest son, the famous BlackPrince, then twenty years of age, and his youngest son, John of Gaunt, then only ten. Suddenly the lookout called down from the tops: "Sire, I see one, two, three, four--I see so many, so help me God, I cannotcount them. " Then the King called for his helmet and for wine, withwhich he and his knights drank to each others' health and to theirjoint success in the coming battle. Queen Philippa and her ladiesmeanwhile went into Winchelsea Abbey to pray for victory, now and thenstealing out to see how their fleet was getting on. 

The Spaniards made a brave show. Their fighting tops (like littlebowl-shaped forts high up the masts) glinted with armed men. Theirsoldiers stood in gleaming armour on the decks. Long narrow flags gaywith coloured crests fluttered in the breeze. The English, too, made abrave show of flags and armoured men. They had a few more vessels thanthe Spaniards, but of a rather smaller kind, so the two fleets werenearly even. The King steered for the Spaniards; though not so as tomeet them end-for-end but at an angle. The two flagships met with aterrific crash; and the crowded main-top of the Spaniard, snapping fromoff the mast, went splash into the sea, carrying its little garrisondown with all their warlike gear. The charging ships rebounded for amoment, and then ground against each others' sides, wrecked eachothers' rigging, and began the fight with showers of arrows, batteringstones from aloft, and wildfire flying to and fro. The Spanishflagship was the bigger of the two, more stoutly built, and with moreway on when they met; so she forged ahead a good deal damaged, whilethe King's ship wallowed after, leaking like a sieve. The tremendousshock of the collision had opened every seam in her hull and she beganto sink. The King still wanted to follow the Spanish flagship; but hissailors, knowing this was now impossible, said: "No, Sire, your Majestycan not catch her; but we can catch another. " With that they laidaboard the next one, which the king took just in time, for his own shipsank a moment after. 

The Black Prince had the same good luck, just clearing the enemy's deckbefore his own ship sank. Strange to say, the same thing happened toRobert of Namur, a Flemish friend of Edward's, whose vessel, grappledby a bigger enemy, was sinking under him as the two were drifting sideby side, when Hanekin, an officer of Robert's, climbed into the Spanishvessel by some entangled rigging and cut the ropes which held theSpanish sails. Down came the sails with a run, flopping about theSpaniards' heads; and before the confusion could be put right Robertwas over the side with his men-at-arms, cutting down every Spaniard whostruggled out of the mess. The Basques and Spaniards fought mostbravely. But the chief reason why they were beaten hand-to-hand wasbecause the English archers, trained to shooting from their boyhood up, had killed and wounded so many of them before the vessels closed. 

The English won a great victory. But it was by no means complete, partly because the Spanish fleet was too strong to be finished off, andpartly because the English and their Flemish friends wanted to get homewith their booty. Time out of mind, and for at least three centuriesto come, fleets were mostly made up of vessels only brought togetherfor each battle or campaign; and even the King's vessels were expectedto make what they could out of loot. 

With the sea roads open to the English and mostly closed to the Frenchand Scots the English armies did as well on land as the navy did atsea. Four years before this first great battle with the Spaniards theEnglish armies had won from the French at Cressy and from the Scots atNeville's Cross. Six years after the Spanish fight they won from theFrench again at Poitiers. But in 1374 Edward III, worn out by tryingto hold his lands in France, had been forced to neglect his navy; whileJean de Vienne, founder of the regular French Navy, was buildingfirst-class men-of-war at Rouen, where, five hundred years later, aBritish base was formed to supply the British army during the Great War. 

With Shakespeare's kingly hero, Henry V, the fortunes of the Englisharmies in France revived. In 1415 he won a great battle at Agincourt, a place, like Cressy, within a day's march of his ships in the Channel. Harfleur, at the mouth of the Seine, had been Henry's base for theAgincourt campaign. So the French were very keen to get it back, whilethe English were equally keen to keep it. Henry sent over a greatfleet under the Duke of Bedford. The French, though their fleet wasthe smaller of the two, attacked with the utmost gallantry, but werebeaten back with great loss. Their Genoese hirelings fought well atthe beginning, but made off towards the end. In 1417 Henry himself wasback in France with his army. But he knew what sea-power meant, andhow foolish it was to land without making sure that the seaways werequite safe behind him. So he first sent a fleet to make sure, and thenhe crossed his army, which now had a safe "line of communication, "through its base in France, with its great home base in England. 

Henry V was not, of course, the only man in England who then understoodsea-power. For in 1416, exactly five hundred years before Jellicoe'svictory of Jutland, Henry's Parliament passed a resolution in which youstill can read these words: "that the Navy is the chief support of thewealth, the business, and the whole prosperity of England. " Some yearslater Hungerford, one of Henry's admirals, wrote a _Book of EnglishPolicy_, "exhorting all England to keep the sea" and explaining whatEdward III had meant by stamping a ship on the gold coins callednobles: "Four things our noble showeth unto me: King, ship, and sword, and power of the sea. " These are themselves but repetitions of Offa'sgood advice, given more than six centuries earlier: "He who would besafe on land must be supreme at sea. " And all show the same kind offirst-rate sea-sense that is shown by the "Articles of War" which arestill read out to every crew in the Navy. The Preamble or preface tothese Articles really comes to this: "It is upon the Navy that, underthe providence of God, the wealth, prosperity, and peace of the BritishEmpire chiefly depend. "

Between the death of Henry V in 1422 and the accession of Henry VII in1485 there was a dreary time on land and sea. The King of England lostthe last of his possessions in the land of France. Only the ChannelIslands remained British, as they do still. At home the Normans hadsettled down with the descendants of the other Norsemen to form onepeople, the Anglo-Norman people of today, the leading race within theBritish Empire and, to a less extent, within the United States. ButEngland was torn in two by the Wars of the Roses, in which the greatlords and their followers fought about the succession to the throne, each party wanting to have a king of its own choice. For the mostpart, however, the towns and seaports kept out of these selfish partywars and attended to their growing business instead. And when HenryVII united both the warring parties, and these with the rest ofEngland, he helped to lay the sure foundations of the future BritishEmpire. 

CHAPTER VII

KING OF THE ENGLISH SEA

(1545)

England needed good pilots to take the ship of state safely through thetroubled waters of the wonderful sixteenth century, and she found themin the three great Royal Tudors: Henry VII (1485-1509), Henry VIII(1509-1547), and Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603). All three fosteredEnglish sea-power, both for trade and war, and helped to start themodern Royal Navy on a career of world-wide victory such as no otherfighting service has ever equalled, not even the Roman Army in thepalmy days of Rome. It was a happy thought that gave the name of QueenElizabeth to the flagship on board of which the BritishCommander-in-chief received the surrender of the German Fleet. Tengenerations had passed away between this surrender in 1918 and thedefeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. But the British Royal Navy wasstill the same: in sea-sense, spirit, training, and surpassing skill. 

Henry VII was himself an oversea trader, and a very good one too. Hebuilt ships and let them out to traders at a handsome profit forhimself besides trading with them on his own account. But he was neverso foolish as to think that peaceful trade could go on without afighting navy to protect it. So he built men-of-war; though he usedthese for trade as well. Men-of-war built specially for fighting wereof course much better in a battle than any mere merchantman could be. But in those days, and for some time after, merchantmen went about wellarmed and often joined the king's ships of the Royal Navy during war, as many of them did against the Germans in our own day. 

English oversea trade was carried on with the whole of Europe, withAsia Minor, and with the North of Africa. Canyng, a merchant prince ofBristol, employed a hundred shipwrights and eight hundred seamen. Hesent his ships to Iceland, the Baltic, and all through theMediterranean. But the London merchants were more important still; andthe king was the most important man of all. He had his watchful eye onthe fishing fleet of Iceland, which was then as important as the fleetof Newfoundland became later on. He watched the Baltic trade in timberand the Flanders trade in wool. He watched the Hansa Towns of northernGermany, then second only to Venice itself as the greatest tradingcentre of the world. And he had his English consuls in Italy as earlyas 1485, the first year of his reign. 

One day Columbus sent his brother to see if the king would help him tofind the New World. But Henry VII was a man who looked long andcautiously before he leaped; and even then he only leaped when he sawwhere he would land. So Columbus went to Ferdinand and Isabella ofSpain, who sent him out to discover America in 1492, the same year thatthey conquered the last Eastern possession in Western Europe, theMoorish Kingdom of Grenada, which thenceforth became a province ofSpain. Five years later Henry sent John Cabot out from Bristol in thelittle _Matthew_ with only eighteen men "to sayle to all Partes, Countreys, and Seas, of the East, of the West, and of the North; toseeke out, discover, and finde, whatsoever Iles, Countreyes, Regions, or Provinces, of the Heathennes and Infidelles" and "to set up Ourbanners and Ensigns in every village, towne, castel, yle, or mainelande, of them newly found. " Cabot discovered Canada by reaching CapeBreton in 1497, three years before Columbus himself saw any part of themainland. But as he found nobody there, not even "Heathenries andInfidelles, " much less "villages, castels, and townes, " as he lostmoney by his venture and could not pay the king the promised "royalty"of twenty per cent. , we need not laugh too loudly over what the kinggave him: "To Hym that founde the new Isle--10 pounds, " which was worthmore than a thousand dollars would be now. Cabot went again and hisson Sebastian after him; but there was no money to be made in thisventure. True, Sebastian said the fish off Newfoundland were so thickthat he could hardly force his vessels through the water. But fishstories and travellers' tales were as hard to believe then as now; andthe English thought America was worth very little after all. Indeed, the general opinion in Europe was that America was more of a nuisancethan anything else, because it seemed to block the way to the GoldenEast. Once people were persuaded that the world was round they wantedto find a short cut to Cathay, the land of fabled wealth in silks andspices, gold and jewels; and they expected to find it by sailing dueWest till they reached the Far East. So, finding instead that Americahad no such riches on its own shores and that these shores spoilt theshort cut to Cathay, and knowing that fish were plentiful in Europe, most people never bothered their heads about America for another fiftyyears. 

[Illustrations: Eddystone Lighthouse, 1699. The first structure ofstone and timber. Built for Trinity House by Winstanley and swept awayin a storm. Eddystone Lighthouse, 1882. The fourth and presentstructure, erected by Sir J. N. Douglass for Trinity House. ]

We shall soon see what wonderful changes took place when the Old Worldat last discovered the riches of the New, and all the Europeansea-powers began fighting for the best places they could find there. 

When Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509 his first thought was forthe "Broade Ditch, " as he called the English Channel. In 1546, only alittle before he died, he appointed a Navy Board, which answered itspurpose so well that it looked after the pay, food, stores, docks, andships of the Royal Navy for nearly three hundred years; and then becamepart of the Admiralty, which now does everything for the Navy that canbe done from the land. In one word, this Board took care of everythingexcept the fighting part of the Navy's work. That part was under theLord High Admiral or a body of men appointed to act for him. This bodystill exists; and the old Board of Henry VIII works with it underdifferent names. One branch of the Admiralty, as the whole managementis now called, supplies the other with the means to fight. This otherorders everything connected with the fighting fleets. The fightingfleets themselves are then left to do the best they can. 

Henry never forgot for a moment that England could not live a day ifshe was not a mighty sea-power. He improved the dockyards founded byhis father at Deptford and Portsmouth. He founded Trinity House, whichstill examines pilots and looks after the lights and buoys all roundthe British Isles. He put down pirates with a strong hand. And hebrought the best ship-builders he could get from Italy, where thescientific part of shipbuilding and navigation was then the best in theworld, because the trade routes of Asia, Africa, and Europe mostly metat Venice. But he always kept his eyes open for good men at home; andin one of his own shipbuilders, Fletcher of Rye, he found a man who didmore than anybody else to make the vastly important change from theancient age of rowing fleets to the modern age of sailing ones. 

From the time when the first bit of a wild beast's skin was hoisted bysome pre-historic savage, thousands and thousands of years ago, nobodyhad learnt how to tack, that is, to sail against the wind. The onlyway any ship could go at all well was with the wind, that is, with thewind blowing from behind. So long as men had nothing but a single"wind-bag" of skin or cloth the best wind was a "lubber's wind, " thatis, a wind from straight behind. When more and better sails were useda lubber's wind was not the best because one sail would stop the windfrom reaching another one in front of it. The best wind then, as eversince, was a "quartering wind, " that is, a wind blowing on a vessel'squarter, half way between her stern and the middle of her side. Shipswith better keels, sails, and shape of hull might have sailed with a"soldier's wind, " that is, a wind blowing straight against the ship'sside, at right angles to her course. But they must have "made leeway"by going sideways too. This wind on the beam was called a soldier'swind because it made equally plain sailing out and back again, and sodid not bother landsmen with a lot of words and things they could notunderstand when ships tacked against head winds. 

Who first "tacked ship" is more than we can say. But many generationsof seamen must have wished they knew how to sail towards a place fromwhich the wind was blowing. Tacking probably came bit by bit, likeother new inventions. But Fletcher of Rye, whom Henry alwaysencouraged, seems to have been the first man who really learnt how tosail against the wind. He did this by tacking (that is, zigzagging)against it with sails trimmed fore and aft. In this way the sails, asit were, slide against the wind at an angle and move the ship ahead, first to one side of the straight line towards the place she wants toreach, and then, after turning her head, to the other. It was in 1539that Fletcher made his trial trip, to the great amazement of theshipping in the Channel. Thus by 1545, that year of naval changes, thenew sailing age had certainly begun to live and the old rowing age hadcertainly begun to die. The invention of tacking made almost as greata change as steam made three hundred years later; for it shortenedvoyages from months to weeks, as steam afterwards shortened them fromweeks to days. Why did Jacques Cartier take months to make voyagesfrom Europe and up the St. Lawrence when Champlain made them in weeks?Because Champlain could tack and Jacques Cartier could not. Columbus, Cabot, and Cartier could no more zigzag towards a place from which thewind was blowing dead against them than could the ships of Hiram, Kingof Tyre, who brought so many goods by sea for Solomon. But Champlain, who lived a century later, did know how to tack the _Don de Dieu_against the prevailing south-west winds of the St. Lawrence; and thiswas one reason why he made a voyage from the Seine to the Saguenay inonly eighteen days, a voyage that remained the Canadian record forninety years to come. 

The year 1545 is coupled with the title "King of the English Sea"because the fleet which Henry VIII then had at Portsmouth was the firstfleet in the world that showed any promise of being "fit to go foreign"and fight a battle out at sea with broadside guns and under sail. 

True, it had some rowing galleys, like those of other old-fashionedfleets; and its sailing men-of-war were nothing much to boast of in theway of handiness or even safety. The _Mary Rose_, which Henry'sadmiral, Sir Edward Howard, had described thirty years before as "theflower of all the ships that ever sailed, " was built with lowerportholes only sixteen inches above the water line. So when her crewforgot to close these ports, and she listed over while going about(that is, while making a turn to bring the wind on the other side), thewater rushed in and heeled her over still more. Then the guns on herupper side, which had not been lashed, slid across her steeply slopingdecks bang into those on the lower side, whereupon the whole lotcrashed through the ports or stove her side, so that she filled andsank with nearly everyone on board. 

No, the Royal Navy of 1545 was very far from being perfect either inships or men. But it had made a beginning towards fighting withbroadsides under sail; and this momentous change was soon to be so welldeveloped under Drake as to put English sea-power a century ahead ofall its rivals in the race for oversea dominion both in the Old Worldand the New. A rowing galley, with its platform crowded by soldierswaiting to board had no chance against a sailing ship which could fireall the guns of her broadsides at a safe distance. Nor had the otherforeign men-of-war a much better chance, because they too were crowdedwith soldiers, carried only a few light guns, and were far less handythan the English vessels under sail. They were, in fact, nothing verymuch better than armed transports full of soldiers, who were dangerousenough when boarding took place, but who were mere targets for theEnglish guns when kept at arm's length. 

The actual Portsmouth campaign of 1545 was more like a sham battle thana real one; though the French fleet came right over to England and noone can doubt French bravery. Perhaps the best explanation is the onegiven by Blaise de Montluc, one of the French admirals: "Our businessis rather on the land than on the water, where I do not know of anygreat battles that we have ever won. " Henry VIII had seized Boulognethe year before, on which Francis I (Jacques Cartier's king) swore hewould clear the Channel of the English, who also held Calais. Heraised a very big fleet, partly by hiring Italian galleys, and sent itover to the Isle of Wight. There it advanced and retired through thesummer, never risking a pitched battle with the English, who, truth totell, did not themselves show much more enterprise. 

Sickness raged in both fleets. Neither wished to risk its all on asingle chance unless that chance was a very tempting one. The Frenchfleet was a good deal the bigger of the two; and Lisle, the Englishcommander-in-chief, was too cautious to attack it while it remained inone body. When the French were raiding the coast Lisle's hopes ranhigh. "If we chance to meet with them, " he wrote, "divided as theyshould seem to be, we shall have some sport with them. " But the Frenchkept together and at last retired in good order. That was the queerend of the last war between those two mighty monarchs, Francis I andHenry VIII. But both kings were then nearing death; both were veryshort of money; and both they and their people were anxious for peace. Thus ended the Navy's part of 1545. 

But three other events of this same year, all connected with Englishsea-power, remain to be noted down. First, Drake, the hero of thecoming Spanish War, was born at Crowndale, by Tavistock, in Devon. Secondly, the mines of Potosi in South America suddenly roused the OldWorld to the riches of the New. And, thirdly, the words of theNational Anthem were, so to say, born on board the Portsmouth fleet, where the "Sailing Orders" ended thus:--"The Watchword in the Nightshall be, 'God save King Henrye!' The other shall answer, 'Long toraign over Us!'" The National Anthems of all the other Empires, Kingdoms, and Republics in the world have come from their armies andthe land. Our own springs from the Royal Navy and the sea. 

 This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise; This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. 

 _Shakespeare_. _King Richard II, Act II, Scene I_. 

 TO SEA

 To sea, to sea! the calm is o'er; The wanton water leaps in sport, And rattles down the pebbly shore; The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort, And unseen Mermaids' pearly song Comes bubbling up, the weeds among. Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar; To sea, to sea! the calm is o'er. 

 To sea, to sea! our wide-winged bark Shall billowy cleave its sunny way, And with its shadow, fleet and dark, Break the caved Tritons' azure day, Like mighty eagle soaring light O'er antelopes on Alpine height. The anchor heaves, the ship swings free, The sails swell full: To sea, to sea! --_Thomas Lovell Beddoes_. 

 A HYMN IN PRAISE OF NEPTUNE

 Of Neptune's empire let us sing, At whose command the waves obey; To whom the rivers tribute pay, Down the high mountains sliding: To whom the scaly nation yields Homage for the crystal fields Wherein they dwell: And every sea-god pays a gem Yearly out of his wat'ry cell To deck great Neptune's diadem. 

 The Tritons dancing in a ring Before his palace gates do make The water with their echoes quake, Like the great thunder sounding: The sea-nymphs chant their accents shrill, And the sirens, taught to kill With their sweet voice, Make ev'ry echoing rock reply Unto their gentle murmuring noise The praise of Neptune's empery. --_Thomas Campion_. 

 EVENING ON CALAIS BEACH

 It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven is on the sea: Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder--everlastingly. --_Wordsworth_. 

 BERMUDAS

 Where the remote Bermudas ride In the ocean's bosom unespied, From a small boat that row'd along The listening winds received this song:

 'What should we do but sing His praise That led us through the watery maze Unto an isle so long unknown, And yet far kinder than our own? Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks, That lift the deep upon their backs, He lands us on a grassy stage, Safe from the storms' and prelates' rage: He gave us this eternal Spring Which here enamels everything, And sends the fowls to us in care On daily visits through the air: He hangs in shades the orange bright Like golden lamps in a green night, And does in the pomegranates close Jewels more rich than Ormus shows:

 He makes the figs our mouths to meet And throws the melons at our feet; But apples plants of such a price, No tree could ever bear them twice. With cedars chosen by His hand From Lebanon He stores the land; And makes the hollow seas that roar Proclaim the ambergris on shore. He cast (of which we rather boast) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast; And in these rocks for us did frame A temple where to sound His name. O, let our voice His praise exalt Till it arrive at Heaven's vault, Which thence (perhaps) rebounding may Echo beyond the Mexique bay!'

 Thus sung they in the English boat A holy and a cheerful note: And all the way, to guide their chime, With falling oars they kept the time. --_Andrew Marvell_. 

BOOK II

THE SAILING AGE

PART I

THE SPANISH WAR

(1568-1596)

CHAPTER VIII

OLD SPAIN AND NEW

(1492-1571)

Just as Germany tried to win the overlordship of the world in thistwentieth century so Spain tried in the sixteenth; and just as theRoyal Navy was the chief, though by no means the biggest, force thathas won the whole world's freedom from the Germans now, so the RoyalNavy was the chief force that won world-freedom from the Spaniards then. 

Spaniards and Portuguese, who often employed Italian seamen, were thefirst to begin taking oversea empires. They gained footholds in placesas far apart as India and America. Balboa crossed the Isthmus ofPanama and waded into the Pacific, sword in hand, to claim it for theKing of Spain. A Portuguese ship was the first to go right round theworld. The Spaniards conquered all Central and great parts of Northand South America. The Portuguese settled in Brazil. 

While this was going on abroad France and England were taken up withtheir own troubles at home and with each other. So Spain and Portugalhad it all their own way for a good many years. The Spanish Empire wasby far the biggest in the world throughout the sixteenth century. Charles V, King of Spain, was heir to several other crowns, which hepassed on to his son, Philip II. Charles was the sovereign lord ofSpain, of what are Belgium and Holland now, and of the best parts ofItaly. He was elected Emperor of Germany, which gave him a great holdon that German "Middle Europe" which, stretching from the North Sea tothe Adriatic, cut the rest in two. Besides this he owned large partsof Africa. And then, to crown it all, he won what seemed best worthhaving in Central, North, and South America. 

[Illustration: The _Santa Maria_, flagship of Christopher Columbus whenhe discovered America in 1492. Length of keel, 60 feet. Length ofship proper, 93 feet. Length over all, 128 feet. Breadth, 26 feet. Tonnage, full displacement, 233. ]

France and England had something to say about this. Francis I wroteCharles a pretty plain letter. "Your Majesty and the King of Portugalhave divided the world between you, offering no part of it to me. Showme, I pray you, the will of our father Adam, so that I may see if hehas really made you his universal heirs. " Nor did the two Henrysforget the claims of England. Henry VII claimed most of the easterncoast of what are now Canada and the United States, in virtue of theCabot discoveries. In the Naval Museum at Madrid you can still see thebullock-hide map of Juan de la Cosa, which, made in the year 1500, shows St. George's Cross flying over these very parts. 

But it was not till after 1545, when the mines of Potosi made Europedream of El Dorado, the great new Golden West, that England began tothink of trying her own luck in America. Some of the fathers ofDrake's "Sea-Dogs" had already been in Brazil, notably "Olde Mr. William Hawkins, a man for his wisdome, valure, experience, and skillin sea causes much esteemed and beloved of King Henry the Eight. "Hawkins "armed out a tall and goodlie ship called the Pole ofPlimmouth, wherewith he made three long and famous voyages into thecoast of Brasil. " He went by way of Africa, "where he trafiqued withthe Negroes, and took of them Oliphants' teeth; and arriving on thecoast of Brasil, behaved himself so wisely, that he grew into greatfriendship with those savages"--very different from the vile crueltywith which the Spaniards always treated the poor natives. Thesevoyages were made about 1530; and the writer says that they were "inthose days very rare, especially to our Nation. "

In 1554 Charles V planned to make all such voyages work for the gloryof Spain instead of England. But, thanks chiefly to the EnglishSea-Dogs, everything turned out the other way. Charles saw that if hecould only add England to his vast possessions he could command theworld; for then he would have not only the greatest land-power but thegreatest sea-power too. Queen Mary seemed made for his plan. Hermother, Katharine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, was a Spaniard, and she herself cared less for England than for Spain. She was onlytoo ready to marry Charles's heir, Philip, of Armada fame. After thisCharles would leave his throne to Philip, who would then be King ofEngland as well as King of Spain. 

Philip sailed for England with a hundred and sixty ships, and came upthe Channel with the Spanish standard at the main (that is, at the tiptop of the main, or highest, mast). Lord Howard of Effingham sailed tomeet him and answer Philip's salute. But Philip and his haughty Donsthought it was nonsense for the Prince of Spain to follow the custom ofthe sea by saluting first when coming into English waters. So theSpanish fleet sailed on and took no notice, till suddenly Howard fireda shot across the Spanish flagship's bows. Then, at last, Philip'sstandard came down with a run, and he lowered topsails too, so as tomake the salute complete. Howard thereupon saluted Philip, and the twofleets sailed on together. But there was no love lost between them. Neither was the marriage popular ashore. Except for the people atcourt, who had to be civil to Philip, London treated the whole thingmore as a funeral than a wedding. Philip drank beer in public, insteadof Spanish wine, and tried to be as English as he could. Mary did herbest to make the people like him. And both did their best to buy asmany friends at court as Spanish gold could buy. But, except for hisQueen and the few who followed her through thick and thin, and thespies he paid to sell their country, Philip went back with even fewerEnglish friends than he had had before; while the Spanish gold itselfdid him more harm than good; for the English Sea-Dogs never forgot thelong array of New-World wealth that he paraded through the streets ofLondon--"27 chests of bullion, 99 horseloads + 2 cartloads of gold andsilver coin, and 97 boxes full of silver bars. " That set them askingwhy the whole New World should be nothing but New Spain. 

But seventeen years passed by; and the Spanish Empire seemed bigger andstronger than ever, besides which it seemed to be getting a firmer holdon more and more places in the Golden West. Nor was this all; forPortugal, which had many ships and large oversea possessions, wasbecoming so weak as to be getting more and more under the thumb ofSpain; while Spain herself had just (1571) become the victoriouschampion both of West against East and of Christ against Mahomet bybeating the Turks at Lepanto, near Corinth, in a great battle onlandlocked water, a hundred miles from where the West had defeated theEast when Greeks fought Persians at Salamis two thousand years before. 

 THE FAME OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE

 Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knew, Which thou didst compass round, And whom both poles of heaven once saw, Which north and south do bound. 

 The stars above would make thee known, If men here silent were; The sun himself cannot forget His fellow-traveller. --_Anonymous_. 

CHAPTER IX

THE ENGLISH SEA-DOGS

(1545-1580)

The daring English sailors who roved the waters to prey on Spanishvessels were given the name of Sea-Dogs because they often used to hunttogether like a pack of hounds. Their Norse forefathers were oftencalled sea-wolves; and sometimes there was not so very much differencebetween the two. War to the knife was the rule at sea when Spaniardsand Englishmen met, even in time of peace (that is, of peace betweenthe sovereigns of Spain and England, for there was no such thing asreal peace at sea or in any oversea possession). Spain was bound tokeep Englishmen out of the New World. Englishmen were bound to get in. Of course the Sea-Dogs preyed on other people too, and other peoples'own Sea-Dogs preyed on English vessels when they could; for it was avery rough-and-tumble age at sea, with each nation's seamen fightingfor their own hand. But Spanish greed and Spanish cruelty soon madeSpain the one great enemy of all the English Sea-Dogs. 

[Illustration: DRAKE]

Sea-Dogs were not brought up on any bed of roses. They were rough, andtheir lives were rougher. They were no gentler with Spaniards thanSpaniards were with them when both were fighting. But, except by wayof revenge, and then very seldom, they never practised such fiendishcruelty as the Spaniards practised the whole time. "Captain JohnSmith, sometime Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New England" (whomthe Indian girl Pocahontas saved from death) did not write _TheSeaman's Grammar_ till after most of Queen Elizabeth's Sea-Dogs weredead. But he was a big boy before Drake died; so one of his_Directions for the Takying of a Prize_ may well be quoted here to showthat there was a Sea-Dog code of honour which would pass muster amongthe rules of war today. What's more, the Sea-Dogs kept it. "Alwayshave as much care to their wounded as to your own; and if there beeither young women or aged men, use them nobly. "

Some of the other _Directions_ show that Smith knew how to fight like alion as well as how to treat his captives well. "Out with all yoursails! A steadie man at the helm! Give him (the enemy) chace! Hailhim with trumpets! Whence is your ship? Of Spain!--whence is yours?Of England! Be yare at the helm! Edge in with him! Give him a volleyof small shot, also your prow and broadside as before! With all yourgreat and small shot charge him! Make fast your grapplings. Boardhim!" Then, after giving much good advice as to how the rest of a seafight should be managed, Smith tells his pupils what to do in case offire. "Captaine, we are foul of each other and the ship is on fire!""Cut anything to get clear and smother the fire with wet clothes. "Here he adds this delightful little note: "In such a case they willpresentlie bee such friends as to help each other all they can to getclear; and if they bee generous, and the fire bee quenched, they willdrink kindly one to the other, heave their canns overboard, _and beginagain as before_. " The duties of a good crew after the fight arecarefully laid down: "Chirurgeon (surgeon) look to the wounded and windup the slain, and give them three guns (volleys) for their funerals"(as we do still). "Swabber, make clean the ship! Purser, record theirnames! Watch, be vigilant! Gunners, spunge your ordnance! Souldiers, scour your pieces! Carpenters, about your leaks! Boatswain and therest, repair sails and shrouds! Cook, see you observe your directionsagainst the morning watch!" The first thing in this "morning watch"the captain sings out, "Boy, hallo! is the kettle boiled?"--"Ay, ay, Sir!" Then the captain gives the order: "Boatswain, call up the men toprayer and breakfast. " The victory won, and the Spanish ship once safein the hands of an English crew, the _Directions_ end with a grandsalute: "Sound drums and trumpets: Saint George for England!" ("SaintGeorge for England!" is what Sir Roger Keyes signalled to the fleet heled against the Germans at Zeebrugge on St. George's Day in 1918, threehundred years after Smith's book was written. )

Sea-Dogs worked desperately hard for all they got, ran far more thanthe usual risks of war, and were cheated by most of the traders ashore. As for the risks: when Shakespeare speaks of a "Putter-out of five forone" he means that what we now call insurance agents would bet five toone against the chance of a ship's ever coming back when she was goingon a long voyage through distant seas full of known and unknowndangers, such as pirates, cannibals, shipwreck, and deadly diseases. As for cheats: Sea-Dogs were not perfect themselves, nor were alllandsmen quite so bad as those in the old sailors' song:

 For Sailours they bee honest men, And they do take great pains. But Land-men and ruffling Ladds Do cheat them of their gains. 

All the same, the "Land-men" often did cheat sailors so much thatsailors might well be excused for poking fun at "Land-men" who wereseasick. Yet, at a time when even the best crews had no means ofkeeping food and water properly, a land-lubber might also be excusedfor being not only seasick but sick in worse ways still. The want offresh food always brought on scurvy; and the wonder is that any onelived to tell the tale when once this plague and others got a footholdin a ship. 

But the Norse blood tingling in their veins, the manly love ofwonderful adventure, and, by no means least, the gamble of it, thatdared them to sail for strange outlandish parts with odds of five toone against them, these, quite as much as the wish to make a fortune, were the chief reasons why Sea-Dogs sailed from every port and made somany landsmen mad to join them. And, after all, life afloat, rough asit was, might well be better than life ashore, when men of spiritwanted to be free from the troubles of taking sides with all the upsand downs of kings and courts, rebels and religions. 

Whether or not the man who wrote _The Complaynt of Scotland_ was only apassenger or off to join the Sea-Dogs is more than we shall ever know;for all he tells us is that he wrote his book in 1548, and that he wasthen a landsman who "heard many words among the seamen, but knew notwhat they meant. " In any case, he is the only man who ever properlydescribed the daily work on board a Sea-Dog ship. The Sea-Dogsthemselves never bothered their heads about what they thought such avery common thing; and whatever other landsmen wrote was always wrong. A page of this quaint old book, which was not printed till two hundredand fifty years after it was written, will show us how much the workaboard a Sea-Dog ship was, in some ways, like the work aboard any othersailing ship, even down to the present day; and yet how much unlike inother ways. Some of the lingo has changed a good deal; for Englishseamen soon began to drop the words King Henry's shipwrights broughtnorth from the Mediterranean. Many of these words were Italian, otherseven Arabic; for the Arabs, Moors, and Turks haunted the Mediterraneanfor many centuries, and some of their sea-words passed current into allthe northern tongues. We get _Captain_ from the Italian _Capitano_, and _Admiral_ from the Arabic _Amir-al-bahr_, which meansCommander-of-the-sea. 

"I shall report their crying and their call, " says our author. "Thenthe boatsman" (who was the officer next to the captain) "cried with anoath: 'I see a great ship. ' Then the master (that is, the captain)whistled and bade the mariners lay the cable to the windlass to windand weigh (that is, heave the anchor up). Then the mariners began towind the cable in with many a loud cry; and, as one cried, all theothers cried in that same tune, as it had been an echo in a cave. 'Veer, veer; veer, veer; gentle gallants, gentle gallants! Wind, I seehim! Wind, I see him! _Pourbossa, pourbossa_! Haul all and one!'"When the anchor was hauled above the water they cried: "_Caupon, caupon; caupon, cola; caupon holt; Sarrabossa_!" When setting sailthey began with the same kind of gibberish. "_Hou_! _Hou_! _Pulpela, Pulpela_! Hard out strife! Before the wind! God send! God send!Fair weather! Many Prizes! Many Prizes! Stow! Stow! Make fast andbelay--Heisa! Heisa! One long pull! One long pull! Young blood!More mud! There, there! Yellow hair! Great and small! One and all!"The "yellow hair" refers to the fair-haired Norsemen. What the mastertold the steersman might have been said by any skipper of our own day:"Keep full and by! Luff! Con her! Steady! Keep close!" But what hetold the "Boatswain" next takes us back three hundred years and more. "Bear stones and limepots full of lime to the top" (whence they wouldmake it pretty hot for an enemy held fast alongside). The orders tothe artillery and infantry on board are equally old and very odd whenwe remember modern war. "Gunners, make ready your cannons, culverins, falcons, sakers, slings, head-sticks, murdering pieces, passevolants, bazzils, dogges, arquebusses, calivers, and hail shots! Souldiers, make ready your cross-bows, hand-bows, fire-spars, hail-shot, lances, pikes, halberds, rondels, two-handed swords, and targes!" Yet, old asall this was, the artillery seems to have made a good many noises thatwould have been familiar to those of us who heard the noises of theGreat War. "I heard the cannons and guns make many hideous cracks"(like the stabbing six-inchers). "The bazzils and falcons cried_tir-duf, tir-duf, tir-duf_" (like the anti-aircraft "Archies"). Thenthe small artillery cried _tik-tak, tik-tak, tik-tak_ (something likethe rattle of machine-guns, only very much slower). 

The cannons of those days seem like mere pop-guns to those who knew theBritish Grand Fleet that swept the Germans off the sea. But the bestguns Drake used against the Spanish Armada in 1588 were not at all badcompared with those that Nelson used at Trafalgar in 1805. There ismore change in twenty years now than there was in two hundred yearsthen. The chief improvements were in making the cannon balls fitbetter, in putting the powder into canvas bags, instead of ladling itin loose, and in fitting the guns with tackle, so that they could bemuch more easily handled, fired, and aimed. 

The change in ships during the sailing age was much greater than thechange in guns. More sails and better ones were used. The oldforecastle, once something really like a little castle set up on deck, was made lower and lower, till it was left out altogether; though thename remains to describe the front part of every ship, and is nowpronounced fo'c's'le or foxle. The same sort of top-hamper (that is, anything that makes the ship top-heavy) was cut down, bit by bit, astime went on, from the quarter-deck over the stern; till at last thebig British men-of-war became more or less like the _Victory_, whichwas Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, and which is still kept inPortsmouth Harbour, where Henry VIII's first promise of a sailing fleetappeared in 1545, the year that Drake was born. 

Drake was a first-rate seaman long before he grow up. His father, alsoa seaman, lived in a man-of-war on the Medway near where ChathamDockyard stands today; and Drake and his eleven sturdy brothers spentevery minute they could in sailing about and "learning the ropes. "With "the master of a barque, which used to coast along the shore andsometimes carry merchandise into Zeeland (Holland) and France" Drakewent to sea at the age of ten, and did so well that "the old man at hisdeath bequeathed his barque to him by will and testament. "

But the Channel trade was much too tame for Drake. So in 1567, when hewas twenty-two, he sailed with Hawkins, who was already a famousSea-Dog, to try his fortune round the Spanish Main, (that is, themainland of northern South America and of the lands all round Panama). Luck went against them from start to finish. Hawkins, who founded theslave trade that lasted till the nineteenth century, was attacked thistime by the negroes he tried to "snare" in Africa. "Envenomed arrows"worked havoc with the Englishmen. "There hardly escaped any that hadblood drawn, but died in strange sort, with their mouths shut some tendays before they died. " As everybody who sailed to foreign parts usedslaves in those days Hawkins and Drake were no worse than the rest; andless bad than those whites who kept them three hundred years later, when people knew better. But Hawkins' complaint against the negroesfor not coming quietly is just the same sort of nonsense as any othercomplaint against anything alive for being "vicious" when we want totake or kill it. "This animal, " said a Frenchman who made wise fun ofall such humbug, "is very wicked. When you attack it, it defendsitself!"

With what he could get--some four or five hundred negroes--Hawkins dida roaring trade in those parts of the Spanish Main where King Philip'ssubjects were not too closely watched by Governors and troops. But newtroubles began when Hawkins, trying to leave the West Indies, was blownback by a hurricane into Vera Cruz, then known as San Juan de Ulua. Hawkins still had a hundred negroes left; so, hoping for leave fromMexico City to trade them off, he held the Kind's Island, whichentirely commanded the entrance to the harbour, where he saw twelveSpanish treasure ships. But it was four hundred miles to the City ofMexico and back again; and meanwhile a great Spanish fleet was expectedout from Spain. Hawkins had this fleet completely at his mercy; for itcould no more get past the King's Island if he chose to stop it thanthe fleet inside could get out. Moreover, the stormy season wasbeginning; so the fleet from Spain might easily be wrecked if Hawkinskept it at bay. 

The very next morning the fleet arrived. Hawkins was terribly temptedto keep it out, which would have made his own fleet safe and would havestruck a heavy blow at Spain; for all the Spanish vessels together wereworth many millions. But he feared the wrath of Queen Elizabeth, whodid not want war with Spain; so he let the Spaniards "enter with theiraccustomed treason" after they had agreed not to attack him. 

For a few days everything went well. Then suddenly the Spaniards seton the English, killed every Englishman they could catch ashore, andattacked the little English fleet by land and sea. Once the twoSpanish fleets had joined they were in overwhelming force and couldhave smothered Hawkins to death by sheer weight of numbers. But hemade a brave fight. Within an hour the Spanish flagship and anothervessel had been sunk, a third was on fire, and every English deck wasclear of Spanish boarding parties. But the King's Island, to whichHawkins had moored his vessels, now swarmed with Spaniards firingcannon only a few yards off. To hearten his men he drank their healthand called out, "Stand by your ordnance lustily!" As he put the gobletdown a round shot sent it flying. "Look, " he said, "how God hasdelivered me from that shot; and so will He deliver you from thesetraitors. " Then he ordered his own battered ship to be abandoned forthe _Minion_, telling Drake to come alongside in the _Judith_. Inthese two little vessels all that remained of the English sailed safelyout, in spite of the many Spanish guns roaring away at point-blankrange and of two fire-ships which almost struck home. 

Drake and Hawkins lost each other in the darkness and gale outside. Drake's tiny _Judith_, of only fifty tons, went straight to England, with every inch of space crowded by her own crew and those she hadrescued from the other vessels. Hawkins was so overcrowded in the_Minion_ (which then meant "darling") that he asked all who would trytheir luck ashore to go forward, while all who would stand by the_Minion_ stayed aft. A hundred went forward, were landed south of theRio Grande, and died to a man, except three. One of these walked allround the Gulf of Mexico and up the Atlantic sea-board, till he reachedthe mouth of the St. John in New Brunswick, when a Frenchman took himhome. The other two were caught by the Spaniards and worked as slaves, one in Mexico, the other as a galley-slave in Europe. Both escaped inthe end, one after fourteen, the other after twenty-two, years. TheSpaniards found their own hostages all safe and sound aboard theflagship that Hawkins had abandoned at the King's Island. Thissurprised them very much; for they had kept all the English hostagesHawkins had sent them in exchange for theirs when they had made theagreement never to attack him, and they knew that by the laws of war hehad the right to kill all the Spaniards who were in his power when theother Spaniards broke their word. 

The treason of Ulua took place in 1568, just twenty years before theGreat Armada. During those fateful twenty years the storm of Englishhatred against the Spanish tyrants grew and grew until it burst in furyon their heads. 

Nothing daunted, Drake and his dare-devils went, three years running, to the Spanish Main. The third year, 1572, brought him into fame. Hehad only two tiny vessels, the _Pasha_ and the _Swan_, withseventy-three men, all told. But with these faithful few he sailedinto a secret harbour, intending to seize the whole year's treasurechest of Spain. To his surprise the found this letter from a scout onthe coast: "Captain Drake! If you fortune to come to this port, makehaste away! For the Spaniards have betrayed the place and taken awayall that you left here. " The date was fourteen days before. He soonsaw that others knew his secret harbour; for in came Rance, anEnglishman, who then joined forces. Stealing quietly along the coast, the hundred and twenty English lay in wait off Nombre de Dios, theplace on the Atlantic coast of the Isthmus of Panama where the treasurewas put aboard for Spain. An hour before dawn Drake passed the wordalong the waiting line: "Shove off!" Bounding into the bay he saw aSpanish rowboat, which at once saw him and pulled hard-all for theshore. The English won the desperate race, making the Spaniards sheeroff to a landing some way beyond the town. Then they landed andtumbled the Spanish guns off their mountings on the wharf, to theamazement of the sleepy Spanish sentry, who ran for dear life. 

No time was to be lost now; for the news spread like wildfire, and thealarm bells were ringing from every steeple in the town. So Drake madestraight for the Governor's palace, while his lieutenant, Oxenham, (thehero of _Westward Ho_!), went by a side street to take the enemy inflank. The Spaniards fired a volley which killed Drake's trumpeter, who had just sounded the _Charge_! On went the English, swordsflashing, fire-pikes blazing, and all ranks cheering like mad. Whentheir two parties met each other the Spaniards were in full flightthrough the Treasure Gate of Panama, which Drake banged to with a will. The door of the Governor's Palace was then burst open, and there, insolid gleaming bars, lay four hundred tons of purest silver, enough tosink the _Pasha_ and the _Swan_ and all Drake's boats besides. ButDrake would not touch a single bar. It was only diamonds, pearls, andgold that he had room for now; so he made for the King's great TreasureHouse itself. But a deluge of rain came on. The fire-pikes andarquebusses had to be taken under cover. The immensely strong TreasureHouse defied every effort to break it in. The Spaniards, finding howvery few the English were, came on to the attack. Drake was wounded, so that he had to be carried off the field. And the whole attack endedin failure, and dead loss. 

The game seemed up. Rance and his men withdrew, and Drake was leftwith less than fifty. But he was determined to be revenged on Spainfor the treachery to Hawkins at Ulua (the modern Vera Cruz); andequally determined to get some Spanish treasure. So, keeping out ofsight for the next five months, till the rainy season was over and thenext treasure train was ready, he went wide of Nombre de Dios and madefor Panama (the Pacific end of the trail across the Isthmus). He hadnineteen picked Englishmen and thirty-one Maroons, who, being theoffspring of Negro slaves and Indians, hated Spaniards like poison andknew the country to a foot. 

On the 7th of February, 1573, from the top of a gigantic tree thatstood on the Divide, Drake first saw the Pacific. Vowing to sail anEnglish ship across the great South Sea he pushed on eagerly. Threedays later his fifty men were lying in wait for the mule train bringinggold from Panama. All had their shirts on over their coats, so as toknow one another in the night attack. Presently the tinkle of mulebells told of the Spanish approach. When the whole line of mules hadwalked into his trap Drake's whistle blew one long shrill blast and hismen set on with glee. Their two years of toil and failure seemed tohave come to an end: for they easily mastered the train. But then, totheir intense disgust, they found that the Spaniards had fooled them bysending the silver train this way and the gold one somewhere else. 

Without losing a moment Drake marched back to the Atlantic, where hemet Têtu, a very gallant Frenchman, who, with his own seventy men, gladly joined company; for Spain hated to see the French there quite asmuch as she hated to see the English. The new friends then struckinland to a lonely spot which another Spanish train of gold and jewelshad to pass on its way to Nombre de Dios. This time there was nomistake. When Drake's whistle blew, and the leading mules werestopped, the others lay down, as mule trains will. Then the guard wasquickly killed or put to flight, and all the gold and jewels weresafely seized and carried to the coast. Here again disaster staredDrake in the face; for all his boats were gone, and not one of the menleft with them was in sight. But once more Drake got through, thistime by setting up an empty biscuit bag as a sail on a raft he quicklyput together. With one other Englishman and two Frenchmen he soonfound his boats, divided the treasure with the French, put the Englishshare on board ship, and, after giving many presents to the friendlyMaroons, sailed for home. "And so, " says one of his men, "we arrivedat Plymouth on Sunday, the 9th of August, 1573, at what time the newsof our Captain's return did so speedily pass over all the church thatvery few remained with the preacher, all hastening to see the evidenceof God's love towards our Gracious Queen and Country. "

The plot kept thickening fast and faster after this. New Spain, ofcourse, was Spanish by right of discovery, conquest, and a certain kindof settling. But the Spaniards wanted to keep everyone else away, notonly from all they had but from all they wished to have. TheirGovernor-General plainly showed this by putting up in his palace thefigure of a gigantic war-horse pawing at the sky, and by carvingunderneath, "_The Earth itself is not enough for Us_. " Nor was thisthe worst. No whites, not even the Germans, have ever been sofiendishly cruel to any natives as the Spaniards were to those they hadin their power. They murdered, tortured, burnt alive, and condemned toa living death as slaves every native race they met. There were brutalBelgians in the Congo not so very long ago. American settlers andpoliticians have done many a dark deed to the Indians. And the Britishrecord in the old days of Newfoundland is quite as black. But, forout-and-out cruelty, "the devildoms of Spain" beat everything badelsewhere. Moreover, while English, French, and Spaniards all wantedgold when they could get it, there was this marked difference betweenthe two chief opponents, that while Spain cared mostly for tributeEngland cared mostly for trade. Now, tribute simply means squeezing asmuch blood-money as possible out of an enslaved country, no matter atwhat cost of life and liberty to the people there; while trade, thoughoften full of cheating, really means an exchange of goods and somegive-and-take all round. When we consider this great difference, andremember how cruel the Spaniards were to all whom they had made theirenemies, we can understand why the Spanish Empire died and why theBritish lives. 

One day Queen Elizabeth sent for Drake and spoke her mind straight out. "Drake, I would gladly be revenged on the King of Spain for diversinjuries"; and, said Drake, "she craved my advice; and I told HerMajesty the only way was to annoy him by the Indies. " Then he told herhis great plan for raiding the Pacific, where no outsider had everbeen, and where the Spaniards were working their will without a thoughtof danger. Elizabeth at once fell in with Drake's idea and "did swearby her Crown that if any within her Realm did give the King of Spain tounderstand hereof they should lose their heads therefor. " The secrethad to be very well kept, even from Burleigh, who was then more or lesslike what a Prime Minister is now. Burleigh was a very cautious man, afraid of bringing on an open war with Spain. Elizabeth herself didnot want open war; but she was ready to go all lengths just short ofthat. In those days, and for the next two centuries, a good deal offighting could go on at sea and round about oversea possessions withoutbringing on a regular war in Europe. But for Elizabeth to have shownher hand now would have put Philip at least on his guard and perhapsspoilt Drake's game altogether. So the secret was carefully hiddenfrom every one likely to tell Mendoza, the lynx-eyed ambassador ofSpain. That Elizabeth was right in all she did is more than we cansay. But with enemies like Philip of Spain and Mary Queen of Scots(both ready to have her murdered, if that could be safely done) she hadto hit back as best she could. 

"The Famous Voyage of Sir Francis Drake into the South Sea, andtherehence about the whole Globe of the Earth, begun in the Yeare ofour Lord 1577" is the greatest raid in history. His fleet was smallenough, compared with what we know of fleets today. But it didwonderful work for all that. The flagship _Golden Hind_ was of only ahundred tons. The four others were smaller still. There were lessthan two hundred men, all told. Yet with these Drake sailed off toraid the whole Pacific seaboard of New Spain. He took "great store ofwildfire, chain-shot, harquebusses, pistols, corslets, bows, and otherweapons. Neither had he omitted to make provision for ornament anddelight, carrying with him expert musicians, rich furniture, and diversshows of curious workmanship, whereby the magnificence of his nativecountry might amongst all nations be the more admired. "

Sou'sou'west went Drake until he reached the "Land of Devils" in SouthAmerica, northeast of Montevideo. Terrific storms raised tremendousseas through which the five little vessels buffeted their toilsome way. The old Portuguese pilot, whom Drake had taken for his knowledge ofthat wild coast, said the native savages had "sold themselves to theDevil, because he was so much kinder than the Spaniards; and the Devilhelped them to keep off Spanish vessels by raising these awful storms. "The frightful Straits of Magellan (through which the British ship_Ortega_ led the Germans such a dance of death) took Drake seventeensqually days to clear. But he was out of the frying-pan into the firewhen he reached the Pacific, where he struck a storm fifty-two dayslong. One of his vessels sank. Two others lost him and went home. But the _Golden Hind_ and the little pinnace _Benedict_ remained safetogether off Cape Horn, which Drake was now the first man to discover. 

Carried too far south of his course, and then too far west by trustingthe bad Spanish maps, Drake only reached Valparaiso in the north ofChili at the end of 1578. Thinking he must be a Spaniard, as no oneelse had ever sailed that sea, the crew of the _Grand Captain of theSouth_ opened a cask of wine and beat a welcome on their drums. Beforethe Spaniards knew what was happening gigantic Tom Moone had led theEnglish boarders over the side and driven the crew below. Half amillion was the sum of this first prize. The news spread quickly, scaring the old Governor to death, heartening the Indians, who had justbeen defeated, and putting all Spanish plans at sixes and sevens. Messengers were sent post-haste to warn the coast. But Drake of coursewent faster by sea than the Spaniards could by land; so he overhauledand took every vessel he met. Very few showed fight, as they neverexpected enemies at sea and were foolish enough not to be ready forthose that were sure to come sooner or later. Even ashore there waslittle resistance, often, it is true, because the surprise wascomplete. One day some Spaniards, with half a ton of silver loaded oneight llamas, came round a corner straight into Drake's arms. Anotherday his men found a Spaniard fast asleep near thirteen solid bars fromthe mines of Potosi. The bars were lifted quietly and the Spaniardleft peacefully sleeping. 

Sailing into Lima Drake cut every single Spanish ship adrift and thensailed out again, leaving the harbour a perfect pandemonium of wrecks. Overhauling a ship from Panama he found that the King's great treasureship, _Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion_, the "chiefest glory of thewhole South Sea, " had such a long start of him that she might unload atPanama before he could come up with her. The Spaniards, a lubberlylot, brave soldiers but never handy sailors, were afraid of the Straitsof Magellan and knew nothing of Cape Horn; so they always sent theirtreasure across the Isthmus of Panama. 

Drake set every stitch of canvas the _Golden Hind_ could carry, takingfour more prizes by the way and learning that he was gaining on thetreasure ship. After clearing the prizes he sent them back with no oneon board hurt, plenty to eat and drink, and presents for all ranks andratings--very much to the amazement of the Spaniards. "Only a dayahead, " was the news the last prize gave him. But they were nearingPanama; so Drake strained every nerve anew, promising a chain of solidgold to the first look-out who saw the chase. Next midday his cousin, young Jack Drake, yelled out "Sail-ho!" and climbed down on deck to getthe golden chain. 

Panama was now so close that Drake was afraid of scaring the treasureship into making a run for it; so he trailed twelve empty wine casksover the stern to slacken the speed of the _Golden Hind_ and make herlook more like a lubberly Spaniard. As the evening breeze came up andreached him first he cut the casks adrift, set every sail, andpresently ran alongside. "Who are you?" asked the Spanish captain. "Aship of Chili!" answered Drake. But when Don Anton looked down on the_Golden Hind_ he saw her decks crowded with armed men from whom athundering shout of triumph came--"English! English! Strike sail!"Then Drake blew his whistle, at which there was perfect silence whilehe called, "Strike sail, Señor Anton! or I must send you to thebottom!" Anton, however, was a very brave man, and he stoutly replied, "Strike sail? Come and do it yourself!" At once the English guns cutdown his masts and rigging, while a perfect hail of arrows preventedthe Spaniards from clearing the wreckage away. Don Anton's crew beganrunning below, and when, in despair of making sail, he looked overside, there was gigantic Tom Moone, at the head of the boarders, climbing outof the pinnace. Then Anton struck his flag, was taken aboard the_Golden Hind_, and, with all his crew, given a splendid banquet by hisEnglish foes. After this the millions and millions of treasure wereloaded aboard the _Golden Hind_, and the Spaniards were given handsomepresents to soften their hard luck. Then they and their empty treasureship were allowed to sail for Panama. 

Throwing the Spaniards off the scent by steering crooked courses Drakeat last landed at what is now Drake's Bay, near the modern SanFrancisco, where the Indians, who had never even heard of any craftbigger than canoes, were lost in wonder at the _Golden Hind_ and nonethe less at the big fair-haired strangers, whom they took for gods. Drake, as always, was very kind to them, gave them rich presents, promised them the protection of his Queen, whose coins he showed them, and, pointing to the sky while his men were praying, tried to make themunderstand that the one true God was there and not on earth. They thencrowned him with a head-dress of eagle's feathers, while he made them aspeech, saying that he would call their country New Albion. Californiathus became the counterpart of Cape Breton, over which John Cabot hadraised St. George's Cross eighty-two years before. 

Leaving the Indians in tears at his departure Drake crossed the Pacificto the Moluccas, where a vile Portuguese, with the suitable name ofLopez de Mosquito, had just killed the Sultan, who was then his guest, chopped up the body, and thrown the pieces into the sea, to show hiscontempt for the natives. Drake would have gladly helped the Sultan'sson, Baber, if he had only had a few more men. But having no more thanfifty-six left he could not risk war with the Portuguese among theirown possessions. He did, however, make a treaty with Baber which wasthe foundation of all the English Far-Eastern trade. And here, aseverywhere, he won the hearty good-will of the natives. 

After a narrow escape from being wrecked on an unknown reef, and otherescapes from dangers which alone would fill a story book, the gallant_Golden Hind_ sailed into Plymouth Sound with ballast of silver andcargo of gold. "Is Her Majesty alive and well?" asked Drake of afishing smack. "Ay, ay, that she is, my Master. " So Drake wrote offto her at once and came to anchor beside what is now Drake's Island. He wished to know how things were going at Court before he went toLondon. The Queen wrote back to say she wished to see him, and thatshe would "view" some of the wonderful things he had brought back fromforeign parts. Straight on this hint he went to town with jewelsenough to soften any woman's heart. The Spanish ambassador was besidehimself with rage; but in London "the people were swarming daily in thestreets to behold their Captain Drake and vowing hatred to all thatmisliked him. "

To crown everything, the _Golden Hind_ came round to London, where shewas the wonder of the day, and when the Queen herself went aboard to astate banquet at which she knighted the hero of the sea: "I bid theerise, Sir Francis Drake!"

CHAPTER X

THE SPANISH ARMADA

(1588)

By 1580, the year of Drake's return, Spain and England were fast movingtoward the war that had been bound to come ever since the Old World hadfound the riches of the New. 

The battle grounds of rival sea-powers had been shifting farther andfarther west since history began. Now the last step was to come. Wehave seen already that the centre of the world's sea trade had movedfor thousands of years from south-eastern Asia toward north-westernEurope, and that in the fifteenth century it was pretty well dividedbetween Venice and the Hansa Towns. This was only natural, becauseVenice was in the middle of southern Europe and the Hansa Towns were inthe middle of northern Europe. The two were therefore well placed toreceive, store, and distribute the bulk of the oversea trade. In aword, Venice (on the Adriatic) and the Hansa Towns (mostly on what isnow the German coast) were the great European central junctions ofoversea trade; while the Atlantic states of Spain and Portugal, Franceand England were only terminal points, that is, they were at the end ofthe line; for the Atlantic ended the world to the west. 

The discovery of a rich New World changed all that. Venice and theHansa Towns became only stations by the way; while the new grandcentral junction of the world was bound to be somewhere among theAtlantic states of England, France, Portugal, and Spain. When thesefour countries became rivals for this junction England won, partlybecause she had the advantage of being an island, and thus safe frominvasion by land, but mostly because her men were of the fightingkindred of the sea. Yet she had to fight hard to win; she had to fighthard to keep what she won; and we all know how hard she has just had tofight again for the real "Freedom of the Seas. "

Her first great rival, Spain, was stronger than ever in 1580, becauseit was then that Philip II added Portugal, as well as all the overseapossessions of Portugal to his own enormous empire. He felt that if hecould 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 Englandand England's sea-power he could make short work of France. His havingPortugal gave him much that he needed for his "Invincible Armada":plenty of ships, sailors at least as good as his own, new ports and newislands, like the Azores, and the "wealth of All the Indies"--for henow had the Portuguese trade with the Indies as well as his own withthe West. 

Luckily for England, Philip was a landsman, no soldier, and very slow. So England struck first, but at New Spain, not, Old, because Elizabethwould not have open war if she could help it. She had enemies inScotland, enemies in France, a few at home, and millions in Spain. Besides, she was cleverer at playing off one against the other than inmanaging a big war; and, like most people everywhere, even in our ownsea-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 wasto command the "Indies Voyage" against New Spain, with Frobisher, ofNorth-West-Passage fame, as his Vice-Admiral, and Knollys, the Queen'sown cousin, as Rear-Admiral. There were twenty-one ships andtwenty-three hundred men; with Carleill, a first-class general, tocommand the soldiers ashore. Drake's crew of the _Golden Hind_ cameforward to a man, among them gigantic Tom Moone, the lion of theboarding parties. It is quite likely that Shakespeare went down withthe crowds of Londoners who saw the fleet set sail from Woolwich; forthe famous London vessel, _Tiger_, which he mentions both in _Macbeth_and in _Twelfth Night_, was one of Drake's fleet. 

Drake's written plan proves that he was not only a daring raider but avery great admiral as well. It marked down for attack all the placesin New Spain the taking of which would knock the sea trade there topieces, because they were the same by sea as railway junctions are byland. More than this, he planned to hold Havana, so that the junctionshe destroyed could not be made to work again, as from there he couldpounce on working parties anywhere else. 

Drake first swooped down on San Domingo in Hayti, battering the wallsfrom the sea while Carleill attacked them by land. The Spaniards hadbeen on their guard, so no treasure was found. Drake therefore put thetown to ransom and sent his Maroon servant to bring back the Spanishanswer. But the Spanish messenger ran his lance into the Maroon andcantered away. The Maroon dragged himself back and fell dead atDrake's feet. Drake sent word to say he would hang two Spaniards a daytill the one who had killed his Maroon was hanged himself. No answerhaving come in next morning, two Spanish friars were strung up. Thenthe offender was brought in and hanged by the Spaniards in front ofboth armies. After this Drake burnt a fresh bit of the town each daytill the Spaniards paid the ransom. 

The next dash was for Cartagena on the mainland of South America. TheSpaniards felt safe from a naval attack here, as the harbour was veryhard to enter, even with the best of Spanish pilots. But Drake didthis trick quite easily without any pilot at all; and, after puzzlingthe Spaniards by his movements, put Carleill ashore in the dark justwhere the English soldiers could wade past the Spanish batteries undercover at the weakest spot. When Carleill reached the barricade hismusketeers fired into the Spaniards' faces and wheeled off to let thepikemen charge through. After a fierce hand-to-hand fight theSpaniards ran. The town gave in next day. Having been paid its ransomDrake sailed for the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine in Florida andutterly destroyed it, then went on to Sir Walter Raleigh's colony ofRoanoke, in what is now North Carolina, and thence home. 

He had missed the yearly treasure fleet by only half a day. He hadlost so many men by sickness that he had no chance of taking andholding Havana. And the ransoms were less than he had hoped for. Buthe had done enough to cripple New Spain for the next few years at anyrate. Arrived at Plymouth he wrote to London, saying, "There is now avery 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 thanbefore, 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 andsmashing up the shipping there; by going on to Cape St. Vincent, whichhe seized and held with an army while his ships swept off the fishingcraft that helped to feed the great Armada; and by taking "the greatestship in all Portugal, richly laden, to our Happy Joy. " This was thebest East Indies treasure ship, loaded with silks and spices, jewelsand gold, to the value of many millions. But, better than even this, Drake found among her papers the secrets of the wonderful trade withthe East, a trade now taken over by the Spaniards from the conqueredPortuguese. With these papers in English hands the English overseatraders set to work and formed the great East India Company on the lastday of the year 1600. This Company--founded, held, and always helpedby British sea-power--went on, step by step, for the next two hundredand fifty-seven years, after which India, taken over by the BritishCrown, at last grew into the present Indian Empire, a countrycontaining three times as many people as the whole population of theUnited States, and yet a country which is only one of the many parts ofthe British Empire all round the Seven Seas. 

Crippled by English sea-power both in New Spain and Old, threatened byEnglish sea-power in his trade with the Far East, and harassed byEnglish sea-power everywhere between Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, where the Duke of Parma was preparing an army for the invasion ofEngland, King Philip kept working on with murder in his heart. Atlast, in the summer of 1588, his Great Invincible Spanish Armada seemedto be as Great, Invincible, and Spanish as he could ever hope to makeit. All the landlubbers, even in England, thought it very greatindeed; 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 shipsand men together, heartening the landsmen of Spain, and dishearteningfar 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 fightwhat 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 hadalways been made as much like battles on the land as the wit of mancould make them. They were fought by soldiers under generals, not bysailors under admirals. They were fought mostly on the platforms ofhuge rowboats called galleys; and the despised galley-slaves werealmost the only seamen. Even the officers and men who handled theclumsy old sailing craft, or the still clumsier sail aboard a galley, were thought to be next door to nobodies; for their only work was tofit their craft together like so many bits of land in order that thesoldiers might have the best imitation of a "proper field. " The mainbodies of these floating armies drew up in line-abreast (that is, sideby side) charged each other end-on, and fought it out hand-to-hand onthe mass of jammed-together platforms. No such battle was ever foughtfar 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 tillLepanto in 1571. Guns, muskets, and sailing craft were all used atLepanto. But the main fighting was done on galley platforms, and notso very differently done from the way the Greeks and Persians fought atSalamis twenty _centuries_ before. Then, after less than twenty_years_, the Armada, though better than the Spaniards at Lepanto, wassent across the open sea to fight a regular sea-going fleet, whoseleaders were admirals, whose chief fighting men were sailors, whosemovements were made under sail, and whose real weapon was theshattering broadside gun. It was ancient Spanish floating army againstmodern English Sea-Dog fleet. 

Philip's silly plan was that the Armada should make for the Straits ofDover, where it would see that Parma's Spanish army had a safe passagefrom Flanders into England. Philip had lost his best admiral, SantaCruz, and had put the Armada in charge of Medina Sidonia, a seasicklandlubber, whom he ordered not to fight any more than could possiblybe helped until Parma had reached England. Parma, who was a goodsoldier, saw at once what nonsense it was to put the army first andnavy second in the fighting, because, even if he could get intoEngland, his lines of communication with the bases in Flanders andSpain could never be safe until Drake's fleet had been beaten. Heknew, as all soldiers and all sailors know, that unless you have a saferoad over which to bring your supplies from your base to your frontyour fleets and armies must simply wither away for want of thesesupplies--for want of men, arms, food, and all the other things a fleetand army need. Therefore he wanted the fleet to fight first, so as toclear, or try to clear, safe roads across the sea. After these roads, or "lines of communication" between the bases and the front, had beencleared 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 herCouncil (all landsmen, and no great soldier among them) wanted todivide the English fleet so as to defend the different places theythought the Armada might attack. This would also please the people;for most people do like to see ships and soldiers close in front ofthem, even when that is quite the wrong place for the ships andsoldiers to be. Of course this plan could never have worked, except infavour of the Spaniards, who might have crushed, first, one bit of theEnglish fleet, and then another, and another, though they had no chancewhatever against the united whole. 

Drake's own perfect plan was to take the whole fleet straight to Lisbonand beat the Armada as it tried to get out. This would have given himan enormous advantage; first, because he would have found the Armada atonce, 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 theTagus; and, thirdly, because this defeat of the Armada off the coast ofPortugal would certainly prevent Parma from taking his army fromFlanders into England. On the 30th of March, 1588, a day to be foreverremembered in the history of sea-power, Drake wrote all this fromPlymouth to the Queen and her Councillors. One civilian, Sir FrancisWalsingham, saw at once that Drake was right. But the others shooktheir heads; while even those who thought Drake knew better than theydid were afraid to let the fleet go so far away, because the peopleliked the comfort of seeing it close beside the coast. Drake's way wasthe way of Nelson, Jellicoe, Beatty, and all the greatest seamen. Buthe was not allowed to try it till the 7th of July, when the Armada hadleft Lisbon and was in the harbour of Corunna at the northwest cornerof the Spanish coast. And even then the Queen kept him so short ofstores 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, beingunable to wait, he had to come back to Plymouth on the 12th. Then fora week the English fleet was taking in stores as hard as it could. Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord High Admiral of England, was incommand as the Great Officer of State who represented the Queen. Buthe was a very sensible man, who, knowing that Drake was the greatestseaman in the world, let him do the fighting in the proper way. 

[Illustration: One of Drake's Men-of-War that Fought the Great Armadain 1588. ]

The southwest wind that blew Drake back brought the Armada out and upthe English Channel. Howard and Drake, their desperate week of takingin stores at last quite done, were playing a game of bowls on the greenwhen Captain Fleming, of the ever famous _Golden Hind_, rushed up tosay the Spaniards were in sight of the Lizard, only sixty miles west. Drake, knowing perfectly well what time there was to spare, and howbest to calm the people looking on, said, "There's time to finish thegame first and the Spaniards after. " But the fleet got its sailingorders on the spot; and all that fateful night the ships were workingout of Plymouth Sound. The Queen and her politicians, though patrioticas any Sea-Dog, had, by keeping Drake so short of stores, very nearlygot their own fleet caught in just the same way as Drake had wished tocatch the Great Armada, that is, coming out of port, ship by ship, against a united fleet outside. But Philip's silly plan, theclumsiness of the Armada, and, above all, the supreme skill of theEnglish Sea-Dogs, put everything to rights again. 

Next morning Drake was safely out at sea in the Channel, withfifty-four ships, when he sighted a dim blur toward the west. This wasthe Great Invincible Armada. Rain killed the wind, and the English layunder bare poles, unseen by the Spaniards, who still left some of theiridle sails swinging to and fro. The great day had come at last. Philip's Armada had drunk to _Der Tag_ (the day) of England's overthrowjust as the Germans did three centuries later; and nearly all theSpaniards thought that thirty thousand Spaniards on the water were morethan a match for fifteen thousand English. But the Spaniards were sixthousand short, through sickness and desertion, and of the remainingtwenty-four thousand little more than a quarter were seamen. The restwere soldiers, with many camp-followers. The fifteen thousand English, on the other hand, were nearly all on board; and most of them had beentrained to sea fighting from their youth up. The Spaniards wereone-quarter seamen and three-quarters landsmen. The English werethree-quarters seamen and one-quarter landsmen; and most of theselandsmen were like the Marines of the present day, "soldier and sailortoo. " Nor was this the only difference that helped to seal the fate ofthe doomed Armada. For not only were the English seamen twice as manyand twice as good as the Spanish seamen, but in the numbers of theirtrained seamen-gunners the English beat the Spaniards no less than tento 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 theirintense surprise, saw the whole English fleet together. Every big shipin the Armada sent boats hurrying off to know what orders Sidonia hadto give them. But Sidonia had none. That the Sea-Dogs had worked outof Plymouth so quickly and were all together in a single fleet wassomething he had not reckoned on, and something Philip's silly plan hadnot provided for. Still, the Armada had one advantage left, theweather-gage; for the southwest wind was piping up again, blowing fromthe Armada to the English. Yet even this advantage was soon lost, notby any change of wind, but by English seamanship. For while eightEnglish vessels held the attention of the Armada, by working aboutbetween 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, edgedin toward the Armada when sea-room west of it was gained, and then, next morning, to the still more intense surprise of the Armada, camedown to attack it, having won the weather-gage by sailing round behindit in the night. 

This was the decisive stroke. The fight itself was simply theslaughter of a floating army by a fleet. The Spaniards fought likeheroes, day after slaughterous day. But their light guns, badly servedby ill-trained crews, fired much too high to hull the English ships"'twixt wind and water, " that is, to smash holes in their sides alongthe water-line. On the other hand, the English had more and betterguns, far more and far better seaman-gunners, and vessels managed bythe sea's own "handy men. " They ran in with the wind, just near enoughto make their well-aimed cannon-balls most deadly on the Spanishwater-line, but never so near that the Spaniards could catch them withgrappling hooks and hold them fast while the Spanish soldiers boarded. Another way the skilful English had was to turn their broadside againstthe enemy's end-on. This, whether for a single ship or for a fleet, iscalled "crossing the T"; and if you will look at a T you will see thatguns firing inward from the whole length of the cross-stroke have agreat advantage over guns firing back from the front of the up-stroke. In other words, the broad front converges on the narrow front andsmashes it. 

The crowded Spaniards sailed on, the whole week long, before thepursuing English in the "eagle formation, " with the big ships formingthe body and the lighter ones the wings: good enough for ancientbattles like Lepanto, but of no use against a modern fleet likeDrake's. Most of them could hardly have been more nearly useless ifthey had been just so many elephants fighting killer whales at sea. Dowhat they could, they could not catch the nimble Sea-Dogs who werebiting them to death. But they still fought on. Their crowdedsoldiers were simply targets for the English cannon-balls. Sometimesthe Spanish vessels were seen to drip a horrid red, as if the verydecks were bleeding. But when, at the end of the week, Sidonia askedOquendo, "What are we to do now?", Oquendo, a dauntless warrior, atonce 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 ninefire-ships in among them. There was no time to get their anchors up;so they cut their cables, swung round with the tide in horribleconfusion, dashing into one another in the dark, and headed for theshallows of the Flemish coast. This lost them their last chance ofhelping Parma into England. But it also saved Parma from losing thewhole of his army at sea. Once more the brave, though cruel, Spaniardstried 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 afterCaptain Fleming of the _Golden Hind_ had stopped Drake's game of bowlsat Plymouth. North, and still north, the beaten Armada ran for itslife; round by the stormy Orkneys, down the wild waters of the Hebridesand Western Ireland, strewing the coasts with wreckage and dead men, till at last the few surviving ships limped home. 

[Illustration: ARMADA OFF FOWEY (Cornwall) as first seen in the EnglishChannel. ]

There never was a better victory nor one more clearly gained by greaterskill. Nor has there ever been a victory showing more clearly howimpossible 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 battleor campaign, that really made those vast changes in world-history whichwe enjoy today. For we owe it to the whole Sea-Dog breed that the fairlands of North America are what they are and not as Spain mightotherwise have made them. The Sea-Dogs won the English right of entryinto Spain's New World. They, strange as it may seem, won Frenchrights, too; for Spain and France were often deadly enemies, and Spainwould gladly have kept the French out of all America if she had onlyhad the fleet with which to do it. Thus even the French-Canadians oweDrake a debt of gratitude for breaking down the great sea barriers ofSpain. 

"The Invincible Armada" could not, of course, have been defeatedwithout much English bravery. And we know that the Queen, herCouncillors, and the great mass of English people would have fought theSpanish 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 TilburyFort, the outwork of London, when the Armada was sailing up theChannel: "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 musthave good hearts, and have them in the right place too; and that theheart of England beat high throughout this great campaign. But goodheads, rightly used, are equally needed in war. Sea-Dog couragecounted 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 quailedagainst appalling odds, then turn to the glorious end of Drake's oldflagship, the _Revenge_, when her new captain, Sir Richard Grenville, fought her single-handed against a whole encircling fleet of Spain. 

[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE ON BOARD THE _REVENGE_ receiving thesurrender of Don Pedro de Valdes. ]

Grenville, Drake, and Sir Philip Sidney had been among those members ofParliament who had asked Queen Elizabeth to give Sir Walter Raleigh aRoyal Charter to found the first of the English oversea Dominions--thecolony on Roanoke Island in what is now North Carolina. Grenvillehimself went out to Roanoke. He was a born soldier of fortune and"first-class fighting man"; an explorer, scout, and pioneer; but not acolonist at all. On his return from founding Raleigh's colony hisboats were swept away in a storm just before he saw a Spanish treasureship. But he made his carpenter put together some sort of boat withbits of boxes; and in this he boarded the Spaniard, just reaching herdeck before his makeshift craft went down. 

On the 1st of September, 1591, the _Revenge_, with Grenville in commandof her less than two hundred men, was at "Flores in the Azores" whenDon Alonzo de Bazan arrived with fifty-three ships of Spain. Thelittle English squadron under Lord Thomas Howard had no chance againstthis overwhelming force. So it put to sea just in time to escapedestruction. But when Howard saw that the _Revenge_ was beingsurrounded he gallantly came back and attacked the Spaniards in rear;while the little _George Noble_ of London ran alongside the _Revenge_, offering to stand by through thick and thin. Grenville ordered heroff, and Howard himself also retired, seeing no chance whatever ofhelping the _Revenge_ and every chance of losing all his own ships. 

Then, at three in the afternoon, the whole Spanish fleet closed in onthe _Revenge_, which had only one hundred men really fit for duty. Therest were sick. Grenville, who had sworn he would cut down the firstman who touched a rope while there still seemed a chance to escape, nowrefused the Spanish summons to surrender and prepared to fight to thelast. Trimming his sails as carefully as if for a yacht race he randown close-hauled on the starboard tack, right between the twodivisions of the Spanish fleet, till the flagship, three times the sizeof the _Revenge_, ranged up on his weather side, thus blanketing hiscanvas and stealing the wind. As the _Revenge_ lost way the ships shehad passed on the other side began ranging up to cut her offcompletely. But meanwhile her first broadside had crashed into theflagship, which hauled off for repairs and was replaced by two moreships. The fight raged with the utmost fury all that sunny afternoonand 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 offifty-three at bay the Spaniards closed in till the _Revenge_ wascaught fast by two determined enemies. In came the Spanish grapplings, hooking fast to the _Revenge_ on either side. "Boarders away!" yelledthe 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, tilltwo fresh enemies closed in and grappled fast. Again the boardersswarmed in from both sides. Again the dauntless English drove themback. Again the English swords and pikes dripped red with Spanishblood. 

But now only twenty fighting men were left, while Grenville himself hadbeen 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 hundredwounded. A hundred Sea-Dogs had thus accounted for a thousand enemies. But they themselves were now unable to resist the attack the Spaniardsseemed unwilling to resume; for the first streak of dawn found only tenmen left with weapons in their hands, and these half dead with morethan 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, hadtaken boat to treat for terms; and the terms had been agreed upon. DonBazan promised, and worthily accorded, all the honours of war. SoGrenville was carefully taken on board the flagship, laid in DonBazan's cabin, and attended by the best Spanish surgeon. Then, withthe Spanish officers standing before him bareheaded, to show him allpossible respect, Grenville, after thanking them in their own languagefor all their compliments and courtesies, spoke his farewell to theworld in words which his two wounded officers wrote home:

"'Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind; for thatI have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, that hath foughtfor his Queen and Country, honour and religion. ' And when he had saidthese and other such like words he gave up the ghost with a great andstout courage. "

 THE REVENGE

 _A Ballad of the Fleet_

 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!"

 * * * * * *

 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 little _Revenge_ ran 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 little _Revenge_ ran 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 craft Running on and on, till delay'd By their mountain-like _San Philip_ that, 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 great _San Philip_ hung above us like a cloud Whence the thunderbolt will fall Long and loud, Four galleons drew away From 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 ears When he leaps from the water to the land. 

 And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three. Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came, Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame; Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame. For some were sunk and many were shatter'd, and so could fight us no more-- God of battles, was ever a battle like this in 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 far over the summer sea, And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring; But they dared not touch us again, for they fear'd that we 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 them stark and cold, And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was 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 night As may never be fought again! We have won great glory, my men! And a day less or more At 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 cheap That 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 the _Revenge_ with 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 their masts and their flags, And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter'd navy of Spain, And the little _Revenge_ herself went down by the island crags To be lost evermore in the main. 

 --_Alfred, Lord Tennyson_. 

PART II

THE DUTCH WAR

CHAPTER XI

THE FIRST DUTCH WAR

(1623-1653)

The Dutch Wars, which lasted off and on for fifty years (1623-1673), were caused by rivalry in oversea trade. In the sixteenth century theDutch and English had joined forces against the Portuguese, who hadtried to keep them out of the East Indies altogether. But when oncethe Portuguese were beaten the allies fell out among themselves, theDutch got the upper hand, and, in 1623, killed off the English tradersat Amboyna, one of the Moluccas. War did not come for many years. Butthere was always some fighting in the Far South East; and Amboyna wasnever forgotten. 

The final step toward war was taken when the British Parliament passedthe famous Navigation Act of 1651. By this Act nothing could bebrought into England except in English ships or in ships belonging tothe country from which the goods came. As the Dutch were then doinghalf the oversea freight work of Europe, and as they had also beenmaking the most of what oversea freighting England had lost during herCivil 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 frontierto defend. And they wanted to keep their rich sea freight businesswithout having to fight for it. But the British were bent on war. They remembered Amboyna. They did not see why the Dutch should keepother shippers out of the East Indies. And it angered them to see theDutch grow rich on British trade taken away while the British were busywith 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 theChannel and fired at the first that refused to salute according to theCustom of the Sea. Then the great British admiral, Blake, fired at thegreat Dutch admiral, van Tromp, for the same reason. A hot fightfollowed in each case; but without a victory for either side. AtDungeness, however, van Tromp with eighty ships beat Blake with forty, and swept the Channel throughout the winter of 1652-3. But inFebruary, when the fleets were about equal, the British got the betterof 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. Butthe dogged Dutch were not yet beaten; and it was not till the last ofJuly that the final battle came. 

Monk made straight for the Dutch line at six in the morning. For ninehours the fight went on, the two fleets manoeuvring with great skilland fighting furiously every time they came together. Each time theyseparated 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'clockas well. Van Tromp's flag still flew defiantly; but van Tromp himselfwas dead. When the fleets first met he had been killed by amusket-shot straight through his heart. When they first parted theflag for a council of war was seen flying from his ship. The councilof Dutch admirals hurriedly met, decided to keep his flag aloft, so asnot to discourage their men, took orders from his second-in-command, and met the British as bravely as before. But after nine hoursfighting their fleet broke up and left the field, bearing with it thebody of van Tromp, the lion of the Dutch, and by far the greatestleader who had as yet withstood the British on the sea. 

[Illustration: SAILING SHIP. The Pilgrim Fathers crossed in a similarvessel (1620). ]

This great battle off the coast of Holland made the Dutch give in. They were divided among themselves; the merchants keeping up a republicand a navy, but the nobles and inland people wishing for a king andarmy to make the frontier safe. The British, though also divided amongthemselves, had the advantages of living on an island, of havingsettled what kind of government they would obey for the time being, andof having at the head of this government the mighty Cromwell, one ofthe greatest masters of the art of war the world has ever seen. 

Cromwell understood warfare on the sea, though his own magnificentvictories had been won on land. He also understood the three thingsBritain needed then to make and keep her great: first, that she shouldbe strong enough to make foreigners respect her; secondly, that heroversea trade should be protected by a strong navy; and thirdly, thatshe should begin to found a British Empire overseas, as foreignersalways 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 anypeace with Spaniards overseas. Cromwell's orders, like those of Pitt ahundred years later, were perfect models of what such orders ought tobe. He told the admiral and general exactly what the country wantedthem to do, gave them the means of doing it, and then left them free todo it in whatever way seemed best on the spot. But the admiral andgeneral did not agree. King's men and Cromwell's men had to be mixedtogether, as enough good Cromwellians could not be spared so far awayfrom home. The leaders tried to stand well with both sides by writingto the King; and every other trouble was made ten times worse by thisdivided loyalty. Jamaica was taken. But the rest was all disgracefulfailure. 

A very different force sailed out the same year under glorious Blake, who soon let Spaniards, Italians, and Barbary pirates know that hewould stand no nonsense if they interfered with British vessels in theMediterranean. The Italian princes were brought to book, as theSpaniards had just been brought to book at Malaga. Then Blake swoopeddown on the Moorish pirates' nest at Tunis, sinking every vessel, silencing the forts, and forcing the pirates to let their Christianslaves go free. After this the pirates of Algiers quickly came toterms without waiting to be beaten first. 

Meanwhile the frightened Spaniards had stopped the treasure fleet of1655. But next year they were so short of money that they had to riskit; 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 Britishhands after very little fighting; and Londoners had the satisfaction ofcheering the thirty huge wagon-loads of gold and silver booty on itsway to safekeeping in the Tower. 

All that winter Blake was cruising off the coast of Spain, keeping theseaways open for friends and closed to enemies, thus getting astrangle-hold under which the angry Spaniards went from bad to worse. In the spring his hardy vigil met with its one reward; for he learntthat the second treasure fleet was hiding at Santa Cruz de Teneriffe inthe Canary Islands, within a hundred miles of north-western Africa. Teneriffe was strongly fortified, as it was a harbour of refuge betweenSpain and her oversea possessions, both East and West. It was alsovery strong by nature, being surrounded by mountains, subject to deadcalms and sudden storms, and lying snugly at the inner end of a bigdeep bay. But Blake knew the brave Spaniards for the lubbers they havealways been at sea. So, on the 20th of April, 1657, he ran in withwind and tide, giving the forts at the entrance more than theybargained for as he dashed by. Next, ranging alongside, he sank, droveashore, or set on fire every single Spanish vessel in the place. Thenhe went out with the tide, helped by the breeze which he knew wouldspring up with the set of the sun. 

This perfect feat of daring skill, though sometimes equalled by theNavy, has never been surpassed; and when Blake died on his way home thepeople mourned their sudden loss as they have never mourned except forNelson and for Drake. 

CHAPTER XII

THE SECOND AND THIRD DUTCH WARS

(1665-1673)

The Dutch quickly took up the East India trade dropped by the beatenSpaniards, started their general oversea freighting again, and weresoon as dangerous rivals as before. The Dutch at home were very muchafraid of war, because their land frontier was threatened by France, while their seaways were threatened by England. But they could notmake the Dutch East India Company keep its promises; for overseacompanies in those days were mostly a law to themselves; and, in thiscase, the Dutch at home, though afraid to say so, quite agreed with theDutch overseas in wishing to shut out the British from all the richtrade with the East. The new British Government, under sly and selfishCharles II, was eager to show that it would care as much for Britishsea trade as great Cromwell had. So it did not take long to bring on awar. 

The first battle was fought on the 3rd of June, 1665, and won by theBritish, who broke through the Dutch line. The Dutch retreat, however, was magnificently covered by van Tromp's son, Cornelius; and the Dukeof York (brother to Charles II and afterwards himself King James II)flinched from pressing home a finishing attack. Next year Monk, areally great commander, fought the famous Four Days Battle in theDowns, (11-14 June 1666). He was at first weaker in numbers than deRuyter, the excellent Dutch admiral; but he skilfully struck one partof the Dutch line very hard before the rest could support it. On thesecond and third days the Dutch, do what they could, were quite unableto crush him. Both sides had some bad ships and bad crews; but as theDutch had more of these than the British had they suffered the greaterloss by flinching. 

On the fourth day Monk was helped by gallant Prince Rupert, cousin toCharles II and by far the best of all the Stuarts. The Government ofCharles, afraid that Louis XIV would send the French to join the Dutch, had just done one of those foolish things that are always done whenscared civilians try to manage fleets and armies for themselves. Theyhad sent Rupert off to guard against the French, thus risking a doubledefeat, by weakening Monk in front of the Dutch and Rupert in front ofthe French (who never came at all) instead of leaving the whole fleettogether, strong enough to fight either enemy before the two couldjoin. Rupert came in the nick of time; for, even with his fresh shipsto help Monk through this last and most desperate day, de Ruyter andvan Tromp were just enough stronger to win. But the fighting had beenso 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 amongthe court favourites. But Charles never thought of punishing these menfor deserting Monk, any more than he thought of honouring the memory ofSir Christopher Myngs, Rupert's second-in-command, who fell, mortallywounded, at the end of the fight, after having done all that skill andcourage could possibly do to turn the fortune of the day. Myngs wasone of those leaders whom men will follow anywhere; and in the diary ofSamuel Pepys, a good official at Navy headquarters in London, we maysee the shame of Charles shown up by the noble conduct of the twelvepicked British seamen who, after following Myngs to the grave, cameforward, with tears in their eyes, to ask this favour: "We are here adozen of us who have long served and honoured our dead commander, SirChristopher Myngs. All we have is our lives. But if you will give usa fire-ship we will do that which shall show how we honour his memoryby avenging his death on the Dutch. "

Even the King did his best for the fleet now, as he was afraid to meetParliament without a British victory. After immense exertions Monk andRupert met de Ruyter and van Tromp, with almost equal forces, on the25th of July, at the mouth of the Thames, and closed in so fiercelythat there was hardly any manoeuvring on either side. Locked togetherin a life-or-death struggle the two fleets fought all day long. Nextmorning the British again closed in, and again the desperate fightbegan. But several Dutch captains flinched this time; and so deRuyter, hoping the next shot would kill him, retired defeated at last. 

The following year (1667) the Dutch came back and sank a British fleetat Chatham; for Charles and his vile favourites were doing for theBritish Navy what de Ruyter's flinching captains had been doing for theDutch. 

The Peace of Breda ended this second Dutch war in disgrace. But theTreaty of Dover, in 1670, brought on the third Dutch war with evengreater shame; for Charles now sold himself to Louis XIV, who thusbought the Royal Navy for an attack on the Dutch, by which he andCharles were to benefit at the expense of all the rest. The French andBritish fleets, worked by the hidden hands of their two kings, grewsuspicious of each other and failed to win a victory. The Dutch foughtwith the courage of despair and came through with the honours of war. But, worn out by their efforts, and unable to defend themselves by bothland and sea, they soon lost their position as one of the Great Powers, and have never won it back. 

THE MOAT

It may be said now to England, _Martha, Martha_, thou art busy aboutmany things, but one thing is necessary. To the Question, What shallwe do to be saved in this World? there is no other Answer but this, Look to your Moat. 

The first Article of an _Englishman's_ Political Creed must be, That hebelieveth in the Sea. . . . We are in an Island, confined to it by GodAlmighty, not as a Penalty but a Grace, and one of the greatest thatcan be given to Mankind. Happy Confinement, that hath made us Free, Rich, and Quiet. 

_George Savile, Marquis of Halifax_, 1633-95. 

PART III

THE FRENCH WAR

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST WAR AGAINST LOUIS XIV

(1689-1697)

In Chapter VI we saw how French and English once fought a Hundred YearsWar to decide the French possession of all the land of France, and howthe French, having the greater army, won. Now, in these next sevenchapters we shall learn how they fought another Hundred Years War todecide the command of the sea, and how the English, grown into aBritish Empire and having the greater navy, won in their turn. Bothvictories proved to be for the best. France and England both gained bythe first war; because the natural way for France to grow was all overthe land that is France now, while the natural way for England to growwas not on the continent of Europe but in the British Isles. TheBritish Empire gained more than the French by the second war; but asFrance could never have held an oversea Empire without a supreme navy, and as she could never have a supreme navy while she had two landfrontiers to defend with great armies, she really lost nothing she thencould have kept. Besides, in the nineteenth century she won a greatempire in northern Africa, where her Mediterranean sea-power keeps itsafe. The British Empire, on the other hand, being based on world-widesea-power, is rightly placed as it is. So neither French nor Britishare tempted to envy each other now; while their Hundred Years Peace, followed by their glorious Alliance in the Great War, should make themfriends for ever. 

The Franco-British wars which began in 1689 and ended on the field ofWaterloo in 1815 are not called the Second Hundred Years War in books. But that is what they were in fact. The British Navy was the chiefcause of British victory all through, and, as French and British alwaystook opposite sides, we may also call the whole of these seven wars bythe one name of "The French War, " just as we have called the other warsagainst our chief opponents "The Spanish War" and "Dutch War"; and justas we might call "The Great War" by the name of "The German War. "

Two more points must be well understood, or else we shall miss the realmeaning of our imperial history and the supreme importance of the RoyalNavy. 

First, there have been four attempts made in modern times by GreatPowers on the continent of Europe to seize the overlordship of theWorld; and each time the Royal Navy has been the central force thatfoiled the attack upon the freedom of mankind. These four attemptshave been made about a century apart from one another. The Spanishattempt was made at the end of the sixteenth century. The first Frenchattempt was made by Louis XIV at the end of the seventeenth. Thesecond French attempt was made by Napoleon at the beginning of thenineteenth. The German attempt was made at the beginning of thetwentieth. Though alike in the ambitions of their makers, theseattempts were most unlike in the way the wars were carried on; for, while the Spaniards and Germans were monsters of cruelty, the Frenchwere foemen worthy of the noblest steel. 

Secondly, as we shall see in Chapter XVI, the middle of this longFrench War was marked by the marvellous growth of the British Empireunder the elder Pitt; a man whose like the world had never seen beforeand may not see again; orator, statesman, founder of empire, championof freedom, and one of the very few civilians who have ever wielded theunited force of fleets and armies without weakening it by meddling withthe things that warriors alone can do. 

Louis XIV liked to be called the Sun King (_Roi Soleil_) and GreatMonarch (_Grand Monarque_). His own France was easily the first GreatPower in Europe. She was rich and populous. The French army was themost famous in the world. French became the language of diplomacy. Whenever two nations speaking different languages wrote to each otherabout affairs of state or made treaties they did so in French, as theydo still. But all this was not enough for Louis. He wanted to be aconqueror in Europe and beyond the seas. His people did not needoversea trade and empire in the same way as the Dutch and British, didnot desire it half so much, and were not nearly so well fitted for itwhen they had it. France was a kingdom of the land. But, no matter, Louis must make conquests wherever he could. 

Hoping to get England under his thumb he befriended James II, the lastStuart king, whom the English drove out in 1688. James, less bad butless clever than his vile brother Charles, had a party calledJacobites, who wanted French help to set him on the throne again, butno French interference afterwards. Most of Great Britain favoured thenew king, William III; most of Ireland the old one, James. Thisgreatly endangered British sea-power; for the French fleet had beengrowing very strong, and an enemy fleet based on Ireland would threatenevery harbour in Great Britain from Bristol to the Clyde. More thanthis, a strong enough fleet could close the Channel between the southof Ireland and the north of France. There would then be no way out ofGreat Britain on to the Seven Seas except round the north of Scotland. But an enemy fleet strong enough to shut off Great Britain from theshort cuts north and south of Ireland would certainly be strong enoughto command the roundabout way as well; for it would be close to itsbase on the west coast of Ireland, while ships coming round by thenorth of Scotland would be far from their own. Thus Ireland, then asnow, was the key to the sea-door of Great Britain. Luckily for GreatBritain then, and for our Empire and Allies throughout the Great War, keys are no good unless you have the hand to turn them. And, then asnow, the strong right hand that holds the key of Ireland was and is theRoyal Navy. 

In 1689 William III had at last succeeded in forming the Grand Allianceagainst Louis XIV, who now had enemies all round him except in littleSwitzerland. But France was easily the strongest of all the GreatPowers, and she was under a single command; while Spain and Austriawere lukewarm and weak against her, the many little German countriescould not act well together, and Great Britain had many Jacobites athome besides still more in Ireland. Thus the Dutch and British friendsof King William were the only ones to be depended on through thick andthin. 

Moreover, the Navy had grown dangerously weak under the last two Stuartkings; and some of its men were Jacobites who knew the French kingwished to put the Stuarts on the British throne again. So, when thegreat French admiral, Tourville, defeated the Dutch and British fleetsoff Beachy Head in 1690, the British fought far more feebly than theDutch, who did as well as the best of them had done when led by theimmortal van Tromp. Luckily for the British, Louis XIV did not want tomake them hate him more than he could help, because he hoped to usethem for his own ends when he had brought them under James again. Better still, William beat James in Ireland about the same time. Bestof all, the Royal Navy began to renew its strength; while it made upits mind to stop foreign invasions of every kind. Even Jacobiteofficers swore they would stop the French fleet, even if James himselfwas on board of it. Then the tide of fortune turned for good and all. 

In the spring of 1692 Louis and James, with a French and aJacobite-Irish army, were at La Hogue, in the north-west corner of theNormandy peninsula, ready for the invasion of England. They had towait for Tourville to clear the Dutch and British fleets away. Butthey thought these fleets had not joined company and that the Britishfleet would be so full of Jacobites as to be easily defeated again. Atthe first streak of dawn on the 19th of May Admiral Russell was offHarfleur, at the north-east corner of the Normandy peninsula. His ownBritish ships of the line (that is, the ships of the biggest andstrongest kind) numbered sixty-three; while his Dutch allies hadthirty-six. Against these ninety-nine Tourville had only forty-four. Yet, having been ordered to attack, and not getting the counter-ordertill after the battle was over, he made for the overwhelming Dutch andBritish with a skill and gallantry beyond all praise. 

[Illustration: LA HOGUE, 1692. ]

The fury of the fight centred round the _Soleil Royal_, Tourville'sflagship, which at last had to be turned out of the line. Then, as atJutland in the Great War, mist veiled the fleets, so that friend andfoe were mixed together. But the battle went on here and there betweendifferent parts of the fleets; while a hot action was fought after darkby Admiral Carter, who, though a Jacobite, was determined that noforeign army should ever set foot in England. Mortally wounded, hecalled to his flag captain, "Fight the ship as long as she swims, " andthen fell dead. All through the foggy 20th the battle was continuedwhenever the French and Allies could see each other. Next morning the_Soleil Royal_ became so disabled that she drifted ashore nearCherbourg. But Tourville had meanwhile shifted his flag to anothership and fought his way into La Hogue with twelve of his bestmen-of-war. Some of the other French ships escaped by reaching St. Malo through the dangerous channel between La Hogue and the island ofAlderney. Five others escaped to the eastward, and four went so farthat they rounded Scotland before getting home. 

On the 23rd and 24th Admiral Rooke, the future hero of Gibraltar, sailed up the bay of La Hogue with his lighter vessels; then took tohis boats and burnt Tourville's men-of-war, supply ships, and evenrowboats, in full view of King Louis and King James and of their wholearmy of invasion. No other navy has seen so many strange sights, afloat and ashore, as have been seen by the British. Yet even theBritish never saw a stranger sight than when the French cavalry chargedinto the shallow water where the Dutch and British sailors werefinishing their work. A soldier-and-sailor rough-and-tumble followed, sabres and cutlasses slashing like mad, and some of the horsemen beingdragged off their saddles by well-handled boat-hooks. 

La Hogue was not a glorious victory, like Trafalgar, because the oddswere nine to four in favour of the Dutch and British. But it was oneof the great decisive battles of the world, because, from that time on, the British Isles, though often threatened, were never again in reallyserious danger of invasion. 

CHAPTER XIV

THE SECOND WAR AGAINST LOUIS XIV

(1702-1713)

King Charles II of Spain, having no children, made a will leaving histhrone to Philip V, a grandson of Louis XIV, whose wife was sister toCharles. Louis declared that "the Pyrenees had ceased to exist"; bywhich boast he meant that he would govern the Spanish Empire throughhis grandson, turn the Mediterranean into "a French lake, " and work hiswill against British sea-power, both mercantile and naval. 

The war that followed was mostly fought on land; and the great Britishhero of it was the famous Duke of Marlborough, who was a soldier, not asailor. But the facts that England, as usual, could not be invaded, and that her armies, also as usual, fought victoriously on thecontinent of Europe, prove how well British sea-power worked: closingthe sea to enemies, opening it for friends, moving armies to the bestbases on the coast, and keeping them supplied with all they needed atthe front--men, munitions, clothing, food, and everything else. 

The great naval feat of this war was the daring attack Rooke made onGibraltar in 1704 with the help of some very gallant Dutch. Landingall the Marines ("Soldier and Sailor too") on the narrow neck of groundjoining the famous Rock of Gibraltar to the mainland of Spain, andranging all his broadsides against the batteries on the seaward front, Rooke soon beat the Spaniards from their guns and forced them tosurrender a place which, if properly defended, should have kept out afleet ten times as strong. No sooner had Gibraltar fallen than aFrench fleet came to win it back. But, after a fierce battle offMalaga, with over fifty ships a side, the French gave up the idea; andfrom that day to this Gibraltar has been British. 

British sea-power won many advantages by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. France and Spain agreed that one king should never rule both countries. The British kept Gibraltar and Minorca, which together made twosplendid bases for their fleet in the Mediterranean; while France gaveup all her claims to Newfoundland and the Territory of Hudson Bay, besides ceding Acadia (Nova Scotia), to the British Crown. 

CHAPTER XV

WAR AGAINST FRANCE AND SPAIN

(1739-1748)

Though the same king did not reign over both countries the same familydid. So the French and Spanish Bourbons made a Family Compact againstBritish sea-power. Spain promised to take away from the British allthe trading rights she had been forced to grant them in America, whileFrance promised to help Spain to win Gibraltar back again. 

When the secret began to leak out the feeling against the Bourbons ranhigh; and when a merchant skipper called Jenkins paraded London, showing the ear he said the Spaniards had cut off him in South America, the people clamoured for immediate war. Admiral Vernon becameimmensely popular when he took Porto Bello in the Spanish Main. But hewas beaten before Cartagena. He was a good admiral; but the Navy hadbeen shamefully neglected by the government during the long peace; andno neglected navy can send out good fleets in a hurry. 

Still, the Navy and mercantile marine were good enough to enableBritish sea-power to turn the scale against Prince Charlie in Scotlandand against the French in Canada. The French tried to help the last ofthe Stuarts by sending supply ships and men-of-war to Scotland. Butthe British fleet kept off the men-of-war, seized the supply ships, andadvanced along the coast to support the army that was running theJacobites down. Prince Charlie's Jacobites had to carry everything byland. The British army had most of its stores carried fen times betterby sea. Therefore, when the two armies met for their last fight atCulloden, the Jacobites were worn out, while the British army was quitefresh. In Canada it was the same story when the French fortress ofLouisbourg was entirely cut off from the sea by a British fleet andforced to surrender or starve. In both cases the fleets and armiesworked together like the different parts of one body. At Louisbourgthe British land force was entirely made up of American colonists, mostly from enlightened Massachusetts. 

A fleet sent against the French in India failed to beat that excellentFrench admiral, La Bourdonnais. But Anson's famous four years voyageround the world (1740-44) was a wonderful success. The Navy havingbeen so much neglected by the government for so many years before thewar, Anson had to put up with some bad ships and worse men. Even poorold pensioners were sent on board at the last minute to make up thenumber required. Of course they soon died off like flies. But hisfamous flagship, the _Centurion_, got through, beat everything thatstood up to her, and took vast quantities of Spanish gold and silver. Yet this is by no means the most wonderful fact about the _Centurion_. The most wonderful thing of all is, that, though she was only aone-thousand-tonner (smaller than many a destroyer of the present day)she had no fewer than eight officers who rose to high and well-won rankin after years, and three--Anson, Saunders, and Keppel--who all becameFirst Lords of the Admiralty, and thus heads of the whole Navy. 

[Illustration: H. M. S. _Centurion_ engaged and took the Spanish Galleon_Nuestra Senhora de Capadongo_, from Acapulco bound to Manila, off CapeEspiritu Santo, Philippine Islands, June 20, 1743. ]

Three years after his return Anson won a victory over the French offCape Finisterre, while Hawke won another near the same place a fewmonths later. In both the French fought very well indeed; but, withless skill in handling fleets and smaller numbers than the British, they had no chance. One of Hawke's best captains was Saunders. Thustwelve years before Pitt's conquest of Canada the three great admiralsmost concerned with it had already been brought together. 

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the war in 1748, settlednothing and satisfied nobody. It was, in fact, only a truce to let thetired opponents get their breath and prepare for the world-widestruggle which was to settle the question of oversea empire. 

The British in America were very angry with the Mother Country forgiving back Louisbourg. But they were much too narrow in their views;for their own fate in America depended entirely on the strength of theRoyal Navy, which itself depended on having a safe base in the MotherCountry. Now, France had conquered those parts of the once Spanish butthen Austrian Netherlands which included the present coast of Belgium;and Britain could no more allow the French to threaten her naval basefrom the coast of Belgium then than she could allow the Spaniardsbefore or the Germans in our own time. Therefore both she and hercolonists won many points in the game, when playing for safety, bygiving up Louisbourg, from which there could be no real danger, and sogetting France out of Belgium, from which the whole Empire might someday have been struck a mortal blow. 

CHAPTER XVI

PITT'S IMPERIAL WAR

(1756-1763)

The British part of the Seven Years War was rightly known as TheMaritime War, because Pitt, the greatest of British empire-builders, based it entirely on British sea-power, both mercantile and naval. Pitt had a four-fold plan. First, it is needless to say that he madethe Navy strong enough to keep the seaways open to friends and closedto enemies; for once the seaways are cut the Empire will bleed to deathjust as surely as a man will if you cut his veins and arteries. Thisbeing always and everywhere the Navy's plainest duty it need not havebeen mentioned here unless each other part of Pitt's fourfold plan hadnot only depended on it but helped to make it work. The second part ofhis plan was this: not to send British armies into the middle ofEurope, but to help Frederick the Great and other allies to pay theirown armies--a thing made possible by the wealth brought into Britain byoversea trade. The third part was to attack the enemy wherever Britishfleets and armies, acting together in "joint expeditions, " could strikethe best blows from the sea. The fourth was to send joint expeditionsto conquer the French dominions overseas. 

But lesser men than Pitt were at the head of the Government when thefighting began; and it took some time to bring the ship of state on toher proper course even after his mighty hand began to steer. 

In 1754 "the shot heard round the world" was fired by the French atWashington's American militiamen, who were building a fort on the spotwhere Pittsburg stands today. The Americans were determined to stopthe French from "joining hands behind their backs" and thus closingevery road to the West all the way from Canada to New Orleans. So theysent young George Washington to build a fort at the best junction ofthe western trails. But he was defeated and had to surrender. ThenBraddock was sent out from England in 1755. But the French defeatedhim too. Then France sent out to Canada as great a master of the artof war on land as Drake had been by sea. This was the gallant andnoble Montcalm, who, after taking Oswego in 1756 and Fort William Henryin 1757, utterly defeated a badly led British army, four times the sizeof his own, at Ticonderoga in 1758. 

Meanwhile war had been declared in Europe on the 18th of May, 1756. Onone side stood France, Austria, Saxony, Russia, and Sweden; on theother, Great Britain, Prussia, and a few smaller German states, amongthem Hanover and Hesse. Things went as badly here as overseas; for themeaner kind of party politicians had been long in power, and the Fleetand Army had both been neglected. There was almost a panic in Englandwhile the French were preparing a joint expedition against Minorca inthe Mediterranean lest this might be turned against England herself. Minorca was taken, a British fleet having failed to help it. Hawke andSaunders were then sent to the Mediterranean as a "cargo of courage. "But the fortunes of war could not be changed at once; and they becameeven worse next year (1757). The Austrians drove Frederick the Greatout of Bohemia. The French took Hanover. And, though Frederick endedthe year with two victories, Pitt's own first joint expedition failedto take Rochefort on the west coast of France. Clive's great victoryat Plassey, which laid the foundation of our Indian Empire, was theonly silver lining to the British clouds of war. 

But in 1758 Pitt was at last managing the war in his own perfect way;and everything began to change for the better. 

The enemy had already felt the force of British sea-power in threedifferent ways. They had felt it by losing hundreds of merchantvessels on the outbreak of war. They had felt it in Hanover, wherethey were ready to grant the Hanoverians any terms if the surrenderwould only be made before a British fleet should appear on their flank. And they had felt it during the Rochefort expedition, because, thoughthat was a wretched failure, they could not tell beforehand when orwhere the blow would fall, or whether the fleet and army might not beonly feinting against Rochefort and then going on somewhere else. 

There is no end to the advantages a joint fleet and army possesses overan army alone, even when the army alone has many more men. It is tentimes easier to supply armies with what they need in the way of men, guns, munitions, food, clothes, and other stores, when these suppliescan be carried by sea. It is ten times easier to keep your movementssecret at sea, where nobody lives and where the weaker sea-power cannever have the best of lookouts, than it is on land, where thousands ofeyes are watching you and thousands of tongues are talking. So, ifyour army fights near a coast against an enemy who commands the sea, you can never tell when or where he may suddenly attack your line ofsupply by landing an army to cut it. The French generals, though theyhad the best army in the world, were always looking over theirshoulders to see if some British joint expedition was not hoveringround the flank exposed to the coast. The French Navy, though verygallant, could only help French shipping here and there, by fits andstarts, and at the greatest risk. So, while the British forces usedthe highways of the sea the whole time, the French forces could onlyuse them now and then by great good luck. Thus British sea-powerhampered, spoilt, or ruined all the powers of the land. 

The French wanted to save Louisbourg, the fall of which they knew wouldbe the first step to the British conquest of Canada. But they couldnot send a fleet through the English Channel right under the eyes ofthe British naval headquarters, from which they were themselvesexpecting an attack. So they tried one from the Mediterranean. ButOsborne and Saunders shut the door in their faces at Gibraltar andbroke up their Toulon fleet as well. Then the French tried the Bay ofBiscay. But Hawke swooped down on the big convoy of supply vesselssheltering at Aix and forced both them and their escorting men-of-warto run aground in order to save themselves from being burnt. Meanwhilelarge numbers of French farmers and fishermen had to be kept under armsto guard the shores along the Channel. This, of course, was bad forthe harvest of both sea and land, on which the feeding of the men atthe front so greatly depended. But there was no help for it, as theBritish fleet was watching its chance to pounce down on the first pointleft unguarded, and the French fleet was not strong enough to fight itout at sea. St. Malo and Cherbourg were successfully attacked. Theonly failure was at St. Cast, where a silly old general made mistakesof which a clever French one quickly took advantage. 

Thus harassed, blockaded, and weakened on every coast, France could donothing to save Louisbourg, the first link in the long, thin chain ofFrench posts in America, where the fortunes of war were bound to followthe side that had the greater sea-power. No army could fight inAmerica if cut off from Europe; because the powder and shot, musketsand bayonets, cannons and cannon-balls, swords and pistols, all cameout from France and England. More than this, the backbone of botharmies were the French and British regulars, who also came from Franceand England. Most of all, fleets were quite as important at Quebec andMontreal as at Louisbourg, for ocean navigation went all those hundredsof miles inland. Beyond these three great points, again, sea-power, ofa wholly inland kind, was all-important; for the French lived alonganother line of waterways--from Montreal, across the Great Lakes, anddown the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. You might as well expectan army to march without legs as to carry on a war in America withoutfleets of sea-going ships and flotillas of inland small craft, evendown to the birchbark canoe. 

Pitt's plan for 1758 was to attack Canada on both flanks and work intoplace for attacking her centre the following year. Louisbourg on thecoast of Cape Breton guarded her sea flank. Fort Duquesne (nowPittsburg) at the forks of the Ohio guarded her land flank and her doorto the Golden West. Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain guarded her gatewayinto the St. Lawrence from the south. Here the British attack, thoughmade with vastly superior numbers, was beaten back by the heroic andskilful Montcalm. But Fort Duquesne, where Washington and Braddock hadbeen defeated, was taken by Forbes and re-named Pittshurg in honour ofthe mighty Minister of War. Louisbourg likewise fell. So Canada wasbeaten on both wings, though saved, for the moment, in the centre. 

Louisbourg never had the slightest chance; for Boscawen's great fleetcut it off from the sea so completely that no help the French couldspare could have forced its way in, even if it had been able to dodgepast the British off the coast of France. The British army, being wellsupplied from the sea, not only cut Louisbourg off by land as well asthe fleet had cut it off by sea but was able to press the siege homewith such vigour that the French had to surrender after a brave defenceof no more than eight weeks. The hero of the British army atLouisbourg was a young general of whom we shall soon hear more--Wolfe. 

If we ever want to choose an Empire Year, then the one to choose, beyond all shadow of a doubt, is 1759; and the hero of it, also beyondall shadow of a doubt, is Pitt. Hardwicke, Pitt's chief civilianadviser, was a truly magnificent statesman for war. Anson was a greatman at the head of the Navy. Ligonier was equally good at the head ofthe Army, with a commission as "Commander-in-Chief of all His Majesty'sForces in Great Britain and America, " which showed how much Pittthought of the Canadian campaigns. The silent Saunders was one of thebest admirals that even England ever had. And when people drank to"the eye of a Hawke, and the heart of a Wolfe!" they showed they knewof other first-rate leaders too. But by far the greatest head andheart, by far the most inspiring soul, of this whole vast Empire Warwas Pitt. In many and many a war, down to our own day, the warriorswho have led the fleets and armies have been greater and nobler thanthe statesmen who managed the government. But Pitt was greater, thougheven he could not be nobler, than any of the warriors who served theEmpire under him; for he knew, better than any one else, how to makefleets and armies work together as a single United Service, and how tomake the people who were not warriors work with the warriors for thewelfare of the whole United Empire. Of course he had a wonderful headand a wonderful heart. But his crowning glory as an Empire-maker isthat he could rise above all the petty strife of party politicians andgive himself wholly to the Empire in the same spirit of self-sacrificeas warriors show upon the field of battle. 

In choosing commanders by land and sea Pitt always took the best, nomatter who or what their friends or parties were; and no commander leftPitt's inspiring presence without feeling the fitter for the work inhand. In planning the conquest of Canada, Pitt and Ligonier agreedthat Amherst and Wolfe were the men for the army, while Pitt and Ansonagreed that Saunders and Holmes were the men for the fleet. This wasall settled at the beginning of Empire Year--1759. 

But this was only a part, though the most important part, of Pitt'sImperial plan. No point of vantage, the whole world round, escaped hiseagle eye. The French and Dutch were beaten in India; though bothfought well, and though the French fleet fought a drawn battle with theBritish off Ceylon. On the continent of Europe our allies were helpedby a British army at the decisive victory of Minden, which drove theFrench away from Hanover. And in the West Indies the island ofGuadaloupe was taken by a joint expedition of the usual kind; but onlyafter the French had made a splendid resistance of over three months. 

Stung to the quick by these sudden blows from the sea France planned agreat invasion of the British Isles. She did not hide it, hopingthereby to make the British keep their fleets at home in self-defence. But though, as always happens, there were people weak enough to want tokeep the Navy close beside the coast and stupidly divided up, so thatplenty of timid folk could see the ships in front of them, just wherethe enemy with one well handled fleet could beat them bit by bit, Pittpaid no attention at all to any silly nonsense of the kind. He andAnson knew, of course, that, when you have the stronger fleet, the onlyright way is to defend yourself by attacking the enemy before he canattack you. So, instead of wasting force at home, Pitt sent jointexpeditions all over the seaboard world, wherever they were needed toguard or make the Empire overseas; while he sent fleets to beat orblockade the French fleets off their own, not off the British, coasts. 

The dreaded invasion never came off; and the only two French fleetsthat did get out were destroyed: the one from the Mediterranean offLagos in the south of Portugal, and the one from the west coast ofFrance in Quiberon Bay. 

Boscawen's fleet was refitting and taking in stores at Gibraltar whenone of his look-out frigates signalled up to the Governor's house, where Boscawen was dining, that the French were slipping through theStrait by hugging the African shore under cover of the dark. TheBritish flagship had her sails unbent (that is, unfastened altogether). Every vessel had her decks and hold lumbered up with stores. Half thecrews were ashore; and if a spy had taken a look round he would havethought the enemy could never have been overhauled. But the Navy isnever caught napping. In the twinkling of an eye Gibraltar was full ofBritish blue-jackets racing down to their ships, leaping on board, andturning their skilful hands to the first job waiting to be done. Within two hours Boscawen was off hotfoot after the French, hoisting inboats, stowing the last of the lumbering stores, and clearing decks foraction. Overhauling La Clue near Lagos, off the coast of Portugal, heranged up alongside, flagship to flagship. But the French, fightingwith equal skill and courage, beat him off. Falling astern he cameabreast of the gallant _Centaure_, which had already fought fourBritish men-of-war. Being now a mere battered hulk she surrendered. Then Boscawen, his damage repaired, pushed ahead again. La Clue, whosefleet was the smaller, seeing no chance of either victory or escape, chose shipwreck rather than surrender, and ran his flagship straight onthe rocks, with every stitch of canvas drawing full and his flag keptflying. 

[Illustration: The _ROYAL GEORGE_]

Quiberon and Quebec go together, like "the eye of a Hawke and the heartof a Wolfe"; for Hawke's victory at Quiberon made it certain thatWolfe's victory at Quebec could not be undone. The French were tryingto unite their west-coast fleets at Morbihan for an invasion of Englandor at least a fight to give some of their own shipping a breathingspell free from blockade. Their admiral, Conflans, was trying to workhis way in under very great difficulties. He was short of trained men, short of proper stores, and had fewer ships than Hawke. Hawke'scruisers had driven some of Conflans' storeships into a harbour ahundred miles away from Brest, where Conflans was trying hard to getready for the invasion of England. The result was that these storeshad to be landed and carted across country, which not only took tentimes longer than it would have taken to send them round by sea butalso gave ten times as much trouble. At last Conflans managed to moveout. But he had about as much chance of escape as a fly in a spider'sweb; for Hawke had cruisers watching everywhere and a battle fleetready to pounce down anywhere. Conflans had been ordered to save hisfleet by all possible means till he had joined the French fleet andarmy of invasion. So he is not to be blamed for what he tried to do atQuiberon. 

On the 20th of November he was sailing toward Quiberon Bay when he sawthe vanguard of Hawke's fleet coming up before a rising gale. Withfewer ships, and with crews that had been blockaded so long that theywere no match for the sea-living British, he knew he had no chance in astand-up tight in the open, and more especially in the middle of astorm. So he made for Quiberon, where he thought he would be safe;because the whole of that intricate Bay is full of rocks, shoals, shallows, and all kinds of other dangers. 

But Hawke came down on the wings of the wind, straight toward theterrific dangers of the Bay, and flying before a gale which in itselfseemed to promise certain shipwreck; for it blew on-shore. Conflansran for his life, got into the Bay, and had begun to form his line ofbattle when some distant shots told him that his rear was beingoverhauled. Then his last ships came racing in. But the leadingBritish, like hounds in full cry, were closing on them so fast thatbefore they could join his line they were caught in the fury of thefight. Within a few desperate minutes two French ships were so badlybattered that they had to surrender, while three more were sent to thebottom. Then the gale shifted and blew Conflans' own line out oforder. He at once tried to move into a better place. But this onlymade matters worse. So he anchored in utter confusion, with wreckingrocks on one side and Hawke's swooping fleet on the other. Once more, however, he tried a change--this time the bold one of charging out tosea. But Hawke was too quick for him, though the well-named_Intrépide_ rushed in between the two racing flagships, the _RoyalGeorge_ and _Soleil Royal_. This was the end. The gale rose to itsheight. Darkness closed in. And then, amid the roaring of the battleand the sea, the victorious British anchored beside all that was leftof the French. 

There were no such sea fights on the coasts of Canada, where theBritish were in overwhelming naval strength. But never was there ajoint expedition which owed more to its fleet than the one that tookQuebec this same year (1759). The fact that the battles were fought onthe land, and that Wolfe and Montcalm both fell in the one whichdecided the fate of Quebec, has made us forget that sea-power had moreto do with this and the other American campaigns than all the otherforces put together. The army did magnificently; and without Wolfe'sand the other armies the conquest could never have been made. But thepoint is this, that, while each little army was only a finger of thehand that drew the British sword in Canada, the fleet which brought thearmies there and kept them going was part and parcel of the whole vastbody of British sea-power united round the world. 

Pitt planned to give French Canada the knockout blow in Empire Year. So, holding the extreme east and west at Louisbourg and Fort Duquesne, he sent a small force to cut the line of the Lakes at Niagara, a muchlarger one to cut into the line of the St. Lawrence from LakeChamplain, and the largest and strongest of all up the St. Lawrence totake Quebec, which, then as now, was the key of Canada. Niagara wastaken; and the line of Lake Champlain was secured by Amherst, who, however, never got through to the St. Lawrence that year. But thegreat question was, who is to have the key? So we shall followSaunders and Wolfe to Quebec. 

Wolfe's little army of nine thousand men was really a landing partyfrom Saunders' big fleet, which included nearly fifty men-of-war(almost a quarter of the whole Royal Navy) and well over two hundredtransports and supply ships. The bluejackets on board the men-of-warand the merchant seamen on board the other ships each greatlyoutnumbered the men in Wolfe's army. In fact, the whole expedition wasmade up of three-quarters sea-power and only one-quarter land. 

Admiral Durell, who had been left at Halifax over the winter, was tooslow in getting the advance guard under way in time to cut off thetwenty-three little vessels sent out from France to Montcalm in thespring. But this reinforcement was too small to make any realdifference in the doom of Quebec when once British sea-power had sealedthe St. Lawrence. Saunders took Wolfe's army and the main body of hisown fleet up the great river in June: a hundred and forty-one vessels, all told, from the flagship _Neptune_ of ninety guns down to thesmallest craft that carried supplies. It was a brave sight off themouth of the Saguenay, where the deep-water estuary ends, to see thewhole fleet, together at sunset, with its thousand white sails, in acrescent twenty miles long, a-gleam on the blue St. Lawrence. 

The French-Canadian pilots who had been taken prisoners swore that nofleet could ever get through the Traverse, a tricky bit of water thirtymiles below Quebec. But, in the course of the summer, the Britishsailing masters, who had never been there before, themselves took twohundred and seventy-seven vessels right through it with greater ease insquadrons than any French-Canadian could when piloting a single ship. The famous Captain Cook, of whom we shall soon hear more, had gone up amonth ahead with Durell, and, in only three days, had sounded, surveyed, and buoyed the Traverse to perfection. 

When once the fleet had reached Quebec Montcalm was completely cut offfrom the outside world, except for the road and river up to Montreal. His French-Canadian militia more than equalled Wolfe's army in merenumbers. But his French regulars from France, the backbone of thewhole defence, were not half so many. Vaudreuil, the French-CanadianGovernor, was a fool. Bigot, the French Intendant, was a knave. Theyboth hated the great and honest Montcalm and did all they could tospite him. The natural strength of Quebec, "the Gibraltar of America, "was, with his own French regulars, the only defence on which he couldalways rely. 

The bombardment of Quebec from across the narrows of the St. Lawrence("Kebec" is the Indian for "narrows") went on without much resultthroughout July; and Wolfe's attempt to storm the Heights ofMontmorency, five miles below Quebec, ended in defeat. During August asquadron under Holmes, third-in-command of the fleet, kept pushing upthe St. Lawrence above Quebec, and thus alarming the French for thesafety of their road and river lines of communication with Montreal, the only lines left. They sent troops up to watch the ships, and verywearing work it was; for while the ships carried Wolfe's landingparties up and down with the tide, the unfortunate Frenchmen had toscramble across country in a vain effort to be first at any threatenedpoint. 

From the 3rd of September to the famous 13th Wolfe worked out his ownsplendid plan with the help of the fleet. Three-fourths of the Frenchwere entrenched along the six miles of North Shore below Quebec, toplease Vaudreuil, who, as Governor, had power to order Montcalm. Therest were in or above Quebec; and mostly between Cap Rouge, which wasseven miles, and Pointe-aux-Trembles, which was twenty-two miles, above. Wolfe's plan was to make as big a show of force as possible, upto the very last minute, against the entrenchments below Quebec andalso against the fifteen miles of North Shore between Cap Rouge andPointe-aux-Trembles, while he would really land at what we now callWolfe's Cove, which is little more than one mile above Quebec. If hecould then hold the land line west to Montreal, while Holmes held theriver line, Montcalm would be absolutely cut off in every direction andbe forced to fight or starve. Montcalm's secret orders from the Kingbeing to keep any other foothold he possibly could if Quebec was taken, he had to leave stores of provisions at different points toward theWest and South, as he intended to retire from point to point and makehis last stand down by New Orleans. 

Quebec was, however, to be held if possible; and everything that skilland courage could do was done by Montcalm to hold it. He even foresawWolfe's final plan and sent one of his best French battalions to guardthe Plains of Abraham. But Vaudreuil withdrew it four days before thebattle there. Again, on the very eve of battle, Montcalm ordered thesame battalion to ramp for the night in defence of Wolfe's Cove. ButVaudreuil again counter-ordered, this time before the men had marchedoff, thus leaving that post in charge of one of his own friends, acontemptible officer called Vergor. 

Wolfe knew all about Vergor and what went on in the French camp, whereVaudreuil could never keep a secret. So he and Saunders and Holmes setthe plan going for the final blow. The unfortunate Frenchmen above CapRouge were now so worn out by trying to keep up with the ships thatWolfe knew they would take hours to get down to Quebec if decoyedovernight anywhere up near Pointe-aux-Trembles, more than twenty milesaway. He also knew that the show of force to be made by Saunders theday before the battle would keep the French in their trenches along thesix miles below Quebec. Besides this he knew that the fire of hisbatteries opposite Quebec would drown the noise of taking Vergor's postmore than a mile above. Finally, the fleet kept him perfectly safefrom counter-attack, hid his movements, and took his army to any givenspot far better and faster than the French could go there by land. 

With all this in his favour he then carried out his plan to perfection, holding the French close below and far above Quebec by threateningattacks from the ships, secretly bringing his best men together inboats off Cap Rouge after dark, dropping them down to Wolfe's Cove justbefore dawn, rushing Vergor's post with the greatest ease, and formingup across the Plains of Abraham, just west of Quebec, an hour beforeMontcalm could possibly attack him. Cut off by water and land Montcalmnow had to starve or fight Wolfe's well-trained regulars with aboutequal numbers of men, half of whom were militia quite untrained forflat and open battlefields. Wolfe's perfect volleys then sealed thefate of Quebec; while British sea-power sealed the fate of Canada. 

The rest of the war was simply reaping the victories Pitt had sown;though he left the Government in 1761, and Spain joined our enemies thefollowing year. The jealous new king, George III, and his jealous newcourtiers, with some of the jealous old politicians, made up a partythat forced Pitt out of the Government. They then signed the Treaty ofVersailles in 1763 without properly securing the fruit of all hisvictories. 

But Canada had been won outright. The foundations of the Indian Empirehad been well and truly laid. And the famous Captain Cook, whosurveyed the Traverse for Saunders and made the first charts of BritishCanada, soon afterwards became one of the founders of that BritishAustralasia whose Australian-New Zealand-Army-Corps became so justlyfamous as the fighting "Anzacs" throughout our recent war against theGermans. 

ON THE LOSS OF THE _ROYAL GEORGE_

Written when the news arrived (September, 1782). 

The _Royal George_, Hawke's flagship at the Battle of Quiberon Bay, thebattle which confirmed the conquest of Canada, was a first-rateman-of-war of 100 guns. On the 29th of August, 1782, while at anchoroff Spithead, between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, her guns brokeloose with the rolling and she went down with all hands. 

 Toll for the brave-- The brave that are no more: All sunk beneath the wave, Fast by their native shore. Eight hundred of the brave, Whose courage well was tried, Had made the vessel heel And laid her on her side; A land-breeze shook the shrouds, And she was overset; Down went the _Royal George_, With all her crew complete. 

 Toll for the brave-- Brave Kempenfelt is gone, His last sea-fight is fought, His work of glory done. It was not in the battle, No tempest gave the shock, She sprang no fatal leak, She ran upon no rock; His sword was in the sheath, His fingers held the pen, When Kempenfelt went down With twice four hundred men. 

 Weigh the vessel up, Once dreaded by our foes, And mingle with your cup The tears that England owes; Her timbers yet are sound, And she may float again, Full charg'd with England's thunder, And plough the distant main; But Kempenfelt is gone, His victories are o'er; And he and his eight hundred Must plough the wave no more. --_Cowper_. 

CHAPTER XVII

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

(1775-1783)

The rights and wrongs of this Revolution are not our business here. But British sea-power is. So we should like to tell the whole story ofthe Navy in that unhappy time; because most books say little about itand do not say that little well. But, as we have no time for more thanthe merest glance, all we can do is to ask those who want to learn thetruth in full to read _The Influence of Sea-Power on History_, by thatexpert American, Admiral Mahan. 

The Revolution was not a fight between British and Americans, as we andthey are apt to think it now, but a British civil war that dividedpeople in Britain as well as in America. In both countries there weretwo parties, the Government and Opposition, each against the other; theonly difference, though a very great one, being that while theOpposition in America took up arms the Opposition in Britain did not. Both countries were then parts of the same British Empire; and so thiswar was really the link between the other two great civil wars thathave divided the English-speaking peoples. Thus there were three civilwars in three successive centuries: the British Civil War in theseventeenth, between Roundhead and Cavalier in England; theBritish-American Civil War in the eighteenth, between the King's PartyGovernment and the Opposition on both sides of the Atlantic; and theAmerican Civil War in the nineteenth, between the North and South ofthe United States. 

The American Opposition had no chance of winning their Independence, however much they might proclaim it, so long as the Royal Navy held thesea against them. Washington knew this perfectly well; and his writtenwords are there to prove it. The Revolutionists fought well on land. They invaded Canada and took the whole country except the walls ofQuebec. They also fought well at sea; and Paul Jones, a Scotsman born, raided the coasts of Great Britain till nurses hushed children by themere sound of his name. 

But no fleet and army based on the New World could possibly keep up awar without help from the Old; because, as we have seen all throughPitt's Imperial War, the Old World was the only place in which enoughmen, ships, arms, and warlike stores could be found. Stop enoughsupplies from crossing the Atlantic, and the side whose supplies werestopped would certainly lose. And more than that: whichever sidecommanded the sea would soon command the land as well. Quebec held outunder Carleton till relieved by a fleet in the spring. But, even ifQuebec had fallen, the American invaders would have been driven outagain by the mere arrival of the fleet. For whichever side lost theuse of the St. Lawrence lost the only means of moving, feeding, arming, and reinforcing an army in Canada well enough to stand the strain. 

The turn of the tide of fortune came, and only could come, when all theforeign navies in the world took sides against the King's party in thisBritish civil war. France, Spain, and Holland were thirsting forrevenge. So when they saw a vile creature like Lord George Germainbungling through a war Pitt never would have made; when they sawBritish generals half-hearted because belonging to the party thatopposed the King's; when they saw how steadfastly Washington fought;and, most of all, when they saw how much the Royal Navy was weakened bythe Opposition in Parliament, who stopped a great deal of money frombeing voted for the Army and Navy lest the King should be too strongagainst the Americans; when foreigners whose own navies had been beatenby the British saw such a chance, they came in with navies which theyhad meanwhile been strengthening on purpose to get their revenge. 

France, Spain, and Holland all fought on the side of the Revolution, their big navies joining the little one formed by Paul Jones; whileRussia, Sweden, Denmark (which then included Norway), Prussia, and theHansa Towns, all formed the Armed Neutrality of the North against theweakened British Navy. The King's Party Government thus had ninenavies against it--four in arms and five in armed neutrality; and thischecked the British command of the Atlantic just long enough to makeIndependence safe for the American Revolutionists. 

It did, not, however, stop the Navy from saving the rest of the Empire;for Pitt and the Opposition in the Mother Country, who would notstrengthen the Navy against the Americans, were eager to strengthen itagainst foreign attack. In 1782 Rodney beat the French in theAtlantic, and Hughes beat them in the Indian Ocean; while Gibraltar washeld triumphantly against all that France and Spain could do by landand sea together. 

CHAPTER XVIII

NELSON

(1798-1805)

Nelson and Napoleon never met; and Wellington the soldier beat Napoleonten years after Nelson was killed at Trafalgar. Yet it was Nelson'svictories that made Napoleon's null and void, thus stopping the thirdattempt in modern times to win the overlordship of the world. As Drakestopped Philip of Spain by defeating the Armada, as Russell stopped LouisXIV by the battle of La Hogue, as Jellicoe in our own day stopped theKaiser off the Jutland Bank, so Nelson stopped Napoleon by making Britishsea-power quite supreme. Century by century the four mightiest warlordsof the land have carried all before them until their towering empiresreached the sea. But there, where they were strangers, they all met thesame Royal Navy, manned by sailors of the only race whose home has alwaysbeen the sea, and, meeting it, they fell. 

[Illustration: NELSON]

Able men all, and mighty warlords, the might of three was much more intheir armies than in themselves. Cruel Philip was not a warrior of anykind. Ambitious Louis and the vainglorious Kaiser were only second-ratesoldiers, who would never have won their own way to the highest command. But Napoleon was utterly different. He was as great a master of the artof war on land as Nelson was by sea; and that is one reason why Nelson, who caused his downfall, stands supreme. But there are other reasonstoo. Nelson, like Drake, fought three campaigns with marvellous skill;but he also fought more seamanlike foes. Like Russell, he completelydestroyed the enemy fleet; but he never had Russell's advantage innumbers. We might go on with other reasons yet; but we shall only givetwo more: first, that magic touch of his warm heart which made hiscaptains "like a band of brothers, " which made the bluejackets whocarried his coffin treasure up torn bits of the pall as most preciousrelics, and which made the Empire mourn him as a friend; secondly, thevery different kind of "Nelson touch" he gave his fleet when handling itfor battle, that last touch of perfection in forming it up, leading iton, striking hardest at the weakest spot, and then driving home theattack to the complete destruction of the enemy. 

Nelson was not the first, but the fifth, great admiral to command fleetsin the last French War (1793-1815). Howe, Hood, St. Vincent, Duncan, Nelson: that is the order in which the victors came. Howe, Hood, St. Vincent, and Duncan were all men who had fought in Pitt's Imperial War;and each was old enough to have been Nelson's father. Howe was the heroof the relief of Gibraltar in 1782, at the time that all the foreignnavies in the world were winning American Independence by taking sides ina British civil war. Howe was also the hero of "the Glorious First ofJune" in 1794, when he defeated the French off the north-west coast ofFrance. 

But it was under Hood, not Howe, that Nelson learnt the way fleets shouldbe used; and it was under St. Vincent that he first sprang into fame. 

[Illustration: FIGHTING THE GUNS ON THE MAIN DECK, 1782. ]

St. Vincent, with fifteen ships of the line (that is, big battleships)was sailing south to stop a Spanish fleet from coming north to join theFrench, when, on the 14th of February, 1797, the look-out reported "enemyin sight. " St. Vincent was walking up and down the quarter-deck with hisflag-captain, Hallowell, as the reports came in. "Ten ships of the linein sight. " Then "fifteen, " the same number that he had himself. Then"twenty" . . . "twenty-five" . . . And at last "twenty-seven. " When thistotal of twenty-seven was reported, the officer reporting said, in aquestioning way, "Pretty long odds, Sir?" But, quick as a flash, St. Vincent answered, "Enough of that, Sir! the die is cast; and if they arefifty I will go through them!" And he did. This victory, which broke upthe plans the French and Spaniards had made against Britain, was thoughtso important that Jervis, as he then was called, was made Lord St. Vincent, taking his title from the place near which he won the battle, Cape St. Vincent, the south-west corner of Europe. 

In October Admiral Duncan was made Lord Camperdown for destroying theDutch fleet which was trying to help the French into Ireland. He caughtit off Camperduin (on the coast of North Holland) and smashed it topieces after a furious battle, in which the Dutch, with a smaller fleet, showed that they too were of the Viking breed. This victory stopped thedanger from the north, just as St. Vincent's stopped it from the south. Both were fought in the only proper way to defend the British Empire onthe sea when the enemy comes out, that is, by going to meet him in hisown waters, instead of waiting to let him choose his own point of attackagainst the British coast. 

Next year, 1798, Nelson was also made a peer for a glorious victory wonon his own account. He had learnt from Lord Hood the first principle ofall defence--that the real aim is not so much to stand on guard or evento win a victory as to destroy the enemy's means of destroying you. Thischimed in with his own straight-forward genius; and he never forgot hisold chief: "the best officer that England has to boast of. " Hood had themisfortune never to have been in supreme command during a great battle. But, in Nelson's opinion, he stood above all other commanders-in-chief ofhis own time; and, as we look back on him now, we see that Nelson alonesurpassed him. 

Napoleon, like the Germans of today, hoped to make land-power beatsea-power in the East by stirring up rebellion against the British rulein India and making Egypt his bridge between Europe and Asia. Withdaring skill he crossed the Mediterranean and conquered Egypt. But hisvictory proved worse than useless; for Nelson followed the French fleetand utterly defeated it in the Bay of Aboukir at the mouth of the Nile onthe 1st of August, 1798. The battle was fought with the utmost firmnesson both sides, each knowing that the fate of Egypt, of the East, and ofNapoleon's army as well as of his fleet, hung trembling in the scales. The odds were twelve British battleships to thirteen French. The Frenchsailors, as usual, were not such skilled hands as the British, partlybecause France had always been rather a country of landsmen than seamen, but chiefly because the French fleets were, as a rule, so closelyblockaded that they could not use the open sea for training nearly somuch as their British rivals did. Still, the French fleet, though atanchor (and so unable to change its position quickly to suit the changesof the fight) looked as if it could defy even Nelson himself. For it wasdrawn up across the bay with no spot left unguarded between it and theland at either end of the line; and it was so close in shore that itsadmirals never thought anybody would try to work his way inside. 

But that is just what Nelson did. He sent some of his ships between thevan of the French and the Aboukir shoal, where there was just room toscrape through with hardly an inch to spare; and so skilful was theBritish seamanship that this marvellous manoeuvre took the Frenchcompletely by surprise. Then, having his own fleet under way, while theFrench was standing still, he doubled on their van (that is, he attackedit from both sides), held their centre, and left their rear alone. Bythis skilful move he crushed the van and then had the centre at hismercy. The French gunners stuck to their work with splendid courage, driving the _Bellerophon_ off as a mere battered hulk and keeping most ofthe rest at bay for some time. But the French flagship, Orient, whichthe _Bellerophon_ had boldly attacked, was now attacked by the_Swiftsure_ and _Alexander_; and the French admiral, Brueys, alreadywounded twice, was mortally hit by a cannon ball. He refused to becarried below, saying that "a French admiral should die on deck in afight like this. " His example encouraged the crew to redouble theirefforts. But, just after he died, fire broke out on board the _Orient_and quickly spread fore and aft, up the rigging, and right in toward themagazine. The desperate battle was now at its fiercest, raging all roundthis furious fire, which lit the blackness of that warm Egyptian nightwith devils' tongues of flame. The cannonade went on. But even thethunder of two thousand guns could not drown the roar of that seethingfire, now eating into the very vitals of the ship, nearer and nearer tothe magazine. Every near-by ship that could move now hauled clear as faras possible; while the rest closed portholes and hatchways, took theirpowder below, sent all hands to fire stations, and breathlessly waitedfor the end. Suddenly, as if the sea had opened to let Hell's lightningloose, the _Orient_ burst like a gigantic shell and crashed like Doomsdaythunder. The nearest ships reeled under the terrific shock, which rackedtheir hulls from stem to stern and set some leaking badly. Masts, boats, and twisted rigging flew blazing through the air, fell hissing on thewatered decks, and set two British vessels and one French on fire. Butthe crews worked their very hardest, and they saved all three. 

[Illustration: THE BLOWING UP OF _L'ORIENT_ DURING THE BATTLE OF THENILE. ]

For a few awed minutes every gun was dumb. Then the _Franklin_, theFrench ship that had taken fire, began the fight again. But the_Defence_ and _Swiftsure_ brought down her masts, silenced nearly all herguns, and forced her to surrender. By midnight the first seven ships inthat gallant French line had all been taken or sunk; every man who couldbe saved being brought on board the victorious British men-of-war and, ofcourse, well treated there. The eighth Frenchman, the _Tonnant_, stillkept up the fight, hoping to stop the British from getting at the fiveastern. Her heroic captain, Thouars, had, first, his right arm, then hisleft, and then his right leg, smashed by cannon balls. But, like Brueys, he would not leave the deck, and calmly gave his orders till he died. 

Dawn found the _Tonnant_ still trying to stem the British advance againstthe French rear, and the French frigate _Justice_ actually making for thedisabled British battleship, _Bellerophon_, which she wished to take. But the light of day soon showed the remaining French that all they coulddo for their own side now was to save as many ships as possible. So therear then tried to escape. But one blew up; two ran ashore; and, of allthe fleet that was to have made Napoleon's foothold sure, only fourescaped, two from the line of battle and two from the frigates on theflank. 

Nelson had won a victory which was quite perfect in reaching his greataim--the complete destruction of Napoleon's power in Egypt and the East. Napoleon himself escaped to France, after a campaign in Palestinefollowed by a retreat to Egypt. But his army was stranded as surely asif it had been a wrecked ship, high and dry. Three years after theBattle of the Nile the remnant of it was rounded up and made tosurrender. Moreover, Malta, the central sea base of the wholeMediterranean, had meanwhile (1800) fallen into British hands, where, like Egypt, it remains to this day. 

The same year (1801) that saw the French surrender in Egypt saw Nelsonwin his second victory, this time in the north. Napoleon (victorious, asusual, on land, and foiled, as usual, at sea) had tried to ruin Britishshipping by shutting it out of every port on the continent of Europe. This was his "Continental System. " It hurt the Continent; for Britishships carried most of the goods used in trade not only between Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, but also between the different ports on theEuropean continent itself. Napoleon, however, had no choice but to usehis own land-power, no matter what the cost might be, against Britishsea-power. He was encouraged to do this by finding allies in thosecountries which had formed the anti-British Armed Neutrality of the Northtwenty years before. Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, Prussia, andthe Hansa Towns of Germany, were all glad to hit British sea-power in thehope of getting its trade for themselves. So the new Alliance arrangedthat, as soon as the Baltic ports were clear of ice, the Russian, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian fleets would join the French and Spanish. 

But Nelson was too quick for them. On the 1st of April he led a fleetalong the channel opposite Copenhagen, which is the gateway of theBaltic. After dark, his trusty flag-captain, Hardy, took a small rowboatin as close as possible and tried the depths with a pole; for the boatwas so close to the Danish fleet that the splash of the sounding lead onthe end of a line would surely have been heard. By eleven o'clock Nelsonhad found out that he could range his own fleet close enough alongsidethe Danes. So he sat up all night planning his attack. At seven nextmorning he explained it to his captains, and at nine to the pilots andsailing-masters. Half an hour later the fleet began to move into place. Three big ships grounded in the narrow, shallow, and crooked channel. But the rest went on, closing up the dangerous gaps as best they could. Just, after ten the first gun was fired; but it was another hour and ahalf before the two fleets were at it, hard all. At one o'clock a Danishvictory seemed quite as likely as a British one. Very few Danish gnushad been silenced, while two of the grounded British men-of-war wereflying signals of distress, and the third was signalling to say she coulddo nothing. In the meantime the few British men-of-war that were tryingto work into the channel from the other end under Sir Hyde Parker werebeing headed off by the wind so much that they could hardly do more thanthreaten their own end of the Danish line. Parker was theCommander-in-chief; though Nelson was making the attack. 

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN, APRIL 2nd, 1801. (Note theBritish line ahead. )]

It was at this time of doubt and danger that Parker, urged by a nervousstaff officer, ordered up signal No. 39, which meant "Discontinue action"(that is, stop the fight if you think you ought to do so). The storycommonly told about this famous signal is wrong; as most stories of thekind are pretty sure to be. Signal 39 did not order Nelson to breakaway, no matter what he thought, but meant that he could leave off if hethought that was the right thing to do. As, however, he thought thechance of winning still held good, he told his signal lieutenant simplyto "acknowledge but not repeat No. 39. " Then he added, "and keep mineflying, " his own being the one for "close action. " These two signalsthen gave Nelson's captains the choice of going on or breaking off, according to which seemed the better. All went on except "the gallant, good Riou, " a man who, if he had lived today, would certainly have wonthe Victoria Cross. Riou was in charge of a few small vessels which werebeing terribly mauled by the Trekroner batteries without being able to doany good themselves. So he quite rightly hauled off, thus saving hisdivision from useless destruction. Unluckily he was killed beforegetting out of range; and no hero's death was ever more deeply mourned byall who knew his career. Good commanders need cool heads quite as muchas they need brave hearts. 

Shortly after Riou had left the scene the Danes began to fire moreslowly, while the British kept up as well as ever. But, the Trekronerforts that had hammered Riou now turned their guns on the _Monarch_ and_Defiance_, making the battle in that part of the line as hot as before;while some Danes so lost their heads as to begin firing again from shipsthat had surrendered to the British. This was more than Nelson couldstand. So he wrote to the Danish Crown Prince: "Lord Nelson has beencommanded to spare Denmark when she no longer resists. The line ofdefence which covers her shores has struck to the British flag. Letfiring cease, then, that he may take possession of his prizes, or he willblow them into the air along with the crews who have so nobly defendedthem. The brave Danes are the brothers, and should never be the enemies, of the English. "

Nelson refused the wafer offered him to close up the letter, saying, "this is no time to look hurried"; and, sending to his cabin for acandle, wax, and his biggest seal, he folded and sealed the letter ascoolly as if writing in his house at home instead of in a storm of shotand shell. After arranging terms the Danes gave in; and the whole ArmedNeutrality of the North came to nothing. For the second time Nelson hadbeaten Napoleon. 

This defeat did not really harm the Northern Powers; for, though theyliked their own shipping to do all the oversea trading it could, theywere much better off with the British, who _could_ take their goods tomarket, than with Napoleon, who could _not_. Besides, the British letthem use their own shipping so long as they did not let Napoleon use it;while Napoleon had to stop it altogether, lest the British, with theirstronger navy, should turn it to their advantage instead of his. In aword: it was better to use the sea under the British navy than to lose itunder Napoleon's army. 

Both sides now needed rest. So the Peace of Amiens was signed in March1802. With this peace ended Napoleon's last pretence that he was tryingto save the peoples of the world from their wicked rulers. Some of themdid need saving; and many of the French Revolutionists were generoussouls, eager to spread their own kind of liberty all over Europe. ButBritish liberty had been growing steadily for a good many hundreds ofyears, and the British people did not want a foreign sort thrust uponthem, though many of them felt very kindly toward the French. So this, with the memory of former wars, had brought the two countries into strifeonce more. All might then have ended in a happy peace had not Napoleonset out to win the overlordship of the world, like Philip and Louisbefore him and the German Kaiser since. France, tired of revolutionarytroubles and proud of the way her splendid army was being led to victory, let Napoleon's dreams of conquest mislead her for twelve years to come. Hence the new war that began in 1803 and ended on the field of Waterloo. 

Napoleon had used the peace to strengthen his navy for a last attempt tobring the British to their knees. Villeneuve, the admiral who hadescaped from the Nile, was finally given command of the joint fleets ofFrance and Spain in the south, while Napoleon himself commanded the greatarmy of invasion at Boulogne, within thirty miles of England. "Let us, "said Napoleon, "be masters of the Channel for six hours and we shall bethe masters of the world. " But he knew that the only way to reach Londonwas to outwit Nelson. 

Napoleon's naval plans were wonderfully clever, like all his plans. Butthey were those of a landsman who failed to reckon with all the troublesof bringing the different squadrons of the French and Spanish fleetstogether in spite of the British blockade. Moreover, they were alwayschanging, and not always for the better. Finally, toward the end ofAugust, 1805, when he saw they were not going to work, he suddenly begana land campaign that ended with his stupendous victory over the Austriansand Russians at Austerlitz early in December. 

But meanwhile the French and Spanish fleets had remained a danger whichNelson wished to destroy at its very source, by beating Villeneuve's mainbody wherever he could find it. At last, on the 21st of October, aftertwo years of anxious watching, he caught it off Cape Trafalgar, at thenorthwest entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. Directly he saw he couldbring on a battle he ran up the signal which the whole world knows, andwhich we of the Empire will cherish till the end of time: "Englandexpects that every man will do his duty. " That he had done his own weknow from many an eye-witness, as well as from this entry in his privatediary three months before Trafalgar: "I went on shore for the first timesince the 16th of June 1803; and, from having my foot out of the_Victory_, two years wanting ten days. " During all this long spell ofharassing duty he kept his fleet "tuned up" to the last pitch ofperfection in scouting, manoeuvring, and gunnery, so as to be alwaysready for victorious action at a moment's notice. 

[Illustration: The _VICTORY_. Nelson's Flagship at Trafalgar, launchedin 1765, and still used as the flagship in Portsmouth Harbour. ]

Villeneuve had thirty-three battleships, Nelson only twenty-seven. Butthese twenty-seven all belonged to one navy and were manned by crews whohad been drilled for battle on the open sea without a single spell ofmere harbour work, like the French and Spaniards. Still, the enemy werebrave, and Nelson remarked that "they put a good face on it. " But hequickly added, "I'll give them such a dressing as they never had before. "It was a lovely day of light west wind and bright sunshine as the Britishbore down to the attack in two lines-ahead ("follow-my-leader"), the port(or left) one led by Nelson in the immortal _Victory_, flying the battlesignal "Engage the enemy more closely, " and the starboard one byCollingwood in the _Royal Sovereign_. The first shot was fired on thestroke of noon, or at "eight bells, " as they say on board. Nelson'splan, as usual, was to strike hardest at the weakest spot, which he knewhe could reach because his fleet was so much better trained. He andCollingwood went through the enemy's long line at two spots about half amile apart, crushing his centre, and separating his front from his rear. The double-shotted British guns raked the enemy vessels with frightfuleffect as their muzzles passed close by the sterns. The enemy fired backbravely enough; but with much less skill and confidence. The Spaniardswere already beginning to feel none too friendly toward Napoleon; whilethe French had already lost their trust in Spanish help. 

[Illustration: TRAFALGAR. 21st October, 1805. ]

Yet the Spaniards were a proud people, not to be beaten without a hardstruggle; while the French were bound to do their best in any ease. Sothe fight was furious and fought at the closest quarters. The gunnerscould often see every feature of their opponents' faces and weresometimes scorched by the flashes from opposing guns. The _Victory_ wasfighting a terrific duel with the French _Redoutable_, and Nelson waspacing the deck with his flag-captain, Hardy, when, at 1. 25, he suddenlysank on his knees and fell over on his side, having been hit by amusket-shot fired from the enemy's mizzentop, only fifteen yards away. "They've done for me at last, " said Nelson, as Hardy stooped over him. ASergeant of Marines and two bluejackets ran forward and carried himbelow. Though in great agony he pulled out his handkerchief and, withhis one hand, carefully covered his face, in the hope that the menbetween decks would not see who was hit. 

While Nelson lay dying below, the fight raged worse than ever round the_Victory_. The _Redoutable's_ tops were full of snipers, who not onlyplied their muskets to good effect but also used hand grenades (somethinglike the bombs of the present day). The _Victory's_ deck was almostcleared by the intense fire of these men, and the crew of the_Redoutable_ got ready to board. But on the word "_Repel boarders_!" somany marines and blue-jackets rushed up from below that the French gaveup the attempt. The musketry fire was still very hot from one ship toanother; and the French snipers were as bad as ever. But those in themizzentop from which Nelson was hit were all sniped by his signalmidshipman, young Jack Pollard, who, being a dead shot, picked off theFrenchmen one by one as they leaned over to take aim. In this wayPollard must have hit the man who hit Nelson. 

[Illustration: MODEL OF THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR. (Reproduced bypermission from the model at the Royal United Service Institution. )]

An hour after Nelson had fallen the _Victory_ had become so battered, sohampered by a maze of fallen masts and rigging, and so dangerously holedbetween wind and water, that Hardy was glad of her sheering off a bit, out of the thick of the fight. He then ran below to see Nelson, who atonce asked, "Well, Hardy, how goes the battle?" "Very well, my Lord, "said Hardy, "we have twelve of the enemy's ships. " "I hope, " saidNelson, "that none of ours have struck. " "There's no fear of that, " saidHardy. Another hour passed before Hardy could come back to say, "I amcertain that fourteen or fifteen have struck. " "That's well, " saidNelson, "but I bargained for twenty. " Then, rousing himself to give hislast order, he said, "Anchor, Hardy, anchor!" for he knew a storm wascoming and that Cape Trafalgar was a bad lee shore (that is, a shoretoward which the wind is blowing). A few minutes later he died, murmuring with his latest breath, "Thank God, I've done my duty. "

Trafalgar was so complete a victory that Napoleon gave up all attempts toconquer the British at sea. But he renewed his "Continental System" andmade it ten times worse than before. Having smashed the Austrian andRussian armies at Austerlitz, and the Prussian one at Jena, he wrote theBerlin Decrees, ordering every port on the continent of Europe to be shutagainst every single British ship. This was blockade from the land. TheBritish answered with a blockade from the sea, giving notice, by theirOrders-in-Council, that their Navy would stop the trade of every portwhich shut out British vessels. Napoleon hoped that if he could bullyEurope into obeying his Berlin Decrees he would "conquer the sea by theland. " But what really happened was quite the other way round; forNapoleon's land was conquered by the British sea. So much of the tradeof the European ports had been carried on by British vessels that to shutthese out meant killing the trade in some ports and hurting it in all. Imagine the feelings of a merchant whose country's army had been beatenby Napoleon, and whose own trade was stopped by the Berlin Decrees, whenhe saw the sea open to all who were under the care of the British Navyand closed to all who were not! Imagine also what he thought of thedifference between Napoleon's land-power, which made him a prisoner athome, and British sea-power, which only obliged him to obey certain lawsof trade abroad! Then imagine which side he thought the better one fortrade, when he saw Napoleon himself being forced to choose betweenletting British vessels into France with cloth or letting his army gobare!

Slowly, at first, but very surely, and faster as time went on, theshutting of the ports against British vessels roused the peoples ofEurope against Napoleon. They were, of course, roused by his other actsof tyranny--by the way he cut up countries into new kingdoms to suithimself first and the people of these countries last or not at all, byhis ordering foreigners about like slaves, and by his being a ruthlessconqueror wherever he could. But his shutting of the ports added a kindof slow starvation in the needs and arts of life to all his other sins;while the opening of the ports to British fleets and armies, and to theBritish trade that followed, meant the bread of life and liberty. ThusTrafalgar forced Napoleon either to give in at once or else to go onraising those hosts of enemies which sapped his strength in Spain andRussia and caused his fall at Waterloo. 

CHAPTER XIX

"1812"

The fight between Napoleon's land-blockade and Britain's sea-blockadedivided not only the people of Europe into friends and foes but alsodivided the people of the United States into opposing parties, one infavour of Napoleon, the other in favour of the British. The partyfavouring Napoleon wanted war against the British. The other partywanted peace. 

The War Party hated the British, coveted Canada, and wished to breakthe British blockade. The Peace Party said that Napoleon was a tyrant, while the British were on the side of freedom, and that Napoleon wasrougher with American ships which broke the land-blockade than theBritish were with those which broke the sea-blockade. The War Partyanswered that, for one ship Napoleon could catch, the British caughttwenty. This was true. But it showed that the War Party would rathermake money on Napoleon's side than lose it on the side of freedom. 

The War Party's last argument was that British deserters should be safeunder the American flag when on the high seas. The high seas meant thesea far enough from any country to be a "no-man's-land, " where, as allthe other peoples of the world agreed, any navy could enforce the lawsof war against any one who broke them. The War Party, however, said"no, " and went on tempting British seamen to desert, by offering"dollars for shillings, " a thing they could well afford, because theywere making a great deal of money out of the war, while the Britishwere forced to spend theirs in fighting the tyrant Napoleon. 

The War Party won the vote in Congress; and war was declared in 1812, just when Napoleon was marching to stamp out resistance in Russia. 

This war sprang a double surprise on the British. First, the Americansfailed badly on land against Canada, though they outnumbered theCanadians fifteen to one, and though the Imperial garrison of Canadawas only four thousand strong. Secondly, the little American Navy gavethe big British Navy a great deal of trouble by daring cruises on thepart of small but smart squadrons against the British trade routes, and, as there were no squadron battles, by what counted for very muchmore than squadron cruises in the eyes of the world, five ship duelswon without a break. Ship for ship of the same class the Americans hadthe larger and smarter vessels of the two, and often the better crews. Twenty years of war had worn out the reserves of British seamen. "Dollars for shillings" had tempted many of the British who survived todesert the hard work against Napoleon for the easier, safer, and betterpaid work under the Stars and Stripes; while the mere want of any enemyto fight for the command of the sea after Trafalgar had tended to makethe British get slack. 

But, even after making all allowances in favour of the British andagainst the Americans, there is no denying that the Yankee ships foughtexceedingly well. Their skilful manoeuvres and shattering broadsidesdeserved to win; and the U. S. SS. _Constitution_, _Hornet_, _Wasp_, and_United States_ richly deserve their place of honour in the story ofthe sea. The turn of the tide came on the 1st of June, 1813, when theU. S. S. _Chesapeake_ sailed out of Boston to fight H. M. S. _Shannon_. These two frigates were about equal in size and armament. The_Chesapeake_ carried fifty more men; but her captain, the very gallantLawrence, was new to her, like his officers and men, and the crew as awhole were not nearly such veterans as the _Shannon's_, whom Broke hadtrained to perfection for seven years. The duel lasted only fifteenminutes. Every single British shot struck home; and when Broke led hisboarders on to the _Chesapeake's_ deck the fight had been won already. 

[Illustration: THE _SHANNON_ AND THE _CHESAPEAKE_. ]

The British government, never wanting this war, and doing all theycould to avoid it without endangering the side of freedom againstNapoleon, had not even now put forth their real naval strength. But in1814 they blockaded all the ports in the United States that the WarParty could shut against them; whereupon, so far as these ports wereconcerned, American sea trade simply fell dead. They also burnt theAmerican Government buildings at Washington as a reprisal for theCanadian Government buildings the Americans had burnt at Newark andToronto. 

Those two splendid Americans, Commodores Perry and Macdonough, thanwhom the British never met a better or more generous foe, won thecommand of Lakes Erie and Champlain, thus partly offsetting Britishvictories elsewhere. The American peace delegates were, however, stillmore favoured by the state of Europe at the end of 1814, when they werearranging the Treaty of Ghent with the British; for, while they had nooutside trouble to prevent them from driving a hard bargain, theBritish had half the other troubles of the world on their shoulders aswell. 

The end of it all was that things were left as before. The Treaty saidnothing about the claims and causes for which the United States hadmade the war. 

 HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA

 Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay; In the dimmest North-east distance dawn'd Gibraltar grand and gray; "Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"--say, Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. --_Robert Browning_. 

 This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true. --_Shakespeare. _ _King John, Act V, Scene VII. _

 YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

 Ye Mariners of England That guard our native seas! Whose flag has braved a thousand years The battle and the breeze! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe; And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow! While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. 

 The spirit of your fathers Shall start from every wave; For the deck it was their field of fame, And Ocean was their grave: Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell Your manly hearts shall glow, As ye sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow! While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. 

 Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain-waves, Her home is on the deep. With thunders from her native oak She quells the floods below, As they roar on the shore, When the stormy winds do blow! When the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. 

 The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn; Till danger's troubled night depart And the star of peace return. Then, then, ye ocean warriors! Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow! When the fiery fight is heard no more, And the storm has ceased to blow. --_Thomas Campbell. _

 SEA-FEVER

 I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking. 

 I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying. 

 I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over. --_John Masefield. _

 O, FALMOUTH IS A FINE TOWN

 O, Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay, And I wish from my heart it's there I was to-day; I wish from my heart I was far away from here, Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear. 

 For it's home, dearie, home--it's home I want to be, Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea; O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree, They're all growing green in the old countrie. 

 In Baltimore a-walking with a lady I did meet With her babe on her arm, as she came down the street; And I thought how I sailed, and the cradle standing ready For the pretty little babe that has never seen its daddy. 

 And it's home, dearie, home, &c. 

 O, if it be a lass, she shall wear a golden ring; And if it be a lad, he shall fight for his king: With his dirk and his hat and his little jacket blue He shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie used to do. 

 And it's home, dearie, home, &c. 

 O, there's a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west, And that of all the winds is the one I like the best, For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free, And it soon will blow us home to the old countrie. 

 For it's home, dearie, home--it's home I want to be, Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea; O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree, They're all growing green in the old countrie. --_Old Song. _

"FAREWELL AND ADIEU"

This famous song was sung in the Navy all through the Sailing Age; andit is not yet forgotten after a century of Steam and Steel. Gibraltar, Cadiz, and many other places on the coast of Spain, were great ports ofcall for the Navy as well as great ports of trade for the MercantileMarine. So, what with music, dance, and song in these homes of theSouth, there was no end to the flirtations between the Spanish ladiesand the British tars in the piping times of peace. 

 Farewell, and adieu to you, gay Spanish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain! For we've received orders for to sail for old England, But we hope in a short time to see you again. 

 We'll rant and we'll roar like true British heroes, We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas, Until we strike soundings in the channel of old England; From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues. 

 Then we hove our ship to, with the wind at sou'-west, boys, We hove our ship to, for to strike soundings clear; We got soundings in ninety-five fathom, and boldly Up the channel of old England our course we did steer. 

 The first we made it was calléd the Deadman, Next, Ramshead off Plymouth, Start, Portland, and Wight; We passed by Beechy, by Fairleigh, and Dungeness, And hove our ship to, off the South Foreland light. 

 Then a signal was made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the downs, that night for to sleep; Then stand by your stoppers, let go your shank-painters, Haul all your clew-garnets, stick out tacks and sheets. --_Old Song. _

BOOK III

THE AGE OF STEAM AND STEEL

PART I

A CENTURY OF CHANGE

(1814-1914)

CHAPTER XX

A CENTURY OF BRITISH-FRENCH-AMERICAN PEACE

(1815-1914)

Germany made 1914 a year of blood; but let us remember it as also beingthe hundredth year of peace between the British, Americans, and French, those three great peoples who will, we hope, go on as friendshenceforward, leading the world ever closer to the glorious goal oftrue democracy: that happier time when every boy and girl shall have atleast the chance to learn the sacred trust of all self-government, andwhen most men and women shall have learnt this lesson well enough touse their votes for what is really best. 

CHAPTER XXI

A CENTURY OF MINOR BRITISH WARS

(1815-1914)

During the hundred and nine years between Trafalgar and the Great Waragainst the Germans the Royal Navy had no more fights for life ordeath. But it never ceased to protect the Empire it had done so muchto make. It took part in many wars; it prevented many others; ithelped to spread law and justice in the world; and, at the end of allthis, it was as ready as ever to meet the foe. 

Sometimes it acted alone; but much oftener with the Army in jointexpeditions, as it had for centuries. And here let us remind ourselvesagain that the Navy by itself could no more have made the Empire thanthe Army could alone. The United Service of both was needed for suchwork in the past, just as the United Service of these and of the RoyalAir Force will be needed to defend the Empire in the future. Nor isthis all we must remember; for the fighting Services draw their ownstrength from the strength of the whole people. So, whenever we talkof how this great empire of the free was won and is to be defended, letus never forget that it needed and it needs the patriotic service ofevery man and woman, boy and girl, whether in the fighting Services bysea and land and air or among those remaining quietly at home. One forall, and all for one. 

The Navy's first work after the peace of 1815 was to destroy thestronghold of the Dey of Algiers, who was a tyrant, enslaver, andpirate in one. This released thousands of Christian slaves and brokeup Algerian slavery for ever. A few years later (1827) the French andBritish fleets, now happily allied, sank the Turkish fleet at Navarino, because the Sultan was threatening to kill off the Greeks. Then theNavy sent the Pasha of Egypt fleeing out of Beirut and Acre in Syria, closed in on Alexandria, and forced him to stop bullying the people ofthe whole Near East. 

By this time (1840) steam had begun to be used in British men-of-war. But the first steamer in the world that ever fired a shot in action, and the first to cross any ocean under steam the whole way, was builtat Quebec in 1831. This was the famous _Royal William_, which steamedfrom Pictou (in Nova Scotia) to London in 1833, and which, on the 5thof May, 1836, in the Bay of San Sebastian, fired the first shot everfired in battle from a warship under steam. She had been sold to theSpanish Government for use against the Carlists, who were the same sortof curse to Spain that the Stuarts were to Britain, and was thenleading the British Auxiliary Steam Squadron under Commodore Henry. (The American _Savannah_ is often said to have crossed the Atlanticunder steam in 1819. But her log (ship's diary) proves that shesteamed only eighty hours during her voyage of a month. )

[Illustration: THE _ROYAL WILLIAM_. Canadian built; the first boat tocross any ocean steaming the whole way (1833), the first steamer in theworld to fire a shot in action (May 5, 1836). ]

In 1854 French and British were again allied, this time against Russia, which wanted to cut Europe off from Asia by taking Constantinople. TheAllies took Sebastopol in the Crimea because it was the Russian navalbase in the Black Sea. The Czar never thought that "bleeding his bigtoe" could beat him. But it did. He had to supply his army by land, while the Allies supplied theirs by sea; and though theirs foughtthousands of miles from their bases at home, while his fought in Russiaitself, within a few hundred miles of its bases inland, yet theirsea-power wore out his land-power in less than two years. 

Russia was at that time a great world-power, stretching without a breakfrom the Baltic to Alaska, which she owned. What, then, kept Canadafree from the slightest touch of war? The only answer is, the RoyalNavy, that Navy which, supported by the Mother Country alone, enabledall the oversea Dominions to grow in perfect peace and safety for thiswhole hundred years of British wars. Moreover, Canada was then, andlong remained, one of the greatest shipping countries in the world, dependent on her own and the Mother Country's shipping for her verylife. What made her shipping safe on every sea? The Royal Navy. But, more than even this, the Mother Country spent twenty-five hundredmillions of her own money on keeping Canada Canadian and British byland and sea. And here, again, nothing could have been done withoutthe Navy. 

The Navy enabled the Mother Country to put down the Indian Mutiny, amutiny which, if it had succeeded, would have thrown India back athousand years, into the welter of her age-long wars; and these warsthemselves would soon have snuffed out all the "Pacifist" IndianNationalists who bite the British hand that feeds them, though theywant Britain to do all the paying and fighting of Indian defence. TheNavy enabled the Mother Country to save Egypt from ruin at home, fromthe ruthless sword of the Mahdi in the Soudan, and from conquest by theGermans or the Turks. The Navy also enabled the Mother Country tochange a dozen savage lands into places where people could rise abovethe level of their former savage lives. 

All this meant war. But if these countries had not been brought intothe British Empire they could only have had the choice of twoevils--either to have remained lands of blood and savagery or to havebeen bullied by the Germans. And if the British do not make friends ofthose they conquer, how is it that so many Natives fought for themwithout being in any way forced to do so, and how is it that the sameBoer commander-in-chief who fought against the British in the Boer Warled a Boer army on the British side against the Germans? The fact isthat all the white man's countries of the British Empire overseas areperfectly free commonwealths in which not only those of British bloodbut those of foreign origin, like Boers and French-Canadians, can livetheir lives in their own way, without the Mother Country's having theslightest wish or power to force them to give a ship, a dollar, or aman to defend the Empire without which they could not live a day. Sheprotects them for nothing. They join her or not, just as they please. And when they do join her, her Navy is always ready to take theirsoldiers safe across the sea. No League of Nations could ever betterthis. 

Nor is this the only kind of freedom that flourishes under the WhiteEnsign of the Navy. The oversea Dominions, which govern themselves, make what laws they please about their trade, even to charging duty ongoods imported from the Mother Country. But the parts of the Empirewhich the Mother Country has to rule, (because their people, not beingwhites, have not yet learnt to rule themselves), also enjoy a wonderfulamount of freedom in trade. And foreigners enjoy it too; for they areallowed to trade with the Natives as freely as the British arethemselves. Nor is this all. During the hundred and nine yearsbetween Trafalgar and the Great War most of the oversea colonies ofHolland, Spain, and Portugal could have easily been taken by Britishjoint expeditions. But not one of them was touched. 

There never was the slightest doubt that the Navy's long arm couldreach all round the Seven Seas. When the Emperor of Abyssiniaimprisoned British subjects wrongly and would not let them go, the Navysoon took an army to the east coast of Africa and kept it supplied tillit had marched inland, over the mountains, and brought the prisonersback. When the Chinese Mandarins treated a signed agreement like a"scrap of paper" (as the Germans treated the neutrality of Belgium)they presently found a hundred and seventy-three British vessels comingto know the reason why, though the Chinese coast was sixteen thousandmiles from England. No, there is no question about the Navy's strongright arm. But it has no thievish fingers. 

The Empire has grown by trade rather than by conquest. There have beenconquests, plenty of them. But they have been brought on either by thefact that other Powers have tried to shut us out of whole continents, as the Spaniards tried in North and South America, or by fair war, aswith the French, or by barbarians and savages who would not treatproperly the British merchants with whom they had been very glad totrade. Of course there have been mistakes, and British wrongs as wellas British rights. But ask the conquered how they could live their ownlives so much in their own way under a flag of their own and withoutthe safeguard of the Royal Navy. 

These things being so, the Empire, which is itself the first realLeague of Nations the world has ever seen, would be wrong to give upany of the countries it holds in trust for their inhabitants; and itsenormous size is more a blessing than a curse. The size itself is morethan we can quite take in till we measure it by something else we knowas being very large indeed. India, for instance, has three times asmany people as there are in the whole of the United States; thoughIndia is only one of the many countries under the British Crown. Somuch for population. Now for area. The area added to the BritishEmpire in the last fifty years is larger than that of the whole UnitedStates. Yet we don't hear much about it. That is not the British way. The Navy is "The Silent Service. "

PART II

THE GREAT WAR

(1914-1918)

CHAPTER XXII

THE HANDY MAN

We have not been through the Sailing Age without learning somethingabout the "Handy Man" of the Royal Navy, whether he is a ship's boy ora veteran boatswain (bo's'n), a cadet or a commander-in-chief, ablue-jacket or a Royal Marine ("soldier and sailor too"). But we mustnot enter the Age of Steam and Steel without taking another look athim, if only to see what a great part he plays in our lives andliberties by keeping the seaways open to friends and closed to enemies. Without the Handy Man of the Royal Navy the Merchant Service could notlive a day, the Canadian Army could not have joined the other Britisharmies at the front, and the Empire itself would be all parts and nowhole, because divided, not united, by the Seven Seas. United westand: divided we fall. 

The sea is three times bigger than the land, but three hundred timesless known. Yet even our everyday language is full of sea terms;because so much of it, like so much of our blood, comes from the HardyNorsemen, and because so much of the very life of all theEnglish-speaking peoples depends upon the handy man at sea. Peopleswho have Norse blood, like French and Germans, but who have never livedby sea-power, and peoples who, like the Russians and Chinese, haveneither sea-power nor a sea-folk's blood, never use sea terms in theirordinary talk. They may dress up a landsman and put him on the stageto talk the same sort of twaddle that our own stage sailors talk--allabout "shiver my timbers, " "hitching his breeches, " and "belaying theslack of your jaw. " But they do not talk the real sea sense we havelearnt from the handy man of whose strange life we know so little. 

When we say "that slacker's not pulling his weight" we use a term thathas come down from the old Rowing Age, when a man who was not helpingthe boat along more with his oar than he was keeping her back with hisweight really was the worst kind of "slacker. " But most of the seaterms we use in our land talk come from the Sailing Age of Drake andNelson. To be "A1" is to be like the best class of merchant ships thatare rated A1 for insurance. "First-rate, " on the other hand, comesfrom the Navy, and means ships of the largest size and strongest build, like the super-dreadnoughts of to-day. If you make a mess of thingspeople say you are "on the wrong tack, " may "get taken aback, " and findyourself "on your beam ends" or, worse still, "on the rocks. " So youhad better remember that "if you won't be ruled by the rudder you aresure to be ruled by the rock. " If you do not "know the ropes" you willnot "keep on an even keel" when it's "blowing great guns. " If you taketo drink you will soon "have three sheets in the wind, " because youwill not have the sense to "steer a straight course, " but, getting"half seas over, " perhaps "go by the board" or be "thrown overboard" byfriends who might have "brought you up with a round turn" before it wastoo late. Remember three other bits of handy man's advice: "you'dbetter not sail so close to the wind" (do not go so near to doingsomething wrong), "don't speak to the man at the wheel" (because theship may get off her course while you are bothering him), and, when astorm is brewing, mind you "shorten sail" and "take in a reef, " insteadof being such a fool as to "carry on till all is blue. " When you arein for a fight then "clear the decks for action, " by putting asideeverything that might get in your way. The list could be made verymuch longer if we took the whole subject "by and large" and "trimmedour sails to every breeze" when we were "all aboard. " But here we must"stow it, " "make everything ship-shape, " trust to the "sheet-anchor, "and, leaving the age of mast and sail, go "full steam ahead" into ourown. 

"Full steam ahead" might well have been the motto of Nelson'sflag-captain, Hardy, when he was First Sea Lord of the Admiralty;because, twenty years before the first steam armoured ship waslaunched, he wrote this opinion: "Science will alter the whole Navy. Depend on it, steam and gunnery are in their infancy. " There were justa hundred years between Trafalgar and laying the keel of the firstmodern _Dreadnought_ in 1905. But Hardy foresaw the sort of changethat was bound to come; and so helped on toward Jellicoe and Jutland. That is one reason why foreigners cannot catch the British Navy napping. 

Another is because the British "handy man" can "turn his hand toanything"; though even his worst enemies can never accuse him of being"jack of all trades and master of none. " He is the master of the sea. But he knows the ropes of many other things as well; and none of thestrange things he is called upon to do ever seem to find him wanting. When a British joint expedition attacked St. Helena the Dutch neverdreamt of guarding the huge sheer cliffs behind the town. But up wenta handy man with a long cord by which he pulled up a rope, which, inits turn, was used to haul up a ladder that the soldiers climbed atnight. Next morning the astounded Dutchmen found themselves attackedby land as well as by sea and had to give in. 

One day the admiral (Sir William Kennedy) commanding in the IndianOcean a few years ago heard that two Englishwomen had been left on adesert island by a mail steamer from which they had landed for apicnic. The steamer was bound to go on. The women were not missedtill too late. So the captain telegraphed to the Admiral from the nextport. The Admiral at once went to the island in his flagship, foundthe women with their dresses all torn to ribbons on the rocks, measuredthem for sailor suits himself, and had them properly rigged out by theship's tailor, just like the bluejackets, except for the skirts--whitejerseys, navy blue serge uniforms, with blue jean collars and whitetrimmings, straw hats with H. M. S. _Boadicea_ on the ribbon in gold, knife and lanyard, all complete. 

To beat this admiral in turning his hand to anything at a moment'snotice we must take the bluejacket whom Captain Wonham saw escapingfrom a horde of savages on the West Coast of Africa during the AshantiWar of 1874. This man knew the natives well, as he had been theGovernor's servant there for several years before the niggers swarmedout of the bush to kill off the whites. Every one seemed to be safe inthe boats, when Captain Wonham suddenly spied Jack running for his lifeon top of a long spit of high rocks that jutted out like a wharf. Thenatives, brandishing their spears and climbing the rocks, were justgoing to cut Jack off when he, knowing their craze for the white man'sclothes, threw his cap at them. Immediately there was a scramble whichheld up their advance. As they came on again he threw them his serge, and so on, taking a spurt after each throw. At last he took off histrousers, which set all the niggers fighting like mad round two bigchiefs, each of whom was hanging on to one leg. Then he took a neatheader and swam off to the boats, which had meanwhile pulled in to hisrescue. 

When the battleship _Majestic_ was sunk in the Dardanelles a bluejacketran along her upper side as she rolled over, then along her keel as sheturned bottom upwards. Finally, seeing that she was sinking by thestern, and knowing both her own length and the depth of the water, heclimbed right up on the tip-top end of her stem, from which he wastaken off as dry as a bone. Meanwhile a very different kind of rescuewas being made by Captain Talbot, who, having gone down with the ship, rose to the surface and was rescued by a launch. He had barelyrecovered his breath when he saw two of his bluejackets struggling fortheir lives. He at once dived in and rescued both at the very greatrisk of his own. 

From East to West, from the Tropics to the Poles, the Navy has goneeverywhere and done nearly everything that mortal man can do. Think ofthe Admiralty "rating" Newfoundland, a country bigger than Scotland andWales put together, as one of His Majesty's Ships and putting a captainin command! Yet that was done in the early days; and it worked verywell. Think of the naval brigades (that is, men landed for serviceashore) which have fought alone or with the Army, or with many foreignarmies and navies, all over the world for hundreds of years. Drake, aswe have seen, always used naval brigades, and they have always been thesame keen "first-class fighting men" wherever they went. The onlytrouble was in holding them back. At the siege of Tangier in NorthAfrica in the seventeenth century Admiral Herbert "checked" CaptainBarclay "for suffering too forward and furious an advance, lest theymight fall into an ambush"; whereupon Barclay said, "Sir, I can leadthem on, but the Furies can't call them back. " A naval brigademan-handled the guns on the Plains of Abraham the day of Wolfe'svictory, and took forty-seven up the cliff and into position before thearmy had dug itself in for the night. Nelson lost his right arm whenleading a naval brigade at Teneriffe in 1797. Peel's naval brigade inthe Indian Mutiny (1857-9) man-handled two big guns right up againstthe wall that kept Lord Clyde's army from joining hands with theBritish besieged in Lucknow, blew a hole in it, though it was swarmingwith rebels, and so let the Marines and the Highlanders through. 

In Egypt (1882) Lord Fisher, of whom we shall soon hear more, rigged upa train like an ironclad and kept Arabi Pasha at arm's length fromAlexandria, which Lord Alcester's fleet had bombarded and taken. Lieutenant Rawson literally "steered" Lord Wolseley's army across thedesert by the stars during the night march that ended in the perfectvictory of Tel-el-Kebir. Mortally wounded he simply asked: "Did I leadthem straight, Sir?"

The Egyptian campaigns continued off and on for sixteen years(1882-1898) till Lord Kitchener beat the Mahdi far south in the wildSoudan. British sea-power, as it always does, worked the sea lines ofcommunication over which the army's supplies had to go to the frontfrom England and elsewhere, and, again as usual, put the army in thebest possible place from which to strike inland. Needless to say, thenaval part of British sea-power not only helped and protected themercantile part, which carried the supplies, but helped both in thefighting and the inland water transport too. 

At one time (1885) the little Naval Brigade on the Nile had to be ledby a boatswain, every officer having been killed or wounded. In theattempt to rescue the saintly and heroic General Gordon from Khartoum, Lord Beresford rigged up the little Egyptian steamer _Safieh_ witharmour plates and took her past an enemy fort that could easily havesunk her as she went by, only eighty yards away, if his machine-gunnershad not kept such a stream of bullets whizzing through every hole fromwhich an Egyptian gun stuck out that not a single Egyptian gunner couldstand to his piece and live. 

Lord Beresford was well to the fore wherever hard work had to be doneduring that desperate venture; and it was he who performed thewonderful feat of getting the Nile steamers hauled through the SecondCataract by fifteen hundred British soldiers, who hove them up againstthat awful stream of death while the blue-jackets looked after thetackle. Beresford's Naval Brigade used to tramp fifteen miles a dayalong the river, sometimes work as many hours with no spell off fordinner, haul the whaleboats up-stream to where the rapids made a bigloop, and then, avoiding the loop, portage them across the neck of landinto the river again. Handling these boats in the killing heat wouldhave been hard enough in any case; but it was made still worse by thescorpions that swarmed in them under the mats and darted out to bitethe nearest hand. Beresford himself had to keep his weather eye onthirty miles of roaring river, on hundreds of soldiers and sailors, andon thousands of natives. Yet he managed it all quite handily by ridingabout on his three famous camels: Bimbashi, Ballyhooly, and Beelzebub. 

But let no one imagine that dozens of joint expeditions ever make theNavy forget its first duty of keeping the seaways clear of everypossible enemy during every minute of every day the whole year round. When the Russian fleet was going out to the Sea of Japan during theRusso-Japanese War (1904-5) it ran into the "Gamecock Fleet" of Britishfishing vessels in the North Sea, got excited, and fired some shotsthat killed and wounded several fishermen. Within a very few hours itwas completely surrounded by a British fleet that did not interferewith its movements, but simply "shadowed" it along, waiting for orders. There was no fight; and the Russians were left to be finished by theJapanese. But the point is, that, although the British Empire was thenat peace with the whole world, the British Navy was far readier forinstant action than the Russian Navy, which had been many months at war. 

THE HAPPY WARRIOR

Wordsworth's glorious poem is not in praise of war but of theself-sacrificing warriors who try to save their country from thehorrors of war. No wise people, least of all the men who know it best, ever sing the praise of war itself. They might as well sing thepraises of disease. But, while those who, like the Germans, force awicked war upon the world are no better than poisoners of wells andspreaders of the plague, those, on the other hand, who, like theAllies, fight the poisoners of wells and spreaders of the plague aredoing the same kind of service that doctors do when fighting germs. Therefore, as doctors to disease, so is the Happy Warrior to war. Heno more likes war than doctors like the germs of deadly sickness; andhe would rid the world of this great danger if he could. But while warlasts, and wars are waged against the very soul of all we hold mostdear, we need the Happy Warrior who can foresee the coming war and leada host of heroes when it comes. And leaders and followers alike, whenfaithful unto death, are they not among the noblest martyrs ever known?_For greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life forhis friends_. 

 Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be? --It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought: Whose high endeavours are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright: Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn; Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, But makes his moral being his prime care; Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train! Turns his necessity to glorious gain; In face of these doth exercise a power Which is our human nature's highest dower; Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives: By objects, which might force the soul to abate Her feeling, rendered more compassionate; Is placable--because occasions rise So often that demand such sacrifice; More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress;

 * * * * * *

 Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad for human kind, Is happy as a Lover; and attired With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired; And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;

 * * * * * *

 Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth For ever, and to noble deeds give birth, Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame, And leave a dead unprofitable name-- Finds comfort in himself and in his cause; And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause: This is the Happy Warrior; this is He That every Man in arms should wish to be. --_William Wordsworth_. 

CHAPTER XXIII

FIFTY YEARS OF WARNING

(1864-1914)

In 1864 the Fathers of Confederation met at Quebec, while the Germanstook from the Danes the neck of land through which they cut the KielCanal to give the German Navy a safe back way between the North Sea andthe Baltic. At first sight you cannot understand why CanadianConfederation and the German attack on Denmark should ever be mentionedtogether. But, just as the waters of two streams in the same riversystem are bound to meet in the end, so Canada and Germany were boundto meet on the same battlefield when once Canada had begun to grow intoa nation within the British Empire and Germany had begun to grow intoan empire for whose ambitions there was no room without a series ofvictorious wars. After beating Austria in 1866, to win the leadershipof Central Europe, Germany beat France in 1870, took Alsace andLorraine, and made herself the strongest land-power in the world. Eventhen two such very different Englishmen as Cardinal Newman and JohnStuart Mill foresaw the clash that was bound to come between the newempire of the Germans and the old one of the British. But most peoplenever see far ahead, while many will not look at all if the prospectseems to be unpleasant. 

Thirty years before the war (1884) Germany began to get an empireoverseas. Taking every possible chance she went on till she had amillion square miles and fifteen million natives. But she neither hadnor could get without victorious war any land outside of Germany whereshe could bring up German children under the German flag. Evenincluding the German parts of Austria there was barely onequarter-million of square miles on which German-speaking people couldgo on growing under their own flags; while the English-speaking peopleof the British Empire and the United States had twenty times as muchland, fit for whites, on which to grow bigger and bigger populations oftheir own blood under their own flags. This meant that the new, strong, and most ambitious German Empire was doomed to anever-dwindling future as a world-power in comparison with the BritishEmpire. The Germans could not see why they should not have as good a"place in the sun" of the white man's countries as the British, whomthey now looked on very much as our ancestors looked upon the overseaSpaniards about the time of the Armada. "Why, " they asked, "should theBritish have so much white man's country while we have so little?"

There are only three answers, two that the Germans understand as wellas we do, and one that, being what they are, they could hardly beexpected to admit, though it is the only one that justifies our case. The two answers which the Germans understand are of course these: thatwe had the sea-power while they had not; and that, because we had it, we had reaped the full benefit of "first come, first served. " But thethird answer, which is much the most important, because it turns uponthe question of right and wrong, is that while the Germans, like theSpaniards, have grossly abused their imperial powers, we, on the whole, with all our faults, have not. 

There are so many crimes for which the Germans have to answer that thiswhole book could not contain the hundredth part of them. But one crimein one of their oversea possessions will be enough to mention here, because it was all of a piece with the rest. In German South-WestAfrica the Herreros, a brave native people, were robbed if they workedhard for the German slave-drivers, flogged till their backs were flayedif they did not, and killed if they stood up for their rights. Thereare plenty of German photographs to prove that the modern Germans arevery like the Spaniards of Philip II and utterly unlike the kindlymodern French, Italians, Americans, and British. The world itself iswitness now, and its conscience is the judge. So there we shall leaveour case and turn to follow the ever thickening plot of coming war. 

In 1889 Britain spent an extra hundred million dollars on building newmen-of-war. Next year Germany got Heligoland from Britain in exchangefor Zanzibar. Heligoland is only a tiny inland off the North Sea coastof Germany. But it was very useful to the Germans as one of the maindefences of the great naval base there. 

In 1897 the Kaiser said, "I shall not rest till I have made my fleet asstrong as my army. " A year later he said, "Our future is on thewater. " And in 1900 the German Navy Bill passed by the GermanParliament began by saying, "The German Navy must be strong enough toendanger the supremacy of even the mightiest foreign navy. " What"foreign navy" could that be if not the British? In 1908 the Kaisertried to steal a march on the too pacific British Government by writingprivately to Lord Tweedmouth, the feeble civilian First Lord of theAdmiralty. The First Lord represents the Navy in Parliament; andParliament represents the People, who elect its members. So when aFirst Lord is a real statesman who knows what advice to take from theFirst Sea Lord (who is always an admiral) everything goes well; forthen Parliament and the Navy work together as the trusted servants ofthe whole People. But Tweedmouth, feeble and easily flattered, wascompletely taken in by the sly Kaiser, who said Germany was onlybuilding new ships in place of old ones, while she was really trying todouble her strength. It was therefore a very lucky thing that theKaiser also tried to fool that wonderful statesman, wise King Edward, who at once saw through the whole German trick. 

Meanwhile (1898) the Americans had driven the Spaniards out of theirlast oversea possessions, much to the rage of the Germans, who hadhoped to get these themselves. The German admiral at Manilla in thePhilippines blustered against the American fleet under Admiral Dewey;but was soon brought to book by Sir Edward Chichester, who told him hewould have to fight the British squadron as well if he gave any moretrouble about things that were none of his business. 

The same year the Germans tried to set the French and British by theears over Fashoda. A French expedition came out of French Africa intothe Sudan, where Kitchener's army was in possession after having freedEgypt from the power of the Madhi's wild Sudanese. French and Britishboth claimed the same place; and for some years Fashoda was like a redrag to a bull when mentioned to Frenchmen; for Kitchener had got therefirst. Luckily he had fought for France in 1870, spoke French like aFrenchman, and soon made friends with the French on the spot. Moreluckily still, King Edward the Wise went to Paris in 1903, despite thefears of his Ministers, who did all they could to make him change hismind, and then, when this failed, to go there as a private person. They were afraid that memories of Fashoda and of all the anti-Britishfeeling stirred up by Germans in Europe and America over the Boer War(1899-1902) would make the French unfriendly. But he went to pay hisrespects to France on his accession to the British Throne, showed howperfectly he understood the French people, said and did exactly theright thing in the right way; and, before either friends or foes knewwhat was happening, had so won the heart of France that French andBritish, seeing what friends they might be, began that _EntenteCordiale_ (good understanding of each other) which our gloriousAlliance in the Great War ought to make us keep forever. Paris namedone of her squares in his honour, _Place Edouard Sept_; and there thewise king's statue stands to remind the world of what he did to save itfrom the German fury. 

Next year Lord Fisher went to London as First Sea Lord (1904-10) to getthe Navy ready for the coming war. He struck off the list of fightingships every single one that would not be fit for battle in the nearfuture. He put "nucleus crews" on board all ships fit for service thatwere not in sea-going squadrons for the time being; so that when theReserves were called out for the war they would find these nucleuscrews ready to show them all the latest things aboard. He started anew class of battleships by launching (1906) the world-famous_Dreadnought_. This kind of ship was so much better than all othersthat all foreign navies, both friends and foes, have copied it eversince, trying to keep up with each new British improvement as itappeared. 

But the greatest thing of all was Fisher's new plan for bringing themighty British fleets closer together and so "handier" for battles withthe Germans. The old plan of posting British squadrons all over theworld takes us back to the Conquest of Canada; for it was the work ofSt. Vincent, to whom Wolfe handed his will the night before the Battleof the Plains (1759). St. Vincent's plan of 1803 was so good that itworked well, with a few changes, down to Fisher's anti-German plan of1904, about which time the French and British Navies began talking overthe best ways of acting together when the Germans made their spring. In 1905--the centenary of Trafalgar--a British fleet visited France anda French fleet visited England. It was a thrilling sight to see thatnoble Frenchman, Admiral Caillard, whose example was followed by allhis officers, stand up in his carriage to salute the Nelson statue inTrafalgar Square. 

In 1908, when Canada was celebrating the Tercentenary of a life thatcould never have begun without Drake or been saved without Nelson, theFrench and British Prime Ministers (Clemenceau and Campbell-Bannerman)were talking things over in Paris. The result was that the Britishleft the Mediterranean mainly in charge of the French Navy, while theFrench left the Channel mostly and the North Sea entirely in charge ofthe British. There was no treaty then or at any other time. EachGovernment left its own Parliament, and therefore its own People, whoseservant it was, to decide freely when the time came. But the men atthe head of the French and British fleets and armies arranged, year byyear, what they would do when they got the word _GO_! At the same time(six years before the war) that the Prime Ministers were in conferencein Paris Lord Haldane, then Secretary of State for War, was warningLord French in London that he would be expected to command the Britisharmy against the Germans in France, and that he had better begin tostudy the problem at once. 

A great deal of sickening nonsense has been talked about our havingbeen so "righteous" because so "unprepared. " We were not prepared to_attack_ anybody; and quite rightly too; though we need not getself-righteous over it. But our great Mother Country's Navy was mostcertainly and most rightly prepared to _defend_ the Empire and itsallies against the attack that was bound to come. If France and GreatBritain had not been well enough prepared for self-defence, then theGermans must have won; and wrong would have triumphed over right allover the world. There is only one answer to all this "Pacifistic"stuff-and-nonsense--if you will not fight on the side of right, thenyou help those who fight on the side of wrong; and if you see yourenemy preparing to attack you wrongfully, and you do not prepare todefend yourself, then you are a fool as well as a knave. 

All the great experts in statesmanship and war saw the clash coming;and saw that it was sure to come, because the German war party couldforce it on the moment they were ready. Moreover, it was known thatthe men of this war party would have forced it on at once if a peaceparty had ever seemed likely to oust them. The real experts evenforesaw the chief ways in which the war would be fought. Lord Fisherforesaw the danger of sea-going submarines long before submarines wereused for anything but the defence of harbours. More than this, tenyears before the war he named all the four senior men who led the firstBritish army into Flanders. In Lord Esher's diary for the 17th ofJanuary, 1904, ten years before the war, is the following note aboutFisher's opinion on the best British generals: "French, because henever failed in South Africa, and because he has the splendid gift ofchoosing the right man (he means Douglas Haig). Then Smith-Dorrien andPlumer. " In the same way Joffre and Foch were known to be the greatcommanders of the French. Again in the same way (that is, by theforeknowledge of the real experts) Lord Jellicoe, though a juniorrear-admiral at the time, was pointed out at the Quebec Tercentenary(1908) as the man who would command the Grand Fleet; while Sir DavidBeatty and Sir Charles Madden were also known as "rising stars. "

The following years were fuller than ever of the coming war. In 1910the Kaiser went to Vienna and let the world know that he was ready tostand by Austria in "shining armour. " Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, andGreece were all to be used for the grand German railway from Berlin toBagdad that was to cut Russia off from the rest of Europe, get all thetrade of the Near East into German hands, and, by pushing down to thePersian Gulf, threaten the British oversea line between England andAsia. 

During the next three years the Italian conquest of Tripoli (next doorto Egypt) and the two wars in the Balkans hurt Germany's friends, theTurks and Bulgarians, a great deal, and thus threatened the GermanBerlin-to-Bagdad "line of penetration" through the Near East and intothe Asiatic sea flank of the hated British. With 1914 came thecompletion of the enlarged Kiel Canal (exactly as foretold by Fisheryears before); and this, together with the state of the world for andagainst the Germans, made the war an absolute certainty at once. Themurder of the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, was only anexcuse to goad the gallant Serbians into war. Any other would havedone as well if it had only served the German turn. 

 HYMN BEFORE ACTION

 The earth is full of anger, The seas are dark with wrath, The Nations in their harness Go up against our path: Ere yet we loose the legions-- Ere yet we draw the blade, Jehovah of the Thunders, Lord God of Battles, aid!

 * * * *

 E'en now their vanguard gathers, E'en now we face the fray-- As Thou didst help our fathers, Help Thou our host to-day! Fulfilled of signs and wonders, In life, in death made clear-- Jehovah of the Thunders, Lord God of Battles, hear! --_Rudyard Kipling_. 

CHAPTER XXIV

WAR

(1914-1915)

No one who has had a look behind the scenes will ever forget the threeWar Wednesdays of 1914, the 22nd and 29th of July and the 5th ofAugust; for during that dire fortnight the fate of the whole world hungtrembling in the scales of life and death. 

On the first the King reviewed the Grand Fleet, when twenty-two milesof fighting ships steamed by, all ready for instant battle with theHigh Sea Fleet of Germany: ready not only for battles _on_ the waterbut _under_ the water and _over_ the water as well. No king, even ofsea-girt Britain, was ever so good a judge of what a fleet should be aswas King George on that momentous day; for, till the death of his elderbrother made him Heir to the Throne, he had spent the whole of his keenyoung life as a naval officer who did his work so well that he musthave risen to a place among the best of British Admirals. Just as itwas a great thing to have had King Edward the Wise to make (as he alonecould make) the _Entente Cordiale_ with France, so it was a great thingto have had King George the Sailor standing by the helm of the ship ofstate when the fated war had come. British to the backbone, knowingthe Empire overseas as no other king had known it, George V was born todistrust the Germans, being the son of the Danish Princess Alexandra, who had seen all the country round the Kiel Canal torn from the Crownof Denmark within a year of her marriage to King Edward. The Kaiser'slying letter to Lord Tweedmouth in 1908 was the last straw that brokeKing George's little patience with the German plotters headed by GrandAdmiral von Tirpitz. "What, " he exclaimed, "would the Kaiser say, ifthe King wrote a letter like that to Tirpitz?"

The chief kinds of fighting craft in the Grand Fleet can be told off onthe fingers of one hand. First, the Battleships and Battle Cruisers. These are to our own fleets what ships-of-the-line-of-battle were toNelson's, that is, they are the biggest and strongest, with the biggestand strongest guns and the thickest armour. The battle cruiser isfaster than the battleship, and therefore not so strong; because to befaster you must thin your heavy armour to let you put in biggerengines. All the ships of this first kind were either Dreadnoughts orsuper-Dreadnoughts; that is, they were classed according to whetherthey had been built during the five years after the _Dreadnought_(1905-10), or during the five years just before the war (1910-14). Each year there had been great improvements, till ships like the _QueenElizabeth_ had eight gigantic guns throwing shells that weighed nearlya ton each and that could be dropped on an enemy twenty miles away. 

[Illustration: BATTLESHIP. ]

The second kind is Cruisers, made up of Armoured Cruisers and LightCruisers, the Armoured being the bigger and stronger, the Light beingthe smaller and faster, and both being too small for the line ofbattle. Cruisers are used in at least a dozen different ways. Theyscout. They attack and defend oversea trade. They "mother" flotillas("little fleets") of destroyers, which are much smaller thanthemselves. They attack and defend the front, flank, and rear of thegreat lines of battle, clearing off the enemy's cruisers and destroyersand trying to get their own torpedoes home against his larger vessels. They are the eyes and ears, the scouts and skirmishers, the outpostsand the watchdogs of the Fleet--swift, keen, sinewy, vigilant, and ableto hit pretty hard. 

Thirdly come Destroyers. This was the way in which they got theirname. Navies had small gunboats before torpedoes were used. Then theyhad torpedo-boats. Then they built torpedo-gunboats. Finally, theybuilt boats big enough to destroy gunboats, torpedo-boats, andtorpedo-gunboats, without, however, losing the handy use of guns andtorpedoes in vessels much smaller than cruisers. As battleships andcruisers are arranged in "squadrons" under admirals so destroyers arearranged in "flotillas" under commodores, who rank between admirals andcaptains. 

A new kind of light craft--a sort of dwarf destroyer--grew up with thewar. It is so light that it forms a class of its own--thefeatherweight class. Its proper name is the Coastal Motor Boat, or theC. M. B. For short. But the handy man knows it simply as the Scooter. The first scooters were only forty feet long, the next were fifty-five, the last were seventy. Everything about them is made as light aspossible; so that they can skim along in about two feet of water at anoutside speed of nearly fifty (land) miles an hour. They are reallythe thinnest of racing shells fitted with the strongest of lightweightengines. They are all armed with depth charges, which are bombs thatgo off under water at whatever depth you set them for when attackingsubmarines. The biggest scooters also carry torpedoes. The scootersdid well in the war. Whenever the hovering aircraft had spotted asubmarine they would call up the scooters, which raced in with theirdeadly depth charges. Even destroyers were attacked and torpedoed. One day a German destroyer off Dunkirk suddenly found itself surroundedby scooters which came in so close that a British officer had his capblown off by the blast from a German gun. He and his scooter, however, both escaped and his torpedo sank the Hun. 

Fourthly, come the submarines, those sneaky vipers of the sea that seemmade on purpose for the underhand tricks of ruthless Germans. Deadlyagainst unarmed merchantmen, and very dangerous in some other ways, thesubmarine is slow under water, no match for even a destroyer on thesurface, and "tender" to attack by gunfire, to bombs dropped fromaircraft, to "sea-quaking" depth charges, and, of course, to ramming. We shall presently hear more about these inventions of the devil. 

[Illustration: Seaplane Returning after flight. ]

Fifthly, come the seaplanes, that is, aircraft which can light on thewater as well as fly. We began the war with a fair number ofcomparatively small planes and ended it with a great number of largeones, a few of which could drop a ton-weight bomb fit to sink mostbattleships if the shot went home. But these monsters of the air weresomething more than ordinary seaplanes. For out of the seaplane theregradually grew a regular flying boat which began to make it hot forGerman submarines in 1917. Commander Porte, of the Royal Navy, went oninventing and trying new kinds of flying boats for nearly three yearsbefore he made one good enough for its very hard and dangerous work. He had to overcome all the troubles of aircraft and seacraft, puttogether, before he succeeded in doing what no one had ever donebefore--making a completely new kind of craft that would be not onlyseaworthy but airworthy too. Porte's base was at Felixstowe, near thegreat destroyer and submarine base at Harwich on the east coast ofEngland. Strangely enough, Felixstowe was a favourite summer resort ofthe Kaiser whenever he came to the British Isles. Felixstowe is withina hundred miles of the Belgian coast, where the Germans had submarinesat Ostend and Zeebrugge. It is only fifty from the Dutch lightship onthe North Hinder Bank, where German submarines used to come up so as tomake sure of their course on their way between the English Channel andtheir own ports. The neighbourhood of this lightship naturally becamea very favourite hunting ground of the new flying boats, which used tobomb the Huns whenever one of their submarines was sighted either on orbelow the surface. Forty flying boats were launched in 1917, andforty-four submarines were bombed. The "Porte Baby, " as the flyingboat of '17 was called, measured a hundred feet across the wings andcarried a small aeroplane, complete with its own airman, on top. The"Porte Super-Baby" of 1918 could lift no less than fifteen tons and waseasily the strongest aircraft in the world. The "Baby's" crew wasfour--pilot, navigator, wirelesser, and engineer. The "Super-Baby"carried more. Two gigantic Zeppelins and several submarines weredestroyed by the "Babies. " The "Super-Babies" had no proper chance ofshowing what they could do, as the Armistice came (11 November 1918)before they were really at work. Porte had many Canadians in hiscrews; and Canadians brought down the first Zeppelin and sank the firstsubmarine. 

But the five chief kinds of fighting craft are only half the battle. There are five more to be told off on the fingers of the other hand. First, the Auxiliary Cruisers, which are swift merchant liners quicklyarmed and manned by trained Reservists, who are mostly merchant seamenand fishermen in time of peace. These cruisers do scouting and escortduty, and sometimes have a hard fight with the enemy; though they arenot strong enough for regular battles between great men-of-war. Secondly, the Supply Vessels of every size and every kind, which keepthe Fleet supplied with food and fuel, munitions and repairs, andeverything else a great fleet needs. So vast is British sea-power ofevery kind, compared with the sea-power of any other people, thatforeign fleets and joint expeditions generally have to get Britishshipping to help them through their troubles when the British areeither neutral or allied. The Russian fleet could not have gone to theFar East in 1904-05 without the supply ships of the British. TheAmerican fleet that went round the world in 1908-09 had to depend onBritish colliers. And over three-fifths of all the American soldiersthat went to France to fight the Germans went in British transports. Transports are any ships that can be used to carry troops, horses, motors, stores, munitions, guns, and all the other things an armyneeds. They come third on this list. Fourthly, come those Merchantmenwhich are not used by the Army or Navy because they carry on theregular oversea trade as best they can. Fifthly, comes the FishingFleet, many of whose best men and vessels have to be used to fish formines and submarines, but much of which must still be left to help outthe food supply. The merchantmen and fishing craft which carried ontheir peace-time trade throughout the Great War had many an adventurequite as thrilling and many a hero quite as glorious as any in thefighting fleets. So there was no kind of British sea-power which didnot feel the awful stress of war; and none, we may be proud to add, that failed to do its duty. 

On the second War Wednesday (July 29th) the British Foreign Ministerwarned the German Ambassador that the British could not be so base asnot to stand by their friends if Germany attacked them without goodreason. All through that night the staff of the Foreign Office werewonderfully cheered up in their own work by looking across the famousHorse Guards Parade at the Admiralty, which was ablaze with lights fromroof to cellar. The usual way, after the Royal Review that ended thebig fleet manoeuvres for the year, was to "demobilize" ships that hadbeen specially "mobilized" (made ready for the front) by adding Reservemen to their nucleus crews. But this year things were different. Warwas in the very air. So the whole fleet was kept mobilized; and thewireless on top of the Admiralty roof was kept in constant touch withevery ship and squadron all round the Seven Seas. By Friday night, the31st, the whole Grand Fleet had steamed through the Straits of Doverinto the grim North Sea and on to Scapa Flow, where it was alreadywaiting when, four days later, it got the midnight call to arms. 

By the third War Wednesday (August 5th) the Germans had invaded Belgiumand France; that great soldier and creator of new armies, LordKitchener, had replaced the civilian, Lord Haldane, at the head of theWar Office; Lord French's immortal first army had just got the word_GO!_ and a German mine-layer was already at the work which cost herown life but sank the cruiser _Amphion_. 

Years before the first shot was fired the French and British Navies hadprepared their plans for blockading the Austrians in the Adriatic andthe Germans in the North Sea. The French were more than a match forthe Austrians, the British more still for the Germans. But theAustrians had their whole navy together, while the Germans also had atleast nine-tenths of their own. So the French and British, in theirefforts to keep the seaways open for friends and closed to enemies, hadto reckon with the chances of battle as well as with those of blockade. The Austrians never gave much trouble, except, like the Germans, withtheir submarines; and after the Italians had joined us (May 1915) theAustrian Navy was hopelessly outclassed. 

But the Germans were different. By immense hard work they had passedevery navy in the world except the British; and they were gettingdangerously close even to that. Their Navy did not want war so soon;and no Germans wanted the sort of war they got. Their Navy wanted tobuild and build for another ten or twenty years, hoping that ourPacifist traitors (who were ready for peace at any price, honour andliberty of course included) would play the German game by letting theGerman Navy outbuild the British. Then _Der Tag_ (the day) would comein the way the Germans hoped when they drank to it with shouts of _Hochder Kaiser!_ (which really meant, _The Kaiser on top, the Britishunderneath!_ though that is not the translation). To get this kind of_Tag_ the Germans needed to strike down their victims one by one inthree quite separate wars: first, France and Belgium, Russia and theSouthern Slavs; a thing they could have done with Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey on their side and the rest of Europe neutral. Then, havingmade sure of their immensely strengthened new position in the world, _Der Tag_ would come against the British Empire. Last of all, theywould work their will in South America, being by that time far toostrong for the United States. A nightmare plan, indeed! But, withgood luck and good management, and taking us one by one, and alwayshaving our vile Pacifists to help them, this truly devilish plot mightwell have been worked out in three successive generations during thecourse of the twentieth century. 

As it was, we had trouble enough to beat them; for they fought well bysea and land and air, though more like devils than like men. Thecharge of cowardice against our enemies, especially the Turks andGermans, is nonsense. Besides, it takes away our own men's glory ifthey had nothing more than cowards to put down. Of course the enemyhad cowards, as other peoples have; but they had plenty of brave mentoo; and what, that unsurpassable hero of the air, McCudden, said ofone brave German will do for many more. "I shall never forget myadmiration for that German pilot who, single-handed, fought seven of usfor ten minutes, and also put some bullets through all our machines. His flying was wonderful, his courage magnificent. "

The Germans had not only the advantage of being able to mass nearly alltheir navy together but of training it all together on the same NorthSea practice ground, and of building battle squadrons on purpose forone kind of fight close at home: a single tiger-spring and that wasall. The British, on the other hand, had to build a good many ships"fit to go foreign" thousands of miles away, and so had to give up muchspace to the men's quarters and to fuel; while the Germans could savehalf this space for increased power in armour, engines, guns, and otherthings suited to one short cruise and tiger-spring near home. Not theleast of the many British triumphs was winning against an enemy who wasso brave, so skilful, so strong in many ways, and so very devilish inall. 

Now that we know what we are about, let us clear the decks for actionand go full steam ahead right through the fight at sea. 

The British Navy had to help the British Army into France and take carethat the Army's ever-growing forces there, as well as on a dozendifferent fronts elsewhere, always had the sea-roads kept open to manydifferent bases over half the world. The Seven Seas are ten timesbigger than the whole of North and South America. Yet the Navy watchedor kept in touch with every part of all of them. So much for space. Now for time. Time was needed to get Kitchener's vast new armiesready. Millions sprang to arms. But it would have been sheer murderto send them to the front without many months of very hard training. So the enemy had to be kept at arm's length for a very long time--forthe whole war, indeed, because reinforcements and supplies were alwaysneeded in vast and ever vaster quantities, both from the Mother Countryand from the Empire, Allies, and Neutrals overseas. In addition tothis the British oversea trade routes had to be kept open and theGerman ones closed; fisheries protected on one side, attacked on theother; and an immense sea service carried on for our Allies as well. 

Some staggering facts and figures will be given in the chapter called"Well done!" Here we shall only note that the Navy, with all itsReserves and Auxiliaries, grew from two and a half million tons ofshipping to eight millions before the war was over. This means thatthe Navy, in spite of all its losses, became bigger than any othercountry's navy, mercantile marine, fishing fleet, river steamers, andall other kinds of shipping, put together, since the world began. Whenwe add the British mercantile marine, British shipbuilding, the Britishfishing fleets, and all the shipping interests of the Empire overseas, we shall find that British sea-power of all kinds equalled all thesea-power of all the rest of the world together. Destroy thatsea-power and we die. 

Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands off the north of Scotland was aperfect base for the Grand Fleet, because it was well placed to watchthe way out of the North Sea through the two-hundred-mile gap betweenNorway and the Shetlands, and also because the tremendous tidalcurrents sweeping through it prevented submarines from sneaking abouttoo close. Six hundred miles south-east was the German Fleet, near theNorth Sea end of the Kiel Canal. Between lay a hundred and twenty-fivethousand square miles of water on which, taking one day with anotherthe whole year round, you could not see clearly more than five miles. This "low average visibility" accounts for all the hide-and-seek thatsuited German tricks so well. 

Within three hours of the British Declaration of War two Britishsubmarines were off for Heligoland, where they spied out the enemy'sfleet. From that time on every German move was watched from under thewater, on the water, or over the water, and instantly reported bywireless to the Admiralty in London and to the Grand Fleet based onScapa Flow. 

Then, when the first British army began to cross into France, the Fleetcovered its flank against the Germans, and went on covering it forfifty-one months without a break, through cold and wet, throughceaseless watching, and through many fights. 

The first fight was off Heligoland, when British light cruisers anddestroyers went into the Bight on a scouting cruise planned by theAdmiralty, not the Grand Fleet. The German destroyers fell back tolure the British within range of the enormous guns on Heligoland. Thatfailed. But suddenly, out of the morning mist, came a bunch of Germanshells throwing up water-spouts that almost splashed aboard. Instantlythe British destroyers strung out, farther apart, and put on fullracing speed as the next two bunches crept closer in. _Whirrh!_ wentthe fourth, just overhead, as the flotilla flagship _Arethusa_signalled to fire torpedoes. At once the destroyers turned, alltogether, lashing the sea into foam as their sterns whisked round, andcharged, faster than any cavalry, straight for the enemy. When theGermans found the range and once more began bunching their shells tooclose in, the British destroyers snaked right and left, threw out therange-finding, and then raced ahead again. In less than ten minutesthey had made more than five miles, fired their torpedoes, and were ontheir way back. Then up came the British cruisers and converged on the_Mainz_, which went down fighting. "The _Mainz_, " wrote one of theBritish officers who saw her, "was immensely gallant. With her wholemidships a fuming inferno she kept one gun forward and another aftstill spitting forth fury and defiance like a wild cat mad withwounds. " In the mean time Jellicoe, rightly anxious about leavingBritish light craft unsupported by heavier vessels so close to theGerman Fleet, urged the Admiralty to change their plan by sending onthe battle cruisers. Then up came Beatty's four lordly giants--_Lion, Queen Mary, Invincible, New Zealand_--and the outclassed Germansretired. 

[Illustration: DESTROYER. ]

The destroyer _Defender_, having sunk a German, had lowered a whaleboatto pick up survivors, when she was chased by a big German cruiser. Sothere, all alone, was her whaler, a mere open boat, on the enemy's partof the battlefield. But, through a swirl alongside, up came SubmarineE4, opened her conning tower, took the whole boat's crew aboard, diveddown again before the Germans could catch her, and landed safe home. 

E9 crept in six miles south of Heligoland a fortnight later and sankthe German cruiser _Hela_. But within a week the German von Weddigenhad become the most famous of submarine commanders, for sinking no lessthan three British armoured cruisers with the loss of fifteen hundredmen. The _Aboukir_, having been hit first, was closed by the _Hogue_and _Cressy_ in order to save her crew. But they were themselvestorpedoed before they could either see their enemy or save theirfriends. 

Meanwhile the only German squadron overseas had been doing somedaringly clever work under its first-class admiral, Graf von Spee. Leaving his worst vessels at Tsing-tao (the German port in China whichwas taken by the Japanese and British later on) he sailed into the vastPacific with his seven best. On his way south he sent the _Königsberg_to raid the east coast of Africa and the _Emden_ to raid the IndianOcean. The _Königsberg_ did a good deal of damage to merchantmen andsank the much weaker British light cruiser _Pegasus_, which was caughtrefitting at Zanzibar and was pounded into scrap iron with the loss ofhalf her crew. But when the _Königsberg_ made off, probably fearingthe arrival of some avenging British, the _Pegasus_ still had hercolours flying, not from the mast, for that was shot away, but in thesteadfast hands of two undauntable Marines. 

The _Emden_ was the most wonderful raider of modern times; and hercaptain, von Müller, behaved much better than the general run ofGermans. Arrived in the Indian Ocean he bagged six ships in five days, sending all the crews into Calcutta in the sixth after sinking therest. But he soon beat this by twice taking no less than seven shipsin a single day! Then he dashed into Penang and sank the unreadyRussian cruiser _Jemchug_ on his way in and the ready little Frenchdestroyer _Mousquet_ on his way out. The _Mousquet_ hadn't the ghostof a chance. But she went straight for the _Emden_ and fought till shesank; her heroic captain, with both legs blown off, commanding her tothe very last gasp. By this time, however, the net was closing in; andtwelve days later the big Australian cruiser _Sydney_ finished the_Emden_ on Cocos Island Reef. 

Meanwhile von Spee's five cruisers had been pressed south by the clevernetwork of Japanese warships working over the vast area of the Pacificunder the orders of a staff officer watching every move from his deskat Tokyo. Sir Christopher Cradock was waiting to catch the Germans. But his slow battleship _Canopus_ had not yet joined him when (November1), with only three cruisers and one armed merchantman, he attackedthem off Coronel on the coast of Chili; though they were very hard tosee, being against the mountains, while his own ships were clearlyoutlined against a brilliant sunset. Ordering the armed merchantmanaway he began the fight between the armoured cruisers: _Good Hope_ and_Monmouth_ against _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_. The German shipswere newer, faster, better armed, and the best shooting vessels of theGerman fleet. The first of their salvoes (volleys) to get home set the_Good Hope_ blazing fore and aft. There was a gale blowing and bigseas running; so the end soon came. Cradock's last signal was for thelight cruiser _Glasgow_ to save herself, as she could do no furtherservice. But she stood by the _Monmouth_, whose own captain alsoordered her away with the signal that, being too hard hit to escapehimself, he would try to close the enemy so as to give the _Glasgow_ abetter chance. Suddenly, like a volcano, the _Good Hope_ was rent by ashattering explosion. Then the _Monmouth_ began sinking by the head, and her guns ceased firing. No boat could live in those mountainousseas. So the _Glasgow_, now under the fire of the whole Germansquadron, raced away for her life. 

Von Spee then swept the coast; and British vessels had to take refugein Chilean harbours. But Captain Kinnear, a merchant skipper, ran thegauntlet with a skill and courage which nothing could surpass. Off thedreaded Straits of Magellan a German cruiser chased him at twenty-oneknots, his own _Ortega's_ regular full speed being only fourteen. Buthe called for volunteers to help the stokers, whereupon every one ofthe two hundred Frenchmen going home to fight at once stepped forward, stripped to the waist, and whacked her up to eighteen. Yet still thecruiser kept closing up. So Kinnear turned into Nelson's Channel, thevery worst channel in the very worst straits in the world, unlit, uncharted, and full of the wildest currents swirling through pinnaclerocks and over hidden reefs. The cruiser stopped, dumbfounded. The_Ortega_ then felt her way ahead, got through without a scratch, andtook her Frenchmen safe to France. 

Von Spee presently rounded the Horn and made for the Falkland Islands, the British naval base in the South Atlantic. But, only a month afterthe news of Coronel had found Sir Doveton Sturdee sitting at his deskin London as the Third Sea Lord of the Admiralty, his avenging squadronhad reached the Falklands more than eight thousand miles away. Nextmorning von Spee also arrived; whereupon Sturdee's much strongersquadron sprang out of Port Stanley and began a chase which could onlyhave one ending. Von Spee turned to fight, with his two armouredcruisers against the two over-powering battle cruisers of the British, so that his three light cruisers might "star away" at their utmostspeed, on three divergent courses, in an effort to escape. Vain hope!Sturdee's battle cruisers sank the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, whilehis other cruisers sank two of the three German cruisers. All theGermans went down with colours flying and fighting to the very last. Only the little _Dresden_ escaped; to be sunk three months later by twoBritish cruisers at Robinson Crusoe's island of Juan Fernandez, fourhundred miles off the coast of Chili. 

From this time forward not a single enemy warship sailed the outerseas. The Austrians were blockaded in the Adriatic, the Germans in theNorth Sea, and the Turks at the east end of the Mediterranean. Now andthen a German merchantman would be armed in the German colonies or insome friendly neutral harbour and prey on British trade routes for atime. But very few of these escaped being sunk after a very shortcareer; and those that did get home never came out again. So 1914closed with such a British command over the surface of the sea as evenNelson had never imagined. The worst of the horrible submarine war wasstill to come. But that is a different story. 

The joint expedition of French and British against the Turks andGermans in the Dardanelles filled 1915 with many a deed of more or lesswasted daring. Victory would have meant so much: joining hands withRussia in the Black Sea, getting the Russian wheat crop from Odessa, driving the Turks from Constantinople, and cutting right through theBerlin-to-Bagdad line. But, once the Allied Governments had given theenemy time to hold the Dardanelles in full force, the only right way toreach Constantinople was the back way round by land through Greece andTurkey, combined with attacks on the Dardanelles. This, however, needed a vastly larger army than the Governments could spare. So, despite the objections of Fisher, their naval adviser, they sent fleetsand armies to wear themselves out against the Dardanelles, tillKitchener, their military adviser, got leave to take off all that wereleft. 

[Illustration: A PARTING SHOT FROM THE TURKS AT GALLIPOLI. ]

The politicians had blundered badly over the whole campaign. But theFrench and British soldiers and sailors, after fighting gloriouslyagainst long odds, managed their retirement in a way which might serveas the perfect model of what such retirements should be. The Turks andGermans, though eager to crown their victorious defence by smashing thefleet and army which had so long attacked them, were completelyhoodwinked. The French and British kept up the cleverest show of forcetill the last streak of daylight had died away. Then, over the worstof broken ground, down terrific slopes, and across the puzzlingbeaches, the gallant armies marched, silent as the grave and regular asclock-work. The boats were loaded and taken off to their appointedplaces as skilfully as Wolfe's were brought down the St. Lawrence thenight before the Battle of the Plains. Next morning the astoundedenemy found an empty land in front of them; while the sea was swarmingwith crowded transports, safe beyond the retiring men-of-war. 

CHAPTER XXV

JUTLAND

(1916)

At four o'clock in the morning of the 4th of August, 1914, LordJellicoe opened the secret orders appointing him Commander-in-chief ofthe Grand Fleet, which was then ready waiting in Scapa Flow, the greatwar harbour in the Orkney Islands off the far north coast of Scotland. Twenty-two months later, off the Jutland Bank of Denmark, he foughtthat battle of the giant navies for which the Germans had so longprepared. Of course the Germans did not want Jutland at the time itcame. For, as we have seen already, they wished to have two quiteseparate wars, the first against the French and Russians, the secondagainst the British; and, if the British had only kept out for as manymonths as the Americans did years, the Germans and their allies wouldcertainly have won this first war, besides gaining an immensely betterchance of winning the second war as well. Even as it was, they werenot only very strong on land but also very strong at sea. They wereeasily the second sea-power in the world, in regard to both their navyand their merchant shipping. Moreover, they had many advantages, evenover the British. This is so little known, and it is so important fora proper understanding of what took place at Jutland, that we mustbegin by looking a little more closely into the strong and weak pointsof the two great rival navies. 

[Illustration: JELLICOE. ]

So far as fitness for battle depended on the officers and men of theNavy itself the Grand Fleet was as nearly perfect as anything could be. Sprung from the finest race of seamen in the world, trained for alonger time than any foreigners, and belonging to what everyone forcenturies has known to be the first of all the navies, the Britishbluejackets formed the handiest crews you could have found in any ageor country. Their officers knew how to handle men, ships, and fleetsalike; and every one had been long "tuned up" for instant action. Thegunnery stood every test, as the Germans know to their cost; and itactually got better as the fight grew worse, partly because the Britishkeep so cool, and partly because length of expert training tells moreand more as the storm and stress increase. It was the same in theengine room, the same in everything, right up to the supreme art ofhandling a fleet at racing speed in the midst of a battle on which thefate of freedom hung. 

But when we come to those things that depended on the Government thereis a very different tale to tell, because no government can get moneyfor the Navy without votes in Parliament, and men cannot become Membersof Parliament without the votes of the People, and most people will notspend enough money to get ready for even a life-or-death war unlessthey see the danger very close at hand, right in among the other thingsthat press hard upon their notice. Looking after the country's safetyneeds so much time, so much knowledge, and so much thinking out that ithas to be left, like all other kinds of public service, to theGovernment, which consists of a few leaders acting as the agents ofParliament, which, in its turn, consists of a few hundred memberselected by the People in their millions. Whatever government is inpower for the time being can, as the trusted agent of the People'schosen Parliament, do whatever it likes with the Army and Navy. Thegreat soldiers and sailors, who know most about war, can only tell theGovernment what they think. The Government can then follow this expertadvice or not, just as it pleases. Now, even in time of approachingdanger, the trouble is that governments are always tempted to say anddo what costs the least money and gives the least cause for alarm, because they think the People like that best. This was the case withthe British governments in power during the fourteen years before thewar, when Germany was straining every nerve to get the better of theBritish Navy. They were warned again and again. But they saw thatmost of the People, who were not watching the coming German storm, wanted most of the money spent on other things. So they did not liketo hear the expert truth; they feared to tell the People; and theyhoped the worst would never happen. But it did happen; and it foundmany a weak spot due to the Government; though not one that was due tothe Navy itself. "Well, it's all going just as we expected, " said SirCharles Madden to Lord Jellicoe in the conning tower of the _Iron Duke_in the middle of the Jutland battle. So it did. Everything thatreally mattered was foreseen by the real naval experts. You nevercatch the Navy napping. 

But you do catch governments, parliaments, and people napping veryoften. Yet here we should not be unjust either to governments ingeneral or to those of our Mother Country in particular. Governmentsof free countries depend upon the People; so we must all take our shareof the blame for what our own elected agents do wrong or fail to doright. And as for the Mother Country; well, with all her faults, shedid the best of any. We cannot fairly compare her with theself-governing Dominions, like Canada and Australia, because she had sovery much more to do. Her war work was more than twice as hard astheirs, even in proportion to her strength; and she led the wholeEmpire in making the greatest efforts and by far the greatestsacrifices. But we can compare her with our Allies; and, if we do, weshall find her stand the test. For if her Government made mistakesbefore the war, so did that French Government whose Prime Minister, Caillaux, had to be tried as a traitor during the war. So, too, didthat party in Italy which favoured the Germans against the true Italianpatriots. And how about the Peace Party in the United States that keptthe Americans out of all but the end of the war, gaining a whole worldof money and almost losing the nation's soul?

Great Britain gave the Navy what most voters think are needed for awar, especially such things as the papers talked of most, likedreadnoughts, guns, and torpedoes. But there was a lack of lightcruisers and destroyers to fight off the same kind of German craft, guard the seaways, and kill the sneaking submarines. The docks inwhich ships are built and mended make little show for the money spenton them; so the Government never asked Parliament for enough till thewar broke out, which meant that some dreadnoughts had to be more orless cramped so as to fit into the old-fashioned docks. The decks ofthe battle cruisers were not strong enough to keep out armour-piercingshells; so two of them were sunk at Jutland that might have otherwisebeen saved. The means of guarding the big ships against mines andsubmarines wore not nearly good enough at the start. There werefishing craft enough, and fishermen who were as good sailors as theworld has ever seen, and dockyard hands enough to build new boats tofish for the deadly mines and spread the nets for nosing submarines. But they were not used in time. 

Now look at the Germans. Their officers knew their navy had no chancein a fair stand-up fight with Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. But even theseofficers hoped that their mines and submarines, with a streak of goodluck, might make the odds more even. Apart from their naval expertsthe Germans had no doubt at all. Their bluejackets and the Germanpeople as a whole thought everything German the best in the world; andlong before the war the million members of the German Navy League hadbeen persuading the people to vote most of the money the Kaiser wantedfor his fleet. The Kiel Canal let the German High Sea Fleet playhide-and-seek between the North Sea and the Baltic without theslightest risk on the way. The British, on the other hand, could onlyget into the Baltic by going round between Denmark and Sweden, bothbeing neutrals whose territories could not be touched. The way throughis so narrow that the water is all "territorial, " that is, it belongsto the countries beside it, and was, therefore, as neutral as theywere. But even if Denmark and Sweden had let the Grand Fleet gothrough, it would have gone to certain defeat; for a weaker navy insidethe Baltic could have crushed the British as they came through one byone--the only possible way. 

Now look at the North Sea, which was the real battleground. The areais about a hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles. But theaverage distance you can see clearly, taking one day with another allthe year round, is only five miles. This was very nice for lurkingmines, sneaking submarines, and sudden cruiser raids against theBritish coasts. The coastline of the British Isles is more than twentytimes as long as the North Sea coast of Germany, much easier tonavigate and very much harder to defend--another advantage for theGermans. The Grand Fleet could not attack the German coast, which hasonly three good seaways into it, which has a string of islands off it, and which, difficult for foreign ships in time of peace, is impossiblein time of war. The whole of the shore and off-shore islands were fullof big guns in strong forts--and remember that you can sink a fleet, though you can't sink a coast--while the waters were full of mines andsubmarines. 

Moreover, in destroyers, which are as dangerous out at sea as they areround a base, the German "High Sea Fleet" began with no less thaneighty-eight against the forty-two in the British "Grand Fleet. " TheBritish had so many narrow seaways to defend that they could not spareJellicoe nearly enough light cruisers or destroyers. It was only afterJutland that the Grand Fleet became so very much stronger than the HighSea Fleet. Before Jutland the odds in favour of the British battlesquadrons were only about four to three; and the Germans had specialadvantages in searchlights that showed up everything except theposition of the ships that carried them, in wonderfully bright andbewildering star-shells, in the gear for bringing all the quick-firingguns of the big ships to bear at once on light craft trying to torpedothem, and in very cleverly made delay-shells, which could go throughall but the thickest armour and then burst inside the vitals of a ship. It was one of these shells that blew up the _Queen Mary_, the finest ofall the British battle cruisers. 

Then, as we have seen already, another German advantage, and a verygreat advantage, was that, while most British men-of-war had to bebuilt for general service all round the world, the German High SeaFleet (which meant nine-tenths of all the German Navy) could be builtspecially for one great battle close at home. Not nearly so much roomwas needed for the men to live in, because they were always near thenaval barracks at Wilhelmshaven; and not nearly so much space wasrequired for fuel. The weight and space saved in these two ways couldall be used for extra shells, thicker armour, and other kinds ofspecial strength. Thus the Germans were even stronger than the numberof their men-of-war would lead you to think; and they were strongest ofall for battles at night or in misty weather near their own base. Thebattle of Jutland seemed to have been made on purpose to suit them. 

In 1914 the Germans had been very much encouraged by the sinking of thethree British cruisers, _Hague_, _Cressy_, and _Aboukir_ in the NorthSea, by the _Emden's_ famous raid in the Indian Ocean, by von Spee'svictory at Coronel in the Pacific, and by the way the Kaiser and allthe German papers boasted. In 1915 they were encouraged by the Frenchand British failure against the Turks and Germans at the Dardanelles. In 1916, however, they began to feel the pinch of the British blockadeso badly that they were eager for a sea-fight that would ease it off. If they had the finest navy in the world, why didn't it wipe the GrandFleet off the North Sea altogether? At the same time the Britishpublic and the Allies wanted to know why the Grand Fleet didn't wipethe Germans off. 

We have just seen why the Grand Fleet could not force on a battle roundthe German base. But the reason why the Germans could not try tosnatch a victory out of some lucky chance at the beginning of the war, when the odds were least against them, was of quite a different kind. The fact was that thousands of their trained seamen were hopelessly cutoff from Germany by the British Navy. Nearly every German merchantship outside of the North Sea or the Baltic was either taken by theBritish or chased into some neutral port from which it never got out. The crews were mostly reservists in the German Navy. They were readyfor the call to arms. But they could not answer it. So new men had tobe trained. Meanwhile the one good chance slipped away; for by thetime these recruits had been trained the Grand Fleet had grown muchstronger than before. 

On the 31st of May, 1916, Jellicoe's whole force was making one of itsregular "drives" across the North Sea in two huge but handy fleets. The Battle Cruiser Fleet under Beatty was fifty miles south of theBattle Fleet, which was under Jellicoe himself. Jellicoe and Beatty, the chosen leaders of the greatest fleet of the greatest navy in thegreatest war in the world, had long been marked men. They were oldfriends, having fought side by side against the Boxer rebellion inChina in 1900, the year the German Navy Bill was passed by the GermanParliament on purpose to endanger the "mightiest" of foreignnavies--that is, the British. They had both been wonderfully keenstudents of every branch of naval warfare, from the handling of asingle gun or ship to the supreme art of handling this "mightiest" offleets; and both they and Sir Charles Madden, the Chief of Staff, werelooked upon as being the very fittest of the fit. 

But even the best of men and ships will not make the best fleet unlesstrained and "tuned up" to act together; and here, in its combinedmanuoeuvres, lay the crowning glory of the vast Grand Fleet. One day avisitor was watching it fight a sham battle against an enemy firing bigguns at long range, when up came a real enemy, in the form of a Germansubmarine, much closer than the sham. Of course the visitor turned hisglasses on the "sub" and on the destroyers racing after it, likegreyhounds slipped from the leash. But when, a few minutes later, helooked round at the fleet, he could hardly believe his eyes; for thereit was, moving, mile upon mile of it, in a completely new formation, after a sort of magic "general post" that had made light craft andbattle-line entirely change places, over an area of a hundred squaremiles, without a moment's slackening of speed. Hundreds of vessels hadbeen in the best formation to fight each other on the surface. Nowthey were in the best formation to fight submarines. Then came four ofthose "sea-quakes" that make you feel as if your own ship had beentorpedoed, but which really were depth-charges dropped round thesubmarine. Then an anxious pause, quickly followed by "all clear, " andthat by another fleet order which changed the whole formation backagain as easily as if the lines of wheeling ships had been a singlepiece of clockwork and their two million tons of steel had simplyanswered to the touching of a single spring. 

_First Round of the Great Fight: 2. 30 to 4. 38 P. M. Beatty and Hipperwith their Battle Cruisers. _

At noon on the fateful 31st the Grand Fleet turned north and the GermanFleet turned south, each having come to the end of its "drive, " andneither knowing that the other one was there. The weather had beenvery warm and fine; but the North Sea mists had risen in time to veilthe fleets from Zeppelins and other aircraft. Jellicoe's Battle Fleetwas going north within a hundred miles of southern Norway, and vonScheer's Battle Fleet was going south within a hundred miles of theJutland coast of Denmark, when the two Battle Cruiser Fleets underBeatty and von Hipper suddenly saw each other's smoke, half way betweenJellicoe and Scheer, and a hundred miles west of the Skager Rack. Jellicoe and Scheer were then more than a hundred miles apart. But the_Galatea's_ wireless report to Beatty, that there was smoke to theeastward, was caught by the wireless receivers aboard the _Iron Duke_, Jellicoe's flagship; whereupon Jellicoe ordered steam to be raised forfull speed. 

Beatty at once turned east and made straight for Hipper, to cut him offfrom his base, force him to fight, and lure Scheer back to save him. This would give Jellicoe time to come up and get in the knock-out blowfor which he prepared by ordering the Battle Fleet to clear for actionat 3. 10. At 3. 30 a British seaplane, sent up by Beatty, and flyingwithin two miles of the nearest German craft, reported five battlecruisers steaming south. At the same moment Jellicoe thrilled his owncommand by signalling that a battle was expected. Hipper was hurryingto join Scheer's battle fleet, which now was racing north as Jellicoe'swas racing south. Beatty then formed his six battle cruisers inline-ahead ("follow-my-leader") while his four fast _Queen Elisabeth_battleships followed as hard as they could. He thus had tendreadnoughts to fight Hipper's five. But he and Hipper were racingsouth toward Scheer and away from Jellicoe. Yet that could not behelped. Hipper must not be allowed to escape; and Scheer must first befound and then lured on toward Jellicoe. 

At twelve minutes to four both sides began firing at a range of eightmiles and a speed of nearly thirty (land) miles an hour. Jutland was agunner's battle, just as the naval experts had foretold; thoughtorpedoes played their part. It was much too fast and furious forsubmarines; and the thickening mist made aircraft useless. Hipper'sfive ships hit hard at Beatty's six; and one big German shell reachedthe vitals of the _Indefatigable_, which blew up like a mine. Therewas a shattering crash, an enormous spurt of flame, a horrid "flurry"on the water; and ship and crew went down. That left five all. But, after the battle cruisers had been at it for twenty minutes, the four_Queen Elizabeths_ (that is, battleships of the same kind as the"Q. E. ") began heaving shells from eleven miles astern. Ten minuteslater the central German dreadnought turned out of line a mass ofseething fire. But, after five minutes more, the magnificent _QueenMary_, Beatty's champion shooting battle cruiser, was simply torn intwo by the explosion of her magazine. This left four all in battlecruisers, with the four fast British battleships straining their lastturn of speed to come up. 

[Illustration: BEATTY. ]

Meanwhile fifteen German and twelve British destroyers charged outtogether to try their torpedoes, met in the middle, and had a fiercefight. Two Germans went down; but the British formation was broken, and only three closed the German battle cruisers, which received themwith a perfect hurricane of shells from their quick-firing guns, sinking one, disabling another, and forcing the third to retire. Commander Bingham, who won the V. C. By leading this skilful and gallantattack, had his destroyer, the _Nestor_, sunk under him. But he wassaved, as if by a miracle, and taken prisoner aboard a Germanman-of-war. 

_Second Round: Beatty luring Scheer and Hipper on towards Jellicoe:4. 38 to 5. 50 P. M. _

Commodore Goodenough's splendid light cruisers went scouting ahead tillthey met Scheer racing north. Then they turned north themselves, undera tremendous outburst of fire, to rejoin Beatty, who now, changing frompursuer to pursued, also turned north to join Jellicoe. The Germans, with their twenty-two dreadnoughts, now hoped _Der Tag_ had really comefor Beatty's eight. But Beatty hit hard and drove a German battlecruiser out of the line very badly mauled. Shortly afterwards thedestroyer _Moresby_ fired a torpedo which hit a German battleship. There was a tremendous burst of steam and smoke; and, when this hadcleared off, the German was seen to be on fire. But Beatty's strongpoint was speed. His battle cruisers and four fast _Queen Elizabeth_battleships could do a good bit more than the slowest Germans; and asthe Germans now had to keep together, in case Jellicoe came up, theirwhole line could go no faster than its slowest ship. Starting with alead and putting on a spurt Beatty turned gradually more to theeastward, that is, toward the German line, which then had to turn andkeep parallel or else let him cross its T. If you will separate thecrosspiece from the upright of a T--for big ships fight some milesapart--you will see quite plainly that ships in a line like the uprightof the T have no chance at all against ships in a line like thecrosspiece of the T. The crosspiece line can converge all itsbroadsides on the leading ship of the upright, smash it utterly, andthen do the same to the next, and the next. So the Germans, having tokeep together and having to keep parallel to Beatty, were graduallyforced eastwards, which would give Jellicoe the best chance to comeinto line against them. 

_The Third and Greatest Round: Jellicoe forms his Victorious Line ofBattle: 5. 50 to 6. 38 P. M. _

For three hours and a half Jellicoe, with his twenty-four dreadnoughtbattleships, had been racing south to reach the scene of action. Hehad gained at first, when Beatty was going east to find von Hipper. Hehad lost when Hipper and Beatty were racing south to meet von Scheer. But now the whole battle was coming north to meet him. As thebattlefield kept shifting about, and the fortunes of the fight keptchanging, he shaped his course accordingly. But he never slackenedspeed, racing along under every pound of steam the straining shipscould carry, thanks to the skill of those quiet heroes of theengine-room, who, seeing nothing of either friend or foe, never knowanything of either defeat or victory, life or death, till all is overeither with the battle or themselves. 

As the great Battle Fleet came rushing from the north every eye wasstrained to catch the first sight of Beatty and the Germans. Thethunder of a thousand guns rolled far across that summer sea. It washeard along the coast of Jutland a hundred miles away; and the mainbody of the Grand Fleet knew _The Day_ had come long before theyreached the battlefield. Presently the flashes began sparkling intoview; and then the ships themselves loomed up, dimly made out throughmist and smoke. 

Jellicoe did not yet know exactly where the Germans were, and Beattycould not tell what they would do now Jellicoe had come. But Beattyturned sharp east immediately he sighted Jellicoe, and the Germans soonturned too, fearing to have him cross their T while Jellicoe wasrounding on them. They wanted to escape, seeing the fight washopeless. But they could not take the quickest way, that of turningall together--each ship turning right round where she was and makingoff as hard as she could--because this would have changed the places ofthe admirals and put the battle cruisers in the rear as well. Norcould they safely turn right back on their course, while keeping thesame line-ahead, because some ships would then be masking the fire ofothers till the whole line had been reversed; and they sorely neededevery gun they had. So the only way left was to keep parallel withBeatty till a chance came to turn sharply enough to get away, but notsharply enough to mask any of their own fire. 

Imagine the whole enormous battlefield as something like a target, withthe Germans circling round the bull's-eye, Beatty round the inner, andJellicoe just coming into the outer. From Beatty's reports and his ownobservation Jellicoe could not know even that before six. So he sentout his own battle cruiser squadron under Admiral Hood to lengthenBeatty's line and overlap the Germans. Hood then sent one of his lightcruisers, the _Chester_, speeding ahead to scout. But three Germanlight cruisers held her up in a furious fight of twenty minutes. The_Chester_ fought desperately, losing more than half her men, butgetting her scout work done in spite of the fearful odds against her. How well she fought may be found out from the story of Jack Cornwell;for he was only one of her many heroes. Ship's boy, first class, andsixteen years of age, Jack Cornwell would have been the youngest V. C. In the world had he lived to wear it. With every man in the gun's crewround him dead or dying, and with the gun-shield shot away, he stoodthere, under a terrific fire, mortally wounded, with the receivers athis ears, reporting exactly what had happened to everyone excepthimself, and calmly waiting for orders how to carry on. 

When the battered _Chester_ told Hood he was too far south-east heturned back north-west till he sighted Beatty coming toward him at fullspeed. On Beatty's orders he then carried out Jellicoe's plan byturning back so as to lengthen Beatty's line of battle cruisers at theforward end, thus overlapping the Germans. This splendidly skilful andmost daring move so alarmed the Germans that they trained every gunthey could on him in a furious effort to wipe out the deadly overlap. He led the gallant line, "bringing his squadron into action ahead in amost inspiring manner, worthy of his great naval ancestors. " (He wasthe great-great-grandson of the Lord Hood whom Nelson always called thebest of naval officers. ) His flagship, the _Invincible_, hit back withall her might, helped by the ships astern. "Keep it up, " called Hoodto his gunnery officer, Commander Dannreuther, one of the sixsurvivors, "every shot is hitting them. " But the converging fire of ahundred giant guns simply smashed the _Invincible_ from stem to stern. At last a huge shell reached her magazine, and she blew up like avolcano; sheets of flame leaping higher than her masts, boats and loosegear whirling higher still, like leaves in an autumn gale, and then onesickening belch of steamy smoke to tell that all was over. After thisHood's two remaining battle cruisers took station astern of Beatty'sfour. 

[Illustration: LIGHT CRUISER. ]

Meanwhile another light cruiser of Hood's, the _Canterbury_, was tryingto protect three destroyers, led by the _Shark_, that were fightingGerman light cruisers and destroyers. Hipper and Scheer were doingtheir very utmost to keep Beatty and Jellicoe at arm's length till theycould complete the German turn round the bull's-eye and make an effortto get off the deadly target altogether. For if Jellicoe could rangeround the inner, at higher speed and with an overlap, they wouldcertainly be rounded up and crushed to death. The German lightcruisers and destroyers therefore attacked the British light craft withthe greatest fury, hoping to destroy the screen behind which Jellicoewould form his line of battle in safety from torpedoes. As the _Shark_charged down at the head of her line she suddenly found two lines ofGerman destroyers charging towards her. Nothing daunted, she wentstraight on, her pulsing engines making her quiver with the thrillingrace for life or death between them. Once abreast of them she firedher guns and torpedoes right and left, sinking two German destroyers, one on each side, and giving the rest as good as she got, till, hit bytorpedoes on both sides together, she sank like a stone. Hercommander, Loftus Jones, was awarded the second posthumous V. C. For thewonderfully gallant way he fought her till she went down with coloursflying. Her last torpedo, when just on the point of being fired, washit by a German shell and exploded, killing and wounding everybodynear. Then another shell took Jones's leg off. But he still foughtthe one gun left in action, firing its last round as the waters closedabove him. 

About the same time the destroyer _Onslow_ made for a German lightcruiser that was trying to torpedo Beatty's flagship, _Lion_. Hittingthe light cruiser with every gun at short range she then passed on totry her own torpedoes on the German battle cruisers, when a big shellscooped out most of her midships above the water-line. Retiring slowlyshe again met the light cruiser and this time finished her with atorpedo. Finding he had two torpedoes left Commander Tovey then madefor the German battle line with the last ounce of steam the _Onslow's_engines could work off. He fired them both, and probably hit thedreadnought that was seen to reel out of line about three minuteslater. The _Defender_, though herself half wrecked by several hits, then limped up and took the _Onslow_ in tow till one o'clock the nextafternoon, when tugs had come to the rescue. 

[Illustration: H. M. S. _Monmouth_, Armoured Cruiser. Sunk at Coronel, November 1st, 1914. ]

The strongest of all the lighter ships that cleared the way forJellicoe's battle fleet were the armoured cruisers, which are abouthalf way between the light and battle cruisers. Sir Robert Arbuthnot'sFirst Armoured Cruiser Squadron, speeding ahead of Jellicoe, swoopeddown on the German light cruisers in grand style, sank one, lamed two, and was driving the rest before it, helter-skelter, when, without amoment's warning, the huge hulls of the German battle line loomed outof the mist at almost point-blank range! In his eagerness to makeshort work of all the German light craft in the way Sir Robert had losthis bearings in the baffling mist and run right in between the twogreat battle lines. Quick as a flash he fought the German giants withevery gun that he could bring to bear while turning back to take hisproper station on the flank. But he was doomed and knew it. Yet, evenat that fatal moment, his first thought was for the men whom, throughno fault of his own, he had led into this appalling death-trap; andbesides the order to turn back he signalled the noble apology to allhands under his command: "I beg your pardon. " The end came soon. Aperfect tornado of gigantic shells had struck his flagship, the_Defence_, at the very first salvo. She reeled under the terrificshock and had hardly begun to right herself before her sides weresmashed in by another. At the third she crumpled up and sank withevery soul aboard of her. Her next astern and second, the _BlackPrince_, and the _Warrior_, managed to crawl away under cover of themist. But both went down; though the battered _Black Prince_ survivedto be sunk by German battleships during the night. 

[Illustration: BATTLESHIP FIRING A BROADSIDE. ]

About this time, just after six, the fight was at its very fiercest, especially between the opposing light craft. It was a question of lifeor death for the Germans to keep the British light craft away and usetheir own to the utmost while their battle line was turning toward thewest in a desperate effort to keep ahead of Jellicoe. This was notcowardice, but a desire to save the German fleet from utter ruin oncevictory was seen to be impossible. Not all the brave deeds were on oneside. How much the Grand Fleet's honour would be dimmed if itsopponents had been cowards or if its own commander had failed to givethe enemy his due! "The enemy, " said Jellicoe in his dispatch, "foughtwith the gallantry that was expected of him, and showed humanity inrescuing officers and men from the water. I particularly admired theconduct of those on board a disabled German light cruiser which passeddown the British line under a heavy fire that was returned by the onlygun still left in action. " But of course this was well matched by manya vessel on the British side, in a fight so fierce and a turmoil soappalling that only men of iron training and steel nerves could faceit. Light craft of all kinds were darting to and fro, attacking, defending, firing guns and torpedoes, smashing and being smashed, sinking and being sunk, and trying to help or hinder the mighty linesof battle whose own gigantic guns flashed and thundered without amoment's pause. 

As Jellicoe closed in to get the strangle-hold his mighty battle fleethad, in very truth, to go through fire and water: the racing ships, their slashing bows and seething wakes; the pall of smoke, stabbed byten thousand points of fire, together making the devil'scolours--yellow, red, and black; the leaping waterspouts thrown up byshells that missed; the awful crashings when the shells struck home;the vessels reeling under well-aimed, relentless salvoes; the ships onfire beyond the reach of human aid; the weirdness of the mist thatveiled these dreadful horrors, or made them ghastlier still, orsuddenly brought friend and foe together either to sink or swim; thesummer sea torn into the maddest storm by ships and shells; while, through and round the whole of this inferno, there swelled andthundered the stunning roar of such a giant fight as other navies hadnever seen or even dreamt of. So deafening was this roar, and soabsorbing were the changes of the fight, that when a ton-weight shellswept overboard every atom of the bridge aboard the leading ship of aflotilla--with compass, chart-house, engine-room-telegraph, steeringwheel, and every soul on duty there--the men on "monkey's island, " justabove the bridge, never knew their ship was even hit till she began torun amuck and rammed another British vessel!

This was the battle into which Jellicoe had to fit his own vast forceof twenty-four dreadnoughts without checking Beatty, without lettingthe Germans get a clear run home, and without risking the loss of hisown best battleships by making one false move. At four minutes to sixJellicoe sighted Beatty. Five minutes later he asked him for theposition of the German line. Nine minutes later he asked again. Thesmoke and mist were so bad at first that it was not till 6. 14 thatBeatty could say exactly. At 6. 16--just two minutes later--Jellicoe'splan was made and his orders had gone out. There, in the conning towerof the _Iron Duke_, within those two short minutes, he had calmlythought out every chance and change and way of going into action underconditions which could not have been worse for him or better for theGermans. 

His twenty-four battleships were in six divisions, side by side, eachdivision in line ahead, and all numbered off from port (left) tostarboard (right). The leading ship of the 1st, or port wing, divisionwas the _King George V_. The leading ship of the 6th, or starboardwing division, was the _Marlborough_. His own flagship, the _IronDuke_, led the 3rd division. 

[Illustration: Jellicoe's Battle Fleet in Columns of Divisions. 6. 14P. M. ]

The supreme moment had now arrived. There was not a second to lose;for the fleets were covering more miles in an hour than armies do in awhole day. But if he formed line on the starboard wing, the nearer tothe Germans, he would have had to wait some time till Beatty's battlecruisers had drawn clear. During this dangerous pause, while his ownfire would have to be blanketed by Beatty, the German battle line wouldhave had a double British target to make hits on, and the German lightcraft would have had the best chance of catching him with theirtorpedoes while he was in the act of forming line. Moreover, theGerman line might have concentrated on the starboard wing before theport had taken station, and might have overlapped the whole lineafterwards. Jellicoe therefore decided to form on the port wing, giving his own line the chances of the overlap, and then fit in asternof Beatty. But, being ready by the time Beatty's battle cruisers weredrawing ahead, he fitted in his own line between these and the fourfast _Queen Elizabeths_ that formed the rear of Beatty's line. Thus, in the very worst of this gigantic battle, the twelve miles of thefinal British line were formed. Three battle cruisers had been sunk:the _Indefatigable_, _Invincible_, and _Queen Mary_. One fastbattleship, the _Warspite_, had fallen astern with a damaged helm. Butsix battle cruisers still led the van. Twenty-four fresh battleshipsfollowed. And three fast _Queen Elizabeths_ brought up the rear. Jellicoe then personally commanded a single line-ahead twelve mileslong and dreadnoughts all. Every part of every change was made asperfectly as if at the King's review. You could not have made the linestraighter with a ruler, nor placed it better if the Germans had beenstanding still. For as Beatty's overlap kept turning them from northto east and east to south, to save their T from being crossed, Jellicoe's whole line had now worked to the landward side of them, thatis, between them and their great home base on the German coast. 

Fourth Round: Jellicoe Victorious: 6. 50 to 9. 00 P. M. 

Driven to desperation by being overlapped and turned away from Germany, the Germans made a supreme effort to escape toward the south-west, thuscompleting their circle round the bull's-eye, as Jellicoe began toround them up from the inner. Their destroyers spouted forth animmense grey smoke screen; the mist helped them to hide; and the sunwent into a bank of clouds. As they ran they fired shoals oftorpedoes, which are much deadlier for the chasers, who go toward them, than for the chased, who go from them. The battleship _Marlborough_, flagship of Sir Cecil Burney, Jellicoe's Second-in-Command, was hit andbegan to list over. But she was so strong and so well handled thatwithin ten minutes she was at it again. She had already fought twobattleships and a cruiser while the British line was forming. Now shecaught another German battleship with fourteen salvoes running anddrove her out of line. 

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND--PLAN II. Jellicoe's battle lineformed and fighting. 6:38 P. M. ]

The Germans fired every torpedo they could bring to bear; and nothingbut Jellicoe's supreme skill, backed by the skill of all his captains, saved his battleships from losing at least a third of their number. Observers aloft watched the enemy manoeuvring to fire and then reportedto Jellicoe, who, keeping in line as long as possible for the sake ofthe guns, turned the fleet end-on, away from Scheer, just in time toprevent the torpedoes catching it broadside on, and then left eachcaptain free to work his own ship till that shoal of torpedoes hadpassed. The torpedoes arrived at about thirty miles an hour, shoals ofthem together, and showing no sign but the little line of bubbles fromtheir screws. But most of them were spotted and not one got home. The_Revenge_ worked her perilous way between a couple, one just missingher rudder and the other almost grazing her bows. 

During the whole of this fourth round the fight went on by fits andstarts. Whenever any part of the enemy's line showed up through thethickening mist the British guns turned on it with shattering salvoes. The _Iron Duke_, whose gunnery was simply perfect, caught a big Germanbattleship for a few minutes only. But by the time the mist had shutdown again the German was like a furnace, seething with a mass offlame. Meanwhile the battle cruisers were crumpling up their oppositenumbers in the German line, which thus became shorter and moreoverlapped than ever. The _Lion_ and _Princess Royal_ each set theiropponent on fire, while the _New Zealand_ and _Indomitable_ droveanother clean out of line, heeling over, and burning furiously fore andaft. (The _Indomitable_ was King George's Flagship at the QuebecTercentenary in 1908, and the _New Zealand_ was Jellicoe's flagship onhis tour of advice round the oversea Empire in 1919. )

At 8. 20, somewhere behind the mist which then veiled the German line, there was a volcanic roar that shook every keel for miles around. Scheer was losing heavily, running for his life, and doing his best tohold Jellicoe back by desperate light craft attacks with hundreds oftorpedoes. But Jellicoe countered this with his own light craft, whichsank four enemy destroyers before the night closed in. 

_Fifth and Last round: The Germans in Full Flight: 9. 00 P. M. 31st ofMay, to 4 P. M. 1st of June, 1916. _

Jellicoe now had another hard question to answer, a question, indeed, to which there could not be a perfect answer. The Germans were brokenand flying. But they still had many light craft with hundreds oftorpedoes; they were not far from home and near a swarm of their bestsubmarines; and their whole coast was full of mines for many miles offshore, while the shore itself and the string of off-shore islands weredefended by a regular chain of gigantic forts armed with enormous guns. Following them home was therefore out of the question altogether; foryou _can_ sink a fleet, while you _can't_ sink a coast. But eventrying to run them down at night was out of the question too; for theirstrongest point was night fighting, which is much fuller of risks andchances than day battles are. Besides, there was the chance of missingthem and losing the best position between them and their base. SoJellicoe and Beatty separated again and steamed, parallel to eachother, south-south-east to within a hundred miles of the German coast. They could not possibly cover more than a quarter of the whole way intothe Danish and German coasts; and so most of the Germans managed toslip in behind them, round by the north. 

The night fighting was done by the light craft; and it was here thatJellicoe had so much need of Tyrwhitt's flotillas from Harwich. Harwich was very handy to the battlefield and Tyrwhitt's light craftwere as keen and ready as any one could be. But the Government wereafraid to let them go, for fear lest some Germans might raid theEnglish coast. There was very little chance of a raid at all. Itcould not have been a bad one in any case. No mere raid can change thecourse of a war. The best way to stop raids is to win the war bydestroying the enemy's means of destroying you. The best way to dothis is to smash his main force wherever it happens to be. And thebest way to smash it is to throw all your own forces against it onceyou get a hold on it. But people who are scared in one place will notthink about the war as a whole, though that is the way to save thesevery people as well as all the rest. So they ask for some defence theycan actually see. It was much the same as in the days of the SpanishArmada. Drake and Jellicoe wanted to do the right thing. But QueenElizabeth's Council and King George's Government wanted to humour thepeople concerned. The only comfort is that, with all our faults, we ofthe British Empire make fewer naval mistakes than other people do. 

The light craft that did reach that famous battlefield could not havedone more to guard the British battle lines and harass the flyingGermans. There was many a weird sight as scurrying cruisers anddestroyers suddenly showed up, ominously black, against the ghastlywhiteness of the searchlit sea. Hunters and hunted raced, turned, andtwisted without a moment's pause. "We couldn't tell what washappening, " said the commander of a dashing destroyer. "Every now andthen out of the silence would come _Bang! bang!! boom!!!_ as hard as itcould for ten minutes on end. The flash of the guns lit up the wholesky for miles and miles, and the noise was far more penetrating than byday. Then you would see a great burst of flame from some poor devil, as the searchlights switched on and off, and then perfect silence oncemore. "

_Next Day_. Dawn comes early on the 1st of June at 55 degrees North. But the mist veiled everything more than three or four miles off. At3. 30 A. M. A huge Zeppelin flew across the British battle line, wirelessing down to any Germans still to the westward the best way toget home. By nine the light craft had all come in after scouring thesea for Germans. At a quarter past one it was plain that not a Germanship remained to challenge the Grand Fleet. So Jellicoe made for hisbase; took in fuel, stores, and ammunition; and at half-past nine nextevening was ready for another battle. 

_The News_. Very different was the plight of the flying Germans, wholost more ships than the British (eighteen, and perhaps six more, tofourteen British) and who left the field for good and all. But Germanysorely needed a victory just then. So the Kaiser proclaimed one, andall the German papers echoed his words. The German lie got two daysstart of the British truth, and was eagerly repeated by every one whohated the British or Allies. On the other hand, the British Governmentsimply said that there had been a battle and that fourteen Britishships were down. They shrank from proclaiming the victory, becausethey thought that most people, knowing nothing of modern naval war andmaking no allowance for the weather and other German advantages, wouldnot believe in a victory which let any of the German ships escape. Andso the lie went round the world much faster than the truth. Yet it wasonly believed by those who wanted to believe it. Even some Italianmountaineers who had never seen a ship said, "That's a lie, " whenItalian traitors told them the Grand Fleet had been sunk. 

After waiting a month to examine the whole case thoroughly the Board ofAdmiralty, which has always been most sparing in its praise, wroteJellicoe an official letter, saying that "the Grand Fleet has knownboth how to study the new problems and how to turn the knowledge toaccount. The expectations of the country were high. They have beenwell fulfilled. My Lords (the Members of the Board) desire to conveyto you their full approval of your proceedings in this action. "

What Jellicoe himself thought of those who fought so well under hisinspiring leadership cannot be said better than in his own words. "Theconduct of officers and men throughout the day and night actions wasentirely beyond praise. No words of mine could do them justice. Onall sides it is reported to me that the glorious traditions of the pastwere worthily upheld. Officers and men were cool and determined, witha cheeriness that would have carried them through anything. Theheroism of the wounded was the admiration of all. I cannot express thepride with which the spirit of the Grand Fleet filled me. "

_Results_. Jutland taught the German Navy what every one should haveknown before: that whenever tyrants have tried to lord it over all theworld they have always had to reckon with the British Navy first, andthat this Navy has never failed to lay them low. More things werewrought by Jutland than the British Empire thinks, and more, far more, than other people, for lack of knowledge, can imagine. There was aregular, unbreakable chain of cause and effect, and Jutland was thecentral link. 

To conquer their bully's "place in the sun" of the white man's empireoverseas the Germans built their Navy. But the Grand Fleet blockadedit so well that the Germans clamoured for a fight to wipe the Britishoff the sea and to let the German merchant ships get out. Jutlandsettled that. From Jutland on to the end of the war the Germanbluejackets could never again be led against the British on the surfaceof the sea. So the murderous German submarine campaign was triedinstead. This forced even the American Peace Party to change theirminds and save their country's honour by joining the War Party in armeddefence both of American rights and of the freedom of the world. 

After another two years the Germans failed under water as they had uponthe surface; and when, in wild despair, the Kaiser ordered the whole ofhis High Sea Fleet to try another fight, the final mutiny began. Thisbroke out at 5 A. M. On the 3rd of November, 1918, eight days before theArmistice. It was not the German Army, nor yet the German people, thatbegan the Revolution, but the German Fleet, which knew that a secondJutland could only mean the death of every German there. In its ownturn the Revolution brought on the great surrender, a thing unheard-ofin the story of the sea. 

Thus, like the immortal Battle of the Marne on land, Jutland was notonly itself a mighty feat of arms but one on which the whole war turned. 

CHAPTER XXVI

SUBMARINING

(1917-1918)

Jutland proved to all hands in the German Navy that they had no chancewhatever against Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. But the great mass of theGerman people never heard this truth; and even their navy hoped to winunder the water a victory it had found impossible on top. So, for thelast two years of the war, the Germans worked their hardest at whatthey called the "Submarine Blockade. " As this "Blockade" forced theUnited States into war, and as its failure showed the Germans that, inthe end, they had no more chance under water than on top, we can allsee now that Jutland turned the scale. 

The British fleets blockading Germany of course seized and kept for theGovernment, as spoils of war, whatever warlike stores (guns, shells, and so on) they could lay their hands on. But all the other goods theNavy stopped the Government bought, paying fair market prices. So theAmerican and other neutrals trying to trade with the enemy had reallynothing to complain of; for a blockade at sea is very like a siege onland, and nobody has ever pretended that a besieging army has not aperfect right to stop any supplies of any kind from reaching thebesieged. Moreover, the crews of the ships trying to break the Britishblockade were always very kindly treated, though their ships weretrying to help the enemy and make fortunes for their owners at theexpense of freedom. 

But when we turn to the German "Submarine Blockade" of the BritishIsles we find something quite different; for the German submarines sankevery ship they could, and they generally were as utterly carelessabout the lives of the crews as they were about the cargo, no matterwhat the cargo was. In short, Germany tried everything, no matter howwrong, that could possibly hurt the hated British. She did let someneutral ships go by without attacking them. But that was only becauseshe did not want to turn all the neutrals into enemies; and nothingproves better what a fiendish crime her "Submarine Blockade" really wasthan the fact that it forced even the Peace Party in the United Statesto change its mind about the war. 

For thirty-two months this Peace Party kept the United States out of awar waged by Germany against the freedom of the world. There were agood many reasons why. Most Americans knew next to nothing about theaffairs of Europe; and Germans had long been busy poisoning their mindsagainst the French and British. Then, Washington and other Presidentshad often advised them not to meddle with anything outside of America;and President Wilson had even said there was such a thing as being "tooproud to fight. "

Of course the Pacifists were against all war, even when their refusingto fight on the side of right forced them to help the side of wrong. They had plenty of money, some of it German, and they made almost asmuch trouble as the Germans and pro-Germans themselves. Then, theGermans, pro-Germans, and Pacifists raised the bogey of trouble for theUnited States at home, while there did not seem to be much danger ofgetting hurt from abroad. Finally, business was booming as it hadnever boomed before. The Americans made twelve-and-a-half thousands ofmillions of dollars out of the war, clear net profit up to the end of1918. 

The War Party said the whole war was about a question of right andwrong, and that the French and British were right, while the Germanswere wrong. They said that Americans were safe because the BritishNavy barred the way, that all the British oversea Dominions had foughtfrom the first, though not obliged to send a ship, a dollar, or a manexcept of their own free will. They said that every American patriotshould be very proud to fight for the freedom of the world and verymuch ashamed to let the French and British uphold the cause of rightalone. They said that the German submarines had already murdered manyAmericans, that many other Americans, ashamed to see their countryhanging back, were already enlisting in Canada, England, and France, and that although business was certainly booming, beyond the wildestdreams of the keenest money-makers before the war, yet this vast wealthwas too much like blood-money, since the French and British weresuffering immense losses in lives and money and in everything buthonour, while the Americans, losing nothing in lives, were making vasthoards of money out of a cause that really was their own--the cause ofright and freedom. 

Slowly but surely the War Party gained, as more and more members of thePeace Party began to see the truth. But still, after twenty-sevenmonths, the most popular cry among those who voted President Wilson infor a second term was "he kept us out of war. " Three months later theGerman "Submarine Blockade" began (February 1917). Then, two monthslater still, most of the Peace Party, seeing that their own ships wouldbe sunk just as readily as French or British ships, gave their vote forwar. 

It was a glorious moment in world-history when British, French, andAmericans at last stood side by side. The American Navy led the way, joining the hunt for German submarines with a keenness whetted byhaving been held back so long. The Army followed, bit by bit, untiltwo million men had gone to Europe, thanks chiefly to the British shipsthat took them there. The Nation backed both Army and Navy with vastsums of money, which it could so easily afford, and with patriotic workof every splendid kind. 

But the war lasted only nineteen months longer; and in that time theAmericans were not able to do anything like what the Allies had donebefore and still were doing. The entire American loss in men (killed, wounded, and prisoners) was over one-quarter million. But Canada'sloss of over two hundred thousand was ten times as great in proportion;for there are twelve-and-a-half times as many people in the UnitedStates as there are in Canada. In the same way the losses of Franceand Great Britain were each more than twenty times greater than that ofthe United States. In ships and money the difference is far morestriking still. The British alone lost one-and-a-half times as manyships as all the rest of the world put together. But the Americanshave actually gained, owing to the number of interned German vesselsthey seized in their ports. As for money: the British, the French, andall the Allies have spent so much in fighting for the freedom of theworld that neither they nor their children, nor their children'schildren, can ever pay the vast debt off; while the United States havemade, on their own showing, the twelve-and-a-half "billions" mentionedalready. 

These few facts (there are hundreds more) will show you a little ofwhat the Great War means to the world, what the British Navy meant tothe war, and what Jutland meant to both the war and the world, bysweeping the German Navy off the surface of the sea, and so bringing onthe "Submarine Blockade" that itself forced the American Government tofight in self-defence. 

[Illustration: British Submarine. ]

The Germans, wishing to kill off their victims one at a time, wereready for the French and Russian Navies, but not for the British. Theyhad less than forty sea-going submarines when the war began. Butnearly four hundred took part, or were ready to take part, before thewar was over, while many more were building. 

We have already noted the weak points of submarines. They are "tender"because they must be thin. An old collier that couldn't steam fasterthan you could walk sank a submarine by barging into it, end-on--onecan hardly call it ramming. Submarines are slower on the surface thandreadnoughts, cruisers, and destroyers; and, after doing a total of tenor twelve hours under water, they have to recharge their batteries; forthey run by oil engines on the surface and by electricity submerged, and the crew would be smothered if the oil engines tried to chargebatteries without coming up. 

Then, firing torpedoes is not at all like firing big guns. At a rangeof five miles a shell will still be making 2000 feet a second or 1400miles an hour. At the same range a torpedo like those used at Jutlandwould be making only 50 feet a second or 35 miles an hour. Thus shellswhizz through the air forty times faster than torpedoes sneak throughthe water. A torpedo, in fact, is itself very like a submarine, moreor less cigar-shaped, and with its own engine, screw, and rudder. Hitting with a torpedo really means arranging a collision between itand the ship you are aiming at. When you and the ship and your torpedoand the water are all moving in different ways you can see that hittingis not so easy. The shorter the range the better. But you cannot seeat all unless your periscope, with its little mirror, is high and dryout of the water; and periscopes are soon spotted by a sharp look-outat very short range. The best torpedoes are over twenty feet long andas many inches through, and they will go ten miles. But the longer therange the slower the pace and the less the chance of hitting. Theengine is driven by air, which is compressed so hard into the middle ofthe torpedo that it actually bulges out the steel a tiny fraction of aninch. You may set the air-valve fast or slow, and the torpedo will goaccordingly. But if you want to make pretty sure you must get withinless than a mile, with the ship's broadside toward you, set the torpedofor the right depth, the right pace to keep it going as fast aspossible just long enough to hit, and of course the right aim. Then, if all goes well, the cap, or "war head" of the torpedo, on hitting theship, will set off the fuse that sets off the tremendous charge of highexplosive; and this may knock a hole in the side big enough to drive astreet car through. But there are many more misses than hits. 

Yet the German and Austrian raiders, mines, and submarines sank fifteenmillion tons of shipping, which is not far short of a third of all themerchant tonnage in the world; and the submarines sank more than themines and raiders sank together. (Ships are measured by finding outhow many cubic feet of space they contain and counting so many feet tothe ton. Thus you get a much better idea of how much shipping acountry has by counting in tons rather than by the number of ships; fortwenty-five ships of one thousand tons each have only half as muchsea-power as one ship of fifty thousand tons. ) The British loss wasnine millions, half as much again as was lost by all the rest of theworld put together. Raiders like the cruiser _Emden_, or the armed anddisguised merchant vessel _Möwe_, did a great deal of harm at thebeginning of the war, as we have seen already. Mines did even moreharm, and did it all through. But submarines did most. 

Our title "Submarining" means any kind of underwater attack, by minesas well as by torpedoes, so we must take a glance at the mines beforecoming to the submarines. 

Most mines are somewhat like big buoys with little horns all over thetop. Each horn ends in a cap which, when hit, sets off the charge. Mines coupled together by a steel rope are more dangerous than twoseparate mines would be, as they are bound to be drawn in against anyship that strikes any part of the rope. The only safeguard a shipcould carry was a paravane. A paravane is made up of a strong steelhawser (rope) that serves as a fender, and of two razor-edged bladesthat serve to cut the mine-moorings free. It is altogether under waterand is shaped like a V, with the point jutting out on the end of steelstruts ahead of the bows, the two strokes running clear of the sides, and their ends well winged out astern, where the two sharp blades standstraight up, one from each end. The lines by which mines are anchoredwere thus guided clear of the ship till they reached the blades, wherethey were cut. The mines then rose to the surface, where they could beset off at a safe distance. Dragging a paravane through the water madethe ship go slow. But that was better than being blown up. 

Minefields cannot, of course, be crossed at all. You might as well tryto walk over armies of porcupines in your bare feet. Some minefieldswere very big. One British field ran from the Orkneys right across toNorway, to stop the German submarines from getting out round the northof Scotland. The American Navy did magnificent work at this field, thegreater part of which was laid by American, not by British, vessels atthe latter end of 1917 and earlier part of 1918. Other minefieldsblocked the Channel. But here the Germans once played a very clevertrick which might have cost the British dear. A British minefield hadbeen laid, some fifty feet deep, to catch submarines without being inthe way of vessels on the surface. Two days after it had been secretlylaid at night the _Nubian_, a British destroyer, had her bows blown offon the very same spot. The German submarine mine-layers had crept inby night and laid a shallow German minefield, exactly over the deepBritish minefield, to catch those who were trying to catch them. That, however, is not the end of the story. Just after the _Nubian_ had beentowed into Portsmouth with her bows blown off, the _Zulu_, a destroyerof the same class, was towed in with her stern blown off. So perfectlywere both these vessels built that, when they had each been cut inhalf, the good halves made an absolutely perfect new destroyer, which, under her compound name of _Zubian_, did excellent work against theGermans during the famous fights at Zeebrugge and Ostend. 

A mine laid by a German submarine blew up the cruiser _Hampshire_ thatwas taking Kitchener to Russia by way of the Orkneys on the 5th ofJune, 1916. Kitchener was drowned and only twelve men, who floated inon a raft, were saved. Submarines lurking about at night wouldsometimes put mines right in the track of vessels. And sometimes swiftmine-laying ships on the surface would do even more deadly harm, rolling a hundred mines off a little railway on deck. At other timesmines would be loosed from the shore or from ships at anchor, so as tofloat in among vessels with the tide or down the current of a stream. One of these was tried against the British in West Africa by a Germanmissionary. Others were sent against the French and British vessels inthe Dardanelles, sometimes blowing them up. 

But the enemy never had it all his own way. British submarines didwonderful work in spite of the mines. Commander Holbrook won the V. C. By feeling his perilous way through five lines of Turkish mines, thoughthe currents were very tricky, and more than once the side of his "sub"actually touched the steel ropes holding the mines to their anchors. When he reached Constantinople he torpedoed and sank the Turkishbattleship that was supposed to be guarding these very mines! Then hedived back through the five rows of mines and rejoined the fleetwithout a scratch. 

Another British submarine stole into the Sea of Marmora with a coupleof land mines to blow up the railway near Constantinople. LieutenantD'Oyley-Hughes then swam ashore, pushing a little raft to which themines were lashed. He was quite alone, but armed with a bayonet groundlike a razor and an automatic seven-shooter. He also carried aflash-light and whistle. He shouldered first one mine and then theother, each the weight of a big man, took them up the hill, and putthem under a little brickwork bridge within a hundred and fifty yardsof the Turkish sentries, who were talking round their fire. Though hemuffled the fuse pistol it was heard by the Turks, who came runningtoward him, firing as hard as they could. He let them have his firstclip of seven shots slap in the face and then raced a mile along theline, doubled back a bit down the cliff, and swam off toward thesubmarine. His whistle was not heard at first, as the submarine was inthe next bay; and he had to swim a mile before he came across herbacking out under fire from the Turks. But he slipped into her conningtower safely, and no one on the British side was hurt. 

So great is the danger from mines, unless they are watched and tackledthe whole time, that thousands of mine-sweeping vessels were always atwork, manned by British fishermen who had been handling gigantic netsand mile-long steel hawsers (ropes) ever since they had gone afloat asboys. These North Sea fishermen, in whom the Viking blood runs strong, had always put in eleven months sea time every year of their lives. Sostorm and fog and clammy numbing cold had no terrors for them as theyworked their "sweepers" to and fro, fishing for the deadly mines. Sometimes, for all their skill and care, a mine would foul their tackleand blow them to pieces. But usually they could "gentle" a mine to thesurface and set it off by rifle shots at a safe distance. Sometimes, however, a hitch would happen and the mine would come close alongside. Once a mine actually came aboard, caught fast in the tackle. Theskipper (captain) ordered all hands into the boats, and then himselfcut it clear after a whole hour's work, during which one false touch oreven the slightest jolt would have blown his ship to smithereens. Thewonder of it is that more men were not killed in keeping the seaways socarefully swept, night and day, all the year round, for tens ofthousands of miles, during the fifty-one months of the war. 

[Illustration: Minesweeper at work. ]

Still more dangerous was the fishing for those vilest of devil-fish, the German submarines. The fishermen "shot" enormous steel nets justas you shoot a fishing net, letting them hang a bit slack so as to bethe more entangling. Then, just as you feel your rod quiver when afish takes your fly, so these anglers for Germans would feel the quiverfrom a nosing submarine caught in the toils. Very few submarines everescaped; for the slack of the waving net was apt to foul the screw, andthere they were held till the last struggle ceased and the last man wassmothered inside. 

The fishermen would sometimes have rescued their ruthless enemies ifthey could have disentangled them in time. But this could rarely bedone; and the Germans met a just fate. One day a submarine came upalongside a British trawler which was engaged in its regular fishing, was quite unarmed, and had a crew of old men and young boys. TheGermans took all the fresh fish they wanted, sank the trawler, smashedup her boats, and put the fishermen on the submarine's deck. Then theyslammed-to the hatch of the conning tower and sank very slowly, washingthe fishermen off. Then they rose again to laugh at them drowning. Anavenging destroyer came racing along and picked up the sole survivor. But the German jokers, seeing it coming, had gone. No wonder theseafaring British sometimes "saw red" to such a degree that they woulddo anything to get in a blow! And sometimes they did get it in, whenthe Germans least thought it was coming. When a skipper suddenly founda German U-boat (_Unterseeboot_ or under-sea-boat) rising beside him, just as his engine-room mechanic had come up with a hammer in his hand, he called out, "look sharp and blind her!" Without a moment'shesitation the mechanic jumped on her deck and smashed her periscope topieces, thus leaving her the blinded prey of gathering destroyers. 

The Germans put their wits to work with hellish cunning. They wantedto surround Great Britain with a sea of death so full of mines andsubmarines that no ship could live. The mines were not placed atrandom, but where they would either kill their victims best or makethem try another way where the lurking submarines could kill them. Thesea-roads into great ports like London and Liverpool converge, just asrailway tracks converge toward some great central junction. Sosubmarines lying in wait near these crowded waters had a greatadvantage in the earlier part of the war, when people still believedthat the Germans would not sink unarmed merchantmen on purpose, especially when women and children were known to be on board. 

On the 7th of May, 1915, the _Lusitania_, from New York for Liverpool, was rounding the south of Ireland, when the starboard (right-hand)look-out in the crow's nest (away up the mast) called to his mate onthe port side, "Good God, Frank, here's a torpedo!" The next minute itstruck and exploded, fifteen feet under water, with a noise like theslamming of a big heavy door. Another minute and a second torpedostruck and exploded. Meanwhile the crew had dashed to their dangerposts and begun duties for which they had been carefully drilled, though very few people ever thought the Germans would torpedo apassenger steamer known to be full of women and children, carrying manyAmericans, and completely unarmed. The ship at once took a list tostarboard (tilt to the right) so that the deck soon became as steep asa railway embankment. This made it impossible to lower boats on the upside, as they would have swung inboard, slithered across the steeplysloping deck, and upset. The captain, cool and ready as Britishcaptains always are, gave his orders from the up end of the bridge, while the other officers were helping the passengers into the boats. The sea soon came lapping over the down side of the deck, and peoplebegan slipping into it. The full boats shoved off; but not half ofthem on the down side were clear before the gigantic ship, with anappalling plunge, sank head first. It all happened so quickly thatmany had not been able to get on deck before this final plunge. Theymust have been crushed by the hurtling of all loose gear when the shipstood on her bows going down, then smothered and drowned, if notsmashed dead at the first. The captain stood on the bridge to thelast, went down with the ship, came up again among the wreckage, andwas saved after hours in the water. He will never forget the long, piercing wail of despair from hundreds of victims as the gallant shipwent down. 

This made it clear to all but those who did not want to understand thatGermany was going to defy the laws of the sea, at least as far as shecould without changing President Wilson's Government into an enemy. Sothings went on, getting worse and worse, for another two years. TheBritish, French, and Italians had never prepared for a war like this. They were ready to fight submarines that fought their own men-of-war, as well as those that tried to sink transports carrying soldiers andarms to the many different fronts. But who would have thought thateven the Germans would sink every merchantman without the least carefor the lives of the crew? The rest of the world thought the days ofpirates and cut-throats were over among all civilized nations. But theGermans did not. So the Allies, the British especially, built more andmore destroyers to fight the German submarines. The Germans, ofcourse, built more and more submarines; and so the fight went on, growing ever fiercer. 

It was up-hill work for the British to guard thousands of ships overmillions of miles against the hidden foe, who sometimes struck withoutbeing seen at all. A ship is a small thing on millions of squaremiles. A slinking submarine is very much lower and harder to see onthe surface. A periscope is far harder still. The ordinary periscopeis simply a tube, a few inches in diameter, with a mirror in the upperend reflecting the outside view on the corresponding mirror at thelower end, where the captain watches his chance for a shot. No wonderthe Germans got on well for so long. It was over two years beforeBritish merchantmen were armed. There was a shortage of guns; and theneutral American Government would not allow any armed merchantmen intotheir ports, though many and many a life was lost because a vessel wasunarmed. But, bit by bit, the merchantmen were forced to arm or dielike sheep before the German wolves; and once they had a gun they soonlearnt how to use it. 

One gun over the stern was all that most ships had. It was mountedastern because the best chance of escape was to turn away and go fullspeed, zig-zagging every which way as you went, firing at the chasingsubmarine; This made vessels harder for submarines to hit, not only onaccount of the zig-zags, but because the ship, going the same way asthe torpedo, made fast and short shots harder to get; also because thebackwash of the screw helped to put torpedoes off their course; andfinally because the target was itself firing back at the submarine. Even so, however, it was often touch-and-go; and very few people everenjoyed the fun of being fired at as much as that little Canadian girlof six, who, seeing a torpedo shimmering past the ship's side, calledout, "Oh, Mummy, look at the pretty fish!" Once a fast torpedo was hitand exploded by a shell from the vessel its submarine was chasing. Butthis was a perfect fluke. 

More to the point was the readiness of the merchantman _Valeria_ and ofCommander Stockwell's destroyer to turn happy accidents to the bestaccount on the spur of the moment. The _Valeria_ bumped over a risingsubmarine at three o 'clock one summer morning off the coast ofIreland. Instantly all hands ran to "action stations, " when the gunnersaw, to his delight, that the periscope had been broken off and so thesubmarine was blind. His first shot hit the hull. His second was amiss. But his third struck the base of the conning tower; on which thesubmarine sank, nothing but bubbles and oil remaining to mark the spotwhere she went down. Stockwell's adventure was rather different. Hehad marked a submarine slinking round in the early dawn, and, knowingthe spot the Germans liked best outside of Liverpool, watched hischance over it. Suddenly he felt his destroyer being lifted up, tiltedover, and slid aside. The "sub" had risen right under it! Swingingclear in a moment he let go a depth charge; and the sea-quake thatfollowed had plenty of signs to show that the "sub" had gone down. 

1917 was the great year of submarine war: the Germans straining everynerve to kill off all the ships that went to or from the Allied ports, the Allies trying their best to kill off all the submarines. TheMediterranean was bad, the North Atlantic was worse, the west coasts ofthe British Islands worst of all. The American Navy came in and didsplendid service off the south coast of Ireland, in the Bay of Biscay, and along the North Atlantic seaways between French and British andAmerican ports. More and more destroyers were put into service, aidedby "chasers"--very much smaller vessels with only one gun and a fewmen, but so cheap and easily built that they could be turned out inswarms to help in worrying the submarines to death. The "scooters" and"Porte's babies, " as we saw in Chapter XXIV, were, however, even betterthan these swarming "chasers. "

The enormous steel nets were also used more than ever. You can fancywhat they were like by thinking of a gigantic fishing-net many mileslong, with armed steamers instead of floats. In the entrances to someharbours there were sea-gates made by swinging open a bit of the net bymeans of its steamers to let traffic go through, and then swinging itback again. The mine-fields were made bigger than ever; it was thenthat the vast one, mostly laid by the Americans, was begun from theOrkneys to Norway. Mines were also laid by British submarines and bydaring fast surface mine-layers round Heligoland and other places offthe German coast. In this way the waters in which submarines couldwork were made narrower and narrower and were better and better guarded. 

But more and more submarines were launched, and they still sneaked outto sea along the Dutch and Norwegian coasts where the Navy could notstop them because they used to slink through "territorial waters, " thatis, within three miles of the coast, where the sea belonged to thenearest country, just the same as the land. The Navy, however, hadlines of patrols always on the watch from the Orkneys to the Shetlands, on to Iceland, over to Norway, and north to the Arctic ice. The narrowwaters of the English Channel were watched by the famous Dover Patrolunder Sir Roger Keyes. From Folkestone to Cap Griz Nez in France therewas an unbroken line of the strongest searchlights on vessels anchoredto ride out the biggest gales. Seven miles west was another line. Between were hundreds of patrol boats always ready, night or day, tofire at anything on the surface or to drop depth charges on anythingthat dived. A depth charge is a sort of mine that can be set to go offat a certain depth, say thirty to sixty feet down, when it makes asea-quake that knocks the submarine out of gear and sinks it, even ifit does not actually hit it. Besides all these guards on the surfacethere were nets and mines underneath. That is why the British army inFrance never had its line of communication with England cut for onesingle day all through the war. 

Now and then the Germans tried a destroyer raid from their ports on theBelgian coast, or even from their own coast; for they would sneakthrough Dutch waters within the three-mile limit as well as through theDanish or Norwegian. They played a game of tip-and-run, their gunnersfiring at any surface craft they saw (for they knew no Germans could beanywhere but underneath) and their captains streaking back home at thefirst sign of the British Navy. On the night of the 20th of April, 1917, they were racing back, after sinking some small craft, when anavenging flotilla of British destroyers began to overhaul them. Seeingthat one of the Germans might escape in the dark, the _Broke_ (namedafter Captain Broke of the _Shannon_ in the War of 1812) turned andrammed her amidships. The Germans fought well, swarming aboard the_Broke_ and fighting hand to hand, as in the days of boarding. ButMidshipman Giles stood up to the first of them, who was soon killed bya bluejacket's cutlass; and then, after a tremendous tussle with swordsand pistols and anything else that was handy, every German was eitherdriven overboard or killed on the spot, except two that surrendered. 

A year later (on St. George's Day) the _Vindictive_ led the famous raidon Zeebrugge under Captain Carpenter, V. C. The idea was to destroy theprincipal German base in Belgium from which aircraft and submarineswere always starting. For weeks beforehand the crews that hadvolunteered to go on this desperate adventure were carefully trained insecret. The plan was to block the mouth of the Bruges Canal, bysinking three vessels filled with concrete, while the _Vindictive_smashed up the batteries on the mole (long solid wharf) guarding theentrance, and an old submarine, loaded like a gigantic torpedo, blew upthe supports for the bridge that connected the mole with the land. Twice the little expedition sailed and had to put back because the windhad shifted; for the smoke screen would not hide the block ships, unless the wind had just the proper slant. At last it started for thereal thing; a great night of aircraft going ahead to bomb the defencesand a squadron of monitors staying some miles astern to pour in shellsat the same time. The crash of air bombs and the thudding of thedistant monitors were quite familiar sounds to the German garrison, whose "archies" (anti-aircraft guns) barked hoarsely back, while thebigger guns roared at where they thought the monitors might be. (Monitors are slow, strong, heavy, and very "bargy" craft, useful onlyas platforms for big guns against land defences. )

Suddenly, to the Germans' wild astonishment, Zeebrugge harbour was fullof a smoke screen, of concrete-loaded block-ships, and of darting motorboats; while the old cruiser _Vindictive_ made straight for the mole. Instantly the monitors and aircraft were left alone, while every Germangun that could be brought to bear was turned on to this new and farmore dangerous enemy at hand. But the British won through. The threeblock-ships were sunk. The submarine used as a torpedo blew up thebridge joining the mole to the land; and the smoke screen worked fairlywell. Still, the tornado of German shells was almost more than fleshand blood could stand. Meanwhile the old _Vindictive_ ran alongsidethe mole and dropped her eighteen special gangways bang against it. Ina moment her forlorn hope--her whole crew was one great forlornhope--swarmed on to the mole, over the splintering gangways, while herguns roared defiance at the huge German batteries. The ground swellmade the _Vindictive_ roll and racked her breaking gangways terribly. The storm of German shells and the hail of machine-gun bullets seemedalmost to be sweeping everything before them. An officer awaiting histurn on deck asked, "What are all those men lying down for?" and wasanswered, "All dead, Sir"; killed before they had started. Severalgangways were smashed to pieces, the men on them falling between the_Vindictive_ and the mole. The Germans on the mole fired furiously tokeep the storming party back. But, with an eager courage no Vikingcould have beaten, and with a trained skill no Viking could haveequalled, every seaman and Marine in that heroic party who was notkilled or disabled pressed on till the flaming battery was silenced. Then the survivors swarmed back with all the wounded they could find, climbed over the few broken gangways still holding together, and turnedto the work of getting clear. At last the _Vindictive_, though a meremangled wreck, got off and limped home victorious with all that wasleft of the equally daring flotilla of small craft. 

Zeebrugge was the bigger base on the Belgian coast. But Ostendremained; and both were connected by canals with Bruges, which stoodseveral miles inland. The whole formed a triple base shaped like theletter V, with Bruges at the bottom, Zeebrugge (sea-Bruges) to theright, and Ostend to the left. To close only Zeebrugge was to leavethe back door open. So Ostend was raided, and smashed later on, theold _Vindictive_, now past her fighting days, being sunk full ofconcrete. From all that remained of her still above water thehero-king, Albert, was cheered into Ostend after the Armistice by theBelgian Boy Scouts, as he steamed past with Sir Roger Keyes to land, with his heroine-queen, on the soil so long fouled by German pirates. 

These raids spoilt German chances from the nearest ports to Britain. But they did not stop the submarine campaign; and there was stillplenty of work for camouflage, convoys, and "Q" ships. 

Camouflage at sea is a very different thing from camouflage on land. On land camouflage is meant to make one thing look like something elseor to hide it altogether. But no kind of camouflage will hide a ship. Nor is there any point in making a boat look like anything else; foreverybody knows that ships are the only things at sea. Camouflageafloat was therefore meant to confuse the submarine commander's aim bydeceiving his eye as to his target's speed and course. By paintingcunning arrangements of stripes and splashes of different colours aship's course and speed could be so disguised that the torpedoist waspuzzled in getting his sights on her and in working out the range andspeed. If an old-fashioned sailor could have suddenly been dropped onto the deck of a transport in the midst of a convoy of camouflagedships he would have thought all their helmsmen were drunk or stark, staring mad; for they would have seemed to be steering every which wayat large and not one on any proper course at all. 

When this was added to their other troubles the submarines thoughttwice before risking an attack on a convoy of ships guarded bycruisers, as well as by destroyers ahead and on both sides, zig-zaggingabout on the hunt for submarines, much as a good sporting dog quarterslikely ground for game. A "mothering" cruiser would keep stationastern, where she could have her weather eye on every one. In narrowwaters like the English Channel there would also be an airshipoverhead, a little in advance, with seaplanes on the flanks. Theseaircraft could spot a submarine almost a hundred feet down in fairweather, just as seabirds spot fish. If a submarine did show up, itwas kept in sight till the destroyers charged near enough to ram, shell, or torpedo it on the surface, or sea-quake it to death with adepth bomb if submerged. Three hundred and seven ships brought wheatfrom different parts of America to Britain, France, and Italy underspecial convoy in the summer of 1918, and only one was lost. 

"Q" ships, those ships of mystery and such strange romance as formernavies never dreamt of, were meant to lure the German devils to theirdoom. One Q ship was a dirty old collier so well disguised as a commontramp (steamer belonging to no regular line) that she completely tookin a British cruiser, whose boarding officer was intensely surprised tofind her skipper was one of his own former shipmates. After fivemonths of thrashing to and fro in the wintry North Atlantic a torpedosped across her bows and she knew her chance had come. Instantly heralarm signals, quietly given, brought all hands to action stations, some in deck-houses, others in hen-coops, but each with his finger onthe trigger or his hand on a ready spare shell. Presently thesubmarine broke surface and fired a shot across the Q ship's bow. Onthis the well-trained crew ran about in panic, while the captainscreeched at them and waved his arms about like mad. Then thesubmarine came up within three cables (ten to the nautical mile of 2000yards); whereupon the captain blew his whistle, just as Drake did longago, the Navy's White Ensign fluttered up to the masthead, thehen-coops and deck-houses fell flat, and a hurricane of shells andMaxim bullets knocked the "sub" out in three minutes' firing. 

But, as the war went on, still better Q dodges had to be invented. Oneday an old Q tramp, loaded chock-a-block with light-weight lumber, quietly let herself be torpedoed, just giving the wheel a knowing touchto take the torpedo well abaft the engine-room, where it would do leastharm. The "panic-party" then left the ship quite crewless so far asanybody outside of her could see. But the "sub" was taking no risksthat day. She circled the Q, almost grazing her, but keeping fifteenfeet under. The Q captain, only ten yards off, was sorely tempted tofire. But shells striking water play queer tricks. So he held hisfire; though the quarterdeck was awash instead of nearly twenty feetclear, and the ship's lucky black cat, blown overboard by theexplosion, swam straight on to it out of the sea. Then the sub cameup, little more than a cable's length away; and the Q captain at lastsent a wireless call for help in case he should sink too soon. Whenthe conning tower rose clear the German commander opened the hatch andsmiled at his work. He was still cautious; for his gun crew began toappear. But the Q caught him; knocking his head off with the veryfirst shot, and riddling the whole sub in no time. 

The same Q captain, Gordon Campbell, V. C. , went out again in another Qship which was also disguised as a tramp. When a submarine attackedher she zig-zagged away in wild alarm, firing only her onemerchantman's gun, and slowing down so as to get overhauled. Knowingthe sub would catch his message Campbell wirelessed "Help! Come quick!Submarine chasing and shelling. " Presently the Q stopped, done up, andthe "panic-party" left her to her fate. This fate really did seem, andmight have been, certain; for she was on fire from the shelling and herafter magazine blew up with terrible force, killing the stern gun'screw and blowing the gun overboard. Moreover, the jar of thisexplosion set off the alarm; so down came all disguises and out camethe guns. But Campbell, still determined to kill off that sub, wirelessed in the secret code to keep all vessels off the horizon, lestthe sub should get scared and run away. Meanwhile she was diving, notliking the explosions; and she presently sent a torpedo straight home. Then the second "panic-party" left; and the Q ship lay wallowing in thetrough of the sea, with two holes in her side, a big fire blazing, andammunition boxes blowing up every few minutes. For nearly an hour thesub hovered round, a good distance off, and ended by rising astern toshell this obstinate Q ship to death. But even then the dauntless Qmen still aboard never gave a sign of life. The wounded lay in theiragonizing pain without making a sound, and stiff as soldiers at_Attention!_ The rest stood by their guns and torpedoes, ready foranything. In the meantime another dangerous fire was blazing, moreammunition was blowing up, and the engulfing sea was creeping ever nearand nearer yet. At last the submarine, quite satisfied, ceased firing. Then she closed, and Campbell fired two torpedoes, but missed withboth. After this he wirelessed for help. But when British andAmerican destroyers came tearing up they found him, cool as ever, arranging for a third "panic-party" to jump overboard and leave himalone with three men to try one more shot with the only gun left freeby the fire. He failed this time. But two of his men earnt the V. C. As well as any men have ever earnt it; and his gallant Q herself wentdown with colours flying. 

The news soon passed round the underworld of "sub-dom"; and the Germansswore they would never be caught again. So when another sub chased andshelled an old tub of a sailing ship her commander took good care tomake sure he had not caught another Q. First and second panic parties, or what he thought were panic parties, did not satisfy him. But atlast, when he had seen the ship's papers and had counted the crew, helaughed at his own mistake and came close alongside, ordering the boatsaway in spite of the skipper's entreaties to be allowed to go back andget his wife, who was crying her eyes out on deck with her baby in herarms. When the boats rowed off the poor woman went mad, rushing aboutwildly, with piercing shrieks, and finally, just as the German wascoming on board, throwing her baby straight into his conning tower. What the Germans thought of this will never be known; for the baby wasmade of rubber filled with high explosive, and it blew the sub tosmithereens. 

CHAPTER XXVII

SURRENDER!

(1918)

As Jutland broke the spirit of the Germans who fought on the surface sominefields, netting, convoys, patrolling, and Q boats broke the spiritof those who fought in submarines. Drake's Sea-Dogs would take theirchance of coming home alive when the insurance on their ships used tobe made by men whom Shakespeare calls the "putters-out of five forone. " As we say now, the chances were five to one against the Sea-Dogship that went to foreign parts in time of war. But, when the oddsreached four to one against the German subs, the German crews began tomutiny, refusing to go aboard of what they saw were fast becoming justnew steel coffins of the sea. A Belgian maid, compelled to slave forofficers of German submarines at Zeebrugge, kept count of those whoreturned alive. The same number, twenty, always boarded in the house. But, before the British came and drove the Germans out, no less thansixteen of her twenty masters had stepped into dead men's shoes. 

Finally, in the early morning of November the 3rd, when, in wilddespair, the Kaiser ordered the whole Fleet out for one last fight, themen of aircraft, surface craft, and submarines alike refused pointblank to go; and the German Revolution then and there began. It wasthe German Navy that rose first, brought to its senses by the might ofBritish sea-power. The Army followed. Then the people. 

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (the11th of November, 1918) the _Cease fire!_ sounded on every front by seaand land and air; for that supremely skilful hero, Marshal Foch, hadsigned the Armistice as Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied Armies onthe Western Front. One of the terms of this famous Armistice was thatGermany should surrender her Fleet to the Allies in the Firth of Forth, where the British Grand Fleet was waiting with a few French andAmerican men-of-war. Never in the whole world's history had such asurrender taken place. But never in the whole world's history had anynavy broken the laws of war so shamefully as the German Navy had. Andnever in the whole world's history had any navy been more truly greator so gloriously strong as the British Navy had become. 

On Friday the 15th of November the German cruiser _Königsberg_ steamedinto the Firth of Forth and anchored near Inchcape, which, aptlyenough, is famous in Scottish song as the death-place of a murderer andpirate. "Beatty's destroyer, " H. M. S. _Oak_, unlike all other craft inher gala coat of gleaming white, then took Admiral von Meurer aboardthe British flagship, _Queen Elizabeth_, where Beatty sat waiting, withthe model of a British lion on the table in front of him (as a souvenirof his former flagship, _Lion_) and a portrait of Nelson hanging on thewall behind. 

The hundred and fifty surrendered submarines went slinking intoHarwich, the great British North Sea base for submarines. But theseventy-four surface craft came into the Firth of Forth on the 21st ofNovember: sixteen dreadnoughts, eight light cruisers, and fiftydestroyers. 

"09. 40 Battle Fleet meet German Fleet" was the unique order posted upovernight in the _Queen Elizabeth_. But long before that hour thestately procession began filing out to sea. H. M. SS. _Canada_, _Australia_, _New Zealand_, and _South Africa_, were there to remind usthat "United we stand, divided we fall. " Admiral Grasset was there inthe _Aube_ to remind us that the French and British had beenbrothers-in-arms for fifty-one months of furious war. Admirals Rodmanand Sims were there in the U. S. S. _New York_ to remind us that duringthe last nineteen of these fifty-one months the three greatestself-governing peoples of the world had made common cause against thebarbarous Hun. Finally, and clinchingly, the main body of the wholeGrand Fleet was there, drawn up in two enormous lines-ahead, six milesapart, and sixteen miles from front to rear, with eighteen flagshipsleading its different squadrons, and scores of destroyers ahead, astern, and on the flanks, not one of which was counted in thethirty-two long miles of lines-ahead. 

Before it had gone eight bells at four o'clock that morning, the_Revenge_, flagship of Sir Charles Madden, Second-in-Command of theGrand Fleet, led the way out to the appointed rendezvous: "X position, latitude 56, 11 North, longitude 1, 20 West. " The present _Revenge_, amagnificent super-dreadnought, is the ninth of her name in the Navy;and, besides her name, has three curious links to recall the gallantdays of Drake. In her cabin is a copy of the griffin which, beingGrenville's crest, the first _Revenge_ so proudly bore in the immortalfight of "The One and the Fifty-Three. " Then, had the German Fleetcome out again, Madden and this ninth _Revenge_ would have takenexactly the same place in action as Drake and the First _Revenge_ tookjust three hundred and thirty years before against the Great Armada. Thirdly (but this, alas, was too good to come true!) Sir Charles toldhis Canadian guest one day in Scapa Flow that he and Sir David Beattyhad agreed to be caught playing a little game of bowls on the GrandFleet clubhouse green the next time the German Fleet appeared. "And, "he added, "we'll finish the game first, and the Germans after"--justwhat Drake had said about the Spaniards. 

Nearing the rendezvous at nine the bugles sounded _Action Stations!_for though the German ships were to come unarmed and only manned bynavigating crews it was rightly thought wiser not to trust them. Younever catch the Navy napping. So, when the two fleets met, everyBritish gun was manned, all ready to blow the Germans out of the waterat the very first sign of treachery. Led captive by British cruisers, and watched by a hundred and fifty fast destroyers, as well as by ahuge airship overhead, the vanquished Germans steamed in between thetwo victorious lines, which then reversed by squadrons, perfect as apiece of clockwork, and headed for the Firth of Forth. Thus the vastprocession moved on, now in three lines-ahead, but filling the samearea as before: a hundred square miles of sea. In all, there were overthree hundred men-of-war belonging to the four greatest navies theworld has ever known. 

At eight bells that afternoon all hands were piped aft by theboatswains' whistles, the bugles rang out the _Sunset_ call, and downcame every German flag, never again to be flown aboard those vessels ofthe High Sea Fleet. For Germany _Der Tag_ had gone. For the British_The Day_ had come; and they hailed it with a roar of British-Lioncheers. 

Most regrettably, the Allies, headed by President Wilson, decided thatthe German men-of-war should be interned, not surrendered, when sent toScapa Flow. If these ships, after being surrendered to the Allies, hadbeen put in charge of the British, or any other navy, as "surrenders, "guards would have been put on board of them and all would have beenwell. But interned ships are left to their own crews, no foreignguards whatever being allowed to live on board. The result of thismistake, deliberately made against the advice of the British, was that, on the 21st of June, the Germans, with their usual treachery, openedthe sea-cocks and sank the ships they had surrendered and the Allieshad interned. 

A week later, on the 28th of June, 1919, in the renowned historicpalace of Versailles, the Allies and Germany signed the Treaty of Peaceby which they ended the Great War exactly five years after theassassination of Franz Ferdinand had given the Austro-German empiresthe excuse they wanted to begin it. 

RULE, BRITANNIA!

Thomson's famous verses and Arne's famous air (in which Wagner said hecould see the whole character of the English people) were sung for thefirst time during the Royal fête held at Clieveden, a celebratedcountry residence beside "the silver Thames. " This was on the 1st ofAugust, 1740. The 1st of August was the day on which Nelson won hisfirst great victory just fifty-eight years later; and Clieveden iswhere the Duchess of Connaught's Canadian Hospital was establishedduring the Great War. 

 When Britain first, at Heaven's command, Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: "Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves! Britons never will be slaves. "

 The nations not so bless'd as thee Must in their turn to tyrants fall; While thou shall flourish great and free, The dread and envy of them all. "Rule, Britannia, &c. "

 Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke; As the loud blast that tears the skies Serves but to root thy native oak. "Rule, Britannia, &c. "

 Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; All their attempts to bend thee down Will but arouse thy generous flame, And work their woe and thy renown. "Rule, Britannia, &c. "

 To thee belongs the rural reign; Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore it circles thine. "Rule, Britannia, &c. "

 The Muses, still with freedom found, Shall to thy happy coast repair; Bless'd isle! with matchless beauty crown'd, And manly hearts to guard the fair. "Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves! Britons never shall be slaves!" --_James Thomson. _

GOD SAVE THE KING!

The words we now sing with such hearty British loyalty all round theSeven Seas originated in the parole and countersign on board the famousPortsmouth Fleet of 1545, when the parole was _God save the King!_ andthe answering countersign was _Long to reign over us!_ The NationalAnthems of all the other Empires, Kingdoms, and Republics in the worldcome from their armies and the land. Our own comes from the Royal Navyand the Sea. 

 God save our gracious King, Long live our noble King, God save the King. Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us, God save the King. 

 O Lord our God, arise, Scatter his enemies, And make them fall. Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On Thee our hopes we fix, God save us all. 

 Thy choicest gifts in store, On him be pleased to pour; Long may he reign. May he defend our laws, And ever give us cause To sing with heart and voice, God save the King. 

CHAPTER XXVIII

WELL DONE!

The day the Armistice was signed (the 11th of November, 1918) King Georgesent this Royal Message to the Navy:

Now that the last and most formidable of our enemies has acknowledged thetriumph of the Allied arms on behalf of right and justice, I wish toexpress my praise and thankfulness to the officers, men, and women of theRoyal Navy and Marines, with their comrades of the Fleet Auxiliaries andthe Mercantile Marine, who, for more than four years have kept open theseas, protected our shores, and given us safety. Ever since that fatefulFourth of August, 1914, I have remained steadfast in my confidence that, whether fortune frowned or smiled, the Royal Navy would once more provethe sure shield of the British Empire in the hour of trial. Never in itshistory has the Royal Navy, with God's help, done greater things for usor better sustained its old glories and the chivalry of the sea. Withfull and grateful hearts the peoples of the British Empire salute theWhite, the Red, and the Blue Ensigns, and those who have given theirlives for the Flag. I am proud to have served in the Navy. I am prouderstill to be its Head upon this memorable Day. 

GEORGE, R. I. 

[Illustration: H. M. KING GEORGE V. ]

(The "women" to whom the King referred were the famous "Wrens, " so calledbecause the initials of the Women's Royal Naval Service--W. R. N. S. --caneasily be turned into "Wrens. " Everything that women could do they did;and did it well. )

(The White Ensign is the flag of the Navy: white, divided into four bythe red St. George's Cross, and with the Union Jack in the upper insidequarter. The Red Ensign is for the Mercantile Marine. The Blue Ensignis for any Government service except the Navy. The Red and Blue Ensignshave the Union Jack in their upper inside quarters, but no St. George'sCross. )

The Mercantile Marine lost nearly fifteen thousand men killed; we oughtto say murdered; for while a blockader can take ships and cargoes thattry to run contraband (that is, whatever the blockader can rightfullyproclaim to be forbidden) he must not kill the crews. The Britishmerchant seamen fought; and the Germans said that was why they had tokill them. But it was the Germans who forced them to fight inself-defence. And that makes all the difference. When our enemies, Germans or others, can prove one case of such murder against the BritishNavy we shall punish the murderer ourselves. But they have not foundthat one case yet, while we have found close on fifteen thousand, notcounting soldiers, passengers, women, or children. The Germans aimed atscaring off the sea those merchant seamen whom they could not kill, disable, or make prisoners. But not a man refused to go to sea again, even when his last ship had been torpedoed and his chums been killed. That is the first glory of the Mercantile Marine. But there are manymore. And not the least is the pluck with which the British, who didmost and lost most, started the race for oversea trade again, though atan enormous disadvantage compared with those who did least and gainedmost. 

All kinds of British sea-power did magnificent work in the war, whetherbuilding ships, sailing them with passengers and cargoes, or fightingthem. The Navy and Mercantile Marine gained eleven million tons duringthe war, exactly half each. But as the Mercantile Marine lost ninemillions sunk, it ended three-and-a-half to the bad, a terrible handicapin the race with the shipping of countries which, like the United Stateshave made stupendous fortunes by the war, besides gaining enormously inshipping and oversea trade. Norway, Japan, and the States gained most. The States came out of the war three and three-quarter million tons tothe good, thus gaining over seven millions as compared with the British. 

The case of the Navy was one of life or death for us and all our Allies;so the merchant fleet, fishing fleet, and shipbuilding yards had to letthe Navy come first, no matter what the cost might be. But we must neverforget that the Navy is only one-half of our British sea-power, that theMercantile Marine is the other half, and that all kinds of Britishsea-power must work together or be lost. So we cannot separate one kindfrom another here; and we would not if we could. 

Nor should we forget that British sea-power was itself only one of themany kinds of war-power put forth by Britain in the cause of freedom. Britain raised by far the largest force of volunteers ever raised by anycountry in any age or for any war--five million and forty-one thousandmen for the Army alone. This takes no account of conscripts, or ofnaval, air force, or civilian Services; nor does it include one manbelonging to any part of the British Empire overseas. 

Then she forced into the ranks those that could but would not go as longas they got others to do their fighting for them. In the meantime herwhole population, except those slackers every country had, had put itsstrenuous hand to war work of one kind or another. So, whether by sea orland or air, whether as warriors or as civilians, the people of GreatBritain gave their united all to the noblest cause on earth. And, whenthe war ended, Great Britain had the biggest army as well as the biggestnavy in the world--biggest not only in absolute numbers but also biggestin proportion to the whole number of men fit to bear arms. Nor was thisin any way due to her having lost less than others; for she had thegreatest total loss in killed and wounded of all the Allies--greatest onland, greatest by sea, and greatest in the air. 

Besides all we have seen before, in following the more purely navalfortunes of the war, the Navy did priceless work in October 1914, whenthe huge German armies, beaten by the heroic French at the immortalBattle of the Marne, tried to take the North-East coast of France withthe ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne. Held by Joffre furthersouth, they found more than their match in the north, when French'slittle British army fought them to a standstill, while the Navy simplyburnt them away from the coast by a perfect hurricane of fire. 

Better still was the way the Navy finished off the submarine blockade. Of the 203 enemy submarines destroyed 151 were finished by the BritishNavy. The French, Americans, and Italians killed off the rest. All the150 submarines surrendered came slinking into Harwich, the great Britishbase for submarines. All the 170 submarines the Germans were buildingwhen the war was stopped were given up to the Allied Naval Commissionheaded by a British admiral and backed by a British fleet. 

But even more wonderful than this was the oversea transport done by allkinds of British sea-power working together as one United Service. TheBritish carried nearly half of all the imports into Italy and France. They repaired more than a thousand ships a month. They ferried nearlytwo-thirds of all the Americans that crossed the Atlantic. They took tothe many different fronts more than half a million vehicles, fromone-horse carts to the biggest locomotives; more than two millionanimals--horses, mules, and camels; and more than twenty-two millions ofmen. Add to this well over a couple of hundred million tons of oil, coal, and warlike stores; remember that this is by no means the wholestory, and that it takes no account of the regular trade; and you maybegin to understand what British sea-power meant in this war. In themere transportation of armies alone it meant the same thing as taking theentire population of Canada, three times over, with all its baggage threetimes over, and with its very houses three times over, across thousandsof miles of dangerous waters in the midst of the worst war ever known. And yet, out of the more than twenty-two millions of men, less than fivethousand were killed on the way; and many of these were murdered inhospital ships marked with the sacred Red Cross. The chances of safetyfrom murder and fair risks of war put together were nearly five thousandto one. The chances of safety from fair risks of war by themselves werenearly ten thousand to one. 

No war, no navy, no sea-power since the world began, has any record tocompare with this. 

 "Let us be backed with God and with the seas, Which He hath given for fence impregnable, And with their helps, only, defend ourselves: In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies. " --_Shakespeare. _ _King Henry VI, Part III, Act IV, Scene I. _

POSTSCRIPT

THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS

Landsmen are many while seamen are few. So the world thinks more ofarmies than of fleets. Our enemies hate all British sea-power, whileour friends never know the half of what it means. So friend and foealike are apt to side against us by making the laws against blockadingfleets very much harder than those against besieging armies. 

All we can do is to stand firmly on our perfect rights and show theworld the five good reasons why:--

1. The sea and land have equal rights. Blockading fleets are likebesieging armies. So if besieging armies have the right to stopsupplies from reaching the places they besiege, why should blockadingfleets be told to let supplies go through?

2. All parts of our great Empire are joined together, not by land, butsea. So if we lose our rights of self-defence at sea we lose the verybreath of life. 

3. We claim no rights we will not share with others. When the Americanblockade of the South during the Civil War (1861-5) ruined the Britishcotton trade we never interfered, though we had by far the strongernavy. 

4. We have never used the British Navy to bully weak nations out oftheir oversea possessions. Who could have stopped our taking theSpanish, Dutch, and Portuguese possessions in Africa and Asia?

5. British sea-power has always been on the side of freedom; and everytime a tyrant has tried to fight his way to world-dominion the RoyalNavy has been the backbone of all the forces that have laid him low. 

 THE CANADIAN

 I never saw the cliffs of snow, The Channel billows tipped with cream, The restless, eddying tides that flow About the Island of my dream. I never saw the English downs Upon an April day, The quiet, old Cathedral towns, The hedgerows white with may. 

 And still the name of England, Which tyrants laugh to scorn, Can thrill my soul. It is to me A very bugle-horn. 

 A thousand leagues from Plymouth shore, In broader lands I saw the light. I never heard the cannon roar, Or saw a mark of England's might; Save that my people lived in peace, Bronzed in the harvest sun, And thought that tyranny would cease, That battle-days were done. 

 And still the flag of England Streamed on a friendly breeze, And twice two hundred ships of war Went surging through the seas. 

 I heard Polonius declaim About the new, the golden age, When Force would be the mark of shame, And men would curb their murderous rage. "Beat out your swords to pruning-hooks, " He shouted to the folk, But I--I read my history books, And marvelled as he spoke. 

 For it was glorious England, The mother of the Free, Who loosed that foolish tongue, but sent Her Admirals to sea. 

 And liberty and love were ours, Home, and a brood of lusty sons, The long, North sunlight and the flow'rs, How could we think about the guns, The searchlights on a wintry cloud, The seamen stern and bold, Since we were hurrying with the crowd To rake the hills for gold?

 But it was glorious England Who scanned the threatening morn. To me the very name of her Is like a bugle-horn. 

 --_J. E. Middleton. _