The Last Fight of the Revenge
9781465667458
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Which is the greatest name upon the roll of English ships? Which is the most sure of a lasting and effectual renown? There was a day when all England would have given but one answer. If you ask the Elizabethan of 1580, you will find him very positive upon the point, and not a little exalted. Drawn round the world by the Divine Hand, under the Northern and Southern Pole stars, victor over a hundred enemies, ballasted with royal treasure, & steered by the captured charts of Spanish Admirals, the little ship that sailed as the Pelican, comes home again as the Golden Hind. She brings her fabulous booty and her still more fabulous romance from Plymouth Sound to Deptford, and then and there the great names of the past—the Christophers, theGreat Harrys, the Dragons and the Swans—are all finally eclipsed. Drake, kneeling upon her deck, receives his knighthood from the hand of Gloriana, and the Golden Hind herself, bidding farewell for ever to wind and wave, is laid up as a national monument—“consecrated to perpetuall Memory.” She is remembered still, but it is hardly for her own sake; her story is a part of Drake’s, and not the greatest part. Question your Elizabethan again some ten years later, and hers is no longer the name that he will give you; he will speak of things that are even nearer to his heart, and to ours; for though an Englishman will always, I suppose, lick his lips over a tale of treasure, it is the fighting and not the plunder that he is really fitted to enjoy, and in his imagination even the jewels of the Golden Hind will shine with a less bright and steady glow than the battle-lanterns of the Revenge. The Revenge is a part of no man; she saw many captains and more triumphs than one. She had a personality, as great ships always have; she had a career, a life of her own. She has a life after death; not only a posterity but a true survival. She may be said, in no merely figurative sense, to be on active service still. If the day ever comes when she no longer helps to keep the sea for us, it can only be when Time shall have paid off the British Navy. The last of her successes is more freshly remembered by our friends than by ourselves. A neighbouring potentate, whom pride in his English descent had exhilarated to a pitch of splendid audacity worthy of an Elizabethan, challenged us by a telegram encouraging a vassal State to throw off the suzerainty of the Queen. If the message meant anything, it was a promise of armed support; but the promise had none of the Elizabethan hardihood to back it, and proved bankrupt as soon as the Flying Squadron put to sea. It was not that this force was unknown, or suddenly created; the ships had long been on the Navy List, their names, guns, tonnage and complement all as familiar to the German Kaiser as to the rest of the world. But there was a sense abroad of something more than brute strength: a memory of great traditions, of inherited skill, of undaunted and indomitable tenacity. When on that January 15, 1896, the English Admiral hoisted his flag in the Revenge, and Her Majesty’s Marines marched on board under the command of Captain Drake, the enemy disappeared from the seas, and we made haste to forget another naval victory. The lesson, we may hope, remains; this was not a triumph of physical force. The challenger’s nerve, and not his ships, failed him; he feared his own destruction more than he desired ours. In an age even more materially minded, if possible, than those which went before it, we are increasingly diligent to measure our armour and our guns, to reckon up our horse-power and the number of our hits at target practice.
