Short Studies on Great Subjects

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The simple majesty of this anecdote can gain nothing from any comment
which we might offer upon it. The crew of a common English ship
organising, of their own free motion, on that wild shore, a judgment
hall more grand and awful than any most elaborate law court, is not to
be reconciled with the pirate theory. Drake, it is true, appropriated
and brought home a million and a half of Spanish treasure, while England
and Spain were at peace. He took that treasure because for many years
the officers of the Inquisition had made free at their pleasure with the
lives and goods of English merchants and seamen. The king of Spain, when
appealed to, had replied that he had no power over the Holy House; and
it was necessary to make the king of Spain, or the Inquisition, or
whoever were the parties responsible, feel that they could not play
their pious pranks with impunity. When Drake seized the bullion at
Panama, he sent word to the viceroy that he should now learn to respect
the properties of English subjects; and he added, that if four English
sailors, who were prisoners in Mexico, were molested, he would execute
2,000 Spaniards and send the viceroy their heads. Spain and England were
at peace, but Popery and Protestantism were at war--deep, deadly, and
irreconcileable.

Wherever we find them, they are still the same. In the courts of Japan
or of China; fighting Spaniards in the Pacific, or prisoners among the
Algerines; founding colonies which by-and-by were to grow into enormous
Transatlantic republics, or exploring in crazy pinnaces the fierce
latitudes of the Polar seas,--they are the same indomitable God-fearing
men whose life was one great liturgy. 'The ice was strong, but God was
stronger,' says one of Frobisher's men, after grinding a night and a day
among the icebergs, not waiting for God to come down and split the ice
for them, but toiling through the long hours, himself and the rest
fending off the vessel with poles and planks, with death glaring at
them out of the rocks. Icebergs were strong, Spaniards were strong, and
storms, and corsairs, and rocks and reefs, which no chart had then
noted--they were all strong; but God was stronger, and that was all
which they cared to know.

Out of the vast number of illustrations it is difficult to make wise
selections, but the attention floats loosely over generalities, and only
individual instances can seize it and hold it fast. We shall attempt to
bring our readers face to face with some of these men; not, of course,
to write their biographies, but to sketch the details of a few scenes,
in the hope that they may tempt those under whose eyes they may fall to
look for themselves to complete the perfect figure.

Some two miles above the port of Dartmouth, once among the most
important harbours in England, on a projecting angle of land which runs
out into the river at the head of one of its most beautiful reaches,
there has stood for some centuries the Manor House of Greenaway. The
water runs deep all the way to it from the sea, and the largest vessels
may ride with safety within a stone's throw of the windows. In the
latter half of the sixteenth century there must have met, in the hall of
this mansion, a party as remarkable as could have been found anywhere in
England. Humfrey and Adrian Gilbert, with their half-brother, Walter
Raleigh, here, when little boys, played at sailors in the reaches of
Long Stream; in the summer evenings doubtless rowing down with the tide
to the port, and wondering at the quaint figure-heads and carved prows
of the ships which thronged it; or climbing on board, and listening,
with hearts beating, to the mariners' tales of the new earth beyond the
sunset. And here in later life, matured men, whose boyish dreams had
become heroic action, they used again to meet in the intervals of quiet,
and the rock is shown underneath the house where Raleigh smoked the
first tobacco. Another remarkable man, of whom we shall presently speak
more closely, could not fail to have made a fourth at these meetings. A
sailor boy of Sandwich, the adjoining parish, John Davis, showed early a
genius which could not have escaped the eye of such neighbours, and in
the atmosphere of Greenaway he learned to be as noble as the Gilberts,
and as tender and delicate as Raleigh. Of this party, for the present we
confine ourselves to the host and owner, Humfrey Gilbert, knighted
afterwards by Elizabeth. Led by the scenes of his childhood to the sea
and to sea adventures, and afterwards, as his mind unfolded, to study
his profession scientifically, we find him as soon as he was old enough
to think for himself, or make others listen to him, 'amending the great
errors of naval sea cards, whose common fault is to make the degree of
longitude in every latitude of one common bigness;' inventing
instruments for taking observations, studying the form of the earth, and
convincing himself that there was a north-west passage, and studying the
necessities of his country, and discovering the remedies for them in
colonisation and extended markets for home manufactures. Gilbert was
examined before the Queen's Majesty and the Privy Council, and the
record of his examination he has himself left to us in a paper which he
afterwards drew up, and strange enough reading it is. The most admirable
conclusions stand side by side with the wildest conjectures.

Homer and Aristotle are pressed into service to prove that the ocean
runs round the three old continents, and that America therefore is
necessarily an island. The Gulf Stream, which he had carefully observed,
eked out by a theory of the _primum mobile_, is made to demonstrate a
channel to the north, corresponding to Magellan's Straits in the south,
Gilbert believing, in common with almost everyone of his day, that these
straits were the only opening into the Pacific, and the land to the
South was unbroken to the Pole. He prophesies a market in the East for
our manufactured linen and calicoes:--

The Easterns greatly prizing the same, as appeareth in Hester, where
the pomp is expressed of the great King of India, Ahasuerus, who
matched the coloured clothes wherewith his houses and tents were
apparelled, with gold and silver, as part of his greatest treasure.

These and other such arguments were the best analysis which Sir Humfrey
had to offer of the spirit which he felt to be working in him. We may
think what we please of them; but we can have but one thought of the
great grand words with which the memorial concludes, and they alone
would explain the love which Elizabeth bore him:--

Never, therefore, mislike with me for taking in hand any laudable
and honest enterprise, for if through pleasure or idleness we
purchase shame, the pleasure vanisheth, but the shame abideth for
ever.

Give me leave, therefore, without offence, always to live and die in
this mind: that he is not worthy to live at all that, for fear or
danger of death, shunneth his country's service and his own honour,
seeing that death is inevitable and the fame of virtue immortal,
wherefore in this behalf _mutare vel timere sperno_.

Two voyages which he undertook at his own cost, which shattered his
fortune, and failed, as they naturally might, since inefficient help or
mutiny of subordinates, or other disorders, are inevitable conditions
under which more or less great men must be content to see their great
thoughts mutilated by the feebleness of their instruments, did not
dishearten him, and in June 1583 a last fleet of five ships sailed from
the port of Dartmouth, with commission from the queen to discover and
take possession from latitude 45 deg. to 50 deg. North--a voyage not a little
noteworthy, there being planted in the course of it the first English
colony west of the Atlantic. Elizabeth had a foreboding that she would
never see him again. She sent him a jewel as a last token of her favour,
and she desired Raleigh to have his picture taken before he went.

The history of the voyage was written by a Mr. Edward Hayes, of
Dartmouth, one of the principal actors in it, and as a composition it is
more remarkable for fine writing than any very commendable thought in
the author. But Sir Humfrey's nature shines through the infirmity of his
chronicler; and in the end, indeed, Mr. Hayes himself is subdued into a
better mind. He had lost money by the voyage, and we will hope his
higher nature was only under a temporary eclipse. The fleet consisted
(it is well to observe the ships and the size of them) of the 'Delight,'
120 tons; the barque 'Raleigh,' 200 tons (this ship deserted off the
Land's End); the 'Golden Hinde' and the 'Swallow,' 40 tons each; and the
'Squirrel,' which was called the frigate, 10 tons. For the uninitiated
in such matters, we may add, that if in a vessel the size of the last, a
member of the Yacht Club would consider that he had earned a club-room
immortality if he had ventured a run in the depth of summer from Cowes
to the Channel Islands.

We were in all (says Mr. Hayes) 260 men, among whom we had of every
faculty good choice. Besides, for solace of our own people, and
allurement of the savages, we were provided of music in good
variety, not omitting the least toys, as morris dancers, hobby
horses, and May-like conceits to delight the savage people.

The expedition reached Newfoundland without accident. St. John's was
taken possession of, and a colony left there; and Sir Humfrey then set
out exploring along the American coast to the south, he himself doing
all the work in his little 10-ton cutter, the service being too
dangerous for the larger vessels to venture on. One of these had
remained at St. John's. He was now accompanied only by the 'Delight' and
the 'Golden Hinde,' and these two keeping as near the shore as they
dared, he spent what remained of the summer examining every creek and
bay, marking the soundings, taking the bearings of the possible
harbours, and risking his life, as every hour he was obliged to risk it
in such a service, in thus leading, as it were, the forlorn hope in the
conquest of the New World. How dangerous it was we shall presently see.
It was towards the end of August.

The evening was fair and pleasant, yet not without token of storm to
ensue, and most part of this Wednesday night, like the swan that
singeth before her death, they in the 'Delight' continued in
sounding of drums and trumpets and fifes, also winding the cornets
and hautboys, and in the end of their jollity left with the battell
and ringing of doleful knells.

Two days after came the storm; the 'Delight' struck upon a bank, and
went down in sight of the other vessels, which were unable to render her
any help. Sir Humfrey's papers, among other things, were all lost in
her; at the time considered by him an irreparable misfortune. But it was
little matter, he was never to need them. The 'Golden Hinde' and the
'Squirrel' were now left alone of the five ships. The provisions were
running short, and the summer season was closing. Both crews were on
short allowance; and with much difficulty Sir Humfrey was prevailed upon
to be satisfied for the present with what he had done, and to lay off
for England.

So upon Saturday, in the afternoon, the 31st of August, we changed
our course, and returned back for England, at which very instant,
even in winding about, there passed along between us and the land,
which we now forsook, a very lion, to our seeming, in shape, hair,
and colour; not swimming after the manner of a beast by moving of
his feet, but rather sliding upon the water with his whole body,
except his legs, in sight, neither yet diving under and again
rising as the manner is of whales, porpoises, and other fish, but
confidently showing himself without hiding, notwithstanding that we
presented ourselves in open view and gesture to amaze him. Thus he
passed along, turning his head to and fro, yawning and gaping wide,
with ougly demonstration of long teeth and glaring eyes; and to
bidde us farewell, coming right against the 'Hinde,' he sent forth a
horrible voice, roaring and bellowing as doth a lion, which
spectacle we all beheld so far as we were able to discern the same,
as men prone to wonder at every strange thing. What opinion others
had thereof, and chiefly the General himself, I forbear to deliver.
But he took it for _Bonum Omen_, rejoicing that he was to war
against such an enemy, if it were the devil.

We have no doubt that he did think it was the devil; men in those days
believing really that evil was more than a principle or a necessary
accident, and that in all their labour for God and for right, they must
make their account to have to fight with the devil in his proper person.
But if we are to call it superstition, and if this were no devil in the
form of a roaring lion, but a mere great seal or sea-lion, it is a more
innocent superstition to impersonate so real a power, and it requires a
bolder heart to rise up against it and defy it in its living terror,
than to sublimate it away into a philosophical principle, and to forget
to battle with it in speculating on its origin and nature. But to follow
the brave Sir Humfrey, whose work of fighting with the devil was now
over, and who was passing to his reward. The 2nd of September the
General came on board the 'Golden Hinde' 'to make merry with us.' He
greatly deplored the loss of his books and papers, but he was full of
confidence from what he had seen, and talked with eagerness and warmth
of the new expedition for the following spring. Apocryphal gold-mines
still occupying the minds of Mr. Hayes and others, they were persuaded
that Sir Humfrey was keeping to himself some such discovery which he had
secretly made, and they tried hard to extract it from him. They could
make nothing, however, of his odd, ironical answers, and their sorrow at
the catastrophe which followed is sadly blended with disappointment that
such a secret should have perished. Sir Humfrey doubtless saw America
with other eyes than theirs, and gold-mines richer than California in
its huge rivers and savannahs.

Leaving the issue of this good hope (about the gold), (continues Mr.
Hayes), to God, who only knoweth the truth thereof, I will hasten
to the end of this tragedy, which must be knit up in the person of
our General, and as it was God's ordinance upon him, even so the
vehement persuasion of his friends could nothing avail to divert him
from his wilful resolution of going in his frigate; and when he was
entreated by the captain, master, and others, his well-wishers in
the 'Hinde,' not to venture, this was his answer--'I will not
forsake my little company going homewards, with whom I have passed
so many storms and perils.'

Two-thirds of the way home they met foul weather and terrible seas,
'breaking-short and pyramid-wise.' Men who had all their lives 'occupied
the sea' had never seen it more outrageous. 'We had also upon our
mainyard an apparition of a little fier by night, which seamen do call
Castor and Pollux.'

Monday the ninth of September, in the afternoon, the frigate was
near cast away oppressed by waves, but at that time recovered, and
giving forth signs of joy, the General, sitting abaft with a book in
his hand, cried out unto us in the 'Hinde' so often as we did
approach within hearing, 'We are as near to heaven by sea as by
land,' reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a soldier
resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify that he was. The same
Monday night, about twelve of the clock, or not long after, the
frigate being ahead of us in the 'Golden Hinde,' suddenly her lights
were out, whereof as it were in a moment we lost the sight; and
withal our watch cried, 'The General was cast away,' which was too
true.

Thus faithfully (concludes Mr. Hayes, in some degree rising above
himself) I have related this story, wherein some spark of the
knight's virtues, though he be extinguished, may happily appear; he
remaining resolute to a purpose honest and godly as was this, to
discover, possess, and reduce unto the service of God and Christian
piety, those remote and heathen countries of America. Such is the
infinite bounty of God, who from every evil deriveth good, that
fruit may grow in time of our travelling in these North-Western
lands (as has it not grown?), and the crosses, turmoils, and
afflictions, both in the preparation and execution of the voyage,
did correct the intemperate humours which before we noted to be in
this gentleman, and made unsavoury and less delightful his other
manifold virtues.

Thus as he was refined and made nearer unto the image of God, so it
pleased the Divine will to resume him unto Himself, whither both his
and every other high and noble mind have always aspired.

Such was Sir Humfrey Gilbert; still in the prime of his years when the
Atlantic swallowed him. Like the gleam of a landscape lit suddenly for a
moment by the lightning, these few scenes flash down to us across the
centuries: but what a life must that have been of which this was the
conclusion! We have glimpses of him a few years earlier, when he won his
spurs in Ireland--won them by deeds which to us seem terrible in their
ruthlessness, but which won the applause of Sir Henry Sidney as too high
for praise or even reward. Chequered like all of us with lines of light
and darkness, he was, nevertheless, one of a race which has ceased to
be. We look round for them, and we can hardly believe that the same
blood is flowing in our veins. Brave we may still be, and strong perhaps
as they, but the high moral grace which made bravery and strength so
beautiful is departed from us for ever.

Our space is sadly limited for historical portrait painting; but we must
find room for another of that Greenaway party whose nature was as fine
as that of Gilbert, and who intellectually was more largely gifted. The
latter was drowned in 1583. In 1585 John Davis left Dartmouth on his
first voyage into the Polar seas; and twice subsequently he went again,
venturing in small ill-equipped vessels of thirty or forty tons into the
most dangerous seas. These voyages were as remarkable for their success
as for the daring with which they were accomplished, and Davis's epitaph
is written on the map of the world, where his name still remains to
commemorate his discoveries. Brave as he was, he is distinguished by a
peculiar and exquisite sweetness of nature, which, from many little
facts of his life, seems to have affected everyone with whom he came in
contact in a remarkable degree. We find men, for the love of Master
Davis, leaving their firesides to sail with him, without other hope or
motion; we find silver bullets cast to shoot him in a mutiny; the hard
rude natures of the mutineers being awed by something in his carriage
which was not like that of a common man. He has written the account of
one of his northern voyages himself; one of those, by-the-by, which the
Hakluyt Society have mutilated; and there is an imaginative beauty in
it, and a rich delicacy of expression, which is called out in him by the
first sight of strange lands and things and people.

To show what he was, we should have preferred, if possible, to have
taken the story of his expedition into the South Seas, in which, under
circumstances of singular difficulty, he was deserted by Candish, under
whom he had sailed; and after inconceivable trials from famine, mutiny,
and storm, ultimately saved himself and his ship, and such of the crew
as had chosen to submit to his orders. But it is a long history, and
will not admit of being curtailed. As an instance of the stuff of which
it was composed, he ran back in the black night in a gale of wind
through the Straits of Magellan, _by a chart which he had made with the
eye in passing up_. His anchors were lost or broken; the cables were
parted. He could not bring up the ship; there was nothing for it but to
run, and he carried her safe through along a channel often not three
miles broad, sixty miles from end to end, and twisting like the reaches
of a river.

For the present, however, we are forced to content ourselves with a few
sketches out of the north-west voyages. Here is one, for instance, which
shows how an Englishman could deal with the Indians. Davis had landed at
Gilbert's Sound, and gone up the country exploring. On his return he
found his crew loud in complaints of the thievish propensities of the
natives, and urgent to have an example made of some of them. On the next
occasion he fired a gun at them with blank cartridge; but their nature
was still too strong for them.

Seeing iron (he says), they could in no case forbear stealing;
which, when I perceived, it did but minister to me occasion of
laughter to see their simplicity, and I willed that they should not
be hardly used, but that our company should be more diligent to keep
their things, supposing it to be very hard in so short a time to
make them know their evils.

In his own way, however, he took an opportunity of administering a
lesson to them of a more wholesome kind than could be given with
gunpowder and bullets. Like the rest his countrymen, he believed the
savage Indians in their idolatries to be worshippers of the devil. 'They
are witches,' he says; 'they have images in great store, and use many
kinds of enchantments.' And these enchantments they tried on one
occasion to put in force against himself and his crew.

Being on shore on the 4th day of July, one of them made a long
oration, and then kindled a fire, into which with many strange words
and gestures he put divers things, which we supposed to be a
sacrifice. Myself and certain of my company standing by, they
desired us to go into the smoke. I desired them to go into the
smoke, which they would by no means do. I then took one of them and
thrust him into the smoke, and willed one of my company to tread out
the fire, and spurn it into the sea, which was done to show them
that we did contemn their sorceries.

It is a very English story--exactly what a modern Englishman would do;
only, perhaps, not believing that there was any real devil in the case,
which makes a difference. However, real or not real, after seeing him
patiently put up with such an injury, we will hope the poor Greenlander
had less respect for the devil than formerly.

Leaving Gilbert's Sound, Davis went on to the north-west, and in lat.
63 deg. fell in with a barrier of ice, which he coasted for thirteen days
without finding an opening. The very sight of an iceberg was new to all
his crew; and the ropes and shrouds, though it was midsummer, becoming
compassed with ice,--

The people began to fall sick and faint-hearted--whereupon, very
orderly, with good discretion, they entreated me to regard the
safety of mine own life, as well as the preservation of theirs; and
that I should not, through overbouldness, leave their widows and
fatherless children to give me bitter curses.

Whereupon, seeking counsel of God, it pleased His Divine Majesty to
move my heart to prosecute that which I hope shall be to His glory,
and to the contentation of every Christian mind.

He had two vessels--one of some burthen, the other a pinnace of thirty
tons. The result of the counsel which he had sought was, that he made
over his own large vessel to such as wished to return, and himself,
'thinking it better to die with honour than to return with infamy,' went
on, with such volunteers as would follow him, in a poor leaky cutter, up
the sea now in commemoration of that adventure called Davis's Straits.
He ascended 4 deg. North of the furthest known point, among storms and
icebergs, when the long days and twilight nights alone saved him from
being destroyed, and, coasting back along the American shore, he
discovered Hudson's Straits, supposed then to be the long-desired
entrance into the Pacific. This exploit drew the attention of
Walsingham, and by him Davis was presented to Burleigh, 'who was also
pleased to show him great encouragement.' If either these statesmen or
Elizabeth had been twenty years younger, his name would have filled a
larger space in history than a small corner of the map of the world;
but if he was employed at all in the last years of the century, no
_vates sacer_ has been found to celebrate his work, and no clue is left
to guide us. He disappears; a cloud falls over him. He is known to have
commanded trading vessels in the Eastern seas, and to have returned five
times from India. But the details are all lost, and accident has only
parted the clouds for a moment to show us the mournful setting with
which he, too, went down upon the sea.

In taking out Sir Edward Michellthorne to India, in 1604, he fell in
with a crew of Japanese, whose ship had been burnt, drifting at sea,
without provisions, in a leaky junk. He supposed them to be pirates, but
he did not choose to leave them to so wretched a death, and took them on
board; and in a few hours, watching their opportunity, they murdered
him.

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