LITMIR.BIZ

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and to cease from being merely the field in which hostile races were fighting for the mastery. The weapon of sea-power, which is the seaworthy and sea-keeping ship, had to be created. The New World had to be opened to the enterprise of the Old, and the globe to be explored. Ages passed before these conditions were fulfilled.

      The maritime history of the country divides itself into three periods. First, there are the ages during which the people was being formed and the weapon forged. This may be said to extend from the first beginnings to the accession of the House of Tudor. At that date, when, be it noted, the Portuguese were exploring the sea route round Africa to the east, and Columbus was leading Spain to America, there was still much to be done in the work of consolidation within, and in the perfecting of the ship; but a vessel had been made which could sail the world round, and in the British Isles it had come to this, that England was predominant, and that for her fellow-islanders the choice was between conquest at her hands, or union on honourable terms. The second period stretches from the accession of the House of Tudor to the close of the seventeenth century, when superiority of power at sea had been fully won. The third, beginning with the Revolution, lasts until our own time. It includes the two hundred years or so during which England, having now united to herself, or conquered, all rivals within these islands, has exercised the power she had won.

      A complete history of the maritime power of England would be a vast subject, for it must include the whole story of the growth of her commerce, and her commercial or fiscal legislation. The object of this book is more modest. It is merely to describe in the main lines, and without professing to enter into detail, the growth and action of the Royal Navy—the armed force by which England has protected her commerce, has made her strength felt in the strife of nations, and has first secured, and then defended, her dominions beyond the sea.

      The first of the three periods just spoken of may be passed over rapidly. In the earlier ages there was neither the organised State which could wield a navy, nor the ships for it to use. From the days of Julius Cæsar to those of William of Normandy, no invader found effectual resistance for long on water when he was about invading this country. Our own Teutonic fathers, who were raiding on the coast long before they began their permanent settlements, the generals of the Roman emperors who had rebellions to suppress, the "hornets," as Simeon of Durham called them, who swarmed out of Scandinavia, and the Conqueror himself, landed as they pleased, with rare and doubtful exceptions. There was no State so rich and so fully organised as to be able to maintain a permanent navy. How fully this was the case was shown in the fateful year 1066. Harold was undisputed king in England. The House of Godwin was familiar with the use of ships, and possessed not a few. Yet within a few months England was twice invaded from over sea. Harold must have known that the most effectual of all ways of protecting his crown was by preventing the landing of an enemy. But he was compelled to disband his land and sea forces on the Nativity of St. Mary, for want of provisions. No organisation capable of meeting the cost of a permanent navy existed. The ships, too, were but large open boats, seaworthy enough, and even capable of making long voyages, but, when full of fighting men, they could not be stored with provisions, and they could not give cover to their crews. So there could be no blockade, no long months of watching spent at sea, without which a navy can never be used except as a mere means of transport. Hence for centuries it is always the same story. The invader runs into an estuary, or on to an open beach, and marches inland, seizing horses. A battle on land decides whether he is or is not to succeed in his purpose, whether of mere plunder or settlement. The Conqueror himself made so little use of his ships, except to cross the Channel, that he could not prevent the Danish king from hanging on the eastern coast for months.

      With the beginning of the thirteenth century there came a great change. The conflict of races was over, State and people were formed in England. On the throne there was a man nearly as able as he was wicked, and he had every motive to make use of his ships to forestall invasions. With King John begins, strictly speaking, the naval history of this country. His predecessors since the Conqueror were masters of both sides of the Channel, and had no need of their fleets except for transport. They might take English ships and seamen with them on their expeditions as far as Syria. Under their powerful rule commerce had increased, and a seafaring class had been formed. But John is the first king of England who effectually used his navy to stop invasion. By 1213 his Continental dominions had been torn from him. Philip Augustus, King of the French, was preparing an invasion, and John well knew that an invader would find friends among his vassals. Being richer and better armed, if not wiser, than Harold, he struck first. A fleet of English ships, under the command of John's half-brother, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, crossed to Damme, where the ships of the French king were collected, and burned them. The scheme of invasion broke down completely for that time. John's reign ended in anarchy. His rebellious barons brought in a son of the French king, and set him up as sovereign. But the death of the wicked king removed the one valid excuse for the rebellion. The country rallied round his infant son and against the invader. Within four years the ships of England were again used with decisive effect to crush an invasion.

      In 1217 Prince Louis and his allies, the barons, had been defeated at the battle of Lincoln, and, being now hemmed in between their enemies and the sea, were in urgent need of reinforcements from abroad. Stores and men were collected for them in Normandy. Eighty ships, besides smaller vessels, are said to have been brought together at Calais, under the command of Eustace the Monk. This man was one of the many mercenary fighters of the time, and had once been in the employment of King John. With this force he put to sea, running before a southerly wind. His intention was to round the North Foreland, and carry his convoy up the Thames to London, which was still held for the barons. If he had succeeded, he might have greatly prolonged the Civil War, but, happily for England, neither the man nor the means to avert the disaster were wanting. Hubert de Burgh, the King's Justiciary and Governor of Dover Castle, was at his post. He appealed to the men of the Cinque Ports, not in vain. "If these people land," he said, "England is lost; let us therefore boldly meet them, for God is with us, and they are excommunicate." Hubert de Burgh saw that the one effectual way of preventing Eustace from doing harm on shore was to beat him at sea before he could land. The man who reasoned like this had grasped the true principle of the defence of England. Sixteen large ships and some smaller vessels were lying in Dover harbour. They were at once got out by the shipmen and fishermen of the town, worthy ancestors of the men who, centuries later, volunteered to fill up the crews of Blake, when he was threatened by Tromp in these very waters. The knights, squires, and men-at-arms of Hubert de Burgh's following made up the fighting crews. Training the yards of the one great square sail which the vessels of that time carried on their single mast, fore and aft, the English squadron kept its luff (the word is used by Matthew Paris), and, standing out to the east, placed itself on the track of the Monk, and between him and Calais.

      As Eustace saw the Dover ships apparently standing over to Calais, he came to the not wholly unnatural conclusion that their plan was to plunder the town in his absence. He laughed, for he knew that he had left it well protected. But the intention of Hubert de Burgh was incomparably more courageous and more effective. He had begun, as every English admiral in after time was wont to begin, by manœuvring to secure the windward position, which with sailing ships gives him who holds it the option of attack. As soon as the French vessels had been brought well to leeward, the English turned together before the wind, and, forming what in after times would have been called the line abreast, stood at their utmost speed in pursuit of the enemy. The Monk was completely out-manœuvred. His heavily-laden vessels could not escape pursuit by flight, while they must infallibly be thrown into confusion by the act of turning to face the pursuers. It was no small advantage to the English that their arrows would fly with the wind. So soon as they were within shot, Hubert de Burgh's archers let fly, and the clothyard shafts, or the bolts from the crossbows, came whistling down on the crowded benches of the French ships. All battles then by land or sea were settled at close quarters with cold steel. The English pressed on to board. Where the enemy's ships were caught in the act of turning, they drove into them with the stem, ramming and sinking them. When this more expeditious method could not be practised, the English laid the enemy aboard, throwing quicklime, which the wind blew in the Frenchmen's faces, into the air in the moment of impact. The boarders followed close on the blinding cloud, and the axes of the Cinque Ports men fell briskly to work.

      "Whenas he fights and has the upper hand

      By

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