“Her ancient British name, Clas merdin, ‘the sea-defended green spot,’ indicated alike her fertility and natural protection,” writes Sir Harris Nicolas, in the commencement of his Naval History of Great Britain. Clas merdin may she still and long deserve to be called—“the sea-defended green spot!” Long may she fight her battles on the waste of waters—on the untilled and untenanted plains of the ocean! Long may she carry forth, and offer up, upon the seas, her great sacrifices to the god of war!

It has been remarked that war, though it assumes a most terrible aspect when to its own proper dangers are added all the perils of the sea, is yet carried on with more humanity, and with a more generous spirit of hostility, between ships upon the ocean than between armies upon land. “Two armies,” says Mr James, in the preface to his Naval History, “meet and engage: the battle ends, but the slaughter continues; the pursuing cavalry trample upon and hew to pieces the dead, the wounded, and the flying. A fort is stormed, and after a stout resistance carried: the garrison for their brave defence are put to the sword—as for their tame surrender they would have been branded (and who can say unjustly?) with cowardice. Two ships meet and engage: the instant the flag of one falls, the fire of the other ceases; and the vanquished become the guests rather than the prisoners of the victors. In another case, boarding in all its fury succeeds the cannonade: still no cutlass is raised after possession is complete. Again: a vessel, instead of flying from or quietly yielding to, boldly engages an opponent of treble her strength. Her temerity is accepted as valour; and all the mischief she may have caused—all the blood she may have spilt—far from provoking the rage, does but ensure the respect of the captors. In a fourth case, a fatal broadside sinks one ship: out go the boats of the other, and the emulation then is, not who shall destroy, but who shall save the greatest number of the enemy.”

Perhaps it may not be altogether fanciful to deduce that love of fair play, or rather of fair fighting, and that generosity to the vanquished which refuses to strike an adversary when down—traits which confessedly distinguish the national character of the English—to these more liberal customs which prevail in naval combat, the form in which war is so well known and honoured amongst them. Their naval victories, and the spirit in which they have been won, fill the imagination from the earliest years, and animate and regulate the combative propensities of the boy. Only strike your colours—know me for your better,—exclaims the young hero, and his adversary may quit the field uninjured—nay, shall be protected from all other assailants. Our national character, some may be disposed to suggest, has given the tone to our naval combats, and not these the temper which distinguishes our national character; seeing there is nothing peculiarly mollifying in the circumstances themselves of a sea-fight. Perhaps not; but still the customs which prevail in maritime warfare have a less capricious, and what will be thought a less noble, cause than the national character of the people who have chiefly distinguished themselves in it. We suspect they must be traced to the vulgar, but the constant motive of cupidity. In a naval combat one great object of victory is to capture the vessel itself—a prize in which all are interested. If it were not the custom to spare the vanquished crew—if, on the contrary, it were the custom to put them to death, no enemy would surrender his ship; he would rather set fire to it, or sink it, and sink with it in the waves. Were not the conquered secure of their lives on the surrender of their vessel, they would have no motive whatever for suffering it to become the rich prize of their adversary. On this account it is, and not because men are a whit more disposed to spare their enemies on sea than on land, that by general consent the battle is supposed to be at an end the moment the flag is struck.

As to that “fourth case,” in which a fatal broadside sinks one of the combatants, we have no difficulty in believing that a quick revulsion of feeling may naturally take place, and that hostility may suddenly change into compassion on beholding their drowning enemy within the clutch of their great common adversary, the sea. But even this change of feeling has been facilitated by the previous habit of regarding the combat as definitively closed when a ship has been fought as long as possible.

That it should ever have been considered a law of war that the captain or governor of a fort should be put to death by the conqueror for having attempted to hold an untenable place, is only one of those many instances where tyranny and overbearing force loves to clothe itself in the form of law or custom. The pretence of diminishing bloodshed is shallow enough. A general at the head of a great army is impatient at being detained before some insignificant town or fortress, and revenges himself by a sort of military execution on the bold man who has ventured to oppose him with so contemptible a force. Wallenstein, one of the proudest of men, and the least scrupulous of shedding blood, is said to have adopted, more systematically than any other general, this so-called law of war. If the same custom has never been introduced into naval combats, it is because there is not even the shallowest pretext on which it can be founded. A ship, however inferior in force to its adversary, if it have no chance of victory, may yet have a chance of escape. The governor of a castle—he and his castle are rooted to the earth: the sea-captain gives his walls and his artillery to the winds; he and his guns, by some skilful manoeuvre, by some obstruction or crippling of his foe, may, after a brief encounter, get out of reach and out of sight. Many are the turns and tides of fortune in a naval engagement; all the accidents of navigation are added to those of war. There is no shadow of reason, therefore, for treating with peculiar severity the captain of a vessel who refuses to obey the summons of his more powerful adversary, but resolves to take advantage of whatever chance his skill, his bravery, and the various incidents of a sea-fight may afford him.

We hold it, therefore, to be a fortunate circumstance, favourably influencing our national character, as well as preserving us from many of the calamities that attend on war, that we as a nation have been called upon chiefly to defend ourselves by means of “our wooden walls.”

A more national subject, or one on which there was more evidently a vacant space for a new book, Sir Harris Nicolas could hardly have selected, than this of a history of our Navy from the earliest times down to the period when the Naval History of Mr James commences. Yet the expectations of a reader who sits down to the perusal of such a work should not be too highly raised. Nothing is more glorious than the naval victories which our country has achieved; but few things are more monotonous and wearisome than the description of a series of naval engagements. There is the same repeated account of masts shot away or “badly wounded,” of rigging cut to pieces, sails rent and riddled, and shattered hulls; till the ships, not the men, seem the real combatants, and it appears to be a contest between oak timbers and cannon-balls, between the power of endurance in the wooden fabric and the explosive force of gunpowder. A naval battle is always split into details; if two hostile fleets encounter, no matter of what magnitude, it is still but a multitude of single combats between ship and ship. When we have gone through the incidents of one or two of these tremendous duels, it must require in the historian singular power of narration to induce us to proceed to the final destruction and capture of the rest of the fleet. If any thing could abate the enthusiasm of an Englishman in the naval heroes of his country, it would be the obligation to read a detailed account of the victories they had achieved. Very feeble is the cheer we give for Trafalgar, after reading all we can read of Mr James’s account of the battle.

Not by any means that naval warfare is destitute of its stirring annals, and of adventures which have all the colouring of romance. But the interest of the narrative does not rise with the importance and magnitude of the occasion. It is in the single combat of detached frigates—in the perils and fortunes of the light cruiser, probably some frigate’s tender—that the incident which stirs the blood is most frequently encountered. A little gun-brig, the Speedy, mounting its fourteen four-pounders, and manned by some forty men with a few boys, is cruising in the Mediterranean, cutting up the coasting trade of the Spaniard, who thereupon despatch, from several ports, armed vessels in pursuit of her. One of these, the Gamo, (we are abridging one of Mr James’s narratives) a thirty-two-gun zebec frigate, by means of hanging or closed ports, decoys the Speedy within hail, and then drawing these suddenly up, discovers her heavy battery. Against stratagem let stratagem be first tried. The English captain hoists Danish colours, and parades upon the gangway a man dressed in the costume of a Danish officer, who roars out something which with the Spaniard passes for the Danish language. The Gamo is, however, but half satisfied, and sends her boat with an officer to make more particular inquiries. Him they softly hail before he can well get alongside, and inform—in some other language, we presume, than their Danish—that their brig has lately quitted one of the Barbary ports; reminding him that a nearer visit will subject him and his ship to a long quarantine. This he knows well enough; so, after a few mutual salutations and wavings of the hand, the vessels part company, one glad at having escaped the plague, the other equally glad, one might suppose, at having escaped capture.

But not at all. The officers and men of the English brig had been all impatience to encounter their superior antagonist, and desired nothing better than to try their fourteen four-pounders and their forty men and some boys against the thirty-two long guns of their opponent, and their crew of some three hundred men. Lord Cochrane—for he it was who commanded the Speedy—on learning this disposition of his crew, promised them, if he again fell in with the Spaniard, to give full scope to their wishes. “On the 6th of May, at daylight, the Speedy being close off Barcelona, descried a sail, standing towards her. Chase was given, but owing to light winds it was nearly nine o’clock before the two vessels got within mutual gun-shot. The Speedy soon discovered that the armed zebec, approaching her was her old friend the Gamo. The former, then close under the latter’s lee, tacked and commenced action. After a forty-five minutes’ cannonade, in which the Speedy, with all her manoeuvring, could not evade the heavy broadsides of the Gamo, and had sustained in consequence a loss of three seamen killed and five wounded, Lord Cochrane determined to board. With this intent the Speedy ran close along side the Gamo; and the crew of the British vessel, headed by their gallant commander, made a simultaneous rush from every part of her upon the deck of the Spaniard. For about ten minutes the combat was desperate, especially in the waist; but the impetuosity of the assault was irresistible; the Spanish colours were struck, and the Gamo became the prize of the Speedy!”

There is more to interest the imagination in a detail of this comparatively insignificant combat than in the manoeuvres and engagement of a whole fleet. They are the episodes in the great war that supply the naval historian with his most stirring narratives. Even the frigate’s tender has a more romantic history than the frigate herself, combining in her solitary cruise all the charms of adventure with all the perils and enterprise of war. Few, we suspect, go steadily through Mr James’s history of the battle of the Nile; and there are few, perhaps, who do not retrace their steps to read a second time his account, succinct and unadorned as it is, of the tender of the Abergavenny. We will indulge our own readers with a portion of it.

“Amongst the many weary hours,” writes Mr James, “to which a naval life is subject, none surely can equal those passed on board a stationary flag-ship; especially in a port where there is a constant egress and regress of cruisers; some sailing forth to seek prizes, others returning with prizes already in their possession. During the whole of 1799 and a great part of 1800 the fifty-four-gun ship Abergavenny, as she lay moored in Port Royal harbour, Jamaica, daily exposed her officers and men to these Tantalusian torments. At length it was suggested that a small tender sent off the east end of the island might acquire for the parent ship some share of the honours that were reaping around her. A thirty-eight-gun frigate’s launch having been obtained, and armed with a swivel in the bow, the next difficulty was to find an officer who, to a willingness, would add the other requisites for so bold and hazardous an enterprise. It was not every man who would like to be cramped up night and day in an open boat, exposed to all kinds of weather, as well as to capture from some of the many pickaroons that infested the coast. An acting lieutenant of the Abergavenny, one on whom nature had conferred an ardent mind,—habit, an indifference about personal comfort,—and eighteen or twenty years of active service an experience in all the duties of his profession, consented to take charge of the cruiser-boat. Mr Michael Fitton soon gave proofs of his fitness for the task he had undertaken; and the crew of the Abergavenny could now and then greet a prize of their own among the many that dropped anchor near them.

“Late in December 1800, Lieutenant Fitton transferred himself and his crew to one of their prizes, a Spanish privateer, a felucca of about fifty tons, mounting one long twelve-pounder on a traversing carriage, with a screw to raise it from the hold when wanted for use. Having embarked on board of her, and stowed as well as he could his crew of forty-four men and officers, Lieutenant Fitton, early in January, sailed out to cruise on the Spanish main.”

After destroying many of the small craft of the enemy which had been committing vexatious depredations on the West Indian commerce, and having suffered much himself from a succession of storms, and refitted his now crazy vessel to the best of his power, “he bore up to Carthagena, intending to coast down the main to Portobello, in the hopes of being able to capture or cut out some vessel that might answer to carry his crew and himself to Jamaica. On the 23d of January, early in the morning, as the tender was hauling round Cape Rosario, a schooner was discovered, to which she immediately gave chase. The schooner, which was the Spanish guarda-costa Santa Maria of six (pierced for ten) long six-pounders, ten swivels, and sixty men, commanded by Don JosÉ Corei, a few hours only from Carthagena, bore down to reconnoitre the lugger. As the latter had her gun below, and as many of her men hid from view as the want of a barricade would permit, the former readily approached within gun-shot. Lieutenant Fitton could not resist the opportunity of showing how well his men could handle their twelve-pounder. It was soon raised up, and discharged repeatedly in quick succession, with evident effect.

“After about thirty minutes’ firing with cannon and musketry, the Santa Maria sheered off, and directed her course for the Isle of Varus, evidently with intent to run on shore. Her persevering opponent, with his one gun, stuck close to her, plying her well with shot great and small; but the tender was unable to grapple with the schooner because the latter had the wind. At length the Santa Maria grounded, and Lieutenant Fitton, aware that if the schooner landed her men in the bushes, no attempt of his people would avail, eased off the lugger’s sheets, and ran her also on shore about ten yards from the Santa Maria. The musketry of the latter, as she heeled over, greatly annoyed the tender’s men, who had no barricades to shelter them; but Lieutenant Fitton leaped overboard, and with his sword in his mouth, followed by the greater part of his crew, similarly armed, swam to, boarded, and, after a stout resistance, carried the schooner.

“Four or five that were on the sick list, heedless alike of the doctor’s injunctions and their own feeble state, sprang over the side with their comrades; and one or two of them nearly perished in consequence of their inability to struggle with the waves.

“The Spanish inhabitants having collected along, and opened a fire from, the shore, and the prize having grounded too fast to be got off, Lieutenant Fitton took out of her what was most wanted for his own vessel, landed the prisoners (for whom, being without a ’tween-decks, he had no room) and even the dead, and then set the vessel on fire. Having effectually destroyed this Spanish guarda-costa, the Abergavenny’s tender sailed back to Jamaica, and on the fourth day reached Black River with scarcely a gallon of water on board.”—(James’s Naval History, vol. ii. p. 563.) These sea-tigers, swimming with their swords in their mouths—climbing in this fashion the steep sides of a defended vessel—assailing, taking it—then landing safely the conquered and their very dead, before they set fire to it—here is war in all its pristine ferocity, while the fight is forward, and in its most humanised and generous mood when the victory is won.

How the present writer, Sir Harris Nicolas, will acquit himself in the description of naval engagements, we can hardly judge, as the first volume only of his work is yet published, and this does not bring him into the era of broadsides, and “tremendous cannonading.” This volume addresses itself rather to the naval antiquarian than to the professional seaman, or the enthusiast in naval exploits. It contains much interesting material; and it is rather our object to give some account of its contents, than to pass an elaborate criticism, which would be somewhat premature, upon a work of which we have merely the commencement before us.

In a manly, distinct, and well written preface, the author gives a statement of the sources of his details, and of the course which he has prescribed for himself in the treatment of his subject. Our old chroniclers have hitherto, it seems, been the sole source from which historians have derived their accounts of the naval transactions of the earlier reigns of the Kings of England. Sir Harris Nicolas has illustrated, corrected, and enlarged the scanty and often precarious information which these old chroniclers afford, by a variety of details extracted from the public records. These details cannot be supposed to be always of an interesting or popular character, but their utility will not be questioned, and the industry which is here displayed in collecting them will meet with its due acknowledgment and undisputed praise.

In the treatment of his subject our author has made two great divisions.

“I. The civil history—containing the formation, economy, and government of the navy.

“II. The military history.

“To the first division belong the construction, the size, rig, appearance, tonnage, armament, stores, equipment, and expense of the various classes of vessels; the manner in which ships and seamen were obtained by the crown, and the number and description of the officers and crews, their pay, provisions, prize-money, and discipline. Under this division, every thing else relating to the navy has been noticed; namely the Cinque Ports, dock-yards, lighthouses, pilotage, maritime laws, the law of wreck, taxes and other contributions for naval subsidies, the Court of Admiralty, the right of England to the sovereignty of the seas, the invention of the compass and of the modern rudder, the national flag, &c. To these statements are added biographical notices of the admirals, and other persons, who have been eminently distinguished for their talents or prowess at sea.

“The second division treats only of active naval proceedings; that is to say, the employment of ships in piratical acts, military expeditions, remarkable voyages, and, of course, all sea-fights.”

Here, it will be observed, is a wide range of subjects on which information is promised, and so far as the work has advanced, the performance by no means belies the promise: on almost all these topics something is added, of more or less importance, to the stock of our knowledge. The classification, however, here adopted has this great inconvenience, it obliges the author to travel twice over the same epoch, first for his civil, and then for his military history of the navy. As the same public events are necessarily alluded to in both departments, an air of repetition is thrown over the book, and the reader finds himself on two or three occasions brought back to the commencement of some king’s reign,—an Alfred or a Richard Coeur-de-Lion,—whom he thought he had left long ago behind him. This repetition Sir Harris Nicolas is not unconscious of, but thinks it “inevitable;” we cannot help thinking that a little more pains bestowed on the arrangement of his materials might have obviated this disagreeable effect, produced by the retracing of his steps. With a little more labour of the artistic kind, with a little more attention to the subordinate toils of composition, he might, we imagine, have so kept his materials together as to have come down the stream of time in one voyage, with both civil and military equipage on board. This ascending again and descending a second time, with a cargo which to all appearance might have been stowed away on the first voyage, gives an unusual tediousness to our mode of progression. This want of a skilful arrangement, and dexterous blending of his materials, together with the dryness of some of the details—which many readers will think should have been relegated to an appendix—will operate against the popularity of the work. But a popular work it was not the ambition of Sir Harris Nicolas to produce: he has compiled one which will be highly useful to the laborious student of history. We must add, too, lest we should be creating a false impression, that the idlest of readers, allowing for a little skipping, may peruse it with interest. And in point of style, the work has one invariable charm: it is free from all affectation—simple, manly, straightforward—a charm which, next to that of the highest order of eloquence, is the greatest and the rarest.

Our history of the navy begins, as may be supposed, from the invasion of CÆsar, and with the scanty notices he has recorded of the maritime skill of these barbarian islanders whom he both discovered and conquered. From these notices it would appear that our British ancestors, at the time of the invasion of CÆsar, were more advanced in naval architecture than were the Anglo-Saxons, who, at the decline of the Roman Empire, took possession of the island. But the British navy, whatever it might have been, seemed to pass away with the Roman name and the Roman protection, and our history may be said to have its true commencement with the shipping of our northern invaders and settlers. There is no line of filiation between the Saxon and the British navy; it is the northmen we must regard as our direct naval ancestors. We open the work of Sir Harris at the description he gives of the Anglo-Saxon shipping.

“However much the vessels Anglo-Saxons may have differed from each other in length, it may be safely concluded that though described as ‘ships’ or ‘long ships,’ these vessels were, in fact, only large, deep, open, undecked boats, and that none of them exceeded fifty tons in burden. Their prows and sterns were considerably elevated; and one or both were usually ornamented with effigies of men, birds, lions, or other animals, which were sometimes gilded. To a single mast, supported by a few shrouds, or rather stays, a large square sail was suspended, which could only have been useful when going large, or before the wind; hence their main dependence in contrary winds and calms was upon their oars. The modern rudder being unknown for many centuries after this period, they were steered by paddles fixed to the quarter. While the steersman, who was also the captain or master, and perhaps, too, the pilot, held the paddle in one hand, he kept the sheet of the sail in the other, thus guiding and providing for the safety of his vessel at the same time. It is doubtful if for any purpose these vessels ever carried more than fifty or sixty men; and when not employed they were drawn up on the sea-shore....

“A very interesting account is given by northern historians of the Danish fleets which so frequently harassed this country. The crews obeyed a single chief, whom they styled their ‘King,’ and who also commanded them on land; who was always the bravest of the brave, who never slept beneath a raftered roof, nor ever drained the bowl by a sheltered hearth—a glowing picture of their wild and predatory habits. To these qualities a celebrated sea-chieftain, called Olaf, added extraordinary eloquence, and great personal strength and agility. He was second to none as a swimmer, could walk upon the oars of his vessel while they were in motion, could throw three darts into the air at the same time, and catch two of them alternately, and could moreover hurl a lance with each hand; but he was impetuous, cruel, and revengeful, and ‘prompt to dare and do.’”—(P. 9.)

To enter more minutely into the naval antiquities of this period would appear to be a hopeless enterprise. There were a class of vessels, we are told, called “ceols,” probably longer, narrower, and of less burden than others, but which Sir Harris will not venture to describe more accurately. “In a later document,” he adds, “they are classed with ‘hulks,’ but there is as much uncertainty about an ancient ‘hulk,’ as about an ancient ‘ceol.’”

Alfred, our first admiral, as he has been justly called, was also the best shipwright of his day; he not only led the way to naval victory, but he also built ships of an improved structure, and of a greater magnitude than had over been seen before. “They were full-nigh twice as long as the others;” says the chronicler, “some had sixty oars, and some had more; they were both swifter and steadier, and also higher than the others. They were shapen neither like the Frisian nor the Danish; but so as it seemed to him that they would be most efficient.” Evidently a man of original genius, this Alfred. Taking himself the command of his “long ships,” he conquered the Danes in several battles, and in particular repelled a certain invasion of one Hasting who had made a camp at Boulogne! where he had collected his infantry and cavalry and a fleet of two hundred and fifty sail.

In the reign of Edgar, if our ships were still small, they were numerous enough. If we are to believe the monkish historians of this reign, his fleet consisted of three thousand six hundred sail, “all very stout ones;” some say four thousand, and others four thousand eight hundred. But these monkish historians were not only tempted, in gratitude to their munificent patron, to extol his power to their utmost; they were probably quite ignorant of nautical affairs. They were not likely to be much better informed on the shipping of their own country than they were of the geography of the island on which they were living; and of the singular notions on this subject sometimes entertained by these recluses, we have authentic testimony. Here their ignorance can be convicted. Edgar’s fleet, “all stout ones,” as they were, have passed away, and none can tell what their number may have been; but the hills, and seas, and rivers, which they misdescribed in their maps, still remain to speak for themselves. “In some of these maps of the twelfth century,” (discovered in the monasteries at the time of their suppression by Henry VIII.,) “Scotland is represented as an island separated from England by an arm of the sea. Ireland is also divided in two by the river Boyne, which is represented as a canal connecting the Irish Channel with the Atlantic. The towns are drawn in them of a disproportionate size, and the abbeys, with the walls, gates, and belfreys, occupy so great a space as to leave little room for the rivers,” &c.12

If the Anglo-Saxons had been capable of manning such a fleet as is here described, they must have been sad poltroons to have succumbed as they did to the Danes under Swain and Canute—the naval heroes who next appear in review before us. This Canute, after all his victories, is remembered chiefly, and remembered by every man, woman, and child amongst us, by the singular dialogue he is said once to have held with the sea. We must quote the story again for the sake of the commentary which is here attached to it. We are glad to find, by the way, that the story has escaped—it is a very narrow escape—from the clutches of historical criticism.

“The anecdote by which the name of Canute is best known to posterity, though unnoticed by the Saxon annalist, stands on the authority of an early historian. ‘Besides many splendid warlike deeds,’ says Henry of Huntingdon, who flourished about the middle of the twelfth century, ‘Canute did three elegant and celebrated things, of which the following was the most memorable: Being at Southampton in all regal pomp, he placed himself on a seat on the sea-shore, and addressing the flowing tide with an air of authority, said, ‘Thou, O sea! art subject to me, as is the land on which I sit; nor is there any one therein who dare resist my commands; now I enjoin thee neither to approach my land, nor presume to wet the feet or garments of thy sovereign.’ But the tide rising, as usual, soon wetted his feet and legs, and the king, retreating, exclaimed,—‘Let every inhabitant of the world know that the power of kings is a vain and trifling thing, nor is there any one worthy of the name of king but He at whose nod the heavens, and earth, and sea, and all that in them are, obey his eternal laws.’ From this time Canute never wore the crown, but placing it upon the head of an image of the crucifixion, set a great example of humility to future kings.

“The world,” adds our author, “has always seen, in this beautiful anecdote, a striking lesson to courtly sycophants; but it was reserved for two profound lawyers to discover in it an important political fact, they having gravely insisted that the king thereby most expressly asserted the sea to be a part of his dominions.”—(P. 18.)

How far the two profound lawyers in their argument for England’s dominion of the seas, could strengthen their case from the title which Canute the Dane chose to bear, we stop not to inquire; but it gives its full meaning and point to the popular anecdote to understand of Canute, that he claimed a dominion over the sea as well as the land, and that his title proclaimed him to be lord of the ocean. Otherwise, his refusal to wear the crown after the contumacious rising of the waters, and his suspending it on the holy image, would be devoid of any peculiar significance. It was as monarch of the sea that he declared himself dethroned by the rebellious waves.

However numerous the fleets which our Anglo-Saxon kings were capable of occasionally collecting—as, for instance, Edward the Confessor when threatened by an invasion from Norway—it is evident but little progress had been made towards establishing a permanent naval force. For when William the Conqueror invaded England, although his great preparations were matter of notoriety, and he had taken no pains whatever to conceal his design, the attempt was not made to encounter him at sea; all was left to the issue of the battle upon land. And William himself had so little appreciation of any naval power attached to the possession of the island, that he burned his ships as soon as he had landed, merely to give his men an additional motive for their courage.

Sir Harris Nicolas has given us here an engraving of the vessel in which William himself set sail from Normandy—a copy from the celebrated Bayeux tapestry; and on several other occasions we are presented with etchings taken from some antique representation. These are well to have, and curious to look at; but it is very difficult to extract any information whatever from such designs, it being impossible to know what is to be attributed to the rude state of the pictorial art, and what to the rude condition of naval architecture. It would be almost as safe to take our notion of a Chinese junk from the ships we see sailing in the sky upon their porcelain ware, as to derive our ideas of William the Conqueror’s ship from the tapestry of the Empress Matilda and her ladies. Though needle-work was in such repute and perfection, that we are told by Miss Strickland, quoting Malmsbury, how “the proficiency of the four sisters of King Athelstane in weaving and embroidery procured these royal spinsters the addresses of the greatest princes of Europe,” we must still take leave to think that the fidelity of representation was often somewhat sacrificed to the exigencies of the worsted work. In this engraving, the unhappy pilot or steersman, while he is working his paddle-rudder with one hand, holds the sail in the other, holds it bodily by the sheet in his extended hand, without the assistance of any belaying pin, or even of a rope. Are we to infer from this, that the simple expedient of turning a rope round a pin to hold the sail the firmer and the easier, with capability of slackening it at pleasure, was unknown in these times, or that the fair artist had but slender knowledge of the management of sailing craft? We are informed that the original exhibits a tri-coloured sail of three broad stripes, brown, yellow, and red: who can tell us whether these gay colours had any other origin than the taste of the needle-woman, and the claims of the worsted work? Sir Harris Nicolas has gravely observed that there are more shields hung round the outside of the vessel than there are men within it—which might have been anticipated without counting them, as it was much easier to work a round shield than even such figures as are here intended to pass for men. We must plainly be content with as many men as she of the needle can manage.

The accession of William the Conqueror, owing to the contempt which the Norman had of commerce, and the little care he took to protect or honour the merchant—(little would he have dreamed of ennobling, as did the Saxon, the man who had made three voyages!)—must have retarded the progress of England as a naval power. Land and castles, forests and hunting-fields, were all the Normans thought of. But though chivalry was no friend to commerce or to navigation, the crusading spirit which seized upon all the knights of Europe, gave fresh employment and a new impetus to our marine. It is thus that the reign of Richard Coeur-de-Lion came to be an important epoch in our naval history. His expedition to the Holy Land incurred the necessity of building many and large vessels; voyages were to be performed to the Mediterranean; and the British navy made its first conquest in distant seas—the isle of Cyprus.

“The English navy at this time seems to have consisted chiefly, if not entirely, of large galleys, afterwards called galliasses and galiones, small and light galleys for war, and of busses, which were large ships of burden, with a bluff bow and bulging sides, chiefly used for the conveyance of troops, stores, provisions, and merchandise. No drawing or description of English ships before the reign of King Edward II. justifies the idea that they had ever more than one mast; but some of the busses in the fleet which accompanied King Richard I. from Messina to Cyprus, are said to have had ‘a three-fold expansion of sails’—an ambiguous expression, which may mean that they had three sails on one mast, or that the sails were affixed to two or more masts.”—(P. 75.)

These small craft, so gaily decorated, sailing and rowing together in even lines, and in such close order that each ship was within hail of its neighbour, with the armour of the knights, their spears and their pennons, seen glittering within them, and their shields ranged on the outside, must have presented a very picturesque appearance, especially when spread out in the calm blue waters of the Mediterranean. “As soon as the people heard of the arrival of Richard at the port of Messina,” says a contemporary writer, Vinesauf, “they rushed in crowds to the shore to behold the glorious King of England, and at a distance saw the sea covered with innumerable galleys; and the sounds of trumpets from afar, with the sharper and shriller blasts of clarions, resounded in their ears; and they beheld the galleys rowing in order nearer to the land, adorned and furnished with all manner of arms, countless pennons floating in the winds, ensigns at the ends of the lances, the beaks of the galleys distinguished by various paintings, and glittering shields suspended to the prows. The sea appeared to boil with the multitude of the rowers; the clangour of their trumpets was deafening; the greatest joy was testified at the arrival of the various multitudes: when thus our magnificent King, attended by crowds of those who navigated the galleys—as if to see what was unknown to him, or to be beheld by those to whom he was unknown,—stood on a prow more ornamented and higher than the others; and landing, displayed himself elegantly adorned, to all who pressed to the shore to see him.”

Richard was as much distinguished for bravery on sea as on land, and during his expedition to Palestine he zealously performed the duties of admiral of his fleet. He sailed in the rear—which in him must have been a remarkable self-denial—for the better protection of the convoy. During a tempest which overtook them and threatened their destruction, he remained cool and collected, encouraging all around him by his speeches and his example. And when the gale abated, the King’s ship, which was indicated during the night by a light at the mast-head, brought to, that the scattered vessels might gather round her. “In truth,” says Vinesauf, “the King watched and looked after his fleet as a hen doth after her chickens.”

These, his “chickens,” however, he was by no means disposed to spare, if any thing like battle was going forward. Sailing along the coast of Syria, an immense ship was discovered a-head. It proved a Turk. It was the largest vessel the English had ever seen, and excited great wonder and admiration. Some chroniclers, call her a “dromon,” others a “buss,” while one of them exclaims, “A marvellous ship! a ship than which, except Noah’s ship, none greater was ever read of!—the queen of ships!” It had three masts, and was reported, though it is incredible, to have had on board fifteen hundred men. It was on its way to Acre to assist in the defence of that place, and was laden with bows, arrows, and other weapons, an abundance of Greek fire in jars, and “two hundred most deadly serpents prepared for the destruction of Christians.”

Lingard has, in his severe classical manner, described the contest of Richard’s fleet with this gigantic Turk. But the account which our present author gives of it, being in great part immediately translated from the original of Vinesauf, is so highly graphic, and withal so characteristic of our Coeur-de-Lion, that we must find room for a portion of it.

“The moment the galley (which had been sent to reconnoitre the strange vessel) came alongside of the ship, the Saracens threw arrows and Greek fire into her. Richard instantly ordered the enemy to be attacked, saying, ‘Follow, and take them! for if they escape ye lose my love forever; and if ye capture them, all their goods shall be yours.’ Himself foremost in the fight, and summoning his galleys to the royal vessel, he animated all around by his characteristic valour. Showers of missiles flew on both sides, and the Turkish ship slackened her way; but though the galleys rowed round and about her in all directions, her great height and the number of her crew, whose arrows fell with deadly effect from her decks, rendered it extremely difficult to board her. The English consequently became discouraged, if not dismayed; when the King cried out, ‘Will ye now suffer that ship to get off untouched and uninjured? Oh, shame! after so many triumphs do ye now give way to sloth and fear? Know that if this ship escape, every one of ye shall be hung upon the cross or put to extreme torture.’ The galley-men making, says the candid historian, a virtue of necessity, jumped overboard, and diving under the enemy’s vessel, fastened ropes to her rudder, steering her as they pleased; and then, catching hold of ropes and climbing up her sides, they succeeded at last in boarding her. A desperate conflict ensued; the Turks were forced forward, but being joined by those from below, they rallied and drove their assailants back to their galleys. Only one resource remained, and it instantly presented itself to the King’s mind. He ordered his galleys to pierce the sides of the enemy with the iron spurs affixed to their prows. These directions were executed with great skill and success. The galleys, receding a little, formed a line; and then, giving full effect to their oars, struck the Turkish ship with such violence that her sides were stove in many places, and the sea immediately rushing in, she soon foundered.”—(P. 120.)

Of the Greek fire, which is here incidentally mentioned, Sir Harris Nicolas gives us a terrible description. He thinks it an instrument of war more dreadful than gunpowder, or than any other discovery of modern chemistry. “It was propelled in a fluid state through brazen tubes from the prows of vessels and fortifications with as much precision as water is now thrown from a fire-engine. The moment it was exposed to the air it ignited, and became a continuous stream of fire, bringing with it excruciating torture and inevitable destruction. Unlike any other combustible, water increased its properties, and it could only be extinguished by vinegar, or stifled with sand;13 while to its other horrors were added a thick smoke, loud noise, and disgusting stench.”

A stream of fire playing upon a vessel presents a terrible enough picture to the imagination; but we doubt very much if this Greek fire would have ever been replaced by gunpowder, if there had not been very good reasons for the preference. To have your instruments of destruction under complete control is one of the first requisites of war; and it is probable that this continuous stream of fire, which might be avoided by a slight movement to the right or left, was often utterly wasted, and that its preparation and employment was almost as perilous to those who used it, as to those against whom it was directed. The sagacity of man is rarely at fault in the work of destruction, and we have perfect confidence that he would in this matter make choice of the most effective means at his disposal.

If the impression on the imagination, or the terror excited in a spectator, were any test of the efficacy of these terrible contrivances, many of the earliest and rudest would claim our preference. We might look with respect upon that expedient which an old traveller, Carpini, attributes to the fabulous hero and monarch, Prester John. “This Prester John (whom he places somewhere in India) caused a number of hollow copper figures to be made, resembling men, which were stuffed with combustibles and set upon horses, each having a man behind on the horse with a pair of bellows to stir up the fire. At the first onset of the battle these mounted figures were set forward to the charge; the men who rode behind them set fire to the combustibles, and then blew strongly with the bellows. Immediately the Mongul men and horses were burned with wildfire, and the air was darkened with smoke. Then the Indians fell upon the Monguls, who were thrown into confusion by this new mode of warfare, and routed them with great slaughter.”—(Maritime and Inland Discovery, vol. i. p. 258.)

These fiery cavaliers must have been fearful enough to look upon, darting flames from eyes and mouth like so many Apollyons; but it must also have been a fearful business to act as faithful squire to one of these combustible knights; and, after all, a single piece of artillery, one long black cylinder of iron with its sooty charge, were worth a whole regiment of them.

It is worthy of remark how few of these schemes for the wholesale destruction of an enemy, or his fleet, have ever succeeded. They have raised great expectations on one side, and great alarm on the other, but have generally ended in some very paltry result. Even in modern times, when the use of explosive materials is so much better understood, fire-ships, and the like inventions, have proved of little efficacy. The means of destruction are great, but they are not sufficiently under the control of those who would use them. In the late war, in order to destroy the flotilla at Boulogne, we despatched four fire-ships in succession—“catamarans” as they were called, horribly stuffed with gunpowder and all sorts of inflammable matter. They exploded one after the other with a terrible noise, but effected nothing. Those who have read Cooper’s History of the American Navy, will remember the disastrous issue of that “floating mine” which was to destroy the fleet and arsenal at Tripoli. This “infernal,” as it was called, was filled with a hundred barrels of gunpowder, a hundred and fifty shells, a large quantity of shot, great and small, and all manner of fragments of iron. In the dead of night it was to sail unperceived into the harbour of Tripoli, and the officer and men who had the charge of it, after having lit the fuse, were to return in their boats to the frigate Nautilus from which they had proceeded. The men on board the frigate, watched the “Infernal” till its dim sail was lost in a pitch-dark night. Then came a fierce and sudden blaze—a torrent of fire like the great eruption of Vesuvius, and a concussion that made the vessel tremble from its keel to its topmost spar. Tenfold night succeeded—and silence; and every eye was vigilant to discover the returning boats. Some leaned over the sides of the vessel, holding lights to guide them; others placed their ears near the water, to detect the sound of their oars. They never reappeared; not a single man of them returned. By some unexplained accident, all had perished in the explosion; and the morning dawned, and the enemy was untouched and uninjured.

Amongst the many subjects which Sir Harris Nicolas has occasion to treat in the course of his naval history, none is more curious than that of the law of wreck. A rude and barbarous people concluded that what was thrown by the tempest on their coast was a sort of god-send, and the property of the first finder. The king, as general finder of all lost treasure, was not long before he put in his paramount claim; and the common law sanctioned it, proceeding, we are told, upon the principle, that by the loss of the ship all property had passed away from the original owner. With equal gravity it might have sanctioned any species of theft or spoliation, by promulgating the principle, that when a man can no longer keep possession of his goods, “all property has passed away from the original owner.” This was indeed “adding sorrow to sorrow, and injustice to misfortune. Henry I. has the merit of having first mitigated this cruelty of the common law. “He ordained that if any person escaped alive from the ship, it should not be considered a wreck:” on the principle, we suppose—for the law loves what it calls a principle, and if it partakes of the nature of a fiction loves it the more—that the person who escaped might be considered as an agent for the merchant or proprietor, retaining in his name a possession of the goods and the ship. But the next step in this humane course of legislation was still more singular. A statute of Edward I. enacts—“Concerning wrecks of the sea, it is agreed that when a man, a dog, or a cat, escape quick out of the ship, that neither such ship or barge, nor any thing within them, shall be adjudged wreck.” Here the dog or the cat, which was so fortunate as to escape, must, in the eye of the law, we presume, have been clothed with the character of an agent, and looked upon, for the time being, as the servant of the hapless merchant. Such, we suppose, must have been the legal reasoning; but perhaps some prejudice of an ignorant people, which we cannot now follow or define, was in reality taken advantage of by the legislation of those days; and a rude selfishness, which would have been deaf to reason or humanity, was assailed by the aid of some superstition as rude as itself. However, after such a law, we hope no ship set sail without having a supply of dogs and cats on board.

The extent to which piratical habits, and indeed all manner of robbing and violence, prevailed in these early periods, is very well known; but the reader will find some curious and startling instances in the work before us. Between foreign countries there was generally a species of private war being carried on; for it was an understood custom, that when a native of one country was injured by a native of another, and could get no redress, he was justified in obtaining what compensation or revenge he could from the fellow-countrymen of the person who had injured him. In such cases, his government granted him letters of marque—“license to mark, retain, and appropriate,” the men and goods of such foreign nation. Even on land the creditor of one foreigner, who could not get paid, might attach the goods of any other foreigner—of the same nation, we presume. It had to be enacted by Statute i. West. c. 23., that “no stranger who is of this realm shall be distrained in any town or market for a debt wherein he is neither principal nor security.”14 Sir Harris Nicolas mentions a curious case at p. 235, which shows how rooted this idea must have been in the general mind, that the goods of all foreigners were liable for the debt of any one of them. One Richard de Canne had captured a ship in Brittany, and Helen, widow of Richard Clark, had lost a ship in Brittany; whereupon widow Helen laid claim to Richard’s ship, and got possession of it. But the king reversed the sentence of the justiciary of Ireland—“forasmuch that it does not appear to us to be just that the said Richard should lose the aforesaid ship, which he acquired in a land at war with us, on account of a ship which the said Helen afterwards lost in the same hostile land.”

The present volume of Sir H. Nicolas’s history carries us no further than the reign of Edward II. We shall watch its future progress with interest. Hitherto we have to familiarise the imagination with ships or boats of very small dimensions, and their very limited exploits. And it is singular what an effort of the imagination it requires here to reduce sufficiently the scale of things. How complete is the contrast of that Saxon ship, with its one sail held by the hand, its few oars, its paddle at the quarter, and its sea-captain showing his dexterity in walking upon the oars while in motion, and throwing, like a conjuror, three darts in the air at once—with the stately man-of-war, and its calm and intelligent commander! Nothing can exhibit more strikingly than this contrast the gradual improvements which age after age may make and transmit. Mast has been added to mast, and sail to sail, and rope to rope; and in the hull, tier after tier of guns have been raised, till the ship has become the hugest and most complicated piece of mechanism the world has ever seen.

Who has not in his time gazed with wonder on those floating castles which the citizen of England from time to time sees hovering on his coast, the watchful and moving fortresses of his island home? You are a dweller in cities—you are lying, in some holiday and summer month, listlessly upon the beach—the great ocean is spread before you, illimitable—and it almost terrifies the imagination to think of men passing out there, in that wild waste of waters, given up to the two unthinking and gigantic powers of wind and wave, that have no more respect for man or his structures than if they were still in the liberty of chaos. That men do go forth to the uttermost ends of the world seems a thing almost fabulous—incredible. You have eaten of the lotus leaf: why should they go?—go from the firm and sheltering earth, to lay their lives upon the winds? But now comes in sight a sail; the extended wing floats unfluttered; the tall tapering masts are visible; it moves imperturbable, like a god upon the waters. And look at that tongue of flame drawn back with a serpent’s swiftness, and that wreath of whitest vapour that steals out from its side so soft and graceful!—is that the deadly shot that levels stoutest walls, and puts to silence the bastion and the fort? So beautiful—so strong!—it walks the waves, how fearless!—and nothing on the sea can harm it, and nothing on the shore resist.

Where now are the great waters that swallowed up all enterprise, and smote the heart with despair? The sea is ours!—we live, we revel, we fight, we conquer on it.

The ship casts anchor, and you rush with many others upon the shore, and you enter a skiff, which will take you off to a nearer survey of this great visitor. You approach, and mount the sides of this floating arsenal. Is this the thing you saw moving light as a bird upon the horizon? You look down as from a house-top. That yacht which bore its pennon so gallantly in the air, and which is now moored under the stern, can just lay its fluttering flag on the solid deck you are walking. Look down—you are giddy with the height; look up—and you are again level with the waters; for there rises the enormous mast, piercing the sky, laying its steady spars against the blue ether, bearing its acre-broad canvass, that makes the vast hull with all its iron stores, bound over the surface of the wave. O Clas merdin!—thou “sea-defended green spot,”—such, and so great, is the sacrifice thou art called to offer up upon the deep to the god of war! May it avail to keep thy homes for ever untouched by the invader!