"Whether it be wise in men to do such actions or no, I am sure it is so in States to honour them." - SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.
THERE is one story of the wars of Rome which I have always very much envied for England.Germanicus was going down at the head of the legions into a dangerous river - on the opposite bank the woods were full of Germans - when there flew out seven great eagles which seemed to marshal the Romans on their way; they did not pause or waver, but disappeared into the forest where the enemy lay concealed."Forward!"cried Germanicus, with a fine rhetorical inspiration, "Forward! and follow the Roman birds." It would be a very heavy spirit that did not give a leap at such a signal, and a very timorous one that continued to have any doubt of success.
To appropriate the eagles as fellow-countrymen was to make imaginary allies of the forces of nature; the Roman Empire and its military fortunes, and along with these the prospects of those individual Roman legionaries now fording a river in Germany, looked altogether greater and more hopeful.It is a kind of illusion easy to produce.A particular shape of cloud, the appearance of a particular star, the holiday of some particular saint, anything in short to remind the combatants of patriotic legends or old successes, may be enough to change the issue of a pitched battle; for it gives to the one party a feeling that Right and the larger interests are with them.
If an Englishman wishes to have such a feeling, it must be about the sea.The lion is nothing to us; he has not been taken to the hearts of the people, and naturalised as an English emblem.We know right well that a lion would fall foul of us as grimly as he would of a Frenchman or a Moldavian Jew, and we do not carry him before us in the smoke of battle.
But the sea is our approach and bulwark; it has been the scene of our greatest triumphs and dangers; and we are accustomed in lyrical strains to claim it as our own.The prostrating experiences of foreigners between Calais and Dover have always an agreeable side to English prepossessions.A man from Bedfordshire, who does not know one end of the ship from the other until she begins to move, swaggers among such persons with a sense of hereditary nautical experience.To suppose yourself endowed with natural parts for the sea because you are the countryman of Blake and mighty Nelson, is perhaps just as unwarrantable as to imagine Scotch extraction a sufficient guarantee that you will look well in a kilt.But the feeling is there, and seated beyond the reach of argument.We should consider ourselves unworthy of our descent if we did not share the arrogance of our progenitors, and please ourselves with the pretension that the sea is English.Even where it is looked upon by the guns and battlements of another nation we regard it as a kind of English cemetery, where the bones of our seafaring fathers take their rest until the last trumpet;for I suppose no other nation has lost as many ships, or sent as many brave fellows to the bottom.
There is nowhere such a background for heroism as the noble, terrifying, and picturesque conditions of some of our sea fights.Hawke's battle in the tempest, and Aboukir at the moment when the French Admiral blew up, reach the limit of what is imposing to the imagination.And our naval annals owe some of their interest to the fantastic and beautiful appearance of old warships and the romance that invests the sea and everything sea-going in the eyes of English lads on a half-holiday at the coast.Nay, and what we know of the misery between decks enhances the bravery of what was done by giving it something for contrast.We like to know that these bold and honest fellows contrived to live, and to keep bold and honest, among absurd and vile surroundings.No reader can forget the description of the THUNDER in RODERICK RANDOM: the disorderly tyranny; the cruelty and dirt of officers and men;deck after deck, each with some new object of offence; the hospital, where the hammocks were huddled together with but fourteen inches space for each; the cockpit, far under water, where, "in an intolerable stench," the spectacled steward kept the accounts of the different messes; and the canvas enclosure, six feet square, in which Morgan made flip and salmagundi, smoked his pipe, sang his Welsh songs, and swore his queer Welsh imprecations.There are portions of this business on board the THUNDER over which the reader passes lightly and hurriedly, like a traveller in a malarious country.It is easy enough to understand the opinion of Dr.
Johnson: "Why, sir," he said, "no man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail." You would fancy any one's spirit would die out under such an accumulation of darkness, noisomeness, and injustice, above all when he had not come there of his own free will, but under the cutlasses and bludgeons of the press-gang.But perhaps a watch on deck in the sharp sea air put a man on his mettle again; a battle must have been a capital relief; and prize-money, bloodily earned and grossly squandered, opened the doors of the prison for a twinkling.Somehow or other, at least, this worst of possible lives could not overlie the spirit and gaiety of our sailors; they did their duty as though they had some interest in the fortune of that country which so cruelly oppressed them, they served their guns merrily when it came to fighting, and they had the readiest ear for a bold, honourable sentiment, of any class of men the world ever produced.
Most men of high destinies have high-sounding names.Pym and Habakkuk may do pretty well, but they must not think to cope with the Cromwells and Isaiahs.And you could not find a better case in point than that of the English Admirals.Drake and Rooke and Hawke are picked names for men of execution.
Frobisher, Rodney, Boscawen, Foul-Weather, Jack Byron, are all good to catch the eye in a page of a naval history.
