FOOTNOTES:
"If we go backward we die: if we go forward we die:
Better go forward and die."—Viking war-call.
[2] "Nulla vestigia retrorsum."—Motto of 5th Dragoon Guards.
[3] I am indebted to the Rev. S. Baring-Gould for the following very interesting note, which indicates that there was some affinity between the ancient Grecian and the Viking ideas with regard to figure-heads: "The Greeks never allowed an image of an entering ship to arrive un-removed, and then it was conveyed to the shore to salute the Goddess of the port. The altar 'to the Unknown God' St. Paul saw was actually to any unknown Deity of an approaching vessel."
[4] "No doubt the noblemen of France prefer land to sea warfare, so hard and so little in accord with nobility ", stated a French Herald in 1456.
[5] Pavises, plural of Pavois. The "Pavois", or "Pavise" as it was generally termed in English, was a big round-topped shield like a tombstone. It was set up with a prop on shore or fastened to a ship's bulwarks, either on going into action or as a decoration. This is why to this day a French man-of-war when "dressed" with all her colours at a review, for instance, is said to be "en grand pavois".
[6] "Of the Tower": this signifies that she was a royal ship, like "H.M.S." of to-day.
[7] A strong bow that needed a tourniquet or winch to draw it back.
[8] A coarse woollen stuff.
[9] Innkeepers.
[10] Threw the enemy's survivors overboard and drowned them.
[11] Called.
[12] At one time the "British Blue" was rather fond of calling himself a "matlow" or "matlo", though it is said the custom is falling into disuse. It has been stated that it dates from the old comradeship of French and English in the Crimean War. The French word matelot, by the way, is derived from matelas, a mattress. Before hammocks, two men used a mattress in turn, one being always on watch.
[13] I say "ordinary" advisedly, as an archer got 3d. a day in 1346 and probably earlier.
[14] "Hereby would I shew you how foolhardy is he who adventures himself in such peril, if he be in debt to any man, or is in deadly sin; for one goes to sleep at night never knowing whether one will awake at the bottom of the sea."
[15] Paul Lacroix.
[16] "Bus", "ships of the largest size, with triple sails".
[17] She was first called the Gret Carrick, then Imperyall Carrick, next Henry Imperiall. The name Henri Grace à Dieu was written with all kinds of variations; sometimes she was merely called the Harry, and finally, after King Harry's death, the Edward.
[18] Each of the Carews adopted the badge of a ship's "fighting-top", which still appears as the crest of the family.
[19] Purchased about 1544, probably from the Hansa.
[20] Seeling means literally to "roll from side to side", but it is evidently here used for the sides themselves.
[21] As guns of these days were called after animals and birds, the "musket" received its name from "mosquito".
[22] The Elizabethan seamen, and indeed their successors, must have inherited somewhat of the old Viking Berserkers' dislike of defensive armour, or any equipment limiting bodily activity. Sir Richard Hawkins complained in 1593 that though he had with him in his expedition to the South Seas "great preparation of armour, as well of proofe as of light corsletts, yet not a man would use them ".
[23] Law's Memorialls.
[25] Nicholas. History British Navy.
[26] Massinger.
[27] From the Parish Books of Portishead, Somerset: Acct. of Disbursements:—
| "1722.—Gave 5 sailors taken by Pierates | ... | 10d. |
| 1723.—Gave 1 man that had been in turkey | ... | 1d. |
| 1726.—Gave 6 poor men tacking by the pirits | ... | 6d. |
| 1726.—Gave 7 poor sailors burnt | ... | 1s." |
Mr. Henry Caer of Portishead, who has been good enough to send me these extracts, thinks that "burnt" in the last entry means that their ship had been burnt.
[28] i.e. "yield".
[29] This, the old Grecian signal to engage, in 1292 "signified certain death and mortal strife to all sailors everywhere". In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was constantly used as an emblem of "Defiance" and "No Quarter". The mutineers at the Nore hoisted it in 1797, as did the Paris Communists in 1871.
[30] A species of grape-shot.
[31] "Bonnet", an extra piece of canvas laced to a sail to enlarge it. "Vail", to lower.
[32] Or Convertine, originally the Destiny.
[33] Guizot, Cromwell, and the English Commonwealth.
[34] Louis XIV of France.
[35] In the Civil War, according to Warburton's Memoirs of Prince Rupert, apothecaries' mortars were sometimes used in emergencies.
[36] In Henry V's expedition to Harfleur he took with him, among others, two big guns known as the "London" and "the King's Daughter".
[37] Sometimes called Hugget.
[38] Compiled from five authorities, who differ slightly.
[39] Lat., coluber, a serpent.
[40] In 1586 "gunners were provided with milk and vinegar to cool their pieces".
[41] There may have been some 68-pounder carronades in action.
[42] If we except the Neptune, which was built by a foreign Government and eventually acquired by the Royal Navy.
[43] It would perhaps be more correct to call the Lord Nelson and Agamemnon contemporaries of the Dreadnought. They were practically experimental ships offering an alternative type. The cost of thirty of these ships would have been the same as that of twenty-nine Dreadnoughts. The annual upkeep of twenty-nine Dreadnoughts would be less by £15,000 than that of thirty Lord Nelsons.
[44] i.e. Corneilius Van Drebbel.
[45] Sides.
[46] A Mariner of England, 1780-1817. Colonel Spencer Childers.
[47] The Chinese considered this a practical form of warfare even in comparatively recent times. In The Voyage of H.M.S. Nemesis (1841) an account is given of the preparations made against the British fleet. At Canton it was stated that "several hundred divers were said to be in training who were to go down and bore holes in our ships at night; or even, as the Chinese privately reported, to carry down with them some combustible material which would burn under water and destroy our vessels".
[48] There is, however, in this MS. a picture of what is probably intended for a diver wearing a metal helmet without a tube.
[49] i.e. King Solomon.
[50] Included in the ships' companies of the Middle Ages were "seamen who knew how to swim for a long time under water". These divers "pierced the ships (of the enemy) in many places so that the water could enter". In an old work on naval architecture, published in 1629, it is stated in reference to the Turkish pirates of Barbary that "The Corsairs, indeed, are very wily in attack and defence, acquainted with many kinds of projectiles, even Submarine Torpedoes, which a diver will attach to an enemy's keel".
[51] See The Story of the Submarine, by Colonel C. Field, R.M.L.I.
[52] See The Story of the Submarine, by Colonel C. Field, R.M.L.I.
[53] Letter from Mr. Ellis to Lord Lexington, 9th August, 1695.
[54] In the Civil War in America the Louisiana was filled with 430,000 pounds of powder, and exploded against Fort Fisher on Christmas Eve, 1864, with little or no effect. This is the last recorded case of an explosion-ship, unless we reckon the four fireships in the form of rafts that in April, 1915, were sent by the Germans against a fort at Osowiec. Some never arrived; the others were blown up by the guns of the fort.
[55] War with Russia, by H. Tyrell.
[56] i.e. tinder.
[57] Possibly not, as there was a composite battalion at Tangier composed of companies from various regiments, including one of marines.
[58] "Five or six hundred seamen and others of the Marine Regiment."—Reminiscences of Cork, by Crofton Croker (MS.).
[59] Lutterell.
[60] Several years ago the Kaiser bestowed this distinction on a Hessian Regiment on account of its ancestors—so it is stated—having participated in the capture. I have studied the taking of Gibraltar pretty thoroughly, but have never found any mention of a German regiment taking part in it.
[61] Life and Adventures of Matthew Bishop. London, 1744.
[62] Quoted in Cassell's British Sea Kings and Sea Fights.
[63] A soldier who used to be placed in front of a regiment, by whose motions the movements of the exercises with arms were directed. In some regiments at the present day the right-hand man steps a pace forward on the order "Fix bayonets", to give the time and ensure all moving together.
[64] Blackwood's Magazine, October, 1858.
[65] Now Brigadier-General Marchant, C.B., A.D.C.
[66] Now Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, K.C.B., K.C.V.O., the famous commander of our Grand Fleet.
[67] Now Major-General Johnstone, C.B.
[68] Engineer-Commander Chas. E. Eldred, R.N., Everybody's Book of the Navy.
[69] "The Progress of Dreadnoughts", Journal of Commerce, 4th March, 1915.
[70] "Your Navy as a Fighting Machine." Fred. T. Jane.
[71] Particulars from Submarines, Mines, and Torpedoes in the War. C. W. Domville Fife.
[72] Paper by Lieutenant C. N. Hinkamp, United States Navy, reprinted in Journal of Commerce, 29th April, 1915.
[73] German ships, by the way, are often provided with a heavier astern fire than a forward one, so that apparently they have long decided to fight a retreating action. The opposite system is pursued in our navy.
[74] Except between 1713 and 1739, when there were no marines.
[75] "Fixed" is, perhaps, not the right word to use. Up to and including part of the nineteenth century, marines and soldiers seem to have been enlisted for an indefinite period—for as long or short a time as the Government chose to keep them.
[76] The Royal Naval Artillery Volunteers were disbanded in 1892 on the report of a Committee of which the late Admiral Sir George Tryon was president. The report said: "The corps of Royal Naval Artillery Volunteers is composed of men who have not, as a rule, practical acquaintance with the sea, but are attracted by sympathy and aspiration. The Committee suggest that there are grounds for maintaining that a Volunteer Force affiliated to the Royal Marine Artillery—from the system of training and discipline that would be established—would be a far more permanently valuable force than any so-termed naval force in which are enrolled men not inured to sea-life and who have no sufficient practical experience at sea, which experience cannot be given by Government under any volunteer system we can devise."
[77] The bluejacket of to-day, by the way, often refers to himself as a "Matlow" or a "Flat-foot", while the marines are often termed "Leather-necks".
[78] i.e. the anchor
[79] i.e. the ship's company.
[80] Said to be a corruption of gendarme.
[81] The first shot, probably from the Amphion—thus the first shot of the war afloat—was fired by Private J. B. King, R.M.L.I. (Plymouth), who died of wounds in Netley Hospital soon after the sinking of the Amphion.
[82] Official account.
[83] Fred. T. Jane, Your Navy as a Fighting-machine.
[84] Naval and Military Record.
[85] In the Morning Post.
[86] i.e. torpedoes.
[87] Naval and Military Record.
[88] Ibid.
[89] Naval and Military Record.
[90] Ibid.
[91] Journal of Commerce, Weekly Edition, 14th April, 1915.
[92] In the Times.
[93] i.e. of guns.
[94] Lance-Sergeant H. Blanchard, R.M.L.I., in The Globe and Laurel.
[95] Captain Luce of the Glasgow in his official report.
[96] Mr. Esmonde, published in Penny Pictorial Magazine.
[97] Quoted by Mr. Esmonde in his letter.
[98] Mr. Esmonde's letter.
[99] Lance-Sergeant H. Blanchard.
[100] Globe and Laurel.
[101] Times.
[102] Editor Aeronautical Journal.
[103] Published in The Sphere.
[104] Naval and Military Record.