II
It was in 1577, the year in which the Golden Hind sailed from Plymouth on her ever-memorable voyage, that the Revenge first took the water. Probably, says Arber (but I cannot find upon what authority), she was built at Chatham by Sir John Hawkins. According to Sir John Laughton she was launched at Deptford. Ships
are the children of predestination, as every sailor knows: from the moment when they leave the slips they are either lucky or unlucky. In the opinion of the younger Hawkins the Revenge “was ever the unfortunatest Ship the late Queene’s Majestie had during her Raigne.” He supports this view by a list of hairbreadth escapes, which might as easily be quoted to prove her the especial care of Providence, many times miraculously preserved to be the scourge and dishonour of the Queen’s enemies. First, says Sir Richard, “Comming out of Ireland with Sir John Parrot, she was like to be [but was not] cast away upon the Kentish coast.” Then, in 1586, “in the Voyage of Sir John Hawkins, she struck aground coming into Plimouth, before her going
to Sea”; but to sea she went nevertheless. Upon the coast of Spain she was “readie to sinke with a great Leake,” and (though she did not sink) “at her return into the harbour of Plimouth, she beat upon Winter Stone”—again without fatality. She escaped a still greater danger when, soon after, she twice ran aground in going out of Portsmouth Haven, lay twenty-two hours beating upon the shore, and was forced off with eight feet of water in her, only to ground again “upon the Oose,” where she stuck for six months, until the following spring, testifying to the skill of those who built and the clumsiness of those who sailed her. Being at last got off and brought round into the Thames to be docked, “her old Leake breaking upon her, had like to
have drowned all those which were in her.” Neither then, however, nor in any of her mishaps, does she appear to have actually drowned anyone, not even when, in 1591, “with a storme of wind and weather, riding at her moorings in the river of Rochester, nothing but her bare Masts overhead, shee was turned topse-turvie, her Kele uppermost.” One might have thought that this final proof of her indestructibility would convince her detractor. Drake, at any rate, knew a good sea-boat when he saw one, for he chose her for his flagship when he sailed against the Armada as Vice-Admiral, and the Calendar of State Papers contains, under the date of November, 1588, a “Device of Lord Admiral Howard, Sir F. Drake, Sir W. Wynter, Sir John Hawkyns, Capt. Wm. Borough and others, for the construction of four new ships to be built on the
model of the Revenge, but exceeding her in burthen.” (She was but of 500 tons herself, and carried at most 260 men and forty guns.) To this evidence we may add the statement of a Spanish prisoner, bearing the delightful name of Gonsalo Gonsalez del Castillo, who writes in 1592 that in England “they have been much pained by the loss of one of the Queen’s galleons, called the Revenge; they say she was the best ship the Queen had, and the one in which they had the most confidence for her defence.”
Such was the Revenge, and, if she had her share of misfortune she had also her full share of prosperous service. She bore Drake’s flag as Vice-Admiral from January 3, 1588. On May 23, at the head of sixty sail, she escorted the Lord Admiral Howard into Plymouth; then, till July 12,
she watched and longed for the “felicisima Armada.” On Saturday the 20th, while the enemy crept up Channel in heavy rain, and the wind fell lighter and lighter, she tacked and tacked her way out painfully through a night of deadly anxiety. She had her reward. On Sunday, “conspicuous with an extravagant pennant and a banner on her mizzen, and fighting almost at grappling distance,” she battered Don Juan Martinez de Recalde in the Santa Anna. Towards evening the Admirals held Council on board her; when night fell her lantern led the fleet, until Drake, finding himself among strange sail, extinguished it and lay by for daylight. Howard and the rest went after the Spanish lights, and when dawn came the Revenge found herself alone,
and drifting within a few cables of the huge Nuestra Señora del Rosario, flagship of Don Pedro de Valdes, Captain-General of the Andalusian Squadron and one of Sidonia’s best officers. The Captain-General was “spoiled of his mast the day before,” and had smashed his bowsprit in collision; but he tried to stand out for conditions of surrender. The Vice-Admiral replied that he was Drake, and had no time to parley. That ended the matter; the galleon went into Dartmouth “under the conduction of the Roebuck” and the Revenge “bare with the Lord Admiral, and recovered his Lordship that night, being Monday.” Aboard of her went poor Don Pedro and forty of his officers; also their cash, to the tune of fifty thousand ducats.
On Tuesday the 23rd, the prisoners, or those of them who were allowed on deck, witnessed the battle off the Isle of Wight, the failure of the galleasses with their countless oars, and the rescue of the Triumph, in which our first Victory and our first Dreadnought distinguished themselves. They saw, too, in the bird-like line-ahead flights of the Revenge and her consorts, their quick concentrations and dispersals, what Mr Julian Corbett has described as “the first dawn of those modern tactics which Blake and Monk were to develop and Nelson to perfect.” By the end of the day they were probably all deaf; the unknown eyewitness who wrote the Relation of Proceedings for Howard, declares that “there was never seen a more terrible value of great shot, nor more hot fight than this was; for although the musketeers
and harquebusiers of crock were then infinite, yet could they not be discerned nor heard for that the great ordnance came so thick that a man would have judged it to have been a hot skirmish of small shot, being all the fight long within half musket shot of the enemy.”
On the 24th fresh ammunition arrived, and the fleet was divided into four squadrons, of which Revenge was to lead the second.
On Thursday the 25th, in a calm, the galleasses ventured again and were finally knocked out of the fight. For the next two days “the Spaniards went always before the English Army like sheep” until on Saturday evening they suddenly came to an anchor off Calais.
On the night of Sunday the 28th, the Lord Admiral “caused eight ships to be fired and let drive amongst the Spanish fleet; whereupon they were forced to let slip or cut cables at half and to set sail.” When day came, Howard stopped to take a prize, and it was the Revenge who led the last great chase northwards, pounding Sidonia himself in the huge San Martin, sinking, scattering and driving ashore his followers. “It was the hour,” says Mr Corbett, “for which Francis Drake had been born.” But glorious as it was, it was not yet the hour for which the Revenge had been built.
