Thus, with the return of Howard’s ships to Margate and Harwich, was the “greatest service ever done by an English fleet ... successfully accomplished by men whose wages had not been paid from the time of their engagement, half-starved, with their clothes in rags and falling off their backs, and so ill-found in the necessaries of war that they had eked out their ammunition by what they could take in action from the enemy himself.”
Plymouth’s share in the most glorious event in national history was the chief and ever unforgettable one. And for this reason we have told the story of it somewhat fully.
It was from Plymouth that Sir Walter Raleigh set sail with other bold adventurers for America, where he took possession of Virginia, calling the new colony after his none too grateful mistress, Queen Elizabeth, on July 13, 1584.
Plymouth, also, saw the setting forth of a much more significant and peaceful expedition to that New World of which so little was even then known, when the Pilgrim Fathers from Leyden, after sojourning awhile in the great West country port, stepped once more aboard the schooner Mayflower, on September 6, 1620, and casting loose, adventured out into the wide ocean, which washed the shores of far distant America as well as those of their native land. It was in remembrance of the last spot in England to give them harbourage that New Plymouth was named. The vessel which bore so rich a cargo of faith to the New World, and has enjoyed such fame, was destined to have a prosaic end. After she had borne the “Pilgrim Fathers” safely across the Atlantic, she was sold as a trader, and after many years in the East India Company’s service was lost off Masulipatam on the east coast of India.
Plymouth played its gallant part in the Civil War. The Royalist forces recognized the importance of the possession of such a town and attacked it almost continuously for several years. It also had to stand actual and protracted siege. Over and over again the Royalist troops under Charles I, dashing and gallant Prince Rupert, and many other distinguished generals assailed the town, only time after time to be repulsed with heavy loss. Then came the culminating event one Sunday morning when the slopes and hillside to the north and north-east of the town surged and rang with the tide and cries of fierce conflict. It was the Royalists’ last effort, and with their defeat the siege was finally abandoned.
Charles II when he came to the throne did not forget the “malignancy” of the men of Plymouth, nor the stout defence they had offered to his father’s attack. It was probably to the latter fact that the existence of “The Citadel,” which Charles II built, may be ascribed. For, although nominally for the defence of the town on the sea side, it is significant that the greater proportion of the guns with which it was provided were trained upon the town itself.
Of the many eighteenth-century voyagers who set out from Plymouth, none was destined to win greater renown than Captain Cook, who made the town his headquarters previous to all three of his famous expeditions.
The fear of Napoleonic invasion did not perhaps convulse Plymouth—greatly strengthened as it had become by that time, and kept by ceaseless bustle and activity from the form of nervous dread which afflicted the smaller towns of the south and south-western coasts—but it saw its full share not only of the distress and excitement caused by the long war, but also of the more terrible effects. Many a proud line-of-battle ship, frigate, and corvette which left the Sound with a gallant complement of brave men, colours flying, and bands playing, returned little more than a shambles or a shattered wreck after one of those fierce engagements in the Channel or Bay of Biscay for which the years from just after the French Revolution till well on into the second decade of the nineteenth century were famous.
PLYMOUTH BREAKWATER