There is not the slightest doubt that the Vikings discovered the continent of America long before Columbus did. They went by way of Iceland, and so were able to touch land more than once on their journey, but they got there all the same. They established a colony in Greenland about A.D. 985. From there they made several expeditions to the southward, and discovered a densely wooded country which is supposed to have been some portion of Nova Scotia. The climate of Greenland must have been very different from what it is at present, for the Viking colony lasted for 400 years, till, in the fifteenth century, an enormous mass of ice was swept down by the Arctic current, piled itself up along the coast, and entirely cut off the settlement—which at that time consisted of thirty villages with their churches and monasteries—from the rest of the world, so that before long every trace of it disappeared.
It seems possible that some of you may say: "This is all very interesting, but I thought we were going to read about the British Navy, and it seems to me that the Saxons and their ships represented the British navy of those days". That is a fair argument, but for my part I do not think that we can accept the Saxon Navy as the ancestor of the British Navy of to-day.
The Saxons were no seamen, and apparently but poor soldiers. When King Alfred built a navy of ships, which are stated to have been superior in every way to those of the Frisians, Scandinavians, and Danes, and by means of which he succeeded in securing more than one victory, he could not provide them with seamen. The Saxons were no good, and he had to hire Frisian pirates to man them. The Saxons fought well at Hastings, but, though there was a strong infusion of the Danish element by this time, they lost the battle through lack of discipline and military experience. It is difficult, therefore, to recognize in these Saxons the progenitors of men like Lieutenant Holbrook, who navigated his submarine through and under rows and rows of deadly mines, knowing that the least touch would bring annihilation, or of Private Pym of the Berkshires, who, alone and "on his own", rushed into a house held by a detachment of German soldiers and succeeded in killing the whole of them but three, who "made their escape".
No. For the ancestors of the British seamen and sailors of Elizabethan and modern times I think we should rather look to the Danes, who, it must be remembered, between 870 and the Norman Conquest, were not only continually invading England, but established themselves in a great part of it, especially in the east and north, and to those of the Conqueror's followers who traced their descent directly from the Northmen or Vikings. It is their spirit which has brought us victory both by land and by sea, but more especially by sea, and not the spirit of Alfred's Saxon subjects, who had to pay others to fight for them. Again, take such pre-eminent commanders as Drake and Nelson. Is not the former name one which takes us directly back to the "Draakers", the "Dragon-ships" of the Vikings, and has not Nelson a distinctly Danish sound about it?
The ships of King Alfred "were full-nigh twice as long as the others; 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 it seemed to him that they would be most efficient."
CHAPTER III
Fighting-ships of the Middle Ages
"With grisly sound off go the great guns
And heartily they crash in all at once,
And from the top down come the great stones;
In goes the grapnel so full of crooks,
Among the ropes run the shearing hooks;
And with the pole-axe presses one the other;
Behind the mast begins one to take cover
And out again, and overboard he driveth
His foe, whose side his spear-head riveth.
He rends the sail with hooks just like a scythe;
He brings the cup, and bids his mate be blithe;
He showers hard peas to make the hatches slippery.
With pots full of lime they rush together;
And thus the live-long day in fight they spend."
Description of a mediæval sea fight, Legend of Good Women
(modernized), fifteenth century.