The only danger attaching to a fine achievement is lest the next may appear insignificant by its side. The dramatist who has created a splendid climax has little to fear except that his effect may be utterly spoiled by some anti-climax. Transfer the simile to the region of wars, and how often all through history do you not notice that part of the grandeur has been robbed by the number of ex-fighting men who, no longer needed for the safety of their country, find themselves at a loose end? There has scarcely been one recorded war that has not shown the soldier and sailor almost happier in fighting than in surviving.
So it was, then, that after all those years of fighting on sea, after all those expeditions towards the West Indies and Spain, after the Armada fights and lesser campaigns had at last brought settled peace to our land, there was no employment for those numerous crews which had fought with such zest and daring. And so they turned their minds to something else, according to their circumstances. “Those that were rich rested with that they had; those that were poore and had nothing but from hand to mouth, turned Pirats; some because they became sleighted of those for whom they had got much wealth; some for that they could not get their due; some that had lived bravely would not abase themselves to poverty; some vainly, only to get a name; others for revenge, covetousness, or as ill; and as they found themselves more and more oppressed, their passions increasing with discontent, made them turne Pirats.”
So wrote Captain John Smith in his “Travells and Observations.” “The men have been long unpaid and need relief,” wrote Hawkyns to Walsyngham on the last day of July, after they had succeeded in driving the Spanish Armada out of the English Channel, and his own gallant crew had fought like true sailormen. “I pray your Lordship that the money that should have gone to Plymouth may now be sent to Dover.” “The infection is grown very great in many ships,” wrote Howard, three weeks later to Elizabeth, “and is now very dangerous; and those that come in fresh are soonest infected; they sicken one day and die the next.” And so we can easily understand that after all these privations and disappointments the ill-treated bands of seamen drifted into piracy as the most profitable life and profession.
Even during Elizabeth’s time there were, of course, plenty of these rovers in the English Channel, the most notorious of whom was a man named Callis, who cruised about off the Welsh coast. For companions he had a man named Clinton and one whose surname was Pursser. These gained great notoriety until the Queen had them caught and hanged at Wapping. And there was a man named Flemming, who was as big a rascal and as much “wanted” as the others; but inasmuch as he performed a fine deed for his country and was a patriot more than a pirate, he received not only his pardon, but a good reward as well. For he was roving about in the Channel when he discovered the great Spanish Armada sailing up. Then, heedless of the fact that his own country was anxious to see him dead, he sailed of his own accord into Plymouth, hastened to the admiral, and warned him of the momentous sight which his own eyes had beheld.
An Early Seventeenth-Century Fortified Harbour.
By a Contemporary Artist. Showing the galleys moored on one side, and the ships on the other.
Afterwards there still remained some few pirates, so that it was “incredible how many great and rich prizes the little barques of the West Country daily brought home.” But now, after peace had come and the men who had fought the Spaniards were not needed, they betook themselves to help the Moorish pirates of Tunis, Algiers, and the north coast of Africa, and many became their captains. There they were joined also by the scum of France and Holland, but very few Spaniards or Italians came with them. Some were captured off the Irish coast and hanged at Wapping: others were pardoned by James I. They wandered in their craft north and east; to the English Channel, Irish Sea, and the Mediterranean, causing panic everywhere; and this notwithstanding that they had against them warships sent out by the Pope, the Florentines, Genoese, Maltese, Dutch, and English. There were seldom more than half a dozen of these piratical craft together, and yet they would invade a seaside town, carry off property and persons, attack ships and confiscate their freights with the greatest impudence. But after a while factions grew, and “so riotous, quarrellous, treacherous, blasphemous, and villainous” a community became “so disjoynted, disordered, debawched, and miserable, that the Turks and Moores beganne to command them as slaves, and force them to instruct them in their best skill.” It was after these pirates had committed frightful atrocities as far north as Baltimore, carried away men, women, and children into slavery and been a terrible menace to shipping, that James I’s navy performed the only active service of his reign when it was sent in 1620 to the Mediterranean. However, though it contained six royal ships and a dozen merchantmen and was away from October to the following June, yet it did little good as a punitive expedition. It was not until 1655 that Blake settled the Tunisian pirates, set fire to all the nine ships of the enemy, and came out of the harbour again with but small loss. And though even in this twentieth century the north coast of Africa still possesses a few pirate ships which have been known to attack a sailing yacht when becalmed, yet ever since Admiral Lord Exmouth, in August, 1816, with a small fleet of British and Dutch warships, exterminated the pirates at Algiers, silenced their five hundred guns, captured the Dey of Algiers, and released twelve hundred Christians, this relic of medieval piracy has been practically non-existent in European waters.
If the sixteenth century forms the climax of English seamanship, it is the seventeenth century which unfortunately is the anti-climax. Abuses crept into the Navy, so that by the year 1618 a complete reorganisation had to be undertaken, and the bribery, embezzlement, and general corruption had to be stopped so far as was possible. And yet, for all that, there was still being made important progress both in navigation and in shipbuilding. John Napier, in the year 1614, provided his tables of logarithms, which simplified the intricate calculations of navigators. In 1678 was published “The Complete Ship-Wright,” by Edmund Bushnell, which I believe to be the earliest treatise on shipbuilding printed in English. The way the London shipwrights were wont to measure their ships was as follows: They multiplied the length of the keel “into the breadth of the ship, at the broadest place, taken from outside to outside, and the produce of that by the half breadth. This second product of the multiplication they divide by 94 or sometimes by 100, and according to that division, 60 the quotient thereof, they are paid for so many Tuns.”
For example, take the case of a ship 60 feet long and 20 feet broad:—